“You were awesome,” she says. “I figured it out while I was downstairs. It was you the whole time, right?”
“No!”
“It had to be. That ghost was definitely a boy, and there were no other boys in the elevator.” Chin pokes me with her elbow. “Besides, I know you wanted to get Nadia back for scaring you other years. You got her pretty good, huh?”
“Well—”
Chin interrupts. “What I want to know is, how did you make your voice sound like it was coming from the other side of the elevator? And who taught you to say ‘Leave your pumpkin in the hallway’ in Mandarin, because you have a really odd accent in Chinese. And are you going to use my jack-o’-lantern in your top secret squash project? Because if you’re the ghost, you’re obviously not really sacrificing all your squash. You probably just want my pumpkin for your own purposes.”
Bleh.
I was really hoping she’d believe the ghost ate all my squash.
“No,” I confess. “I’m not using your pumpkin. I don’t have any squash myself, even.”
“Really?” Chin looks concerned. “Your mom told my mom you were revealing the project later tonight, over at Big Round Pumpkin.”
“I never really had a project,” I say. “I lied.”
“Oh.” Chin is silent for a moment. “How come?”
I can’t tell her why I lied, though it feels good to admit that I did. “It just popped out of my mouth one day. Then my parents kept asking about my project and acting all interested. I had to buy squash, just to keep up the lie.”
Chin wrinkles her nose at me. “That’s not a normal thing to do, Hank.”
“I know.”
Hardly anything I do is normal, really.
I add a detail to make my lie seem reaclass="underline" “It was starting to stink up my closet something bad. That’s why I had to get rid of it. I should have told you before. Sorry.”
Chin thinks for a moment, then smiles. “That’s okay. You made up for it with your genius elevator haunting.”
We join Nadia, Locke, Linderman, and Daley. They are waiting for the people in 6B to answer their doorbell.
“You were awesome,” Daley says to me. “You showed that ghost who was boss.”
“Thanks,” I say, looking at the floor.
“Really. We’d still be in that elevator if it wasn’t for you.”
“It was nothing.”
“It was very brave,” she says.
6B opens up, and we all get Skittles.
We trick-or-treat the whole sixth floor. Even Nadia. She puts her candy in her handbag.
Chin is right. They give out good candy up here.
Then we do the fifth floor, the third, the second.
Always taking the stairs.
Somewhere on the second floor, Inkling taps my knee. I pretend to tie my shoe, and he climbs onto my back and into his usual position.
He smells like Chin’s jack-o’-lantern.
“I was awesome,” he whispers.
“Not.”
The girls are down at the end of the hall, talking to Mrs. Gold in 2E.
Mrs. Gold can talk a lot. Lot.
“What do you mean, ‘not’?” says Inkling.
“That was the opposite of awesome. You scared everyone half to death and made Nadia cry. Plus, while we were all stuck in the elevator, the people in three-A ran out of Toblerones.”
Inkling huffs. “The way I see it, I managed a Halloween costume, which is nearly impossible for an invisible person. I booed Nadia, who richly deserved it. I made you look the hero and gave you an excuse not to reveal the nonexistence of your top secret squash project. Plus I got myself a tasty pumpkin in the bargain.”
Oh.
When he puts it that way, it does sound pretty good.
We head down to the ground floor, where there’s only two apartments. 1A: Butterfingers. 1B: Kit Kats.
As we finish with 1B, Max and Gustav come in through the front door. Gustav is Frankenstein’s monster again. Max is dressed as a unicorn.
“Max!” Nadia cries. She runs down the hall and hugs him.
“Sorry we’re late,” says Max. “They wouldn’t let me on the bus with my unicorn horn. We had to walk. I left a message on your cell.”
“I can’t believe I was mad at you,” Nadia says. “You’re so sweet. You dressed as a unicorn for me.”
“I didn’t dress up,” says Max. “This is what I always wear.”
It’s Good to Embrace Joy
Before Nadia leaves, she puts an arm around me. “You were awesome,” she says. “I can’t believe you planned that whole thing out. You really got revenge for me booing you those times.”
I don’t correct her.
“I guess I deserved it,” Nadia goes on. “And thanks for saving my dangerous pumpkins last night at school. I wasn’t that nice about it, I know.”
“That’s okay.”
“I was mad at Jacquie more than you,” she says. “It’s like I’m always mad at Jacquie these days.”
“I’m sorry about breaking those first four pumpkins,” I tell her. “Really.”
“I know you are,” she says. “That’s why I made you the faint-banded sea snake.”
“What?”
“The faint-banded sea snake? Wake up, Hank.”
Oh.
The dragon pumpkin—was not a dragon. It was a faint-banded sea snake! “That was for me?” I squeak.
“Yeah,” Nadia says. “I looked it up on the internet so I could carve it correctly. Turns out it’s a really cool kind of snake.”
“But you were mad at me.”
“Yeah, but there I was, wanting to scoop your eyeballs out and snap your fingers off, when I started talking to Dad. He told me this thing about families. He thinks they’re like—”
“Vanilla ice cream,” I say.
“Yeah.” Nadia laughs. “He gave you that talk, too?”
“He gave it to my entire class.”
“So I tried to think of your smashing my pumpkins like a bit of salt that makes our family good,” says Nadia.
“I thought of you as slimy egg,” I tell her.
Nadia goes upstairs with Max and Gustav. I am going to walk down the block to the ice-cream shop to hang out with my parents. Chin talks to her mom through the apartment intercom and gets permission for all the dead ballerinas to go with me. Inkling’s still on my back.
We push through the front door of our apartment building. Out on the street, the neighborhood feels like a party. Sidewalks are crowded with kids and adults in costumes, babies in strollers. Trees shine with orange holiday lights. Jack-o’-lanterns glow, and front steps are covered with fake cobwebs. Our neighbors sit on their stoops in costume. They have bowls of candy for trick-or-treaters.
People walking toward us are holding small paper cups full of ice cream, eating it with thin wooden spoons. Suddenly, there is Patne. He’s wearing a fuzzy blue monster suit and holding a cup of ice cream. His dad is somewhere behind him.
“Happy Halloween,” he says to me. “You get anything good?”
I open my bag to show my candy.
Patne starts talking about how his parents let him go trick-or-treating, but he’s not allowed to eat any of the candy. His dad makes him use it as building blocks. Together they do a big architecture project.
This year, though, he’s hiding a bunch of candy inside his monster suit. That’s why he picked this costume. There’s a pocket that goes right across the tummy, and Patne’s pretty sure his dad hasn’t noticed.
Then he starts talking about how my dad talked to his dad about how dessert brings such joy into the world and it’s good to embrace joy wherever you can find it, as long as you eat a balanced diet.
He tells how my dad said his dad should let Patne try just a tiny cup of Big Round Pumpkin’s special Halloween ice-cream flavor.