“I can count and read at the same time,” she replied defiantly.
“Hey, look, it’s our street,” her mother exclaimed in the loud, overly cheery tone she used when she was trying to distract her stepfather.
“Craftsman Lane!” She patted his hand on the steering wheel. “This is so exciting, isn’t it honey? Our first real house together!”
Millie glared down at her lap, feeling a spike of irritation at her mom’s comment. The old house had been real enough, but Millie’s father bought it before he died, and so it wasn’t their house. But now they could move someplace new and pretend that Millie’s real father had never even existed. It wasn’t fair.
“Oh, what a lovely hibiscus!” her mother said.
Millie finally looked out the window and blinked in surprise. They had gone from dunes and bait shacks to a proper town with tree-shaded neighborhood streets. Teen boys were kicking a soccer ball around on a well-kept corner field. This place didn’t look too bad, she had to admit. Maybe there would be some kids her age in the neighborhood? She hadn’t had a lot of friends at her old school. She and Chrissy Romano were pretty tight, at least until Chrissy started having eyes for Mike Walhgren. Millie walked to school with Jeff Laramie for years and had thought of him as a friend until he joined Little League and decided he was too cool to hang out with girls. Sixth grade was confusing; everybody wanted to be with the boys and nobody wanted to spend time with Millie.
So, maybe seventh grade would be better? Maybe meeting new kids would be the one good thing about having to leave everything she knew behind?
Her stepfather slowed in front of a three-story white Victorian with a wraparound porch. “And here’s our new home!”
Millie couldn’t take her eyes off the amazing porch. It had steps wide enough for pumpkins on each side, and a railing that was begging to be decorated. “That’s the perfect Halloween porch!”
“Aren’t you getting a little old for Halloween?” her stepfather said.
“Not yet,” Millie suddenly felt anxious. She couldn’t tell from his tone if he was being serious.
“I think you are.” He pulled the van into the driveway and parked. “I think you’re getting much too old for things like Halloween and trick-or-treating.”
“You said teenagers are too old. I’m not a teenager. Not until next April.” She turned to her mother, her stomach churning. She couldn’t be too old for Halloween. Not yet. “You said I could still trick-or-treat this year.”
“Oh, honey, that’s a whole three months away,” her mother said. “Let’s go in and see our new home!”
The house was fine. Millie’s new room got too much sun in the mornings, but as her mother pointed out, at least she wasn’t running late for school any more. Her stepfather was frequently gone on Cosmic Cola business—he bought her mother a Honda Civic so they wouldn’t have to share his van—and frankly his absence was a relief. And Marsh Middle School was fine, too, at least as far as her classes went.
The kids were weird, though. She was used to the cliques at Wendover: orchestra kids, theatre kids, rich kids, poor kids. Pretty kids from wealthy families who were good at sports were at the top, and the special ed kids and the immigrant kids from poor families were at the bottom. It wasn’t fair but it made sense. But at Marsh, it was mostly about whose families had been around the longest. Even the kid with crooked, discolored teeth and a limp got to sit with the popular kids at lunch because he was a real Marsh. So did the kid with the threadbare clothes. Sure, they had a hierarchy within their hierarchy, but nobody who was “new blood” got let into that club no matter how cool they were. And apparently you could still be new blood even if your family had lived in the town for several generations … but meanwhile some of the other kids were considered old blood even though they’d moved to town just a few years before. The situation wasn’t any fairer than at Wendover, and Millie couldn’t quite make sense of it, not entirely.
The old blood kids were actually friendlier to Millie than they were to some of the new blood kids they’d grown up with, simply because when the teachers introduced her, they made sure to mention that her father was the new Vice President of Operations for Cosmic Cola. Millie never would have guessed that being the daughter of an executive at the soda company would be such a big deal. It was nearly as good as being a featured soloist in the choir! She didn’t make new friends, not like Chrissy had been, anyway, but she always had a place to sit at lunch and people to talk to and nobody picked on her.
Once she realized the social advantage she had, she could never let on that she didn’t even like Cosmic Cola. It was sickly sweet, and it had an unpleasant licorice aftertaste. And the bubbles seemed too harsh and made her sneeze. Everybody in town seemed to drink gallons of the stuff. Whenever someone offered her a bottle, she’d politely pretend to sip it and then pour it out first chance she got.
Late summer cooled to fall, and at the end of September the janitors festooned the school in black-and-orange streamers and grinning paper Jack-o-Lanterns, black cats, and green-faced witches. Millie was thrilled! Marsh Middle School was far more keen on Halloween than her old school was. And not only did the town have an official trick-or-treat planned from 6:00 to 8:00 pm on Halloween, they had special Devil’s Night parties planned for older kids and teens on the days leading up to Halloween to prevent pranks and other mischief in town.
The biggest Devil’s Night party—or at least the most important party as far as her classmates were concerned—was the Cosmic Cola Party at Marsh Mansion up on the cliff above the ocean. None of the Marsh family lived there anymore; old Jeremiah Marsh had donated it to the soda company for charity events and executive retreats. They’d get to ride in a chartered bus up the winding road to the mansion, and at the party they’d dance and drink Cosmic Cola and eat pizza and play games. All that, on the face of it, didn’t seem so impressive to Millie, but the old blood kids all talked about how their parents had said that the company was bringing in a super-secret special guest to play at the party. Some said it might be Aerosmith … others claimed it was Duran Duran or even Michael Jackson.
Millie’s mother said she was far too young to go to a rock concert, so to think that she might be able to see someone as famous as Michael Jackson … that was most impressive. And even better, because the party ran so late, all the kids who attended would be excused from class the next day.
The catch was that only thirty kids from Marsh Middle School could attend the party, and they’d be chosen in a special lottery in mid-October. Everyone got one ticket, but students could earn extra tickets by making As, volunteering to help out around the school, and other such things. By October seventh, she’d earned seven lottery tickets thanks to her good grades in math, English and history and a couple afternoons picking up trash. Seven was more than most kids, but she guessed that there were probably nine hundred tickets total for the three hundred kids in the school, which meant that her efforts had earned her only of a fraction of a percent of a chance.
And then she had a worrisome thought.
“Papa, I was wondering about something,” she said that night at dinner. Her mother and stepfather preferred that she called him Papa, rather than Steve or Mr. Gibbs. Calling him that almost didn’t seem unnatural anymore.