CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Meg eyed a long, beige, short-sleeved dress with crimson flowers patterned over it. It was hanging over a mannequin in the front window of Macy's, displayed ostentatiously between a case of jewelry and a rack of leather shoes. Already that day she'd bought a Gap t-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and a costume for Halloween-- that year she was going to be Raggedy Ann-- complete with freckles and red-yarn hair.
No practice that day. At Jeff's invitation, they'd gone straight to the mall after school to pick up some things for the holiday, and of course Meg couldn't resist picking up a couple of extra things for herself along the way. He was standing beside her, and as she looked at the dress in the display window, his hand brushed hers. Blushing, she gave him a quick smile.
"We still have to get your costume," she said, holding up her overalls. "Wanna be Raggedy Andy?"
He smiled big. "Of course. Does that mean we go to the party together?" He now had a twinkle in his eyes.
She blushed again. "I guess so." She shrugged. "Do you want to?" They were both invited to one of Jeff's friend's parties-- held on Halloween night. With an extensive back-ground check and an assurance of parental chaperones, her parents had agreed to let her go.
Jeff beamed. "Of course," he said again. "You can be my date again...this time, I promise not to ditch you."
"What's the party going to be like?"
They started walking away from the window, swinging their bags as they moved. "Chips, sodas, pizza... and a scary movie. Nothing like that other party. Good clean fun."
"You call a slasher movie 'good clean fun'?"
"Sure, don't you like seeing someone's guts being spilled out onto the floor every once in a while?"
Meg laughed. "Well, I suppose since it's Halloween..."
Jeff stopped her, holding both her hands in his. "You know, you don't talk much about your time in private school."
"What made you think of that?" Meg blew away a strand of hair that had gotten in her face.
Jeff looked at her tenderly. "I was just thinking about how long you were missing from my life. Last time I ever saw you it was in the second grade, and then suddenly you were whisked away."
"It was my parents. I think their reasoning was that they wanted to somewhat remove me from the immediacy of what happened."
Jeff nodded. "Do you think they were being overprotective?"
"They got to be that way, I think. Private school was just the first step."
He eyed her. "So why don't you ever talk about it, may I ask?"
She roped her hand through his arm and urged him to walk with her. "There's not much to tell," she said. "It was an all girls' Christian boarding school. Not Catholic, but Episcopalian. No nuns roaming around, in other words. Once a week we had chapel, and every day we had to go to theology class."
"Is that all?"
Meg smiled. "I had a few friends, but not many. I was more like a serious student than a socializer. A couple of the girls were royally mean to me."
"Tell me more. What did they do?"
"Oh, I don't know," she said. "I guess they thought I was strange. I wasn't as outgoing as the other girls, and so they started to make fun of me."
"Did they do it a lot?"
"They did it enough to make me cry into my pillow at nights until I went to sleep. Sometimes, instead of praying, I'd try to talk to Cory, whispering into the empty recesses of my room, in the hopes that he would hear me and stick up for me. Of course he never did. He was dead."
"That's sad."
"I was a little kid. It got better."
"Well, one thing's for sure," Jeff said.
"What's that?"
"If anyone tries to do that to you again, I'll black-belt them to kingdom come."
Meg smiled big and they walked back to the main part of the mall, bags in tow.
Halloween came. Their teachers gave them little packages of candy wrapped in tissue paper and ribbon at school, and several of the kids showed up in costume. Meg didn't; she was going to wait until the evening to get dressed up. The party was at seven, and children started showing up at the Mitchell's doorstep at around five o'clock, demanding candy. Meg dug into the huge candy dish that was sitting beside the front door and dropped huge fistfuls of Reese's Cups and Tootsie Rolls into their bags.
A cute little boy wearing a Batman costume hollered, "Trick or treat!" and Meg happily reached for the candy dish, but just as she was about to drop the sweets into his pail, a couple of young teenagers showed up and shoved him out of the way.
"You're Meg Mitchell, aren't you?" one of the boys asked.
"Yes, that's me," Meg said, apprehensively. One of the boys was wearing a cap that made it look like a butcher knife was impaled through his head, and the other one wore a frightening mask that made him look like a deformed ghoul.
"We know about you," said the ghoul, who had fake blood gushing from his mouth. "You have a ghost living in this house. You better watch out, or he'll try some crazy stuff tonight."
"I'll keep that in mind," Meg said, not impressed. "How did you hear about that?"
The boy with the butcher knife through his head grinned. "We know lots of things about you," he said. "We know all about you and that guy Mark Powell, too."
"I don't know who you are or how you got this information," she said, "but I think you'd better leave. Right now." She reached past them, dropped some candy into the arms of some children who had just arrived, and slammed the door in the teenagers' faces. Thankfully, they did not return. Meg went upstairs.
It was a very windy night, and from time to time the power went off inside the house, the old power lines not sturdy enough to withstand the high winds. It was dusk, and dark enough inside the house to necessitate some candles. Meg lit some scented votives as she heard some noises coming from downstairs. Her parents were arguing again; she could hear them yelling from her bedroom.
She slipped out of her jeans and blouse and examined her body before the full-length mirror. She frowned, not at all pleased with what she saw. Twirling around, she scrutinized her bulging abdomen, thighs that were larger than she would have liked, and pudgy arms. Her mother would have called it babyfat, but Meg thought it had something to do with her weakness for sweets. She wasn't grossly overweight; in fact, she wasn't considered overweight at all for her height, but still, she wanted to shave off at least ten pounds. She was at the very highest limit of being at a normal weight, but she wanted to be less.
She took the shirt and overalls that she had bought at the mall from her closet and slipped them on. Once on, she pulled on a pair of dirty boots and laced them. She then knotted her hair and pinned it up, retrieved the red-yarn wig and placed it on top of her head, and dotted her face with brown face paint for the freckles. She looked at the end result and smiled at what she saw.
Her parents were arguing as she arrived downstairs.
"Davis, you are simply insane sometimes!" her mother yelled, through clenched teeth.
"Oh, now you're going to insult me?" he argued back, equally as incensed.
"What's going on?" Meg asked, coming into the kitchen.
"Your father is being a big bully," her mother said. The lights flickered on, and then off. Their faces looked distorted and scary in the candlelight.
"Now that's not fair," he said. "Why don't you tell our daughter the truth? That you're the one who's being a bully?"
They hadn't even noticed her costume. "I'm going out with Jeff to that party you let me go to," she said, walking past them. "I won't be back until ten-thirty."
Her parents hadn't even heard her. They just continued yelling at each other. When Meg saw the headlights flashing in the driveway, she slipped out the front door and bounded over to the car without saying good-bye. They wouldn't have heard her anyway, she thought.
As she crossed the front lawn to the car, the force of the wind nearly knocked her wig off of her head, but she clamped it down with a heavy hand. Dusk was spectacular-- the clouds were splattered across the skyline in an array of colors-- red, orange, pink and purple, and the grey clouds overhead were moving in an unbelievable speed. The air was blisteringly cold, and crisp.
Jeff was sitting behind the wheel, dressed in his Raggedy Andy costume of matching overalls and wig. "You look cute!" he said. Meg smiled at him.
"I have to be back by ten-thirty because it's a school night," she said.
"No problem," he said. "That'll give us plenty of time to see the movie. See any trick-or-treaters?"
"A couple," she said. "They're so cute. But the funniest thing happened. A couple of young teenagers came by and said that there was a ghost in my house."
"You mean they knew about Cory?"
"I suppose so. But isn't that weird?"
Jeff nodded his head. "Maybe someone's been talking about you," he said. As they drove down Spruce Lane, they saw the shadowy blobs that were kids walking from door to door. Meg could make out the forms of a few witch hats, as well as an animal's tail and some ears on one of the kids.
When they arrived at Gary's house, not many cars were parked out front. His house was a green split-level just outside the borders of Glenwood proper. The lights from inside were casting a warm glow on the lawn outside, in contrast to the eery, greenish glow of the street light two doors down.
Jeff turned the car off, went around to the other side of the car, and opened the door for Meg. His warm hand grasped hers, helping to lift her up and out.
When they got to the front door, he rang the bell. A few seconds later, Gary was standing there, dressed like a red devil, pitchfork in hand.
"Come in, come in!" he urged, stepping aside to give them room to pass. "Party's just getting started! Let me guess. Raggedy Ann and Andy?"
"Good guess."
They strolled inside and saw that the living room had been cleared of furniture. Along one of the walls was a long buffet table draped in a white tablecloth, covered with snack foods. "Dig in, everybody!" Gary called.
Several other kids, in costume, were standing around. Meg immediately spotted Amanda, who was wearing a Little Bo Peep costume. "Hi, Amanda," Meg said, as she sidled up to her.
"Well, don't you two look like the perfect couple," she said, with a sideways glance, and then a wink.
"You look so adorable," Meg said, regarding her costume.
"I feel ridiculous," she said. "And I think this dress is too small. It keeps riding up, and that Dracula over there keeps looking at my ass." She pointed to a young man who was hovering over the potato chips.
Meg laughed and patted her on the shoulder. "Well, look at it this way..." she said. "At least you didn't come as a French maid, like Kate did." They both looked at her, and she was having a hard time keeping her costume on her body.
"You're right." They stood in silence together for a moment, while Amanda sipped her berry-red punch. Then she leaned in close to Meg. "So, Meg," she whispered. "Are you and Jeff, like, a thing now?"
Meg looked into her eyes and smiled. "I don't know," she answered back. "But he keeps giving me these signals, like holding my hand, telling me he really likes me, telling me we're going out on dates. I think he's really into it."
"Are you?"
She bit her lip. "I think so. I mean, now that Mark's not in the picture, what have I to lose, right?"
Amanda nodded sagely. "Oops, here he comes," she said, looking up.
He approached, carrying two cups of punch and some cookies. "The movie's going to start soon," he said. "Nightmare on Elm Street. The first one. We're all going to go down to the basement to watch it."
"I'm starved," Meg said. "I didn't have any dinner. Has he got anything besides cookies?"
"Some pizza," he said. "I'll get you a slice."
"So," Amanda said, as soon as he left, "do you really like him?"
"I think I do." Jeff came back with the pizza. They were silenced.
After chomping down two greasy slices of pepperoni pizza, Meg watched as the group congregated at the top of the stairs to go down to the finished basement. The lights weren't flickering anymore, and so they made their way downstairs easily under the fluorescent lights.
About a dozen kids were at the party that night. With extra folding chairs pulled out to complement the huge, brown sofa and easy chairs, everyone had a seat in front of the tv. Someone dimmed the lights, and Gary pushed the play button on the vcr.
Meg and Jeff had prime spots on the sofa. They sat right next to each other, Jeff on the end, Meg in the middle. While the previews were on, people chattered excitedly.
It was dark. The amber glow from the tv screen provided little in the way of being able to distinguish people's faces. Gary's mom brought in a bowl of freshly popped and buttered popcorn and placed it on the coffeetable in the middle of the group, and it smelled wonderful, all steamy and buttery-smelling.
Once the previews were over and the movie came on, everyone hushed.
Jeff's hand lightly brushed Meg's during the first scene. Surprised, she gave a little jump. Looking around, all she could see were the silhouettes of kids rapt in attention at the movie, and all she could hear was the creepy music coming from the tv and the sound of people eating their popcorn. No one had noticed her jump.
Slowly, his hand slid over hers. His hand was cool now, although not cold. She let him hold her hand.
Several scenes went by. She could hear the sound of Jeff smacking his teeth together, chewing on some popcorn. She felt the desire to lean into his arms, and so she did. He did not back away. He enclosed both his arms around her, hugging her close.
By the time the movie ended, they were both embracing each other. Just before the lights were switched on, Meg shyly moved away. Then the overheads came on, and Meg blinked and squinted her eyes, not used to the light. She felt sedate and sleepy as she looked up at Jeff, who looked tired himself.
It was nearly ten o'clock and Meg knew that she had best be going. "Ready to leave?" she asked Jeff, who looked like he was about ready to curl up into a ball and take a nap on the sofa.
"Let me just say good-bye to some people," he said. She waited on the couch, yawning.
When he returned he was carrying his jangling keys. "Let's go," he said.
It was all Meg could do not to fall asleep in the car. She'd seen scary movies a million times before, so they never gave her nightmares. They never bothered her one bit, so she felt perfectly at ease to sleep. But she sobered up a little when they arrived at her house. He turned to her in the waiting car and held both her hands, the way he had at the mall earlier that day. "I had a really good time tonight," he said. "Even though there were tons of other kids around with us. One of these days I want to take you out on a real date, you know, to like a restaurant or something."
She could barely see him in the moonlight. "I had a good time, too," she said. "I'm glad you asked me to come with you."
There was a pause, and Meg wasn't quite sure what was going on because she couldn't see Jeff's face or expression, but a second later, he said, "Can I kiss you?"
She was surprised. But without much thought, she said, "Sure. I guess so."
He leaned in close, and when his mouth came close to hers, she could faintly smell the mint on his breath. Then the top lip softly, hesitantly touched hers, and then the bottom lip, bravely and firmly, quickly captured the rest of her mouth.
When he pulled away, she caught her breath. "That was nice," she said.
"Just nice?"
"More than nice," she corrected herself. There was a moment of silence as Meg got her bearings.
"I like you a lot," he said. "I hope I can see more of you."
Meg hesitated. "You will," she said, quietly.
After a while, she exited the car, said a nervous good-bye and returned to the warmth of her house.