“What?” asked Peggy Pan and I in unison.
“They still live right here in this house. Every night, they hide in the dark and watch out the windows, waiting for visitors.”
“You’re just making this up,” Nick said.
“Sure I am.”
“She isn’t, man,” said Jimmy.
“They’re probably up in the house right this very minute watching us, licking their lips, just praying we’ll climb the stairs and go across the porch and ring the doorbell. Because they’re very hungry and you know what?”
“WHAT?” asked Peggy Pan, Jimmy and I in unison.
In a low, trembling voice, Donna said, “The food they love most of all is...” Shouting “LITTLE GIRLS LIKE YOU!” she lunged toward Alice and Olive.
They shrieked and whirled around and ran for their lives. Yoda or E.T. waved her little arms overhead as she fled. The fairy dancer whipped her magic wand as if swatting at bats. One of them fell and crashed in the weeds and started to cry.
Nick yelled, “Fuck!” and ran after them, his light saber jumping.
“Language!” Jimmy called after him.
Donna brushed her hands together. “Golly,” she said. “What got into them?”
“Can’t imagine,” I said.
“What a bunch of wussies,” said Peggy Pan.
“I can’t stand that Nick,” said Jimmy. “He is such a shit.”
“Language,” Donna told him.
We laughed, all four of us.
Then Donna said, “Come on, gang,” and trotted up the porch stairs. We hurried after her.
And I’ll always remember trotting up those stairs stepping onto the dark porch and walking up to the door. Even while it was happening, I knew I would never forget it. It was just one of those moments when you think, It doesn’t get any better than this.
I was out there in the windy, wonderful October night with cute and spunky little Peggy Pan, with my best buddy Jimmy, and with Donna. I was in love with Donna. I’d fallen in love with her to this day and I’ll love her the rest of my life.
That night, she was sixteen and beautiful and brash and innocent and full of fun and vengeance. She’d trounced Nick and done quite a number on Alice and Olive, too. Now she was about to ring the doorbell of the creepiest house I’d ever seen. I wanted to run away screaming myself. I wanted to yell with joy. I wanted to hug Donna and never let her go. And also I sort of felt like crying.
Crying because it was all so terrifying and glorious and beautiful—and because I knew it wouldn’t last.
All the very best times are like that. They hurt because you know they’ll be left behind.
But I guess that’s partly what makes them special, too.
“Here goes,” Donna whispered.
She raised her hand to knock on the door, but Jimmy grabbed her wrist. “That stuff about Boo and the cats,” he whispered. “You made it up, didn’t you?”
“What do you think?”
“Okay.” He let go of her hand.
She knocked on the door.
Nothing.
I turned halfway around. Beyond the bushes and trees of the front yard, Nick and the two girls were watching us from the sidewalk.
Donna knocked again. Then she whispered, “I really don’t think anyone lives here anymore.”
“I hope not,” I whispered.
Donna reached out and gave the screen door a pull. It swung toward us, hinges squeaking.
“What’re you doing?” Jimmy blurted.
“Nothing,” said Donna. She tried the main door. “Damn,” she muttered.
“What?” I asked.
“Locked.”
Oh, I thought. That’s too bad.
The wooden door had a small window at about face level. Donna leaned forward against the door, cupped her hands by the sides of her eyes, and peered in.
Peered and peered and didn’t say a word.
“Can you see something?” Jimmy asked.
Donna nodded ever so slightly.
“What? What’s in there?”
She stepped back, lowered her arms and turned her back to the door and said very softly, “I think we’d better get out of here.”
Peggy Pan groaned.
Jimmy muttered, “Oh, shit.”
I suddenly felt cold and shrively all over my body.
We let Donna take the lead. Staying close behind her, we quietly descended the porch stairs. At the bottom, I thought she might break into a run. She didn’t, though. She just walked slowly through the high weeds.
I glanced back at the porch a couple of times. It was still dark. Nobody seemed to be coming after us.
Entering the shadows of some trees near the middle of the lawn, Donna almost disappeared. We all hurried toward her. In a hushed voice, Jimmy said, “What did you see?”
“Nothing really,” she said.
“Yes you did,” Peggy Pan insisted.
“No, I mean...” She stopped.
The four of us stood there in the darkness. Though we weren’t far from the sidewalk where Nick and the girls were waiting, a high clump of bushes blocked our view of them.
“Okay,” Donna said. “Look, this is just between us. They ran off, so they’ve got no right to hear about it, okay?”
“Sure.” I said.
Jimmy whispered, “They’ll never hear it from me.”
“Okay,” Donna said. “Here’s the thing. It was really dark in the house. I didn’t see anything at first. But then I could just barely make out a stairway. And something was on the stairway. Sitting on the stairs part-way up, and it seemed to be staring straight at me.”
“What was it?” Peggy Pan whispered.
“I’m not really sure, but I think it was a cat. A white cat.”
“So?” Jimmy asked.
I felt a little letdown, myself.
“I think it was sitting on someone’s lap,” she said.
“Oh, jeez.”
Peggy Pan made a high-pitched whiny noise. Or maybe that was me. Or her. “All I could see was this darkness on the stairs.”
“How do you know it was even there?” Jimmy asked.
“The cat was white.”
“So?”
“Someone was petting it.”
“Let’s get outa here,” Jimmy said.
Donna nodded.
“Remember, not a word to Nick or Alice or Olive. We’ll just say nothing happened.”
We all agreed, and Donna led us through the trees. Out in the moonlight, we walked around the clump of bushes and found Nick and the girls waiting. “So what happened?” Nick asked.
We shrugged and shook our heads. Donna said, “Nothing much. We knocked, but nobody was home.”
Smirking, he said, “You mean Boo and his cats weren’t there?”
Donna grinned. “You didn’t believe that story, did you? It’s Halloween. I made it up.”
Nick scowled. The ballerina fairy godmother princess looked very relieved, and Yoda or E.T. sighed through her mask.
“Good story,” I said.
“Thanks, Matt,” said Donna.
“Can we still trick or treat some more?” Peggy Pan asked.
Donna shrugged. “It’s getting pretty late. And we’re a long way from home.”
“Please?” asked Peggy Pan.
Her little friends started jumping and yelling, “Please? Please-please-please? Oh, please? Pretty please?”
“How about you, Nick?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Guys?” she asked Jimmy and me.
“Yeah!”
“Sure!”
“Okay,” Donna said. “We’ll go a little longer. Maybe just for a couple more blocks.”
“Yayyy!”
The girls led the way, running up the sidewalk to the next house—a normal house—cutting across its front lawn and rushing up half a dozen stairs to its well-lighted porch. Nick chased them up the stairs. Jimmy and I hurried. By the time the door was opened by an elderly man with a tray of candy, Jimmy and I were also on the porch, Donna waiting at the foot of the stairs.