I SHOULDN’T HAVE EATEN THAT SECOND PIECE OF pecan pie. The Endangered Species could make a pie to make you cry. I knew it was tofu day at home and that Laura had said it would be Thai today. I don’t want Laura to think I’m an ingrate and don’t appreciate what she cooks—even when I don’t.

  But the pie was good and the crowd was happening. A couple of artists from the loft across the street were eating steak and eggs. They hardly ever come out in the daylight. A delivery man was swigging coffee and yelling at somebody on his cell that his GPS wasn’t working, and a woman with three kids was trying to get her set of twins to share an order of fries—and failing.

  School let out twenty minutes ago and there was no place I needed to be so here was good.

  I’m just about to pick up a pecan that’s fallen off my second piece of pie when Jason sits down next to me. He’s there so fast I can’t even embarrass myself by sliding under the table and/or making a run for it.

  “Okay, Scotty, we’re in a real small diner and there’s no place you can sprint off to, duck under, or hide behind.”

  Again, it would help me out more if Jason didn’t always smell so damned good.

  I lie. “I haven’t been running from you.”

  “Scotty.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Scotty.”

  Jason relaxes, ’cause I guess he realizes I’m going to keep denying it. That way I don’t have to be as ashamed as I really am. But I’ll be damned if he doesn’t read my mind.

  “Scotty, I’m sorry about the park. I mean—I’m not sorry it happened. I just mean I’m sorry that I took advantage. I feel like you might think I wasn’t respecting you the way I came at you. I mean—”

  “Okay, stop.” I need another piece of pie—but there’s still tofu for dinner.

  Jason closes his eyes and doesn’t say anything else for the minute. I pretend I’m eating whatever is left on the dessert plate in front of me. My favorite green-haired waitress comes over and smiles at Jason.

  “What’ll you have, darling?”

  He opens his eyes and points at my plate. “I’ll have what she had.”

  I stop imaginary pie eating and relax back against the booth. Now two men in suits and a woman dressed for a formal walk in. She leans over the counter and the green-haired waitress gives her a carryout bag. Ms. Sparkly Formal pays and is out the door in front of the lost delivery man.

  Jason gets his pie in a minute, the waitress calls him darling again, then he moves closer to me and says, “Share?”

  And that’s how we sit at the Endangered Species, smiling and eating pie.

  I CALL FALCONE’S HOUSE BUT his dad says he went for a drive with somebody. Me being nosy, I ask, “Who?” He says Falcone grumbled a name he couldn’t hear, kept looking in the mirror and messing with his hair, then finally left with a big old dumb smile on his face.

  Later that night I start to smile again when I think of the clown walking towards Nick and how my hand is still warm from holding Jason’s before I fall asleep.

  I GOT MY HOMECOMING DRESS TODAY FROM Celia’s Closet. Celia is a friend of Laura’s. The dress found me in her little shop off of Coventry. Celia is a witch’s granddaughter. I figured I’d waited so long to get a dress, the only way I was ever going to get one was to stop looking for it. So just as I was reaching for an old picture book from the forties about trains, I spotted it from across the room.

  I’m getting excited that homecoming falls on Halloween. Definitely more choices of dresses to wear when people are walking around as zombies and dead accountants and vampires. Celia’s Closet is full of everything. And I mean everything. It’s worth the forty-minute bus ride just to touch and smell the things in the store. Some things in the shop are on consignment, but not everything. But when I walk over to a flowing green dress—it acts like it found me and won’t let go.

  Celia claps her hands when I walk out of the dressing room.

  “No one has been able to fit into that dress—until you.”

  I out-twirl Misha and cannot believe the fit. It’s a beautiful gauzy sage green that fits like it was made for me. It’s sleeveless and has a very slight train in the back that brushes the floor, barely.

  “People were a lot smaller way back then,” Celia says.

  “This dress is that old?” I say.

  “Do you care?” Celia asks, in her black head wrap and gold caftan.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Then she says, “I have a necklace that belonged to a witch—one of my grandmother’s friends, actually.”

  “Was she a good witch or a bad witch?”

  Celia walks off to find me the necklace to go with the dress.

  She brings back a beautiful teardrop crystal necklace and latches it around my neck.

  “She was an amazingly good witch. She changed people’s lives for the good without them ever knowing it.”

  So when I leave out of Celia’s with my sage green dress and the amazingly good witch’s necklace, I also relieve her of an extremely old copy of The Railroad’s Western Journey for Keone.

  THE HALLS ARE QUIET IN pediatrics. I open Keone’s door and the room smells like ginger. His books are stacked waiting for him and the music he loves plays just low enough for him and not too loud that anyone outside his room could hear. They say he might actually hear everything going on around him, even though he’s still in a coma. I like to believe that.

  I take the book out I bought from Celia’s, then put it on top of the four or five books already beside his bed. It’s got that old book smell Keone likes.

  “Keone, do you want me to try on my witch dress for you?”

  Keone never likes to try on clothes himself but he always loves to watch other people walk back and forth in front of a mirror at the mall. I think he sees it as a game, maybe. He loves it. I go into his bathroom and put the dress on. There’s a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door and even in the bad lighting it’s still beautiful. I open the door and walk towards Keone. You can’t tell that he’s been asleep for weeks.

  The Band-Aids are coming off slowly.

  No more wrapped left hand. Then the bandage on the right arm came off. The swelling in his face went down; then the head wrap came off. Every day Keone looks more like Keone.

  So I stand beside my little brother’s bed in my green witch dress and begin to twirl around his room. I dance to the music coming out of the boom box from the jazz channel. I dance around the room and read out loud to Keone about trains, cars, planes and anything that moves, rolls, or flies.

  I’m tired at the end of the twirling so I climb into bed with Keone and read him his favorite book about trains. I fall asleep holding my little brother’s hand.

  I walk out of pediatrics with the witch dress in my bag again and the crystal necklace sliding around in the bottom. The train book from Celia’s I leave tucked beside Keone underneath his comforter. When I walk out of his room I feel the jazz music following me home—little bitty ghosts of my sleeping brother.

  As I get on the bus and find a seat towards the middle I look up towards his room and smile. At least I showed him my homecoming dress.

  And I start to think about evil omens. It’s one of the things that’s stayed with me from Anna Karenina. Trains and omens. And of course I haven’t finished the book report yet. I think I will take the incomplete at this point.

  But at that moment I would have hollered and kissed everybody on the bus if I’d known that Keone was waking up just as I sat down beside the snoring kid with the backpack on the Cain Park/East Cleveland bus. By the time I got home—though I still didn’t know it—he was totally awake and wrapping his arms around The Railroad’s Western Journey and was probably wondering if I would maybe come back soon and dance again in the green witch dress.

  I ALWAYS MISS THE BEST stories in the making.

  The nurse told us all she knew about Keone waking up.

  One minute a nurse at the station thought she saw a little kid darting behind the desk. Then he was gone. Another nurse thought she heard someone eating something crunchy over by the fridge where they keep juice and ginger ale for the kids. Another nurse finally went in Keone’s room, where he had a bunch of cookies in the middle of the floor, a ginger ale, a stethoscope, and a pile of train books surrounding him. And because he knew he was truly a superhero, Keone was naked and using his hospital gown as a cape.

  I wished I’d gone and seen him an hour later than I did.

  My brother is Superman.

  HURRAY FOR HALLOWEEN

  Hurray for Halloween

  Owls hoot

  whoooooo

  And cats meow

  meeoowww

  And witches fly up in the sky

  Hurray

  for

  Hal-lo-ween

  Boo!

  I say, “Now let’s all thank Misha for that talent-filled rendition of an amazing Halloween song I think she made up.”

  Misha is hanging out the moon top of the parked limo, rockin’ a huge turban around her head.

  “I DIDN’T MAKE IT UP,” she yells. I guess you gotta scream if you’re hanging out the moon top of a limo. Her aunt Adrienne tries to wave her down.

  When it doesn’t work she says, “Misha, get down from there. Can you pretend to be a grown-up for about five minutes?”

  “No—I mean yeah,” she says, getting out of the car and taking her jeweled sandals off. Her mask is tied to her wrist. We all have them.

  It seems like half the neighborhood is out standing in yards snapping pictures of kids in formal dresses and tuxes. But there’s Misha back up in the moon roof of one of the biggest truck-looking limos I’ve ever seen. I’m kind of embarrassed at having the big-assed thing in front of the house.

  I wrap my arms around Misha and we grin like idiots for my dad as he takes picture after picture.

  “More poses, girls.”

  Mr. Alguero pulls up in a few seconds. Falcone looks like a model in his tux. He walks over and squeezes between us. We hug him and start playing to the camera again. The more people, the more poses. And I start to think how just an hour ago we were all somewhere else that didn’t have us in high heels, long dresses, and updos.

  Falcone touches my hair softly and stares at Misha’s.

  “Who did your hair, Scotty?”

  I say, “Michelle did mine.”

  She had half of Heights High battling for seats in her shop. When the electricity flashed for five seconds I thought half the girls would have to get CPR. Anyway, Michelle’s did seriously good. I know a lot of people who end up with helmet hair when they go to get updos.

  Okay—Misha is wearing the amazing backless black lace dress that doesn’t hang down to the ground as much as it drifts like snow. She’s wearing a thin silver necklace with baby teardrops hanging from it. Her shoes (she’s holding in her hands) are jeweled satin—black and turquoise.

  Laura and Mr. Alguero have been looking at her like they are expecting something to emerge from Misha’s turban. Falcone just says, “Shopping with the Mad Hatter?”

  And all she says is . . . “It matches.”

  I say, “Misha, why are you hiding your locks?”

  Misha grabs Falcone and me for more pictures and totally blows the question off. I can’t believe she’s hiding her locks. Did Mrs. Williams ask her to? ’Cause if she did she needs some cultural sensitivity classes. If not, Misha is deluded that the head wrap looks good on her. And I’m just about to pull her over to the side of the maple tree and say so when another car pulls up behind the limo. The limo driver has been leaning against the car in dark glasses taking everything in and answering questions my dad’s been throwing at him between pictures.

  Falcone announces that the next two minutes of photos will be just of him so that he can send them to his sister, Gina. Flashes everywhere.

  The car door opens and Jason walks out. Another door opens and Nick gets out. The last door opens and Thelonious is standing there. Falcone smiles and whispers something under his breath. . . . Misha and I stand there. Her mouth is open in shock and I have a shit-eatin’ grin on mine.

  Thelonious goes up to turban girl—I mean Misha.

  Nick goes over to Falcone, who once upon a time never wanted to see him again but now wraps his arms around him like they’ve never been apart.

  And Jason walks over to me.

  My dad, Misha’s aunt Adrienne, and Mr. Alguero go crazy with the cameras. Laura runs around hugging everybody. She’s been hugging anybody who stands still long enough ever since Keone woke up, nakedly terrorizing pediatrics.

  It’s almost perfect. We head to Jason’s house so his, Nick’s, and Thelonious’s people can ooh and aah us. And then we all finally climb back into the limo laughing and waving and pouring Cokes into crystal glasses and we toast Halloween as the limo blows down the leaf-covered road.

  And about the time we are blocks from the school, Kris’s mother is opening a red box with a framed photo of her beautiful son laughing when he was about nine years old. What has been cropped out of the photo is the little girl with the gum in her hair, frowning.

  I DON’T GO TO FOOTBALL GAMES—WELL, I DON’T go to many of them. But I always like the way the lights glow blocks away when the football field is lit up. I don’t know why, but they have the lights on the field lit tonight. The dance is in the gym, though. The homecoming queen used to be picked at the football game the night before the dance. I guess there were some bad scenes where the visitors’ fans booed and got out of hand. Nobody wanted the homecoming queen booed. So—they pick her at the dance now.

  The theme is “A Halloween Homecoming,” which wasn’t so easy to keep as the theme ’cause two churches picketed the school when they found out and a couple of parents (from the two churches) even threatened to take their kids out of school. They carried signs that said KEEP DEVIL WORSHIPERS OUT OF HOMECOMING. Damn. It’s still the Midwest around here, no matter how many open-minded people you surround yourself with.

  Everyone is supposed to wear a mask as the dance is a masked ball. Mine has feathers and kitty whiskers. I love the way everybody who’s usually dressed in jeans now is dressed in mad crazy dresses and tuxes and nobody knows who anybody else is. We all climb out of the limo and line up for more pictures before we go into the gym. Again there are so many cameras flashing and people all around that I lose Misha.

  Jason stays right beside me, though.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve lost Misha.”

  “I think I saw her go in.”

  I jump straight up trying to get a view over everybody to see if I can find her.

  “There’s Thelonious, Falcone, and Nick standing near the fountain.”

  Nick and Thelonious have taken their masks off and are laughing about something. Falcone’s shaking his head, then spots me jumping up and down and pushes his way through the crowd still getting their pictures taken outside the gym.

  Falcone is still holding his mask when he grabs my hand.

  “Yo, Jason, can I borrow your girl a minute?”

  Jason leans close, lifts my mask and kisses me, and says, “Yeah, for a minute.”

  (Okay, pause . . . I do believe that was our very first official kiss. Since I pretty much blocked out much of what happened at the park—except the parts that make my eyes go huge—I technically don’t count the lip-locking in the woods as a first kiss.)

  Stop pause. I almost passed out from this kiss.

  Falcone holds me up as I walk away with him, looking back at Jason.

  “Okayyy, what’s up that I had to walk away from the cute boy?”

  “What’s your girl up to with the head wear, Scotty?”

  “Who?”

  “Who? Misha, Scotty, Misha. What’s she up to?”

  I guess I look clueless, ’cause he leads me back to Jason, then we all walk into the gym as the line thins. Just inside the door on a table with a burgundy tablecloth there’s a postersized framed photo of Kris, with a lot of people standing around it. Some cry; some just touch the flowers around the table.

  And like all the times before, when I show up, everybody divides, looks at me like I’m the most pitiful thing on the planet, then moves away. So in the end I’m standing alone at the table. And there’s Kris—smiling and not knowing that his picture would be the only way he’d get to come be with everybody at the dance this year.

  THE GYM IS DECORATED WITH GLOWING jack-o’-lanterns, silvery ghosts that hang from the ceiling, and something that looks like spiderwebs draped across the rafters and almost anywhere people lean or sit. The individual tables have candles in the shapes of bats, and the music is loud.

  I spend most of the night nodding my head and not really understanding much of what anybody says to me.

  I dance with Jason.

  Then Nick.

  Then Falcone.

  Then with Thelonious.

  Then with DJ Hampton, who used to chase me home, trying to put fake spiders on me, and was a good friend to Kris. I figure tonight would be appropriate for him to chase me around the room with one of them, but he doesn’t. He just dances with me and his date, and screams in our ears like everybody else does. I don’t think he cares if I hear what he says.

  Misha dances with Thelonious most of the night. That girl’s in love.

  I go to our table to take my shoes off for a minute and pick at the food that I got at the buffet. The DJ keeps on hittin’ everybody with music they can’t help but dance to.

  I drink some punch and think about taking a few of the pumpkin cookies to Keone in the hospital. I watch as Misha finally dances with her original date, Jason. It makes me smile. In a minute Falcone is sitting next to me with a plate packed with buffalo wings.

  We scream at each other over the music, eat, and finally get a break when a slow song fills the gym.

  “How’s Nick?”

  Falcone smiles between bites.

  “He’s fine. Damn—who’da thunk it? Did I tell you Nick thinks it’s been me sending him things in the mail and sending clowns over to him with cookies? And you were too busy trying to drink up all the soda in the limo to try to get any info out of him for me. I’ve just been going along with it—as has Misha. Misha was too busy having that big-assed turban on her head and insisting we all listen to some mix CD Thelonious made for her. Jason was just too cool and calm to think any of it was crazy. I mean—right?”

 

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