“It’s going to be amazing. I can wear my fairy godmother costume—you know, the one that makes me look taller?—and you can wear the princess gown—”
A groan slipped out. “Can’t Donnie wear it this time?”
There was something childlike about wearing costumes around other adults. Sure, they wore costumes too, but it still felt strange. Like I was playing dress-up. Like their costumes were appropriate because they were at a party, but my frou-frou princess gown was weird because I wasn’t a guest. I was a worker. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if I could’ve dressed up as something else—something more festive for the time of year—but no.
Gram rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure he’d look as lovely as you do in it.”
“Why can’t I be a ghost?” I demanded. “More of a Halloween staple?”
“I can probably whip together a pumpkin costume if you wanted. Something large and unflattering.”
Honestly, it would’ve been better than the princess dress.
Gram peered over her shoulder at me, the glow of the computer screen a faded shadow around her figure. “Blaire,” she said, tone changing in an instant, going from excited to almost nervous, “I’ll understand if you don’t want to work the Bash. I know…I know how hard this time of year is for you. Especially since…”
A fist of discomfort clenched my stomach, but I flipped my switch. The smile I pulled onto my face felt real enough—real enough to fake her out. “It’s a big party for you, Gram. You’re going to need all hands on deck. Besides, I haven’t been in years. It’ll be fun to go again, rather than watching it from my window.”
For a moment, I felt bad about lying to her, for pulling on a phony smile to brush off her concern. That moment of guilt quickly washed away as a relieved look crossed her expression, and I knew I’d made the right choice.
I was freezing my butt off. And for what?
A stupid football game.
“This counts as one of our outings,” I grumbled to Donnie, but he probably couldn’t even hear me over the noise of the bleacher section cheering on the team. The Hallow High Devils—for a town that loved Halloween, that mascot was no surprise—led the game by over ten points in the last quarter, and yet whenever we got the ball, our side of the football field acted like we made the winning touchdown. By the end of the night, my eardrums would be goo.
“It doesn’t count,” Donnie replied to me. “Lucas isn’t here.”
“Uh, yes he is. He’s—” I pointed to the football field with all the players, “—down there. He’s present and accounted for, meaning this totally counts.”
Okay, so he wasn’t exactly accounted for. At least not the entire time. I had trouble finding his jersey number over the jolly giant standing in front of me, eclipsing my view.
Donnie glanced sideways at me. His black hair curled out from underneath his knit cap, his dark trench coat pulled up around his neck. “You used to love football games. You used to wear orange-and-black face paint like the players and cheer your boyfriend on. What happened to that girl?”
That girl had run out of paint and broken up with Lucas.
When Donnie had asked me to come to tonight’s football game, a part of me had wanted to come. Not that I’d ever admit that aloud. But it was the last football game of the season—the last football game of Lucas’s high school career. I didn’t want to be able to say that I’d missed one of the biggest nights in Lucas’s senior year.
And I really hated myself for caring, because I was about to turn into a human popsicle.
“It feels weird being here,” I told him, glancing around.
“I bet. You haven’t been to a game all season, have you?”
No, I hadn’t. Not even homecoming. “I only ever came to these things for Lucas.”
Again, I could feel Donnie looking sideways at me. This time, I kept my focus on the field, watching our orange-and-black team bob and weave through the blue-and-gray players. The football bounced somewhere in the mix, lost to me. “He told me he looks for you in the crowd every game.”
“You don’t have to tell me those things,” I said a little sharply, digging my fingers into my palms. The effect was somewhat lost through the barrier of my thin mittens. “It’s not…helpful.” The opposite, actually.
“Come on, Blaire.” He sighed, his breath fogging in the air. “This is ridiculous, you know. Why won’t you tell me what happened between you two? Maybe I can help.”
“Fine, you want to know what broke us up? Irreconcilable differences.”
“Please. You and Mr. Dreamy practically never fought. About anything serious, anyway. You two were head over heels for each other.”
“And doesn’t that sound unhealthy to you?” I demanded, my voice quivering as it rose. None of the people around us seemed to be listening, but I fought to control my volume. “Never fighting with someone?”
Donnie faced me fully, eyebrows pulled low on his eyes. “You know what’s unhealthy? This.” He gestured at me with both hands. “You. All of you. I’ve never seen you like this, Blaire. Never. And I’ve known you for a long time.”
I focused my stony gaze on everywhere but him. “You know October’s hard for me.” My words hardened. “Have you ever thought maybe I’m in a bad mood because of what time of the year it is?”
“I get it, I do. But your bad mood caused you to dump your boyfriend, who you were totally in love with up until the night you broke it off, so I’m just a little confused.”
I’d never wished more that I could be invisible. That Donnie couldn’t see me and I could be silent, to not have such questions hanging in the air, to not be called out in a way like this. Because even though I refused to look at him, I could still feel him looking at me, trying to probe out the truth.
There wasn’t an answer I could give him.
As the clock ticked down, a player with an orange jersey stepped over the line at the end of the field, causing the entire section of the bleachers to erupt in a colossal noise of applause and cheers. I flinched at the suddenness of it, pulling back as someone elbowed my side.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I told Donnie, making sure he wouldn’t follow me.
It was colder tonight, cold enough for goosebumps to raise underneath my thin jacket. It usually took Hallow a little while to cool down from our summers, but this year the chill settled faster. It’d be a cold Halloween this year. Kids’ costumes would be half obscured by their jackets and gloves, feebly trying to warm them. All the effort on their parents’ part to keep them best dressed would be in vain, since the cool fall breeze would win.
I sucked down deep breaths of air, crunching the dropped popcorn with the soles of my shoes. Lost in my thoughts, I took the corner of the bleachers too sharply and ran straight into someone. Someone small. Reeling back, I blinked hard. “Delia?”
Lucas’s little sister looked a lot like him, in a way. Her cheeks were a little rounder, but her eyes were the same. Both of theirs held the same curve, but Delia’s were hidden behind small pink glasses. The stadium lights reflected in them.