LEO
“Emma! Slow down!” I shout, my voice bouncing off the brick facades of the West 80s. “I mean it!”
Beside me, Joe lets out a sharp whistle that could crack a window. “Lauren! Ladybug! Freeze!”
Our daughters—the Glitter-Cat-Mermaid and the world’s most disgruntled Ladybug—skid to a halt thirty feet ahead. They don’t turn around. Instead, they exchange a look, a synchronized, four-year-old eye-roll that suggestsweare the ones being difficult. They swing their old pillowcases with an air of profound impatience.
Joe shakes his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “The sass, Leo. It’s taken over the house.” He looks down at the double-wide stroller where Allison is maneuvering my goddaughter, baby Alyssa, who is currently just a bundle of pink fleece and sheer confusion. “Al, remind me again. Why did we do this? Why did we sign up for round two?”
Allison doesn’t even look up from the sidewalk. “Because you have a short-term memory and I’m a sucker for tiny shoes, Joe.”
We’ve been trick-or-treating in Joe and Allison’s neighborhood since the girls were old enough to walk, mostly because it’s an actual neighborhood—rows of brownstones with stoops and front yards the size of postage stamps but frontyards nonetheless. Tonight the whole block’s turned out. There are kids everywhere, dressed as everything from Power Rangers to a very ambitious Statue of Liberty costume that looks like it’s made entirely of cardboard and spray paint. I spot a kid dressed as a box of crayons, another as a very confused-looking dinosaur.
People are sitting on their porches wrapped in blankets despite the fact that it’s not even that cold yet with big bowls of candy balanced on their laps—Snickers, Milky Ways, Twix, Smarties, Tootsie Rolls, the occasional full-size Hershey bar that makes kids lose their minds. Someone three houses down has set up a folding table in their front yard with plastic cups and a pitcher of hot chocolate, marshmallows floating on top like little life rafts. From a window above, Monster Mash is blaring out of a dusty boombox, the bass rattling the glass.
Joe and Allison are to my left, bickering over stroller navigation, but my focus keeps drifting to my right. My parents have Annie cornered.
I keep checking in on her, ready to throw a lifeline if my mother starts in on the family tree or the correct way to fold a moussaka. But Annie doesn’t look like she needs saving. She’s tucked between my dad, who’s holding a thermos of coffee, and Maria, who still lives to ruin my reputation. Annie is smiling—a genuine, dimpled smile that I’m starting to realize is my favorite thing about her. She’s listening as if my family is the most fascinating thing in the borough.
“Oh, you think he is tough man now?” my mom says, her accent thick and musical, her hands moving in small, frantic circles. She nudges Annie. “This one?Panagia mou,he would not even go to door on Halloween until he was almost nine. He hide behind his father’s coat.”
I groan. “Ma, please. Not tonight.”
“Is true!” my dad chimes in. He’s been in this country thirty years, but his English still sounds like it’s being dragged over a gravel road in Piraeus. “We had to turn the lights off, hide in kitchen like we are under arrest. If the doorbell ring, Leo would jump across the room!”
Maria snickers, her voice dripping with sisterly malice. “I found these rubber masks at the drug store one time and my dad bought them for me. A werewolf, a clown and some swamp creature. I thought it was hilarious to chase him around the house with them on. I didn’t realize I was scarring him for life.” She cuts a glance at me and mumbles, “Wuss,” just loud enough for Annie to hear.
I glare at her. “I was six, Maria. You looked like you were going to rip my throat out.”
Annie lets out a sudden, bright laugh that cuts through the noise of the street. She looks at me, her eyes dancing with enough mischief to rival my sister’s. “Well, I think it explains a lot, actually. The brooding, the skepticism of strangers…it’s not his personality entirely. It’s just some lingering childhood trauma.”
My mom howls with laughter, and even my dad is chuckling into his coffee.
I try to keep my face stoic, but I feel the corner of my mouth twitch. A smile slips out before I can catch it. I look over at Annie in the glow of the streetlamps and for a second, I forget about the candy and the vibrating pager on my belt.
“Trauma is very chic right now, Annie,” I say around my parents, my voice a little lower than I intended. “Isn’t that all the rage these days? Grunge? Angst? I’m just ahead of the curve.”
“Clearly,” she says, her gaze lingering on mine for just a beat too long before Emma’s shrill voice breaks the moment.
“DADDY! THE LADY AT THE BLUE DOOR GAVE ME TWO! TWO BARS!”
I sigh, already calculating the impending sugar crash.
“Annie! Annie, look!” Emma’s pointing at the slice of moon hanging over the brownstones, her sequined tail swishing with every frantic bounce. “There’s a smiley moon out tonight!”
Annie tilts her head, her gaze following that small finger. “A smiley moon?”
“Yeah!” Lauren, the world’s tiniest ladybug, abandons her quest for chocolate to grab Annie’s other hand. “When the moon looks like it’s smiling right at you!”
“It’s a crescent,” Emma explains, using her ‘I am a very serious scholar’ voice. “But it looks like a smile. See?”
Watching them, I feel a strange, tight pull in my chest. Both girls are hauling Annie forward now, dragging her toward a stoop guarded by a glowing jack-o’-lantern. Annie glances back at me—just a split-second look—before she’s swallowed up by a swarm of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
I watch Emma tug on Annie’s sleeve to show her a plastic skeleton. She’s proud. Proud to show her off to Lauren, to the other kids, to anyone who’ll pay attention.Look at my Annie. Look at the magic she makes. Isn’t she the best?
It’s a relief, honestly. I wasn’t sure Emma was going to find that again with anyone outside the family. Someone she felt comfortable enough to talk to, someone she wanted to impress. And she found it fast—faster than I thought possible. With Annie, of all people.
Even when Annie’s not around, all I hear about is her.
