My blood runs ice-cold. I feel my own vision tunnel, the trailer's walls seeming to press in. I am suddenly, terrifyingly,aware of my own heartbeat, loud and frantic in my ears. This isn't just vandalism. This is a message. Someone knows.
“I don't see anything,” I lie, my voice a dry croak.
Trevor sighs, a put-upon sound. “Come on, Maya. It’s right there.” He traces it again. “It looks like... ‘WOLF.’ W-O-L-F. What is that, some kind of... inside joke? A team name? It's just... odd.”
“I see a scratch,” I say, my voice shaking. But I'm not looking at the gourd anymore. I'm looking at him. His shrewd, assessing eyes. His total lack of surprise.
“It’s a word, Maya. A confusing word in this context. And the parent’s complaint, combined with this... it’s exactly what I was afraid of. These… artisanal… displays you insist on, they’re drawing the wrong kind of attention. They’re provoking a reaction. If you’d just stuck tonormalHalloween—spiders, ghosts, like she said—none of this would have happened.”
The logic is so twisted, so fundamentally backward, that it takes my breath away. He’s blaming me. He's blaming a gourd.
And a horrifying thought surfaces, a dark, ominous bubble of suspicion. The carving is so small. So hidden. Who found it and brought it to Trevor’s attention, as he claimed? Who would have been looking at thebackof a gourd that was part of a big display?
It’s something only I would notice. Or... or someone who wanted tomake sureI noticed it. Someone who wanted to make me feel small and targeted and crazy, all at once.
The pretzels in my hand are suddenly unbearable. I have a white-hot, violent urge to crush the entire handful, to grind the salty fragments into my palm until they draw blood, to throw them at his smug, impassive face. I thought I had designed the perfect display, a display to offendno one. A display that was just...fall.
And now I’m beginning to wonder if these complaints are even real. Is this parent really complaining? Or is Trevor justmaking it all up, piece by piece, to make my life harder? But why? Why would he do that?
“Trevor,” I say, and my voice is a low, dangerous growl that doesn't sound like me. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have?—”
The trailer door jiggles, then swings open, and Zachary walks in, his arms full of freshly printed lesson plans and worksheets. He’s smiling, his sandy-brown hair messy from the wind.
“The printer jammedtwice,” he starts, “but I won. I finally?—”
He stops. His smile evaporates. He takes in the scene in a fraction of a second: me, white-knuckled, standing behind my chair like a cornered animal; Trevor, holding the gourd, his face a mask of patronizing concern. The air in the trailer is thick and toxic.
“What’s going on?” Zachary asks, and his voice is suddenly all business. He drops the papers on the closest table, the sound loud in the silence.
I can't tear my eyes away from Trevor. I just point. “Trevor,” I say, my voice dripping with a venom I can’t hide, “was just telling me that my harvest display is ‘provoking reactions.’ A parent has complained that there aren't enoughwitches or other normal Halloween decorations.”
I see the confusion then the dawning, furious understanding in Zachary's eyes. But before he can speak, I add, “And apparently, someone carved a word into this gourd.”
Zachary’s head snaps toward Trevor as he shows him the gourd in question. I can see the muscle in his jaw jump. He’s about to step forward, to defend, tofight. But before I can even defend the display myself, before I can say any of the furious, career-ending things building in my throat, Zachary does something incredible.
He relaxes.
He unclenches his fists, shoves his hands into his pockets, and lets out a short, disbelieving laugh. He turns to Trevor, not as an adversary, but as a bewildered comrade.
“Witches?” he says, his voice full of mock-sympathy. “Trevor, man, don’t tell me it’s that parent with a second grader who has been complaining about everything since her kid started school here. She’s legendary in the teacher gossip mill.”
Trevor, caught off-guard by the lack of confrontation, blinks. “Well, yes, but?—”
“I get it, I get it,” Zachary says walking over and taking the bumpy gourd from Trevor’s hands, inspecting the carving with a critical eye. “Parents are nuts. But vandalizing agourd? That's new. Low blow, kids.” He turns back to Trevor, his expression all ‘we're in this together.’ “Look, we’ve got this combo lesson guide due but tell you what. I will personally...supervise… the spooky. I'll make sure we hit the required ghost-to-gourd ratio. We’ll even throw in a spiderweb. Will that get ’em off your back?”
He says it with such easy charm, such conspiratorial, ‘aren't-we-long-suffering-educators’ warmth, that Trevor is completely disarmed. A slow, reluctant smile cracks his face.
“Ghost-to-gourd ratio,” Trevor repeats, and he actually chuckles. “Right. Well. Just... get it handled, Zachary. I don’t want any more calls.”
“You got it, boss. We’ll make it so normal it’s… well, spooky,” Zachary says, steering him toward the door with nothing but body language.
“Right,” Trevor says again. He gives me one last unreadable look, then ducks out of the trailer. The door clicks shut. The silence that follows is deafening.
Zachary stands with his back to me for a long second, his head down, breathing. Then, very slowly he turns around. The charm is gone. His face is dark with a cold, quiet rage. Heplaces the gourd on the desk delicately, as if it's a bomb that will explode at any second.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice low.
The adrenaline drains out of me all at once and I collapse into my chair. The exhaustion is so total, so bone-deep, I feel like I could sleep for a week. The nausea, which had vanished in my anger, comes roaring back, worse this time. I shake my head, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes.
