He frowned pensively. “What about now?”
“You look like Obama but if he pooped his pants.”
We walked toward the Halloween-themed town. Milan was straightening the cat ears on my head when Ryen hooked an arm around her, pulling her to his side. The entrance was a skull face grinning at us with broken teeth. Beyond it: grass cradling ribbed pumpkins, striped-awning stands selling cider, fried Oreos, beer.
The air was crisp. Trees loomed like masked men on stilts. When we were swept into a group toward the trail, the edible began to ravage me, the world too sharp, like I could cut myself on it. A witch with white eyes dragged her feet alongside us, mutely, before jerking in Jay’s face. He hid behind me, clutching my elbows. I patted his head like a baby.
Carefully, we stepped inside a ramshackle house that resembled a slave cabin. Light shot through the dark, just enough so you could see all the creepy shit awaiting you, then was gone like a candle snuffed by a fingertip. A chain saw wound and roared behind us. The group lurchedforward, screaming, scrambling to escape. This would’ve been a good time to run. Instead, I stared at the ceiling.
“Why are you just staring at the ceiling like that?”
I turned to find a man whose face was a coconut I wanted to slurp through a straw. Was this hell?
“How did you make your face a coconut like that?” I asked.
“Oh, okay, you’re high.”
I heard Jay’s voice, but then a girl appeared. Did she materialize from Jay’s voice? She was dressed as Western Barbie in hot-pink pants. What was a movie star doing in Virginia?
She said, “Don’t I know you?”
I nodded. That seemed right, that we all knew each other. That every living being, including me and Western Barbie, was connected. An evil clown grabbed my shoulders, but I felt no fear, only love.
“You know her?” said coconut-face, who I now understood was Tristan. He looked like a god in the glaze of my gummy high. My heart reared back against my rib cage. They both shot me a startled look.
“What?” I said.
“You just screamed,” Tristan said.
“Really?” Things came together slowly. “Wait. I thought you weren’t coming?”
“My evening freed up.”
When we stepped outside, I recognized Western Barbie as Nia from Janine’s office. She laughed brightly at something Tristan said, and my insides rearranged themselves around the sound. Why had this woman’s laugh burrowed itself inside me like this? And why was she dressed as Western Barbie and Tristan as…
“What are you supposed to be?” I asked.
“A grain farmer.”
What?
Jay was leaning against a tree on his phone, his sleeves unbuttoned. When he saw me, he kicked off the trunk. Slipping his phone in hispocket, he cupped my face, fragile like porcelain in his hands. I felt like nothing could hurt me.
Tristan shouted, “Milkman!”
Jay let me go. They did their signature swaying hug.
“Did you see the chain saw?” Jay asked, delighted.
“Yeah, this place is fucking nuts. What happens if they chop your arm off?”
“That’s what the waivers are for.”
Tristan placed an arm around Nia’s waist. She fit perfectly in the crook of it, like a child’s drawing of their parents taped to the fridge.
“This is Nia. Nia, this is Jay and his girlfriend, Cat. I would’ve introduced you earlier but Cat was having some sort of stroke.”
“I wasn’t having a stroke!”
