I know which one is Blue. I would know his body in a room of a thousand bodies. I would know his shoulders, the way he stands. This is a fact about myself that I’m not going to be able to talk myself out of in this lifetime.
He doesn’t move or say hello.
He stands beside Benson on the porch with a bowl of candy in his hands and the mask on, and I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or not. Probably not.
I smile at Benson.
Benson plays it off. “Come in. There’s lots of food.” He glances down at the platter in my hands and then at Mila’s Tupperware. “You brought snacks. Nice. Put them on the counter. Stanley or Percy’s in there somewhere.”
A pile of kids walks up behind us. “Trick-or-treat!”
We rush into the house.
The house has been transformed. Pumpkin lights overhead in long string loops along the ceiling. Cobwebs in the corners. A black tablecloth on the dining room table covered in food platters. A veggie tray on the counter shaped like apumpkin, the carrots and orange peppers arranged in rings around a bowl of hummus, which I stop and stare at for a second because somebody at this party can prep a pretty damn good vegetable tray.
There’s a punch bowl with orange liquid. There’s a second punch bowl with darker orange liquid and a hand-written index card next to it that sayspunch (boring)in neat block letters. The room smells like cinnamon and pumpkin and the faint warm thread of whatever is keeping in the oven, and underneath all of it the deeper note of a college house full of bodies and beer and somebody’s perfume.
Spooky Halloween music is playing on a Bluetooth speaker somewhere.
Everyone in here is dressed up.
A girl I don’t know is a Squid Game guard. There’s a guy in a banana suit. There’s a group of three guys in matchingRisky Businessoutfits — white button-downs, black sunglasses, no pants. There are at least three sexy cats. There’s one fully committed inflatable T-Rex who’s been struggling at the kitchendoorway for two minutes now and has acquired a small audience that’s rooting for him.
The room turns when we walk in.
I feel it more than I see it. The way conversations dip half a volume when six girls walk through a doorway in matching costumes. The way heads cycle in a slow appraisal that I, three weeks ago, would have hated. I kind of hate it now, but I pretend not to notice.
Mara is eating it.
Stanley appears out of the kitchen with a Solo cup in his hand and his devil mask shoved up on top of his head like a pair of pushed-up sunglasses.
“Girls.”
“Stanley,” Gianna calls back.
“Girls!” He opens his arms wide and almost spills his drink. Gianna walks right up to him and pulls the mask off his head.
She looks at the mask.
She looks at Stanley.
She looks at Benson, who has just come in behind us. She looks at the mask Blue is still wearing in the doorway.
“I can’t believe you’re all matching.”
“On theme,” Stanley says, smug, “with the girls.”
Lucy says, “You’re devils?”
Stanley and Benson, at the same time, say, “Yes.”
Across the living room, in the doorway to the kitchen, Rowan is leaning against the frame with his own devil mask shoved up on top of his head. He shrugs at Gianna. She almost smiles.
Stanley throws his head back and groans dramatically.
Lucy says, “Did you plan this?”
Benson says, “I had to match my baby.”
