13 on Halloween
Book 1 in the Shadow Series
By Laura A. H. Elliott
13 on Halloween © 2011 by Laura A. H. Elliott
Cover Illustration by Laura A. H. Elliott
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means – electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise – without prior permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Smashwords edition
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Table of Contents
Other Books by Laura A. H. Elliott
Dedication
Roxie Speak
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Bonus Excerpt: Shadow Slayer, Book 2 The Shadow Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Other Books by Laura A. H. Elliott:
The Shadow Series
13 on Halloween, Book 1
Shadow Slayer, Book 2, Sept. 2012 release
Moon Killers, Book 3 Oct 2012 release
Book 4 Coming Soon
The Starjump Series
Transfer Student, Book 1 in the Starjump series, an intergalactic tale of beauty and the geek.
Book 2, Dec 2012
Winnemucca, a small-town fairy tale where fear’s as blind as love
Dedication
To my Halloween girls
Candice and Margaux
Roxie Speak
Tarantulas- scares the heck out of people
Hamsters- hops from one thing to the other without really doing anything
Cats- annoys the heck out of me
Owls- knows everything
Zebras- thinks everything is black and white
Anteater- big-nosed
Dodo- fail
Condors- barely survives
Dodo Gauntlet- how geek brothers turn little sisters into nerds without said-sisters even knowing
Peacock- a popular boy or girl
Peacock Nectar- Red Bull
Hyenas- when I laugh my butt off
Hot Factor- Animal Attraction Number
Parrots- dances
Star-nosed mole- freaky
Skipper- ridiculously excited
Mustangs- runs like the wind
Porcupines- when I put up my spiny quills
Dolphins- fun & fierce
Chameleons- changes
Eagles- soars
Gophers- digs in
Pterosaurs- when a person tries to attract a peacock
Bees- ready to sting
Armadillos- ready for battle
Elephants- is afraid of the smallest thing.
Monkeys- takes off
Pumas- rules, determined, slaughters at will
Chapter 1
A left rabbit hind foot, carried in the left pocket after having been removed from a rabbit that was killed during a full moon by a cross-eyed person is truly lucky.
I am sick of the way Adrianne tarantulas and hamsters and cats and owls and zebras to get everything she wants. Unspeakably amazing things. Like trampolines. And a spot on the Vikings Varsity Cheerleading Squad––ok we blow, but still––all because she can back flip-flop and back flip better than anyone in town. My talent is mostly in the realm of home and garden care. A whiz with the vacuum. Awesome with a lawn mower. And, when you need someone to rake a pile of leaves, I’m your gal.
In other words, my anteater self is destined to dodo and condor my way through another grade, eighth grade––repelling everything that I want from ever happening. Cursed. I mean I really like being on the volleyball team, at least my picture is on one other page in the yearbook besides my eighth grade class photo. What is it about photo day that gives me that starry-eyed look of a person without a clue? I’m not totally invisible, but I’m not getting any trampolines or invites to hangout or––and especially––party invitations. But I won’t go into that, yet.
And don’t even get me started on how Adrianne tarantulas me. Because, if she ever gets a hold of this and finds out, I don’t even want to say. But here’s the scoop––when Adrianne doesn’t get her way, it gets ugly. And I won’t specifically mention how she hamsters but it’s a lot like how your younger brother always does stuff, but none of it really matters.
It seems impossible to show you here, in black-and-white, just how annoying, how incredibly cats, Adrianne can be. But I’ll try. It’s lots of things. It’s in the way she always signs her name in yearbooks and on papers with big upside-down hearts that she morphs somehow, very creatively and cleverly, into letter As. She follows her super creative and clever, big, upside-down-heart letter A with her super loopy “d-r-i”, the “i” accented with a right-side-up smaller heart, followed by another upside-down-heart letter A with two loopy n’s and an even more nauseating e, in the shape of a heart that isn’t quite closed. I never thought e’s could be nauseating but her’s always are. It’s like, hello? First grade called and they want their hearts back.
I watched the History Channel one time when they analyzed bits of criminal writing––Al Capone’s and Dillinger’s. Nerd alert: I love all things History Channel. And all things nineteenth century. A time without Facebook and Internet and email and twenty-four-seven news and, well, lots of things. A time when people talked. To each other. When you had to take ships to travel to faraway places, way before airplanes—the things that people use to kill us now. When the bicycle was a really big deal. What I love about those olden times is that people knew how to dress, at least from the pictures that survive, and for the most part they knew how to throw great parties in between cataclysmic wars and plagues and child labor and what not. And I respect that.
Anyway, the guy analyzing Dillinger’s handwriting said that you can learn a lot about a person from their handwriting. All kinds of things. Like whether they are going to ruin your life and what kind of vegetables they like and whether or not they will become a killer. Writing is the unconscious mind on paper. But it is the ruining-my-life part I care about. Those upside-down hearts and right-side up hearts and sideways-hearts tell me all I need to know. She. Is. Ruining. My. Life. And I want one thing and one thing only. To be like her. Except for all the hearts.
I’m not kidding. It’s like she sat on her bed for hours dreaming up a way she could write her name that would totally make me porcupine [put up my spiny quills]. I loved it last year because most of our seventh grade teachers didn’t put up with her hearty, perfecty, trampoliney ways. They all said they wanted no-nonsense. A lot like my parents. But this year, most of our teachers are super hippie-slash-creative tree-huggers who think Adrianne is the best thing on the planet and freaking LOVE her.
And so now we all have to come up with our own personal logo. Which is just a super-nauseating way to write our own name. I sit here at my desk two rows away from Adrianne. And the thing is, she always smells good. It’s not perfume. Trust me, I went to Macy’s to try to track it down. I
t’s nothing sold in the beauty department of CVS either. I’ve hunted and tracked and I think the scent is some sort of potpourri or bath powder or something. Subtle, but very clearly there. And that’s the other thing. She doesn’t smell like the typical eighth grader––all Curious by Britney Spears. She has older sisters. Who know everything. Which isn’t fair. Not at all. Not fair for a girl who has two older geek brothers to help teach her The Ways of The Teenager. Because that’s what I’ll be in a week. ThirTEEN.
When I say I want to be like Adrianne, I need to clarify. I don’t want to become her clone or stalk her so I know what kind of pajamas she sleeps in. And I don’t want to be a cheerleader or anything. Or do flip-flops either. I know enough about myself that I’m not made for stuff like that and the Goddess of Gymnastics isn’t going to visit me in my sleep and flick her magic wand and make me into someone I’m not––good at Adrianne-kinds-of-things. No, I only want to get what I want. Like she does.
And I know exactly what I want. I want Hayden, the funniest and hottest guy in the eighth grade to, you know, talk to me. Maybe even ask me to hangout. And as long as I’m fantasizing about The Perfect Life of Roxie, let’s add a puppy, and big boobs––those should get me way more attention. And, just not every day being the same as every other day. Yup that should do it. Adrianne can keep her hearts and back flip-flops.
I know what you’re thinking. Get over yourself. That’s what my best friend Allyson, who doesn’t use any upside-down or right-side up hearts to sign her name, says. She’s so dolphin, fun and fierce. So far Allyson and I are forty-five days into eighth grade, the grade I thought I’d totally chameleon, I’d eagle. The grade I dreamed about all summer, a grade that would catapult me outside of the realm of the not-good-enough and into the stratosphere of The Peacocks, the popular kids. Finally. And no one would be more surprised than my geeky brothers who laid down the Dodo Gauntlet for me years before I even breathed or took my first step into Oakdale School. It seems geeks have bloodlines and if you have two older brothers who are so super-smart that when their old teachers get you in their class and don’t know what to do with you as you are unspeakably-less-of-a-brainiac and decidedly-less-geek-challenged than your brothers, said teachers actually pity you.
Allyson is so sick of me this year. Mostly because I keep telling her this same thing every day on our walk to school.
Here’s a note about the dodo, Raphus cucullatus, a fun fact that most eighth graders don’t know and, yet, I tragically do––like I said, geek bloodlines run deep. I looked up dodo on the Internet because, well, I have nothing better to do and because I’m lame like that. But, at the same time I also found the most awesome band on Youtube, called Cirez D, so I wasn’t a complete dodo that afternoon.
I like dance music, make that Techno. Especially Trance. And I like anything and everything that will keep me far, far away from my brothers’ Eagle Scout, clean cut, do-and-say-all-the-right-things straight-A reputation. In fact as I’m writing this, I’m listening to Cirez D. The song is called On and Off and the reason I like it so much is it only has four notes and a killer drumbeat that’s kinda manic, like a heartbeat, so it feels like it’s my heartbeat and it makes my heart beat faster like I’m excited about something, which hasn’t happened in a very long time.
Anyway, here’s the dodo fact I googled––in the year 1598 AD, Portuguese sailors landing on the shores of the island of Mauritius discovered a previously unknown species of bird, the dodo. Having been isolated by its island location from contact with humanity, the dodo greeted the new visitors with a child-like innocence. The sailors mistook the gentle spirit of the dodo, and its lack of fear of the new predators, as stupidity. They dubbed the bird "dodo" [meaning something like a simpleton, in Portuguese]. Many dodo were killed by the human visitors, and those that survived man had to face dogs and pigs which went wild in the Mauritian eco-system. By 1681, the last dodo died.
So, all you need to do to understand The Life of Roxie, is switch it up a little and you have the definition of what it’s like to be me at Oakdale Middle School––Roxanne O’Grady landed on the shores of Oakdale Middle School in sixth grade but had been going to school with most of the kids since kindergarten. The new kids from the rich neighborhoods discovered a girl previously unknown to them. Having been isolated to the ways of popularity by her family’s hard working, studious nature, the rich kids mistook Roxie’s gentle spirit and her lack of fear of the new predators as stupidity. They dubbed Roxie, Toxy––as in toxic. If you aren’t in, you are out. And I won’t lie to you, some days I felt as extinct as the dodo, invisible. But while the death of the last dodo was the death of a breed, I knew my breed would always live on––the not-quite-good-enough girl of eighth grade.
But then I get to thinking about how stupid it is to let other people make me feel so miserable. Define me. Which sounds like something my mom would say and even though when she says stuff like that I cringe, she’s usually right. Everything’s about to change today, though.
This morning starts out like every other morning. I take the usual route to pick up Ally. I walk down my street, Croydon Lane, and turn left on Windsor Drive and I ring Ally’s doorbell. She’s always ready right away. It’s one of the things I love about her. No drama.
“Roxie why should you care how loopy and hearty and practically perfectly Adrianne’s life is––which, by the way, you know it isn’t, nobody’s is,” Ally says first thing before I even open my mouth to give Ally the big news that I am beyond all that now. That forty-five days of moping is enough, ok maybe it’s more like two years and forty-five days of moping, but regardless, I am over it. Can you tell?
“Well, I’ll tell you why. Because. Just because,” I say. Brilliant, I know. But it’s like that when you are the way you are and you don’t feel like taking the idiot trophy someone is trying to hand you. You dig in. You gopher. Which is what I do. And I am so ready to let my moping go. Way ready. Epically ready. Until Ally says what she does about Adrianne. Then Adrianne and her hearty-loopy-tarantula-hamster-cat-owl-eagle self bubbles up inside of me and makes me so bee. So armadillo. When I am really elephanting on the inside. You know, scared of the smallest things, but not ready to admit it, yet.
“Get over yourself,” Allyson, my best friend since kindergarten, says. She just stares at the asphalt of Windsor Drive, blacker than black, paved right before the school year started. Our walks smell less and less like tar and more and more like pine and burning leaves and the scent that gets in the air right before Halloween, a mixture of caramel and apple cider and magic––the anything-can-happen scent. I get quiet and Ally does too. And the blackness of the road and the magic of the pre-Halloween-scented air and the quietness of Allyson makes me want to monkey so bad.
So I do. I step off Windsor Drive and into the high weeds of the empty field beside us and I cut across the field heading right for the small forest that stands between me and Chatham Lane, the road that leads to the cul-de-sac that leads to the sidewalk that Ally and I walk everyday which dumps us out at the bike racks by the kindergarten playground at our school.
I never cut through the field before. I never cut through the small forest before. I love forests. I love the look of the small forest from far away. From the safety of Windsor Drive.
My favorite forest is Bemis Woods, a few towns over from Oakdale, where I live. My mom and dad never let me downhill ski, but took me cross-country skiing in Bemis Woods last winter. I like Bemis Woods in the summer too when I can hear Salt Creek and catch lightning bugs and wrap myself up in the summer heat. But this forest, small enough to walk through in about two minutes, isn’t thick with birch trees that you can see through. It’s thick with pines. Big, fluffy pines. I guess it’s because I can’t see my way through to the other side that’s kept me out of this forest for so long. Maybe it’s too small to call a forest. Do they have rules about that? I’m not sure.
But this morning is different. I don’t think about not being able to see the other
side and how I don’t like things I can’t see through. No. This morning the only thing on my mind is getting away. From everything. From Ally especially, because she could have just asked why Adrianne pushes my buttons, instead of saying what she did. Some people just don’t get along. Plain and simple.
I walk through the tall weeds past twigs and a few plastic grocery bags that blew into the field. I pick them up, put them in my pocket and crunch red-and-orange oak leaves under my Vans. I like the sound of the leaves and weeds crunching under my feet. I pick one of the un-crunched leaves up and stuff it in my jacket before I glance over at Ally as she walks down Windsor Drive.
I take my first step into the pines and oaks, into a place I’d never been before. And it’s not like I do that every day. I mean I never do anything really new. Not since I learned to ride my bike and tie my shoes and blew my first bubble. All the new things I look forward to are for bigger kids. Like kissing, and dating, and other stuff.
Like I said, every day is pretty much like the next. And as I walk looking up at the tall, tall trees, hearing the way the wind sounds as it whistles through their leaves and branches, I hear my mom in my head. Not that she ever said specifically don’t walk into the woods in the empty field on your way to school, ever. She didn’t. But I get this sort of tingly feeling on the back of my neck and then it spreads under my corduroy coat. The kind of feeling you get when you know you should turn around and go back.
13 on Halloween (Shadow Series #1) Page 1
