by S. L. Baum
“I had to redo your dad’s make-up,” Krista sighed. “The man can’t stay still for eyeliner.”
“You poked me in the eye,” Sam protested.
“I wouldn’t have poked you if you had just kept still,” Krista countered.
“There was a stick coming near my eyeball. It’s kinda hard to keep still when that is happening.”
“Girls do it all the time.”
“Girls are insane.”
Krista and Eva both crossed their arms over their chests and stared at him.
“Not you two, of course,” Sam quickly added. “You two are perfectly sane women.”
“We’ll just leave it at that.” Krista smiled at her husband. “Let’s get in the truck.”
“Jake said he’d set up the table for us before he took off for the night. We still have more than enough time to decorate before everybody will start showing up,” Sam assured his wife and daughter as they made their way to the center of town.
“I can’t believe he doesn’t like to dress up,” Eva sighed. “Costumes are so fun!”
“What’s Trixie going to be?” Krista asked.
“Some sort of Disney princess that she wanted to be a surprise, so she wouldn’t tell me. She is ob-sessed with the princesses.”
Sam laughed. “When her sister, Tianna, was little, she hated princesses.”
Eva nodded her head vigorously. “Yeah. Tee teases her about it all the time, which is funny because she has the name of a princess. But she always buys Trixie princess stuff.”
“She’s a good big sister,” Krista commented.
“I guess. She is pretty nice whenever she watches us. I wonder what she’ll be for Halloween this year.”
“Something teenager cool,” Sam guessed.
It was when they were decorating their table that they found out. As Eva emptied the bag of candy into the big orange bowl, she heard laughing behind her. She turned around and found two green fairies. One short, one tall – one pretty, sparkly and cute – one ragged, bloodied, and decayed.
“Oh, wow! You both look so cool! Regular Tinkerbell and Zombie Tinkerbell! I can’t believe you guys decided to do that.” Eva knew how much Tianna hated Trixie’s favorite characters.
“She dared me to be a princess,” Tianna said.
“And she said the only way she’d ever be a princess is if it was a scary one,” Trixie added. “So I told her to be a zombie princess.”
“I’m not exactly the princess type. Tinkerbell seemed like a good compromise because she’s a fairy, not a princess,” Tianna stated. “Zombie fairy sounded like a pretty cool costume.”
“And I begged her to not care if I was a regular Tinkerbell.”
“I think you guys look great,” Krista told the Tyson girls.
“I’m going off to college next year. I figured I’d give my kid sister one year of almost matching costumes.”
“She hates matching me,” Trixie frowned. “But she said that this was different enough.”
Tianna put her arm around her sister’s shoulders. “We make Tinkerbell look good!”
“You guys most definitely do,” Sam agreed.
“Where’s Trey?” Eva asked. “What’s he dressed up as?”
“He’s hanging out with all his friends. They decided to dress up as mummies. The six of them bought out all the white sheets at the thrift store and tore them into strips this week. They were dragging the material through the dirt and messing them up to make the fabric look old and creepy earlier today. We haven’t seen the finished product yet,” Tianna told them. “It’s beyond my imagination what Eighth Grade boys will do.”
“All six of them dressed up in tattered dirty cloth. Hmmm, not sure I want to imagine the smell,” Krista laughed.
“Tell me about it. They don’t all come over to your house after basketball practice. I’m sure the dirty Halloween costumes will smell like roses compared to what they smell like after they’ve been running around for hours on end.”
“You’ve got me on that one. That’s a lot of teenage sweat.”
Tianna raised her eyebrows and nodded her head. “It’s one thing I definitely won’t miss at college. I can’t believe this is my last year.”
“I can’t believe you’re the same cute little scary girl who was dressed up as ‘the Reaper that comes after Death’ on the very first night I met you,” Krista told her.
“Oh my god. That’s right. Mom had wanted me to be a ladybug but I refused. It was my first scary costume, but obviously not my last,” she said with a wink. “I’ll walk around with Trix and Evie, take them to get their candy, if you want. That is, if they want to go with me.”
Eva’s eyes widened. “Can I, Mom?”
Krista and Sam turned to each other, a momentary look of sadness crossed between them. They’d always taken turns walking with Eva. Krista would take the west side of the road and then they would switch off so Sam could take her on the east side. It was the first time Eva had wanted to go without one of them by her side.
Sam gave a small nod of his head. “I guess so. If you want.”
“Or you could go with us.” Krista spoke the words quickly; desperately hoping her little girl would change her mind.
“It’s not a problem at all,” Tianna added. “You guys can hang out here. I’m just waiting for Britney and Grayson to show up, and then we can all go together. We’ll stay on Main Street. I promise.”
Eva looked at Trixie and smiled widely. Tianna had never offered to take them with her and her friends before. The younger girls were excited by the idea. “Thanks, Tee!” Trixie hugged her sister.
“I want to go with them. See you later, Mom and Dad.”
Tianna reached a hand out for each girl to take and they walked away before Krista could protest any further.
“Did you hear that?” she asked Sam. “Mom and Dad. Not Momma and Daddy. I hate that.”
Sam came up behind his wife and put his arms around her. “You hate what?”
“She’s getting older. She already wants to leave us.”
“Krista, she’s trick-or-treating with her friend. She’s not leaving us.”
“But she will!” Krista protested.
“You are absolutely right. Someday she will.”
“And I hate that,” Krista whispered.
Sam kissed his wife’s neck and rested his chin on her shoulder. “Yeah. Me too. But we have years before that’ll happen.”
“Not enough of them.”
Eva and Trixie thought it would be fun to walk around with the older girls, but it turned out that Tianna and her friends just walked ahead of them, gossiping about other people at their school. Tianna would turn around regularly, and make sure they were still following them, but she was completely engrossed in what Grayson had to tell them about what somebody said at lunch about somebody else. Trixie and Eva had stopped paying attention to the older kids after the first ten minutes.
“She does not have supernatural powers,” Britney shrieked and Eva was suddenly ready to pay attention again.
Grayson shrugged. “She said that when she was in New York this summer she went to some fortune teller in Chinatown and that woman said she would do great things and that she had some deep inner power or something.”
“Rachel is so full of it,” Tianna scoffed. “Deep inner power does not mean supernatural power. Did she actually say the word supernatural?” she asked her friend.
“Those were her exact words,” Grayson assured his friends “She said she could feel something growing inside her after the visit with the fortune teller.”
“With all the time she spends with Tommy Pierson, I bet I know what’s growing inside her,” Britney said under her breath. “She’ll say anything to get attention.”
“You know Rachel.” Grayson raised his eyebrows. “She’s so convinced she’s got something bigger and better coming to her that she’ll exaggerate every detail of her life to prove it. I can’t believe she convinced her mom to take her
to New York anyway.”
“I heard she begged her mom to go there to look at colleges, but Rachel totally hates school. I mean, hates it,” Britney added.
Tianna laughed. “If it means living in New York, she’d go to college. She might even do some actual homework. But she’d have to get accepted first.”
“Maybe there is some supernatural powers college she can go to,” Grayson said with a laugh. “The entrance essay might be waved in favor of a spell or two.”
“She doesn’t have powers! Nobody does!” Britney insisted.
“She has the power to annoy me,” Tianna told her friends.
Grayson nodded his head. “She annoys me every day. I can’t wait until this year is over and I don’t have to see her face every single day.”
They continued walking and the conversation moved on to somebody else, but Eva’s mind was still wrapped around the thought of someone claiming to have supernatural powers. What if Rachel did? What if it was true? It was obvious that Tianna, Britney, and Grayson laughed off the notion. They didn’t even consider that there was a possibility the girl could be telling the truth. Their conversation was another reminder that she’d be wise to keep her personal information to herself. Nobody would believe her anyway. They’d laugh at the suggestion.
But a part of Eva wanted to know what her friend thought about it. “Do you think that people with some kind of power actually exist?”
Trixie looked at her, confused. “What do you mean? Like comic book powers? Flying, and spiderwebs out of your hands, and stuff like that?”
“I don’t know. Just doing things that normal people can’t do to save a life, I guess.”
“Like brain surgery? That’s like a skill or a talent, not a power.”
Eva pursed her lips as she tried to gather her thoughts. “I guess a little like brain surgery, but without using a scalpel or medicine or anything. Just using your power.”
Trixie looked at her in confusion. “Um. Yeah. No. Nobody has powers like that. Not even Superman.”
“Of course. Not in real life,” Eva said with a sigh. She wasn’t even sure that supernatural powers existed. It wasn’t as if she’d witnessed any yet. Her mother kept telling her that she’d let her see her gift soon, but it still hadn’t happened.
“The evil villains always have the coolest powers, but the princesses are still my favorite,” Trixie mused.
Eva sighed again. “You and your princesses.”
“I’m getting married in a princess dress.”
“I know. You’ve told me. Like a hundred times.”
“It’ll be big and lovely, with one of those cool fluffy skirts underneath, to make the dress even puffier. All satin and lace and pearls.”
“Trixie, stop, before I stuff a sock in your mouth,” Eva teased her friend.
“You always say that.”
“One of these days I might actually do it.”
“You would not!” Trixie insisted.
“You’re probably right,” Eva agreed.
Trixie stopped walking abruptly to avoid colliding with Britney, who had turned around suddenly. “She’s over there.” Britney pointed down one of the side streets. “Let’s go ask her about her powers.” She laughed.
“I can’t,” Tianna told her friend. “I told Eva’s mom that I’d stay on Main Street with them.”
“Can’t your brother take them back?” Grayson asked. He motioned across the street to where Trey had appeared with his mummy friends. “He’s right there.”
“Yeah. Probably. Trey,” Tianna called out to her brother.
“What?” he shouted back at her.
“Can you walk with Trix and Evie for a couple of minutes, and take them back near Eva’s parents or ours? You guys are going that way, right?”
“Yeah. We are. Why?”
Tianna put her hands on her hips. “Because I’m asking you to.”
Trey flung his hands up in the air. “Whatever. Come on, lil sis. You guys can walk with us.”
“Seriously, Tee? With the boys?” Trixie complained.
Tianna twirled her little sister around. “I’ll come back and get you soon. I promise. Grayson and Britney can be a little harsh. They want to talk to Rachel, and you guys don’t need to hear the crap that’ll probably come out of their mouths.”
“Then why are you going?”
“To keep them in line,” Tianna said. “Go with Trey. I’ll be back soon.”
Trixie pushed her fists into her hips and gave her best Tinkerbell pout. “Ugh. Alright.”
“Come on, you two,” Trey called out to them.
They could hear the impatience in his voice.
“They’re coming,” Tianna told him. “Thanks, bro.”
Eva crossed the street and Trixie followed.
“Mummies, huh?” Eva raised an eyebrow at Trey.
“And what are you supposed to be?” he asked her.
“Some 80s singer. I don’t remember her name. Cyndi something. But I know she jumped around and moved her skirts like this,” Eva told him as she did her best video music dance impression.
Trixie spun around shaking her wand while Eva continued to dance to the music that played in the street.
“Those are some crazy dance moves,” Trey said with a laugh. “Cyndi and Tink are shakin’ it.”
Eva danced and Trixie twirled while the boys dragged their legs in a mummy dance shuffle all the way down Main Street. Krista noticed the group coming their way and smiled at the sight. She was staring at the reason she’d stayed in Cedar Creek: small town fun, childhood innocence, and the feeling that the people around you would always be there for you. Krista hoped Eva would still feel those things after… After everything that awaited her came to be, after she saw her own mother in the coma-like aftermath, after her gift started to take root inside of her, and after her first personal experience as a Deathtaker. It would be an adjustment period, one that hit some harder than others. Krista didn’t want to see the smile on her daughter’s face disappear into the heavy weight that deathtaking often brought with it.
Eva waved at Opal, Pete, Lavinia, and Egon as they passed the diner. They were all dressed as Ghostbusters. Her mother had finally insisted she watch the film so she could understand where Egon and Peter had acquired their names. Egon had a sign taped to his back that said, “Watch out, I might slime you!” At a year and a half old, he was quite a messy little kid.
Trey lagged behind his friends and shuffled between Eva and Trixie. He didn’t mind walking her back to safety. Some of his friends complained about their younger siblings, but he rarely did. He’d always felt protective of his sister and her friend. When they were all in elementary school together, he’d made sure that they didn’t get into trouble. He’d even stepped in, once or twice, when he saw either of them getting teased.
He was in Eighth Grade; it was his second year at a different school and he still found himself worrying about his little sister. He didn’t like not knowing how she was dealing with the other kids in school, but he wasn’t looking forward to the day that she moved up to the secondary school with him. Some of the girls in his grade loved to flirt, and he didn’t want to think about princess-loving Trixie flirting with anyone. Sometimes he thought it was crazy that he was so protective of her. But that was his little sister, and Eva was just like a little sister to him. He wasn’t going to let any harm come to either of them. Some of his friends teased him about it, but Trey never let that bother him. He was a protector; it was his nature.
“Did you guys get any candy yet?” Eva asked him. She noticed he wasn’t carrying a pillowcase, or a bag, or anything.
“Nah. I’ll leave the trick-or-treating to the younger kids. Besides, my mom said she’d buy an extra bag just for me.”
“You can have all my peanut stuff too,” Trixie told him. “I hate peanuts.”
“Yet you love peanut butter. Strange kid.”
“I like what I like,” Trixie shrugged.
“Trey, du
de, come on,” one of the other mummy-wrapped boys called out to him. Eva didn’t notice which one.
“I’m coming,” he called back.
They had reached the hardware store, and Trey ran off to be with his friends.
“Where’d Tianna go?” Krista asked her daughter.
Eva shrugged. “Some kind of high school drama. She asked Trey to walk with us, but she said she’d come back to take us out again. ”
“That was nice of Trey.”
“He’s a nice boy.”
Later that night, when Main Street had quieted down and all the parents had taken their tired children home, Sam and Krista put everything away and they headed home. While they were in their truck, Eva told her parents about Tianna’s classmate, Rachel.
“They were talking bad about her. They were saying that she was telling people she had supernatural powers. Then Britney said nobody has powers, and Grayson was making fun of it all. Mom, Dad, nobody believes people can have powers. I don’t think I do either. What did Grandma Chai really die from? Do Deathtakers really exist? How am I supposed to believe any of this? It happened so long ago. I don’t even know what to believe anymore.”
Krista let her daughter blurt out all her thoughts and didn’t try to interrupt her. She let the questions come and knew Eva was right. She’d put it off for so long that doubt had crept in. It was time.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” Sam said to Eva. “But we haven’t been lying to you. Most people have never been exposed to someone like your mother, so of course they would say that powers aren’t real.”
“Soon, Doc and I will start looking for someone for me to help. It’s real, pumpkin. Being a Deathtaker is a real thing and you are going to be one someday. And much sooner than I’d like. I wish I could let you just be a normal little girl, but that power is coming to you. The Vita family gift isn’t something you can reject; it comes whether you want it to or not,” Krista told her. “I’ll find someone within the next few months. Let’s just get through the holidays first. But I promise you’ll soon see exactly what I go through.”
