Annie's Life in Lists

by Kristin Mahoney

  4. First real haunted house

  How this haunted house was different from others I’d been to

  1. It was not sponsored by the PTA.

  2. It did not feature spaghetti being presented as worms and peeled grapes masquerading as eyeballs.

  3. There were no high school kids in rubber masks answering the door.

  4. It was, according to Zora, Charlie, and Zach, an actual haunted house.

  Five reasons they say the house is haunted

  1. It has been boarded up for as long as they can remember, but sometimes the front door is mysteriously open.

  2. No one has ever been seen coming out of the house.

  3. Years ago, a college student collecting signatures for a clean-water bill entered the open front door, and she was never seen again.

  4. The attic window is the only one not boarded up, and if you look closely, sometimes you can see a pale white figure moving in front of it.

  5. If you knock on the door on Halloween night, you will hear terrible shrieks coming from inside. And every neighborhood kid is supposed to try it the first time he or she goes trick-or-treating without parents. That meant us. Right then.

  Five things that crossed my mind to say at that moment

  1. That sounds terrifying.

  2. That’s trespassing.

  3. I don’t think my mom would like this idea.

  4. Zach isn’t a very fast runner. That could be a problem if we need a quick getaway. (I knew this because he and I were in the same group the day the gym teacher timed us in the fifty-yard dash. I’m not faster than many people, but I was faster than Zach.)

  5. Don’t you guys just want to go get some candy?

  One thing I did say at that moment

  1. Um, you mean now?

  But I still followed them. Turns out my fear of not making friends is stronger than my fear of haunted houses.

  Seven things we heard at the haunted house

  1. The creak of the iron gate in front of the house as we opened it

  2. Our own breathing as we walked slowly down the path from the gate to the house

  3. More creaking as we moved gingerly onto the rotting porch steps

  4. Someone’s dad on the sidewalk yelling, “Hey! What are you kids doing over there?”

  5. A crash as Zach turned around, stepped on a rotten spot, and put his foot through one of the porch floorboards

  6. Charlie yelling, “Run for it!”

  7. The sound of Charlie running as Zora and I helped Zach pull his foot out of the porch floor

  One thing we did not hear at the haunted house

  1. Terrible shrieks (other than the ones coming from Zach)

  Four reasons we only went trick-or-treating at five more houses after that

  1. Zach stopped to yell at Charlie for abandoning him on the porch.

  2. Charlie was defensive and insisted he ran because he saw a ghostly figure through the window.

  3. Zach was limping.

  4. Zach was bleeding a little. Finally I said we were near my house and we could go there to get him a bandage and check out his ankle.

  Five best things in my Halloween haul

  1. Reese’s pumpkins

  2. Butterfingers

  3. Nerds

  4. M&M’s

  5. Plastic witch nose

  Five worst things in my Halloween haul

  1. Pencils

  2. Granola bar

  3. Apple

  4. Black licorice

  5. Candy corn

  I know, I know, some people love candy corn. I am not one of those people. And neither is Zora. But my mom is, so I told Zora we could give it to her when we got back to my house.

  Five things you would notice about my family if you spent an hour with them

  1. My mom has a little bit of an accent. She grew up in North Carolina, and sometimes she’ll say things like “y’all” or “I reckon.” (She doesn’t mind the rule about calling grown-ups Mr. and Mrs. here. She says that’s what she had to do when she was a kid.)

  2. Mom is really smart, but kind of forgetful. She is like me, actually. She remembers things about people she hasn’t seen in decades, but she forgets to put the chicken in the fridge when she gets home from the grocery store. And when she’s working, she gets focused on her designs (and it can be hard to get her attention).

  3. My dad is really into Harry Potter. Sometimes I think it’s funny, but sometimes it’s a little weird.

  4. Dad also loves music. LOVES it. He has to turn it on as soon as he walks in the house or gets in the car, and sometimes Mom gets annoyed. (She likes music too, but she can’t have it on all the time, especially if she’s working. She says it “crowds her thinking space.” It hasn’t been much of a problem since we moved, because Dad usually uses his headphones these days. I guess he doesn’t feel like sharing his tunes as much as he used to.)

  5. Besides the drumming, I’m not sure what you’d notice about Ted. Ever since we moved, he keeps to himself a lot. He didn’t even dress up for Halloween, and it used to be his favorite holiday. In Brooklyn, he and his friends would always dress up as a group of things that went together, like the members of Nirvana or all the Batman villains or something like that. This year, he just came home and went to his room like always.

  Three good things that happened back at my house

  1. Turned out Zach only needed a Band-Aid and an ice pack.

  2. Charlie gave me his Reese’s pumpkins because he’s allergic to peanuts.

  3. Mom didn’t ask anyone too many questions.

  Four things that embarrassed me back at my house

  1. When Dad saw how much candy we got, he said, “Merlin’s beard!,” his favorite Harry Potter expression.

  2. Mom was singing along really loudly to her Johnny Cash CD when we walked in.

  3. The carpet in the living room was partially ripped away, and you could see the gross plywood floor underneath. (Mom and Dad were disappointed when they started tearing up the carpet and didn’t find nice hardwood under it. Now we’re “in a holding pattern” while they figure out what to do.)

  4. Zora asked if anyone remembered who gave us the granola bars, and Dad said, “I’m sure Annie does! She has an amazing memory.” (I did remember. It was Mrs. Deibler. She lives one block over in a yellow house, and she has four-year-old twin boys named Ethan and Andrew. She was wearing a black skirt, a red sweater, and fuzzy slippers, and when she gave us the granola bars, she said, “Something crunchy for Halloween!” But I said I didn’t remember. And Zora gave me a funny look.)

  One thing Ted said to me after my friends left

  1. You totally remembered who gave you the granola bars, didn’t you?

  Two things I wanted to say back to Ted

  1. Yes, I remembered.

  2. Do you know what a severance agreement is? And why Dad got one?

  One thing I actually said to Ted

  1. Why were you spying on us, weirdo? I’m going to bed.

  But first I had to check my email. Halloween was always the best day in Brooklyn, and I wanted to see if I had a report from Millie.

  Four ways Millie’s Halloween sounded awesome

  1. The city closed off the street for three extra blocks for the neighborhood parade this year. (I knew the neighborhood Halloween parade was going to be one of the things I missed most. It’s not like a regular parade where people stand on the side and watch while floats and bands go by. There’s some of that stuff at the beginning, but mostly everyone just walks in the street with hundreds of other people, checking out each other’s costumes, saying hi to people they know, and trading candy.)

 
; 2. There were people dressed as fire-breathing dragons on stilts in the parade.

  3. She and two other kids dressed up as a fork, a knife, and a spoon. (What two other kids, I wondered. That seemed like an important detail to leave out.)

  4. Her parents let her stay at the parade till ten-thirty.

  Three ways I told her my Halloween was awesome

  1. I was an evil fairy.

  2. I got to go trick-or-treating with just friends, no parents.

  3. I went to a real haunted house.

  I didn’t tell her that we didn’t actually go inside the haunted house. So I guess Millie wasn’t the only one omitting details.

  NOVEMBER

  Three weird smells in our new house

  1. Wood smoke (This one lingered for a while after Dad forgot to open the chimney flue the first time he built a fire in the fireplace.)

  2. Paint (Mom and Dad are painting the rooms at an average of about one a month. The latest was the dining room, which they want to have ready in time for Thanksgiving.)

  3. Something mysterious and fierce that we eventually determined was half of an old turkey sandwich in the bottom of Ted’s backpack

  Five things that fell out of Ted’s backpack when he dumped it upside down to clean it

  1. Two books (Catcher in the Rye and Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga)

  2. About seven crumpled pieces of paper

  3. The offending sandwich half

  4. Two drumsticks

  5. Three guitar picks

  Two questions that naturally arose when I saw this

  1. How could you have forgotten about the sandwich?

  2. Are you playing guitar now? (Answer: No. I’m just collecting picks.)

  Then I told him that Zora’s older brother plays guitar, and he just said, “I know,” but he seemed weird about it.

  Eleven things in my backpack right now

  1. A binder

  2. A spiral notebook

  3. One of Kate’s hair ties I need to return

  4. An eraser shaped like a unicorn, with the top of the horn broken off

  5. A PTA newsletter I keep forgetting to show my parents

  6. Pictures of aliens that Zora and I drew together at indoor recess

  7. A crushed granola bar

  8. A bottle of hand sanitizer with maybe one squirt left in it

  9. A few broken pencils

  10. A rock that I found in the driveway and saved because I thought it looked like George Washington

  11. A French stamp Mrs. Silva gave me (you know, for my imaginary stamp collection)

  Five things I included in my last letter to Millie

  1. A report on the election for fifth-grade class president (which, to the surprise of no one, Zora won by a landslide)

  2. A tally of the number of times Amelia has randomly brought up my flying-underwear kickball incident and started laughing (seven at last count)

  3. The news that Mom says I can get my ears pierced if I read fifty books (twenty-five of my choice, twenty-five of hers)

  4. A new friendship bracelet in fall colors

  5. A hand turkey (you know the kind, where you trace your hand and make it look like a turkey)

  One reason I made my best friend a hand turkey even though we aren’t in preschool

  1. It’s a tradition. Millie goes to her grandparents’ house in California for a week every year at Thanksgiving, and we always trade hand turkeys before she goes. It was Millie’s idea; it started the first year we were friends and I was mopey about being away from her for a whole week.

  Four things I did not tell Millie in my letter

  1. I overheard my parents talking about bills again after I went to bed last night. Mom is emailing some of her work friends in the city to try to get more assignments, and Dad’s going to ask about overtime pay at his new job. I don’t know why I didn’t tell Millie, exactly. It’s not like she thinks we’re rich—I mean, she knew we had to move out of our first Brooklyn apartment because the rent went up. But money is definitely coming up more these days, and it just doesn’t feel like something I want to tell my friends about. (Especially a friend like Millie, whose parents have always had the same big apartment and take nice vacations every year.)

  2. I’ve started going to the school library some days at lunchtime to look for the old books Mom recommends for the ear-piercing challenge. If Kate’s there too, I talk to her and help her shelve books. (I’m not sure why I didn’t tell Millie about that. Maybe because we never would have hung out in the library voluntarily at our school in Brooklyn. With Kate it’s kind of fun, but it’s hard to explain why.)

  3. One day when Zora and Kate were both out sick, I ate my lunch in a bathroom stall so I wouldn’t have to sit with just Amelia and the boys. (Charlie and Zach are nice, but they just don’t make enough of a buffer between Amelia and me.)

  4. When I heard Amelia on the bus asking Zora if she could be her campaign manager for the class election (and Zora saying, “Sure!”), it made my stomach hurt for the rest of the ride home. (Did I want to be the campaign manager? No. But according to my stomach, I guess I didn’t want Amelia to do it either.)

  Two things I did not get from Millie before Thanksgiving

  1. A letter

  2. A hand turkey

  She did send a quick email that said, “Sorry I didn’t have time to do a turkey this year. Leaving for the airport soon. Happy Thanksgiving!” Hmph. But I was going to try not to let one snoreburger of an email kill my holiday spirit.

  Two reasons I’m excited about Thanksgiving this year

  1. We could never host it before because our Brooklyn apartment was too small. But this year we have enough space for the whole family to come, and some will even stay over. (I’m excited about this, but Mom and Dad are kind of freaking out. They’re more concerned than usual about how the house looks, and they keep arguing about things like whether they should buy more pillows or ask people to bring their own. They don’t say it, but I know these are just more things they never would have had to worry about if I hadn’t made us move.)

  2. I get to bunk with my mom’s younger sister, Aunt Penelope. (And no matter how crummy I’m feeling about moving, my parents, or Ted, Aunt Penelope is one person who always makes me feel better.)

  Four best feelings

  1. Saturday morning

  2. A compliment from someone who’s not your parent

  3. A compliment on something you don’t think you’re good at (For example, “Annie, you kicked that ball so far!” I’m still waiting for that one.)

  4. Your parents saying, “Let’s just order pizza tonight.”

  Three worst feelings

  1. Nausea

  2. Getting a splinter (Actually, I don’t know if it’s getting the splinter that’s so bad, or just the idea of a sliver of wood sliding into your skin. Shudder.)

  3. Waking up the day after you’ve gotten bad news (Because at first you’ve forgotten the bad news and it feels like a regular morning; then your brain slowly reminds you, and it feels like you’re hearing it for the first time all over again.)

  Seven things I love about Aunt Penelope (or Aunt Pen, as Ted and I call her)

  1. She has really long hair—almost to her bottom—although she usually wears it up. When I was little, one of my favorite things to do was watch her twist her hair into a long rope and tie it in a knot. It’s so long that it will stay like that with no clip or hair tie or anything.

  2. She taught me how to make a quilt for my dolls when I was seven.

  3. She’s a teacher and she knows everything about books for kids my age. So she always recommends the best ones for me to read.

&
nbsp; 4. When her house got infested with ladybugs, she never called an exterminator. She just let them be. So they live on her kitchen ceiling in clusters around the lamp, like sunbathers on a beach.

  5. When she visits us, she brings me a container full of ladybugs to live in my old butterfly habitat.

  6. She understands what it’s like to be a younger sister. Mom tries, but she’ll never really know because she never lived it like Aunt Pen and I have.

  7. She never says anything about me being quiet or shy.

  Five people who DID say I was shy at Thanksgiving

  1. Grandma Rose

  2. Grandma Elaine