After Ruby thought she was too old for Trick-Or-Treating, I finally got to spend Halloween without dragging trash bags of Peanut Butter Cups and Snickers bar across the driveway while my sister followed behind in a pair of fairy wings and a sparkly tutu. Instead, I started attending the annual haunted house at our suck ass middle school that I once thought were filled with nightmares, chills, cold air, dark shadows, footsteps and the faint smell of death was actually the footsteps coming from the repetitive record player, hid somewhere in the room and the smell of death of the nearby cafeterias left over cooking from the afternoon before. But it still scared the crap out of Clyde, who would run out crying half of the time and Token and I would follow behind him, tears from laughter, not only because he would be the first to leave, but because of the school's staff failed attempts to scare us. We could never invite Tweek to come with us because he's already spazzy enough without Mr. Garrison jumping from behind bookshelves while wearing a plastic mask, so we would just ask whoever's mom picked us up that year, to drive over and get him so we could all stuff our faces with tacos and watch the same scary movie that was on Channel 32 every Halloween.
Even without going out and receiving treats from strangers or playing pranks on the next door neighbors after watching Beetlejuice or The Nightmare Before Christmas or whatever was on that night, I liked Autumn (Why do people call it Fall, anyways?) I like feeling the crisp cold wind that flew through your front door when you opened it, the feeling of crunching dry leaves under my worn out Converse, seeing the Jack-O-Lanterns people actually put effort into making an interesting carving that were outside their doorstep along with the mostly cheesy but sometimes scary decorations, the Pumpkin Spice Latte that Tweek would bring me after working a day at his father's Coffee shop, sitting on the old tire swing at Stark's Pond watching dead leaves fall, the evolution of how slutty female's costumes get when they grow up, and as much as it seemed to annoy the others, I like how every candle scent was Cinnamon or Pumpkin.
This year, like many, BeBe and Token are head to head at making their parties the biggest and best which you think doesn't include me at all, but guess whose parents are out-of-town? And my thoughts of having pumpkins everywhere and spider webs hanging from the staircase weren't reality because it seems all the teenagers here care about the Guitar Hero screen in the living room, the bowl of punch mixed with whatever, and the Jello shots that Kenny found in the fridge and ate most of them already. Most are in their costumes, unlike Wendy Testaburger who's just wearing the shortest black dress I've ever seen and I'm trying hard not to flip her off even though she's ruining the purpose of Halloween by taking Officer Marsh into my bathroom and probably giving him an 'oral confession'. And now I'm sitting outside, on my picket fence that surrounded my house while I'm lighting up a cigarette and Kyle Broflosvki's already outside. Tall, lanky, skinny like a rail and nothing but sharp angles from his shoulders to his knees. I guess he's not much for costumes either, seeing that he's wearing a grey shirt with the Batman symbol and had a cheap, matching plastic mask with a rubber band hanging from his neck, even though he could have been a red-headed Clark Kent, since he already has the thick rimmed glasses. "Hey, Tucker."
And between sips of his spiked punch and drags of my cancer stick his head of firey red curls being blown from the wind while mine was under my chullo blue hat (that I always wore, even if the pattern of it's tribal print and my plaid shirt clashed), listening to the loud music coming from my house, we sat outside my front door with slight possibility that his fingers were laced with mine and we exchanged kisses that meant absolutely nothing, other than we were enjoying Halloween together, and each other's company.