Disclaimer: The main characters don't belong to me, but the rest does.

Dear Diary,

Yesterday was Halloween.

This year was the first year we were allowed to wear costumes in school. I went as the dead lady from The Corpse Bride. I haven't actually seen the film, and my costume wasn't the most accurate, but I wore a long white dress, a blue wig and a cheap veil, and did some dark eye makeup, so I think it still counts. I picked her because Meg wanted to reuse her Nightmare before Christmas Sally costume, and thought it would be cool if we both went as Tim Burton characters. Her new friend/admirer Devin, for his part, went as Beetlejuice, so we made a pretty stylish-looking trio.

I was a bit annoyed, though, when at lunch Devin basically invited himself to our after-school plans. Meg and I had already decided we'd go to my house first to eat pizza and watch Sleepy Hollow (the closest thing to horror I can bear to watch) until night fell, and then walk around for a bit to look at all the decorated houses. When she made a passing reference to our plans at lunch, Devin exclaimed, "Oh cool! We should get root beer from 7-Eleven to go with the pizza!" …And that was that.

During the movie, he kept saying 'gross' every time someone's head was lopped off, which really got on my nerves. He was also all over Meg the whole time, and even though she didn't flirt back, I still felt a bit like I was third-wheeling.

When night fell, we went outside, after being told by Dad to be careful and stay together. (He doesn't really approve of Halloween by the way — he 'doesn't understand what's so great about celebrating evil.')

I'm lucky to live in a neighborhood where most people decorate their houses for the holidays. The front lawns are turned into movie-set graveyards; there's fog machines, jack-o'-lanterns and plastic skeletons hanging from trees; one person even somehow managed to wrap their entire house in a giant fake cobweb! Obviously we didn't do trick-or-treating because we're a bit too old and tall to pull that off now, but it was still fun. That it is, it was fun until they ditched me.

At some point I realized my veil had fallen off my head without my realizing it while we were walking, so I said I wanted to go back to look for it. Meg wanted to help me look, but Devin said his feet hurt from his shoes and he wanted to stop walking for a bit, so eventually it was agreed that I would go back to look while they waited for me there. There were lots of people about, so I didn't feel uncomfortable being on my own. Also, I remembered adjusting my veil fairly recently, so I knew it couldn't be far behind.

It only took me five minutes or so to find it (some kind soul had hung it off a bannister), but when I returned to the spot where I had left them, they weren't there anymore. I couldn't call Meg, because she didn't have her phone with her, and I didn't have Devin's number, so I was kind of stuck. I looked around for a bit to make sure they weren't hiding as a prank, but no luck.

Not wanting my evening to end in such a lame way, I called Erik to come rescue me. His car pulled up to the curb only a few minutes later (we were fairly close to his building). When he came out, I was surprised to see he wasn't wearing his mask. Casually, he asked me how I liked his Halloween makeup. I answered I liked it very much, which made him smile.

Together, we resumed touring the neighborhood. Now that he was with me, suddenly we were getting a lot more compliments from people, and one lady even randomly gave us candy. Since he was wearing a dark suit as usual, it looked a bit like we were supposed to be an undead couple. The funniest moment was when he growled at one preteen girl who had said 'Eww' loudly upon seeing him, and successfully made her jump and run away.

When we got to my house, Dad greeted us. He didn't comment on Erik's face, but only shot me a questioning glance when he wasn't looking, to which I responded with a small nod. We all watched Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt together, then Erik left, and we all went to sleep.

A very good day, all in all, even if I am still a bit mad at Meg, even if she explained today they'd only left our meeting place briefly to go look at something, and when they'd come back I was gone. Oh well. I just hope she doesn't get with Devin, because that'd be very annoying.