It was Halloween and there was a party and Eren couldn't find parking anywhere. He fiddled with the stick-shift and turned back onto the road.
"How about by the little bridge?" Mikasa suggested from the passenger side.
"If nobody's parked there, already."
They drove down to the little bridge. Eren's Durango lurched from an asphalt ledge and rumbled in the wet grass. The headlights went off. Eren and Mikasa got out. Mikasa flicked air into her skirt so she didn't trip. Dark frills swished around her ankles.
"Ready to go?" Eren was at her elbow.
Mikasa nodded so they walked a quarter of a mile down the street. Around them was a dead universe that swam unseen during the day. Kids dressed creaturely blew across the sidewalks, laughing, toting candy bags. The October air was cold with the hijinks of ghosts and the flurry of crows.
Jean Kirstein's house sat on a canal and had a lot of glass windows. Mikasa hadn't been to Jean's house in years, but it still loomed like it had when she'd been a kid.
She remembered what Jean had been like growing up. At first he'd been mean to her, but it hadn't been like Eren, who didn't like to lose, especially not to girls, especially not in footraces. Then he'd been nice to her, and he'd offer to give her piggyback rides at recess when they all played Tag. Then he'd abandoned the lunch table where they always sat together, and that had been that.
They went up and rang the doorbell.
"Don't we look like trick-or-treaters?" Mikasa said.
Eren looked at her. His face was an ashen blur of zombie makeup. "Isn't everyone dressed up? It's a Halloween party."
"I don't know. I've never been to a Halloween party."
"I've never been to any party."
"I've never been to any party," Mikasa said, distressed.
"Well, relax, 'cause we're leaving once we find Jean's stupid fucking face."
"It's been way long since we've seen Jean. Do we really need him for this?"
Eren pushed loose hair from his face. A fake head-wound glistened on his temple. "Mikasa, we're already down one man! It's supposed to be with everyone."
"Okay, okay," Mikasa said, and they turned to face the door as Eren rang a couple more times.
Eventually someone let them inside, and, to their dismay, nobody else was wearing costumes.
Inside, there was loud music. Eren and Mikasa cringed from the noise as they stepped in. There were loud people too; the stereo deceived them into thinking they weren't being heard, when in reality, they weren't being listened to because everyone was listening to the music.
"So this is a party, huh," Eren said. He wormed a finger in his ear.
"I don't like it very much," Mikasa said.
"What?"
"I said—"
"Mikasa, you're way too quiet."
Eren stooped and Mikasa screamed straight into his ear canal. "NEVERMIND."
"Whatever," Eren said, straightening and shaking the fog of sound from his head. "Let's just find Jean so we can get out of here."
Eren began to gingerly break ranks, and soon his face had submerged with the other faces, as though a twirling mask had spun him away into the tide. Mikasa hesitated. She skirted the walls, wishing she could style her pigment coloration after the nautical paint theme and blend herself in.
The girls here weren't wearing costumes. They were just wearing a lot less than they did in school. They looked like they were having more fun than the boys. The boys stood at fundamental angles of the house and didn't move too much. They had hard jaws and dark laughs and laid dark eyes on the passing girls.
Mikasa walked through the living room where people were dancing. There was a sudden breeze and a snag of her Victorian-style skirt.
Someone had stepped on the end of it, pulling it down slightly. It was only for a flash. Mikasa looked around to see if anyone had seen and made eye-contact with too many people. They glanced away and told their friends not to look. Their friends hushed up and looked anyway.
Mikasa's face was hot. Her neck was hot. The rest of her was cold. She imagined herself walking through the wall, leaving behind a shadow of ectoplasm. She went to find a bathroom where she could hide for a bit.
When she opened a promising door in the hallway, she found Louise from school, who was dumping a can of fruity beer down a sink. Louise looked up and recognized Mikasa.
"Oh," she said. "It's you. Hi."
"Hello, Louise."
"I've never seen you at a party before. I like your costume. Did you need to use the bathroom?"
"Oh…" Mikasa tried to figure out which of these things to answer. Louise turned on the tap and put the can under the faucet. "Um, why are you filling that can with water?"
Louise had an intense emptiness in her stare. It was like looking into the bottom of a bucket. She took a sip of water from the beer can.
"Alcohol tastes bad."
"Oh. Okay. Why don't you just… not drink it?"
"Then people would think I don't drink," Louise said.
"Okay," Mikasa said. "Have you seen Jean Kirstein tonight?"
Louise said she had and they went outside to the patio. Caged light-drops straddled the palm trees. Their reflections flecked the black canal. Some kids sat at the outdoor table, slick-backed and wet like a pod of dolphins.
"Jean," Mikasa said. Jean turned. Smoke from a joint wreathed his face, and Mikasa breathed through her mouth. He smiled at her from behind a red-and-green blaze.
"Hey," he said. "Hey," he said again, this time startled. "Mikasa! You showed. What's up? You been here this whole time? How's things, man?"
"Oh…" Mikasa said. She thought. She lined her thoughts in order. "Nothing. I just got here. I'm okay."
"Hey," he said, getting up. "Let's get you a drink, yeah?"
"I don't want one. Don't you remember the promise we all made?"
"What?" he said, laughing.
Mikasa heard one of the boys at the table whisper the word panties so she brought Jean to the edge of the dock. He had a funny grin on his face, as though he found her silly and absurd. Like he was entertaining the antics of a small child.
"Remember Armin's treehouse? We made a coalition that one summer, when we were, like, ten or eleven."
"Sure," Jean said. He'd insisted on being a silver wolf that summer. That's stupid, Eren had said. Wolves can't be in the army.
"And we made a pact together, that we'd all drink together one day."
"Uh, yeah, I remember that, vaguely."
"We were all going to drink at Armin's tonight. His grandpa's on a fishing trip."
"Mikasa," Jean said, laughing. "I don't know how to tell you this, but I've already drunk."
"Well," Mikasa said, crossing her arms. "You did break the rules. But you can still come with us."
"Look, I'll hit you guys up any time, but I got shit going on tonight. Actually," Jean said. He was very close to her. Alcohol and chlorine and cologne burned in Mikasa's nose. "Why don't you stay over?"
He was being nice to Mikasa again. That part, at least, remained unchanged.
"We were going to do it together," Mikasa said, sounding, to herself, like she was whining. "Not with a bunch of random people."
There was a shift of weight on the dock. Eren walked up the length.
"Jean! Yo!"
Jean turned. His face became mean again. "Eren, how you doin'?"
Eren smiled openly. "Dude! Did Mikasa tell you what we're doing tonight? We're getting drunk."
"Yeah," Jean said. "Look, I'm gonna have to pass, but, like I, uh—" he turned towards Mikasa again. "Like I said, you can stay over if you want."
"Nope," Eren said. "You have to honor the Wolf-Pack Pact. Sorry, no exceptions."
"I'm not coming," Jean said to Eren, turning mean. "Sorry," he said to Mikasa.
"What?"
Jean loomed to the three-inch advantage he had over Eren. For a second, they were old rivals instead of two unfamiliar faces.
"I'm not coming."
"But you promised—"
"What the fuck?" Jean said, incredulous, leering. "What are you even talking about?"
Eren wilted. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Fine. Whatever. We'll just do it without you. C'mon Mikasa."
Mikasa felt a pang as they left the dock. At least Reiner would always be the same, even when he was on the other side of the country, even when they wouldn't see him for a long time. The waves of change had flipped Jean around, frolicking him about, grown him to a full-fledged adult with bristly sideburns and no tolerance for kids' games.
They'd wanted him to replace Reiner, Mikasa thought. But now they were down two men. The Wolf-Pack Army was fighting a losing war against time.
Louise waited by the pool, drink in hand.
"Are you guys leaving? Can I come with you? My ride home is wasted. I don't want to die. I don't really want to be here anyway."
"Why not?" Eren said.
Louise crossed her arms over her chest. "Parties are scary."
"Oh. Why don't you just… not come?"
"Then people would think I don't like to party."
Eren thought about this. He eyed her. "How would you like to become a member of the Wolf-Pack Army?"
Eren drove them to Armin's. Armin greeted them furtively. They snuck two six-packs from the Durango's trunk and brought them to the backyard. The treehouse sat old and derelict in the tangle of a banyan tree. It was a dusty, patient thing, faithful that meetings would be held again in it one day.
They climbed the rotting wooden planks that led to the top. There were old anachronisms carved into each:
"kasa + squid"
"jean + men"
The treehouse was cramped, almost too small for them. They sat cross-legged. Their eyes winked around a flashlight beam as they swore Louise in. Eren, Mikasa and Armin each took a beer and toasted her. Eren's throat bobbed as he drank. Mikasa and Armin tipped their cans and the fruit-acid withered their tongues.
They finished two more each and then Eren climbed down with Mikasa. Her skirt caught on a ladder rung, and she fell into the grass. She thought that they were sober, but both pretending to be drunk.
They were stupid idiots dancing in the backyard. The neighborhood kids had all gone to bed, bags full of treats. The night was small, and quiet except for the drone of a thousand televisions and some faint music playing from across the canal. Eren spun Mikasa, wind flying her through the grass, billowing her skirt around and around. Then they fell down. Mikasa kissed Eren in the hedges. With his pallid makeup and melting hairdo, it was like kissing the poster of Robert Smith she had in her bedroom.
They were all zombified too, by morning. They did their business and made sure that nobody could tell what they'd done last night. Then, confident in their efforts of concealment, they each went home. Their parents, of course, could tell immediately what they'd done last night. Mikasa was grounded by her mom.
While she was grounded, Mikasa had a lot of time to think. She thought about how some things would never change. Whether Eren was young or old, gay or not, whether they kissed or didn't, nothing would ever change.