Hey y'all! New chapter, I hope you enjoy! It's Halloween 2004 for the boys, and man is it gonna get wild.

Logan glances around, at him and his friends in their costumes. They're appropriate, they don't even feel like costumes. More like a glimpse into the future. He was, obviously, a doctor. James, a pop star. It's unclear which one, but he's wearing a white, faux diamond-studded jacket, so probably somebody famous. Carlos is a police officer, one who threatens to arrest Kendall every time he gets him with his hockey stick. Kendall is a hockey player.

Mrs. Knight is a witch, one with green face paint and a fake mole on her face. She does a really good witch cackle. Katie is a milder variation, a candy corn witch. James's mother is dressed up like a vampire, but she refused to put on face paint or fake teeth. Carlos's mom dressed like a mummy, wrapped head to toe in toilet paper.

Logan's mother would've been a zombie. The moms were all doing a group costume this year. But she was working. It was weird, because for the last months, she could hardly get out of bed. Now she could barely stand being in the house for one minute. She stopped writing notes for him using her signature loopy letter cursive. She still wrote notes, but she also still called him Hortense. It was a quick scrawl of his first name across the top of some ripped sheet of notebook paper, and then some variation of I have a meeting/showing/client dinner. Back late. Dinner in the fridge.

Sometimes there was Love, Mom at the end. Today's note didn't have one. She didn't write Happy Halloween either, maybe she didn't know it was today. She was busy.

Logan remembered wishing his mother would be busy lat year, instead of lying in bed all day. Now that his wish came true, he only half-regretted making it. At least when she was sleeping most of the time, she was there. Logan hadn't actually seen his mom in weeks. Left early, came back too late.

Carlos's dad had volunteered to be the zombie in lieu of Logan's mom. He used the excuse I've always wanted to be a part of a group costume. So Logan went back to his house a few minutes ago, and grabbed the still-wrapped-up costume off his mother's desk. Mr. Garcia had changed quickly, a smile plastered onto his face.

"I think I look good," he had said, and they all laughed.

Logan didn't though, because he just wanted to see his mom.

—

At the end of the night, Carlos had gotten the most candy. He charged and ransacked each house, especially those lazy houses that just put out a bucket of candy with a Please Take One paper sign. Carlos, in the midst of ransacking one of these lazy houses, ripped off the sign. He grabbed a handful of candy to shove in his bag. Good thing Mr. and Mrs. Garcia didn't see anything. Carlos probably would've been lectured at and grounded for weeks. Stealing when your father was a police officer probably wasn't the smartest idea, but Carlos was hopped up on sugar. It was less of a thievery attempt than it was the desire for more sugar.

All this sugar eventually resulted in the inevitable. A sugar crash on Kendall's couch, where they were flicking through the channels until they found a good Halloween movie to watch. The catch was, no horror. Logan couldn't handle it, and their mothers wouldn't allow them to. Not until all of them turned ten. So far, it was just James. So, no horror movies.

"Hocus Pocus?" Kendall asked, pointing at the screen with the remote.

"No, that's girly," Carlos murmured. "And they're all old."

Just because something had girls in it, didn't mean it was girly or infested with cooties, Logan thought. Why did Carlos think that? And of course the witches were going to be old. All witches were, except for maybe Mrs. Knight, who was probably, like, fifty. Fifty was old, but it wasn't as old as the witches. The witches looked like they were one hundred-fifty.

"Well, that's the only movie that's on, Carlos."

Carlos sighed, reaching for another fistful of candy. He had dumped his pumpkin bucket full of candy onto the table, which was littered with wrappers, since Carlos was the type of person not to throw them out. Logan brushed some aside, snagging two packets of Whoppers. He popped the first one into his mouth. The second was stolen by none other than James Diamond.

The rest of the night continued in a similar fashion, the only variables being what movie played in the background and who stole candy from who. By the end of Hocus Pocus, Carlos, groggy from his sugar crash, was asleep. Knocked out, more like it. They could push them off the couch and he wouldn't even flinch. They tested this theory several times to prove its accuracy.

By the end of Halloweentown, James was nearly as lifeless as Carlos. His arms dangled off the edge of the couch. He was mumbling something about being in Times Square. As far as Logan knew, James had never been out of Minnesota, much less Times Square.

"I think we should get a marker," Kendall whispered. "What should we draw on Carlos?"

Logan shrugged. "I don't know."

He yawned, stretching his arms above his head. "I'm pretty tired, anyway."

Kendal was staring intently at Carlos's blank forehead. He brandished the marker like a painter painting a canvas. "Then sleep."

So, he stands up to go home. After all, that's where his bed is, that's where he sleeps. Apparently, this is not what Kendall meant, because he looks at him with his eyebrows scrunched together. Logan doesn't know what this means exactly, but he knows he's done something wrong.

He pulls on his shoes, with Kendall still looking at him in that way he can't decipher. "What?"

"Are you leaving?"

He nodded slowly, glancing at the door, then at his shoes again. "Yes?"

"Yes? Are you walking home? From here?"

Logan nodded again, a blush blazing across his cheeks. He averted Kendall's gaze. "I–yeah."

"Logan, you can't walk home from my house."

He pulls on his jacket next, zipping it up carefully. "Why not?"

Kendall stares at him. Logan pretends not to notice, shoving his hands in his pockets. He braces himself for yelling. Kendall throws up his hands, his face red. "What—why not? Logan, your house is a ten minute walk. It's dark out, it's cold, kids are probably still out from Mischief Night. It's not—"

"Sorry. Maybe your mom can drive me home?"

Kendall shakes his head, leading Logan over to the hallway. Mrs. Knight was sitting with a sleeping Katie on her lap, near to sleep herself. Her green witch face paint was peeling away.

"See?"

Logan frowned. "Yeah."

—

When Logan got home the next morning, his mother, as expected, wasn't. He started looking around for one of her notes, though it was more difficult to spot, now that she didn't bother with the cursive.

The note was taped to the refrigerator door.

Hortense,

Happy Halloween, honey. Sorry I wasn't there. I'll be back tonight at around ten. There's bread in the breadbox for toast. There might be candy somewhere, you'll have to find it.

Love,

Mom

The note wasn't magical, it wasn't going to fix all his problems. She still called him Hortense, which always made him cringe, grateful for Ms. Diamond's suggestion (command) to go by his middle. It wasn't going to make him stop missing his mom. But this time she wrote in full sentences. She even remembered it was Halloween yesterday. And put Love, Mom at the end of the note.

He didn't know what exactly was going on with his mother. She was always fluctuating, like an unstable meter. High, low. But today she was on the high end of the meter.

Was it wrong for him to hope and to believe that his mom would be okay? He hoped not.