A/N: Requested anonymously for Fictober as April in a costume contest similar to the wine tasting contest in the show. Went a little wacky, but that's just good fiction if I can be that pretentious.

Enjoy!

To 15-year old April there were two incredible sins that were totally, completely, irrevocably unforgivable. The first was that you were never supposed to wear something or do something just to make somebody happy. It was dumb, and that person was most likely not worth it in her clearly infinite experience as a veteran sophomore in high school. The elite of the elite, basically. Especially her, since the older kids were just awful.

The second was that you should never ever desecrate Halloween.

"Wow, sick vampire costume!"

"Whoa, dude. Check out Ludgate."

"Oh my God, she looks so slutty," and, arbitrarily and contrarily because she's a high school girl and that's how this works in the saddest of truths, "She should show more skin."

"What's she s'posed to be? Oh, cool–" and a thousand others that she could barely register.

Since when did wearing some leggings and not styling yourself at all count as a costume? April hates it, and hates all of them for their stupid schoolday costume parties or whatever. They're a bunch of morons and she deserves better than this. When did people give up on traditional stuff that was all about worshipping the Devil and painting cool symbols on walls? When did it become Wal-Mart and capitalism and all those stupid buzzwords that she barely knew a colloquial definition for and yet they formed the foundation of her person, of everything she was. The worst part is that a few teachers even looked at her differently.

This wasn't Halloween, this was some stupid, sexified, commercialized messy affair that wasn't Jack Skellingtons and goths. When she had her first kiss in middle school, April realized things like that weren't fairy tales and dreams either. This was just another ideal bludgeoned to death by the real world first-hand and with a sadistic glint in its all-seeing eye.

They never would be.

And that's when she took a turn. Why not, if they were so convinced of this insanity, fuck with them? That'd show them. That's how April, in her indie wisdom that clearly she only had and only a pretentious high schooler could pretend existed solely for them, figured it out.

Someone had already signed her up for the costume contest, probably as a prank. It was probably just to get her up on a stage, quiet and shy but terrifying and creepy April Ludgate that people rarely ever heard speak, and pull a Carrie on her. Sadly, she didn't have the telekinetic thing going on – and she's tried, so don't go there – so all she could do was beat them by playing into it. That's how it worked, right?

Paw at the air, she thinks. A teenager, barely that, plays a sexy kitten-vampire-whatever and people clap.

They clap and hoot and holler and April hates Halloween in this stupid town, hates Pawnee, hates these people, but plays up into it because that Knoblauch bitch is grimacing like she's just smelled a cow carcass mixed in with her bath and it's the best feeling April's ever had. This was the showcase, and April can't really do much. She plays at the sexy card. Teachers cheer. Chaperones, adults, dudes that are likely going to go home with a million thoughts in their head that she wants to vomit just thinking about.

"Third place, April Ludgate!"

When they call it, she's disgusted with herself but at the same time Stacy is horrified. She never wins anything.

April beat her.

This warrants a dead raccoon in her locker a week later, obviously. However, April's already won. That's how high school works, she guesses. It's these weird cliques battling eternally, pushed by some weirdly omnipresent and powerful forced and made to split off into the usual groups. That's how it worked, always. Except for Halloween, when April suddenly became known as the Queen. It was her Holiday, and her Time. When the time came around, year after year, she went to the stupid costume contests and wore exceedingly bizarre things – a hangman's tree, the steps to Hell a.k.a. a step ladder missing one step so she could fit her head through it, a true hag of a witch replete with filthy robes – and won greater achievements. Suddenly, while she was on top for that second, April lost care for what Halloween was supposed to be. For now, these few years, she would use it to make fun of her bullies and the people that suggested she was anything and everything to get a rise out of her.

"She's a slut–" yeah, I gave that one guy a handy and you're busy fucking the whole school. "She's such a prude–" and yet I'm also a slut, weird. "She creeps me out–" good!

"She's kinda cute–"

"She's a butterface–"

"Jake said she barely knew what to do–"

"Jake said she wanted to do anal–"

It was high school again, after Halloween. She became silent, people ignored her. She ignored them. It was easy. But that one time of the year, when the freak thing was cute or desirable or in any way normal (though, hopefully abnormal even with her clearly superior weirdness) then it was her time to silently judge everyone while they lauded her strange behavior. April got to make fun of them without them even knowing it! It was perfect.

Except for Stacy. That was just the cherry on top, because for every ounce of bluster she had, saying that Halloween was stupid and this contest doesn't matter because April knew better. Everything had to be about her, and about her winning it, and this time? This time, it was April Ludgate!

For years. Years of extended socially inept agony slathered all over the stupid face of Stacy Knoblauch, shoving it in her face and laughing, and April couldn't be any happier.

"Dude, she never talks–"

"I heard she doesn't have any friends–"

"I bet I could hit that–"

"I bet you could. Watch out for the maggots–"