This was my entry in the 2023 Tricks and Treats Contest which was unfortunately canceled when its host, OhgeeFantasy, lost her precious daughter, Larkin. For seventeen years, Gee has been the primary caregiver for a child with Down syndrome and spinal muscular atrophy, and so she has no income until she finds a job, something she's in no position to do right now.
I hope you can donate something to help a woman who has always given so much. If you search for gofundme ohgeefantasy, you'll get to the page.
Thanks in advance, and thank you to Sally for knocking these words into shape.
"There's something weird about those two," Alice declared, leaning on me. "Just look at them. Edward's so intense, and it's like … see how Rosalie has her hand on his arm like she's holding him back?"
I thought he was cute, and I didn't get intense from the body language, but with the eyes of the school on the newcomers, he did look uncomfortable, as if he was waiting for something to put him out of his misery. "Just imagine how horrible it would be if you were a senior starting a new school in October."
Had it not been so obvious that they preferred their own company, I would have introduced myself by now since we were going to be neighbors.
The house next door had been vacant for a whole month before somebody took the sold sign down. Harry's sudden death had shocked the entire street, ending a long and happy chapter in our lives when Sue decided to sell and take Leah and Seth to live with her mother.
Our two dads had become best friends and fishing buddies, and the big gate in the fence between the houses allowed our households to mingle with an easy flow of people, pets, food, drinks, and games. One of us was always hosting a barbecue, and it went without saying that the invitation extended to less fortunate family and friends. It was a solid and jovial place to grow up, where our houses were mirror images of each other as they'd gotten a deal at the local hardware store and painted the wood siding the exact same color.
That dove gray looked cold and bleak, matching the stormy sky, the day a truck showed up to take their furniture away. The shine had begun to dull on the Clearwater's home soon after Harry passed, and Dad and Emmett shared the mowing of their lawn until they moved. Dad later kept it up out of respect for his friend, relieved when the cooler weather arrived to give him a break.
"I heard they come from a broken family," Alice remarked.
"You mean like death or divorce?'"
"I'm not sure, but Lauren apparently overheard something said in the office. They were reading from Rosalie's file."
"Really, Alice? You're starting rumors from nothing now." She rolled her eyes, although we both knew this fascination with the Cullens was triggered by boredom. Alice Brandon's mood had always been affected by the seasons. She blossomed in spring, burned bright through the summer, and lost her leaves in fall, depressed until the day she could play in the snow.
"Look, I'll tell you when I find out, all right?" She wouldn't stop until she discovered whatever it was, desperate to find a distraction to get her through the worst time of her year when there were only two things to live for: Halloween and Thanksgiving.
The bell rang, and Edward was gone in a flash, leaving his sister looking around nervously. I decided then and there not to leave it too long before I reached out to them.
"They're step-siblings," Alice reported, plonking down beside me in English.
"Who are?"
She sighed in exasperation, but I was no mind reader. "Honestly, Bella? The Cullens! Who else?"
"How do you know?"
"I found out why they were querying her file. Rosalie's surname is Hale, but they're allowing her to go by Cullen since they're in the process of changing it. I asked her a few questions for the Halloween issue of The Shield, and she admitted that Dr. Cullen is her stepdad and formally adopting her. They've moved here from Vancouver, Washington, and he's taken over the top job at Forks Community. Apart from that, she was very wary of me."
"Ever consider you might come across as a little over the top to a stranger? If she's private, she's probably terrified of what you're going to write in the school paper."
"I'm not that scary, am I? Aren't journalists supposed to seek the truth and report it?"
"Except I think I remember you saying there was something about doing no harm, too. Leave the girl alone and let her get used to this in her own time."
"Can't I have one?" My ever-hungry brother pouted when I smacked his hand away. I'd spent ages baking and icing these cookies, and I was very proud of the way my little white ghosts and gold pumpkins looked on their plate. The faces had turned out a little more smiley than scary, but this batch was only a practice run for the day I would show Mom her teaching me hadn't been a waste of her time. Anyway, it seemed like the easiest way to break the ice with the new neighbors. Who wouldn't love chocolate Halloween cookies?
"You've had enough, Emmett! There'll be none to take next door."
"Next door? I better come with you."
I just sighed at the pretense of him suddenly showing interest in the Cullens. When I first said it was time we went over there to introduce ourselves, he made it clear he wanted nothing to do with losers and nerds. Emmett was one of those confident, popular people who believed success came from fearlessness, hard work, and determination, but he didn't have the maturity to understand that some people found it harder than others.
"Have you changed your mind about the Cullens?"
He shrugged. "There's something not right about those two. They give me the creeps."
"Since when?" Alice had said something similar the week they arrived, but I'd never heard it from Emmett.
"Since I saw him diggin' a grave in their backyard."
"Who? Edward?" I was shocked he hadn't shared this while it was happening.
"One day he was standing in a coffin-shaped hole, and the next it was filled in."
"Maybe the sewer was blocked or something?"
"Why would their son be digging up a sewer line? Wouldn't they need a plumber?"
My whole face twisted at the thought of what a job like that might entail, and I tried to unthink it. "A garden bed then?"
"He filled it in, Bella. The grass is back."
I eyed him, looking for a telltale sign that this was one of his legendary pranks. "Are you sure?"
"Saw it with my own two eyes. Something's up over there."
"Well, I'm going over. Are you coming?" I snipped the ends of the bow that closed up the cellophane, pleased with my pretty little present.
"I'll wait here on the porch. If anything happens, I'll be there in a blink."
So, he was really making a lot of fuss about nothing.
Cookies in hand, I climbed the stairs of their porch. The Clearwaters had been like family, and I was often sent over to drag Emmett home for dinner. Sadly, this porch didn't have its swinging chair anymore, and there was no black lab to announce my arrival.
Looking over at Emmett, I wasn't surprised to see him grinning at his phone. So much for him protecting me from the grave digger.
It took a while for the door to open after I knocked, and I jumped back, questioning what I'd just seen. It was only for a couple of seconds before he covered them up with sunglasses, but Edward's eyes were black—not like being punched black—his jade irises were now black.
In the sunglasses, he looked perfectly normal, and I had to wonder if Emmett's scare tactics were playing tricks with my head, but that didn't explain the red substance dripping from his mouth.
"You've got something …" I pointed to the spot on my own lips, and his tongue flicked out to lick it off his. The action interested me more than it probably should have. He was actually very good looking in a peaches and cream, black-irises way.
"Are you going out?" I asked, trying to initiate a conversation.
"No?"
"The sunglasses."
"It's the light."
So, he must have some hyper-sensitivity issue, and I would have scoffed at conversing with so few words, but it seemed to be the norm for most of the teenage boys I knew. They either talked too much or not enough.
"Is Rosalie at home?" Surely, she would realize that I'd brought the cookies as a gift because Edward was completely ignoring them.
"No."
"Your mom?"
He just shook his head.
"Well … I know it's a bit overdue, but I made these to welcome you guys to the neighborhood. We're pretty friendly around here."
"Thanks." He took them from me and smiled. "They look good."
"They are good. I had to stop Emmett from eating all of them." When trying to be amusing drew no reaction, I clarified. "Emmett … my brother?"
He nodded. Of course, he had to know who Emmett Swan was. Everyone in Forks knew both of us really. Our dad was the Chief of Police.
It felt awkward now, trying to extract an exchange of words from this mute. "Okay, I'll see you around." This hadn't been anything like the success I'd hoped for, but at least, I now had a reason to speak to Rosalie at school; I could ask if she liked my cookies.
"How was that?" Emmett asked, lounging on our big porch couch.
"Yeah, he's a bit weird." I didn't go into detail because the individual things that made me think weirdness weren't that significant, but the package as a whole was definitely strange.
That night, I was pulling down my blackout shade when I noticed I could see through Edward's sheer curtain. His room and mine faced each other, and it was the first time I'd been able to get a good look into his private world. Even though I knew it was wrong, I couldn't help switching my light off and snooping.
He was sitting by a fish tank, studying its inhabitants, and while there was no way in hell I'd have anything like that in my house, it wasn't the first time I'd seen a tank holding cockroaches. Tyler Crowley kept some pretty fancy lizards as pets, and he fed them live cockroaches. He never said what he fed to his cockroaches, but I was pretty sure no one would believe that I saw Edward Cullen giving chocolate Halloween cookies to this collection, or swarm, or intrusion as Tyler called it, so I sent a text to Emmett: Get in here quickly. You've gotta see what he's doing next door.
I knew it wouldn't take him long. "Turn off the light in the hall and close that door."
"What is that?" He leaned forward and stared for a while before turning to me. "And I gave up those cookies for this."
"Do you think he has lizards like Tyler?"
"I don't want to think about it." He shivered, making my stomach churn, imagining one of them escaping and crawling into my bed. I guess it served me right for snooping.
With the shade firmly down and my brother gone, I searched the internet for anything on irises turning black, and the only real explanation was pupils dilating. However, this happened in low light, and not to the extent where the color of the irises was entirely obscured. Edward had seemed to react to glare, so his pupils should have been tiny. Weird.
"What's he doing?" Alice asked as we drove past the cemetery.
"Who?" I followed the direction of her stare.
"Edward Cullen. He's crouching on the grass over there. Looks like he's taking photos."
It was him, but it was an odd time to be taking photos with only the last of the daylight left and a fog rolling in. "Do we know anything about them? Maybe they have relatives buried here."
Alice snorted. "Well, you've had no luck befriending them, so it looks like I'll have to ask Rosalie."
In some ways, I hoped Alice would become friends with Rosalie Cullen so I could try to understand them better. Other parts of me were afraid of what we might find out.
"Have you seen the tent yet?" Emmett met me at the front door when Alice dropped me off.
"No, what tent?"
"They've put up a tent over the grave. Come on, I'll show you."
I followed him up to the spare room with the view of both back yards. "What kind of tent is that?" It was like nothing I'd seen before. With no windows, campers would swelter in there.
"It reminds me of one of those crime scenes on NCIS, minus the yellow tape."
I could see how he would draw that conclusion. "So, what's the crime, Sherlock?"
"Whatever they've buried in there, I suppose. It's not just me who thinks this is suspicious, right?"
Suspecting my first guess about underground pipework was probably more likely, I wasn't about to crush Emmett's imagination when life in Forks was pretty dull. Playing along, I asked, "So should we tell Dad?" There wasn't enough here to pester our father, but I wanted to see how far he would take this.
"No! I don't want them tipped off! We don't tell another soul about this."
It was great to see him so animated. "Okay, but if it turns out there's something sinister in there, our secrecy is on you."
"How long do you reckon it would take for cockroaches to eat a whole body?"
"La la la la la," I called out, escaping with my palms planted firmly over my ears. It did feel like Halloween might be more interesting this year, but I expected that at some point I would have to assume the role of the responsible older sister to stop the fun getting out of hand.
Not that long after, Emmett sent me a text: Spare bedroom. Now.
I found him in the dark, peering between the two heavy curtains. "What's going on?"
"Quick! Edward's coming out of the tent. Rosalie is still in there."
I could see Edward walking toward the house, and I assumed the shadowy figure inside the tent was Rosalie. "What are they doing?"
"I don't know, but they're definitely up to something."
Even though there was nothing specific I could distinguish, the anticipation was utterly enthralling. I couldn't have left if I'd wanted to.
"Here he comes." Edward was pushing a wheelbarrow containing a heavy-looking black plastic bag. There was no way to determine its contents, but Emmett had already formed an opinion. "Is that the body?"
The body indeed. That theory was not one I could advance with my impressionable brother salivating over the reason for these strange nocturnal activities.
"My guess would be soil or manure, Em."
"Then why the tent and why do this at night?"
Yes, those two aspects were particularly peculiar, but there had to be a plausible explanation. "If they've dug a hole, the tent might be like one those safety structures put up when people are working down manholes. Maybe the hole had to be filled in as soon as possible, the soil has only just been delivered this evening, and they don't have time to do this tomorrow."
Emmett's long sigh made me feel bad that I'd proposed such a mundane version for him to digest, but if he acted on his suspicions, it could ruin any chance of friendship with our weird neighbors.
We watched their silhouettes moving, and after a few minutes, they emerged with a shovel and the empty wheelbarrow, leaving us still speculating about what they'd been doing.
The following day, the tent had been taken down, the grass sod showing signs of disturbance that would soon disappear.
Edward stayed downstairs much longer than I did on weeknights. I had finally accepted the discipline my mother spent years trying to instill in me: television, YouTube, and social media were not going to help me pass my final exams, so once we'd cleaned up after dinner, I usually hit the books from seven 'til ten, showered, then went to bed. Sometimes, the texts weren't exactly part of the curriculum but studied they were.
Leah's room had been empty since the start of the school year, but now Edward had taken it over, there were times when I couldn't resist the temptation to peek in there again. Once, I nearly screamed when he ran through his doorway wearing a Hannibal Lecter-style mask and holding a hockey stick. Another night, he was just a silhouette, standing still and staring at me. Certain he could sense me lurking, I was too petrified to move.
The tank with the cockroaches was nowhere to be seen.
Mom and Dad drove to Seattle for their anniversary the weekend before Halloween, and Emmett went down the street to Ben's place while Alice was staying with me. She had made progress in getting Rosalie, or Rose as she preferred, to open up a little, but I really wasn't sure when she wanted her to come over for the carving of our Jack-o'-lanterns. Since I couldn't say why I was uneasy with one of them in my house, I went along with it, surprised that Rose was so eager to join us.
Baking a new batch of Halloween cookies reminded me that I had originally planned to ask Rose if she liked the first lot. That was until I discovered Edward feeding them to his cockroaches.
"I've had these before," Rose declared while eating a broken one. "Wait, did you bring them over?" When I nodded, she put her fingers over her mouth as the realization set in. "You must have thought I was very rude when I didn't thank you."
Admitting what I'd seen her brother doing wouldn't foster any kind of potential friendship, so I had to make up something believable.
"I suspected that Edward had eaten them all. That's what Emmett would have done."
She nodded, laughing. "These really are great cookies, so I was probably lucky there were any left."
Rose was much more talented than me at creating evil faces with icing, and we were soon swapping TikTok recipes we'd saved.
I felt bad when she said Alice had been the only real friend she'd made so far and that she was missing her mother terribly. I had wondered about the absence of Mrs. Cullen, and now I was finding out that she had remained behind to settle her father into a care facility. He had been living with them for two years, and she was devastated that she couldn't manage him anymore.
Seeing her vulnerable like this made me think that if it hadn't been for the strange goings on in their back yard, Rose Cullen would seem very normal. Her brother, on the other hand, was a very different beast.
Thunder rumbled around us while we were carving our pumpkins, and Alice looked out the window. "It had better not rain on Halloween!"
"Do y'all dress up?" Rose asked.
"I do. Halloween is the best!" Alice insisted as if she needed to defend it.
I shrugged, a bit over it after the effort we'd put into it over the years, and Rose admitted, "It's really more Edward's thing than mine. He's got so many things to wear."
Imagine that surprising me. He was probably trying on black contacts the day I knocked on their door.
A loud clap of thunder made us all jump. "It's getting close," I observed, and I knew I'd be in big trouble if I didn't protect the two most important things in our home, so I quickly pulled the power from our big TV and the wireless router.
"She does this," Alice claimed, rolling her eyes as if it was a bad thing.
"I'm texting Edward to do the same," Rose replied as her thumbs flew over her phone.
I watched Rose bring her pumpkin's face to life, and I happily accepted her help with mine. Mrs. Cullen was an art teacher, and I marveled at what Rose could create with simple, well-placed shapes.
When the power flickered off and then on again, I felt a moment of alarm, but I was calmed to know that I'd isolated the TV and WiFi. However, as soon as we looked at each other, pleased that it didn't seem serious, the power failed, plunging us into darkness.
Alice grabbed my arm. "What do we do? Do you know what to do?"
"Calm down, Alice, and see what happens. It might come back on."
"For how long? I hate this, Bella."
"Nobody likes being in the dark, Al, but panic never helps the situation."
With two parents who had prepared us for situations like this, I kind of knew what to do, and I told the other two to stay where they were since I was used to the layout of the house. Looking out the window, I could see lights next door, so the problem was with our house. If the street was in darkness, then we would wait it out with the candles we kept in the laundry, and we might still need them if the problem was something other than the circuit breaker in the garage.
The flashlight on my phone made the house look so eerie that I might have been scared had I not been able to hear Alice and Rose in the kitchen. I had to yank on the door of the box to get it open, and it showed a photo of the panel which Dad had labeled so any dummy could work out which switches applied to which areas of the house. The circuit breaker was at the top, and flicking it downward brought the house back to life and cheering from the kitchen.
I was pretty pleased that I didn't have to call Dad and ruin their evening. Turning up the music to drown out the thunder and rain, we celebrated with candy Mom already had in the pantry ready for the trick-or-treaters, but just when we thought the storm was moving away, the lights went out again.
This time, I groaned, wondering if I'd have to keep resetting the circuit breaker and wishing I'd thought to have the candles ready in case the problem recurred. The door was just as stiff when I pulled it open, but this time, I screamed and slammed it shut again. The panel was now full of cockroaches—a hideous, quivering mass of them, and there was no way on earth I could reach in there.
Trying to calm down, I steadied myself on the walls as I made my way to the kitchen, met by both girls.
"What happened?" Alice held my arm, but my mouth was too dry to answer her. One cockroach was bad enough, but hundreds were my worst nightmare. "Are you okay, Bella?"
Shaking my head, I sat down on a stool at the kitchen counter. "I can't … It's full of cockroaches."
"What is?" Alice squeaked.
"The box with the circuit breaker."
"Did it trip again?" Rose asked.
"I don't know. I only saw cockroaches. I hate cockroaches."
"I'm not touching it," Alice declared, and I didn't blame her one bit.
"Do you have a long-handled wooden spoon?" Rose may have thought she was proposing a reasonable solution, but I could only visualize the insects scattering and landing on me.
"Let's go to your place." My plan was much better.
"Noooo! I'm sick of being with Edward! Show me where the box is."
"It's not just a couple of roaches, Rose. There are loads of them."
"We just need to flick one switch, right?" she pressed on, and her determination was now making me consider finding one of the dads in the street to help me. "Bella?"
With a sigh, I realized she didn't find this as horrendous as I did. They did have cockroaches as pets after all. "That's all it took the first time."
Alice hung back in the garage doorway while Rose and I inched forward, armed with our cell phone flashlights, a wooden spoon, and a can of Raid. Knowing what was in the box on the wall had my heart racing again, and I could feel the walls closing in.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Alice called out, and I suddenly needed to know we had a clear escape path.
"Alice, you're going to block our exit if we have to run."
"Fine. I'll go back to the candy."
"Are you ready? I asked Rose as I scoured the wall for escapees. "I'll count to three, and you pull on the door."
"Let's not draw this out," she said, reaching for the latch.
"Wait," I cried out before she could act. "What if they panic and jump on us?"
"You spray the inside of the box, and we'll come back when they're dead."
"After we freak the hell out."
"They're not dangerous to humans, Bella, and they don't bite unless we threaten them."
"Is spraying them with poison considered a threat? I'll go get an adult to take care of this."
"This is ridiculous," she stated right before she pulled the door open, and I screwed up my eyes.
Bracing myself for the beat of cockroach wings approaching me, the only thing I could hear was the sound of the gutters emptying themselves of the last of the rain. Rose put her arm around me, and I opened my eyes to the power restored and the fuse box free of cockroaches.
"What did you do?" I asked, amazed at how quickly they'd dispersed.
"I flicked the switch down. It must have tripped again."
"I mean the cockroaches, Rose."
"I didn't see any. I guess they—"
We heard the sound of voices inside, and raced in there, finding the front door wide open and no Alice on the porch. Walking out on the street and calling her name, it was as if the damp night had swallowed her. What worried me the most was discovering she'd left her cell phone on the counter, and I was contemplating the nightmare of calling her parents when the lights went out again.
"Stay here in case she comes back," I told Rose, praying I'd return to one of Alice's awesome anecdotes as I made my way to the garage. Opening the door of the box, the roaches were back, and I had to flee them again.
"Rose, they're back! Can you help me?" I grabbed the wooden spoon and the Raid when she didn't answer, but I needed her. I checked the bathroom and found it empty. Against my better judgment, I ventured out onto the porch, managing a nervous scan of the street, not ready to accept that two of my friends had now gone missing and left their cell phones behind. On my own and in the dark, I couldn't dwell on what might have happened to them when it might be coming back for me.
I frowned at finding the laundry door unlocked, but once I was happy the house was secure, I lit a candle and waited for the sound of my friends' return, wondering if I should call the Forks Police Department number or 911.
When the landline rang, I raced to answer it, expecting it was Alice. We'd known each other's numbers since we were kids, and she wouldn't know my cell number without her phone. I answered, but there was only indistinguishable noise on the line, and I hung up after a whole minute of listening. I had to consider if this had any significance since I sometimes answered that phone and seemed to wait for ages for a telemarketer to respond.
When it rang again, I had visions of a gagged Alice getting hold of a phone. "Alice! If that's you, give me a signal. Bang the phone on something!"
The porch step creaked, and it was as if the Almighty was giving me the signal I'd just asked for, so I ran to open the front door. "Alice?" But what I found on the other side was not either of my friends but the probable cause for their disappearance: a man in a black hoodie and mask with orange LED stitches for eyes and mouth.
Something came over me—as if I suddenly remembered everything my father had told me, and this clown had come to the wrong house if he thought he was going to take me. Without a moment's hesitation, I kicked the monster in the balls.
"Fuck," he screamed, crumpling to the ground like the wimp I knew he would be.
"What have you done with my friends, you asshole?"
I needed more than just a groan for an answer, so I kicked him again.
"Bella! Stop!"
"Emmett?"
"It's Edward, sis, and Alice and Rose are fine. We've been playing a prank on you."
It took nearly an hour of staying horizontal with a bag of frozen peas strategically placed to ease the pain in Edward's groin. True to form, he didn't speak, but the others all revealed the moment they were dragged into the prank.
Emmett's curiosity was too great for him to overlook the reason for all the digging in their back yard, so he just asked, and Edward agreed to let him in on the secret only under certain circumstances. Of course, Emmett was eager to be part of the game, and from that moment, he was a great source of information on how far they could push me before I got my parents involved.
He and Edward had entered the house via the laundry door several times during the evening to place and remove a flimsy piece of fabric that Edward had attached a hundred plastic but realistic-looking cockroaches to. The act of yanking the fuse box door open made the fabric wobble, so they looked like they were moving, and Emmett knew I'd be too scared to examine it too closely. Reacting to Rose's offer to help, Edward knew she would suspect right away, and he went to plan B where they had already scattered on their return. Between them, they were able to choreograph their actions around the sounds of the storm, the music playing, and the times when we were out front searching.
It was Emmett who had come to the porch twice: first to ask if we wanted their leftover pizza, and second to tell Rose that Alice had been injured while getting said pizza.
I needed more before he went any further. "Okay, so you pulled it off, but I don't understand why we've been led down this path for weeks."
Edward was able to sit up and answer me. "I'm getting ready to apply for cinematography courses. Part of the application is a piece of original work, and the genre I've chosen is horror/mystery. Apparently, they look for students who challenge what's gone before, so I've been trying to establish if people still react to the old symbols of fear. I'm finding out what makes you jump and how some people are curious to their own detriment while others are just nope, nope, nope and run in the other direction. These are the scenes that can be accentuated with the right music.
"Anyway, being the new kid in town gave me the perfect opportunity to play on people's nosiness. Remaining silent has created the speculation I thought it would, but I made enough noise so Emmett would see me dig up the grass the day Dad was staying overnight in Vancouver. The tent was supposed to make you speculate when it was actually there to cover the fact that we were filming the digging of a grave. I found out that it would take one person around eight hours to dig a hole that big by hand, so I had to film part of it during the day and finish it at night. Of course, I didn't dig a whole grave. I only removed enough to suggest it with the angle of the camera, but it all had to go back before my parents found out."
"You didn't actually give them a chance, Edward. They might have just agreed to it," Rose stated.
"That's true, but I liked it better this way, and when I saw the two of you at the curtains, I knew I'd achieved the effect I was going for.
"Without an explanation, people will either try to normalize something with an innocent reason or come up with theories that feed into their desire for drama and excitement to fill their ordinary lives.
"With parents away, a blackout in the house creates so many wonderful scenarios. Some characters will immediately fear the worst and cower instead of fumbling around in the dark searching for lighters and candles. Others will be prepared and have a plan ready, like you did, Bella, and immediately want to rule out a problem with the fuses. Because directing and producing are mostly about problem solving, and because I hate movies where the plot isn't believable, my aim was to find a normal response from today's teenage girl, and what tangible thing it would take to defeat a logical approach. Would it be a dead rat, realistic-looking spiders, or the fear of touching live cockroaches? These are some of the questions I've been trying to answer with this process, and because of you guys, I now feel confident to go ahead and film the rest of the movie.
"So what do you say, Bella?" He grinned at me as if I'd made his day. "I'd like to invite everyone to a Halloween party to rival all others. You never know what might happen."
"I'm in," Alice was first to reply.
"Me too." Emmett was already seeing Rose in a new light because our new neighbors were anything but losers and nerds.
"But can I ask you for more of those cookies, Bella? They were amazing!"
"You mean the ones you fed to the cockroaches, Edward?" I just couldn't help myself.
"What better way to grab your attention?" he asked, winking at me.
Edward's enthusiasm was truly contagious, and I couldn't be mad at him for what I'd been through because he'd managed to renew the spirit of Halloween in me. We'd all been so bored at the beginning of September, and now it felt like we were starting the best year of our lives.
We would have a spooktacular party to remember, and maybe Alice, Rose, and I could find the perfect prank to pay him back and give him an extra scene for his movie.
Thanks for reading xo