Hey y'all looks like I learned how to update again! Chapter 22!
"We're going trick or treating," Carlos declared, throwing each of them a bucket, like they're ten years old.
That probably wouldn't be a bad thing. But they aren't ten.
Logan groaned. "I'm out. I have a checkup tomorrow. And we've got no costumes."
He shouldn't have said the costume thing.
Carlos smiled, shaking his head, because of course, somehow, he has procured costumes.
Is this even real? Maybe they are ten. Sitting on Kendall's couch, blindly surfing through whatever Halloween-esque movies cable has on tonight. The costumes Carlos has given them are almost exact replicas of that first double digit Halloween: hockey player, pop star, policeman, doctor.
Doctor.
Not anymore.
He really wishes he was ten again.
Ten year old Logan Mitchell, with the mom who was essentially a ghost.
Well, maybe he was ten. That part about his mom is still true.
She's drunk this time, on top of the depression, but the difference doesn't get her out of bed.
She probably hasn't washed her sheets. Maybe she's dead, her room smells unclean. She hasn't had any open houses. No client dinners.
But she promised she'd come for Halloween, and put on a costume, and go trick or treating. It's not the same if he just gets candy for her. What's her favorite candy? Something sour. But that wasn't healthy. All the artificial coloring had to be doing a number on her dopamine receptors. He'd get her chocolate. Sure, it was processed sugar covered in more sugar, but it wouldn't be poison green.
Green.
Logan glances down. What are these things on his arms? Certainly they couldn't be part of the doctor costume. No, he needs a white lab coat. Where'd that stupid coat go? And why aren't these green things coming off?
He's trying to pull harder, but his hand feels stiff and also like jello. Like that time he ate a gummy bear soaked in water. The water absorbed, so the gummy bear was just a fraction larger; Carlos had been disappointed. They each ate one, the first layer, the expanded layer, all watery. The original gummy bear was just tough to chew.
That had been a disappointing experiment.
"Logan?" Carlos says, "nobody will give you any candy if you don't have a costume."
"These green things are a costume, aren't they?"
Logan blinks. Was he asleep? It felt like he had just woken up.
"What? Sorry, yeah, I'll put the thing on."
The lab coat fits, the stethoscope hangs around his neck comfortably enough, and the walker he holds in his hands makes him look like a cripple.
Which of these does not belong?
He laughs.
All of the above, obviously.
Dead guys can't be doctors.
— — —
Apparently, the neighborhood must have gotten the memo: FOUR SAD UNCOOL ADULTS OUT TRICK OR TREATING - DO NOT GIVE CANDY.
So there they sat, gathered around Kendall's television, eating ice cream instead.
"Good try, Carlos," Kendall offers. "The little kids probably took all the candy anyway."
What little kids? Katie might be the youngest person that lived here.
Katie, incidentally, did not partake in their lame attempt at trick or treating. The middle school was having a Halloween dance.
Logan thought so anyway, because Kendall was not happy when she left.
Kendall's mood isn't much better now.
"Yeah, maybe," Carlos muttered. "But it's Halloween. We can't just have no candy. We need sugar."
Funniest thing said in the history of unfunny situations that had become their life.
"Yeah, Carlitos, you need sugar," James quipped, rolling his eyes.
Logan laughed so hard the soda he had been attempting to drink shot out of his nose.
Yes, he absolutely meant to do that, it contributed to laughter for the sake of laughter. Totally, definitely not because the soda didn't even bother 'going down the wrong pipe' as they say. It was not a matter of pipes, he just had a finicky esophagus. And really, the soda didn't make it down the esophagus. It simply lay dormant in his mouth, his throat constricting.
Like a carbonated poisonous moat encircling a volcano.
So the soda went up his nose, out of his mouth, out of his eye probably.
Everywhere soda was not supposed to go.
Thank goodness for the still bubbling stream of laughter filling the room. Nobody seemed to notice.
"Well," Carlos huffed, adjusting his helmet strap. "I'd like sugar. Want to make garbage sundaes?"
The concept of a garbage sundae is similar to that of a kitchen sink sundae. The difference is, garbage sundaes are a challenge. You like hot fudge on your sundaes? Try a drizzle of cold Worcestershire sauce instead. Sprinkles? No, (still) frozen peas. Whipped cream? How about a helping of very close to inedible mayonnaise?
The winner of garbage sundae making did actually receive a sundae they could eat.
Boy, did Logan really want to be the winner of that sundae.
"Sure," he agreed. "You're all losing by the way — I have a stomach used to hospital food."
"Like you eat anything," Kendall replied.
Carlos poked him in the stomach. "So bony."
"Yeah, and these bones are going to send your stomachs running."
— — —
Running a victory lap, that is. For Carlos.
Logan's stomach was not cut out for this. In fact, he might actually have to cut it out surgically.
He remembered why they haven't made garbage sundaes since they were ten.
Ten year olds can eat anything. School lunches were fake meat slop, expired milk, corn that must have been marinating in a can of urine, and a bag of apple slices way past their prime. And ten year olds could go out to recess after that 'meal' running, jumping, swinging around.
Logan's stomach was rich LA popstar level weak.
And also, very much out of practice with eating large amounts of food.
He never used to win when they were kids, either.
"Wanna watch Mean Girls?" James asked, flicking through the channels. "There is a Halloween party."
Back then, that movie would've been too girly.
It might be the garbage sundae suckerpunching his gut, but he agrees to watch.
He can't wish to be ten anymore.
He's eighteen.
So he watches the movie like an eighteen year old.