In this whole adventure I was never so conscious of looking girly as at this moment. Maybe it was because we were standing in near darkness on the shoulder of a busy highway, and I could see my little twill skirt flutter in the wake from the passing cars. Maybe the fact that my uncle, who was only slightly taller than me, was on his knees before me, and for once, now that I was looking down into someone's face, I felt a stab of pity mixed with the joy of feeling (for once!) taller.

I said — and will probably continue to say for the rest of my life — that Beacon Hill is the absolute best place to trick-or-treat on Halloween.

Of course, I'm just a kid, and I haven't been everywhere, but I do know that Beacon Hill would be hard to beat.

To begin with, the place itself is very cool, apart from Halloween. Its streets are narrow, lit by gas streetlamps, and lined with old brick row houses. Tight alleyways run through the hill, and they're paved with round, irregular cobblestones. In some spots the houses are so close, you feel you're in a dark brick maze. Then suddenly it opens up to a pretty square with grass and trees, fenced in by a wrought-iron fence.

And even if it's wrong to say that *everyone* on the hill is rich, well, a lot of them must be, with their over-the-top decorations and the amount of candy they hand out.

A lot of adults were in costume. I saw a Wicked Witch of the West who had the cackle exactly right. There was a Wicked Queen (from Snow White) who was honestly quite frightening to look at.

The sun went down at about 5:30, so it got dark pretty quickly, making the whole scene much more Halloweeny.

Courtney was great. She looked so cute that the fathers who were out with their children just had to chat her up. Courtney was cool — I mean, she spoke to them; she was very polite — but she didn't give an atom of warmth, and she never took her eyes off us.

I had to respect her: her priorities were clear. She was responsible. At the same time, she let Miranda and me have fun.

It was absolutely the best Halloween ever: the most memorable, the most fantastic!

And, God! The houses were just incredible... with their fake spiderwebs, lights, music, spooky sounds, exotically carved pumpkins. Some people even set up little scenes, little tableaux. One house had a fake graveyard out front, complete with a coffin for a mannequin vampire that sat up and gave and laughed evilly.

A huge rubber spider climbed up and down the front of another house, while smaller spiders bounced on cords from a tree.

At one point, Miranda and I came to an undecorated, unlit door. It was obvious that no one was home — at least no one who would answer — so we sat down on the stoop. Neither of us realized how tired we were until that moment. Walking up and down the hill was a chore. And lord! Our bags had gotten pretty heavy.

Courtney leaned against a tree and smiled at us. She looked so cute in that blonde wig. I wished for a moment that she knew I was a boy... a boy her age, in fact! Still, it would never work... she lived so far away from me... and there was as always the problem of my height... but anyway... I could dream.

Miranda and I dug into our bags and started pulling out the candies we didn't want. We had a LOT of candy, but we each had candy we didn't want. Soon we had a big pile of discards on the ground between us.

Our idea was to trade: Miranda might like the ones I didn't, and vice versa. But before we'd exchanged a single piece, two little girls came and stood before us, saying, "Trick or treat!"

We dropped some of our unwanted candy into their bags. Courtney laughed, and I smiled at her.

More children followed, and we kept handing out candy until all our discards were gone. Then we stood up and walked around some more.

By 7:30 we were tired and hungry, and our bags had gotten heavy again. Courtney took us to a pizzeria on Charles Street, but just as we stepped inside, her cell phone rang.

"Oh, hi, Mrs. Jameson. [pause] Yes, we just finished. We were just about to get something to eat. [pause] Really?" Her eyes fell on me, and my heart stepped up a few beats. From her expression, she was hearing something serious. She twisted up her mouth and turned her back to me so I couldn't see her face. "Uh huh... uh huh," she said. Then she put her hand over her mouth and said in a low voice, "Should I tell her?"

My heart flew into my throat.

"Okay... [pause] yes, I understand. No, I know where that is. [pause] Right. I'll meet you there. Goodbye, Mrs. Jameson."

When she turned back to face us, my eyes were enormous, and my hands were clutching each other. "What is it?" I asked.

"Your grandfather is... very sick," she said.

"I know that!" I told her, interrupting.

"Well, he's gotten worse. Your uncle wants to leave now, and I have to take you to his house. It isn't far. Just a few blocks—" she looked over her shoulder in both directions, then "—that way."

All the way there I kept asking Courtney questions. Had something happened? What was the news? I looked for different ways to ask the same question, to try to squeeze more information out of the little that she knew.

But all Courtney would say was, "I don't know, Juliette. Mrs. Jameson didn't say."

Miranda held my hand, and the two of us walked that way, one hand clutching a heavy bag of candy and the other holding on to a friend.

Uncle Mick was wringing his hands when he saw me. "Oh, there you are!" he cried in relief. "I've gone mad waiting!" To Courtney he said, "Do you need money, girl? What do I need to pay you?"

She started back and gave him an offended look. "I work for Mrs. Jameson," she replied. "I don't need anything from you."

"Fine, good, fine!" he said in a distracted tone. "Get in the car then, Juliette."

"I need to go to the bathroom," I said.

"So do I," Miranda put in.

Courtney crossed her arms and pursed her lips. She looked at my uncle in silence. She was the very picture of feminine disapproval. I had the idea that she needed the bathroom as well, but she wasn't going to say so.

My uncle looked at the three of us, his eyes darting from one girl to the next. His face wore a hunted, harrassed expression, and it tore my heart.

"Then come in, girls," he said, in a beaten tone, and we followed him inside.

I understood, if Courtney didn't, that Uncle Mick was anxious to get underway. I ran to the bathroom and tried to be as quick as I could possibly be. Then, as Miranda ducked inside, I asked my uncle, "Can I quick get changed?"

His face paled, and he said, "Oh, must you?"

Courtney frowned. "You can't bring her to the hospital dressed like that! She'll—"

He put up his hand and went to retrieve my suitcase from the car.

Uncle Mick didn't say a word as he negotiated the streets of Boston, but once we got onto the Turnpike, he said, "Your friend is quite the little harridan. And for a girl her age! I pity the man who ends up wedding her."

I opened my mouth to defend Courtney, but thought better of it. My uncle was upset... I just let it go.

"The reason...," he said, and then he stopped with a sniff. He took a breath, sighed, and began again. "The reason I was so anxious to leave..." his voice came close to breaking, but he mastered it and went on. "... It's my father... your grandad. Tonight may be his last night on earth." He sniffed loudly and coughed away a sob. "At least that's what the doctors say."

When he said the word father, it caught in his throat and came out with a strangled hiss.

I was watching his face closely, but he didn't turn to look at me. His eyes were fixed on the road.

For some reason I thought of Madison, lying in my suitcase in the trunk. I was surprised to find myself wishing I had her in my hands. But I didn't have her, so I put my hands in my lap and looked out the window. We passed a train station, then a street full of shops.

I had to wonder, as I looked beyond the scenery into the dark sky... was my grandfather really going to die? On the one hand, he was old, so old. He was shaky and fragile and papery thin. It was a wonder he was still alive at all.

On the other hand...

Could my uncle be fooling me? He did have a history of playing awful, terrible pranks. I'd seen him prank me and my mother already, and some of the stories I heard made me wonder whether he understood other people's feelings at all.

So I turned to him and asked, "Uncle Mick?"

"Yes, child?"

"Is this real?"

Startled, he looked at me for an instant, then brought his eyes back to the road ahead. "Is what real?"

"Grandpa," I replied. "Is he really going to die?"

"I don't know," he said. "I hope not. The doctors say he will. Your mother told me to hurry, or I may miss him."

"Yes, but...," I drew up my courage in a big breath. "This isn't one of your pranks, is it? Because if it is, it's not funny."

He began sniffing and gasping. With a quick look over his shoulder, he turned the wheel sharply and brought us across two lanes of traffic into the breakdown lane. My eyes opened their widest, but it happened so quickly that I didn't have time to cry out in alarm.

My uncle put the car into park, shut off the engine, and hit the emergency flashers. Then he opened the door, stepped outside, and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone inside. He walked around the back of the car, onto the gravel at the side of the road, and fell to his knees.

Startled and frightened, I pressed my face and hands against the car window and watched his back and shoulders as he sobbed. I could hear him crying out, but couldn't make out the words.

Somewhere a long time ago, I picked up a book and saw a little phrase I never forgot: "The loudest cry is that of a man alone." I remember picturing of an astronaut floating in space... I thought of the last man alive on a space station... things like that, but when I saw my uncle on his knees on the side of the road, praying and crying and screaming with a desperation I was seeing for the first time in my life, I knew what that quote was really about.

I kept my hands and face pressed against the glass. I was both frightened and fascinated, and there was nothing I could do but wait. I didn't dare step out to try to talk to him, any more than I would have stepped out to pet a wild snarling dog.

At last the cold of the glass began to hurt, so I sat back in my seat and looked around the car. Just as my eye fell on my uncle's cell phone, the thing began to ring. I picked it up. The caller ID told me that my mother was calling.

"Hi, Mom?"

"Victor? Where are you? Is your uncle there?"

I gave her a quick picture of the situation. She took it in and asked, "Are you alright?"

"I don't know," I replied. "He's still outside, crying and stuff."

"Are you scared?"

"No," I scoffed, though I was. "But I don't know what to do."

"Okay, listen to me," she said. "Go out there, where he is, and go stand where he can see you. Try to give him the phone and tell him that it's me. Okay? If he won't talk to me, then get back on the phone, and tell me, and I'll come and get you, okay?"

"Okay," I replied. "Hang on."

I undid my seat belt and got out of the car. Three cars whizzed past in rapid succession, shaking my uncle's car. I'd felt those shakes while I was inside, but it was quite different to see the thing moving while I was standing next to it. The air seemed colder than in the city, and the traffic was a constant rush of whip-like sounds.

A car honked as it whooshed by, and for some reason I blushed in the semi-darkness, and for some reason I felt very exposed and vulnerable. The gravel crunched under my pink and white Skechers as I made my way around my uncle. When I got in front of him he looked at me. His face was riven by tears. Even in that dim light I could see the redness in his eyes and the tortured, beaten expression on his face. He sniffed and let out a long sigh. Then his eyes took me in from head to foot. I blushed again.

In this whole adventure I was never so conscious of looking girly as at this moment. Maybe it was because we were standing in near darkness on the shoulder of a busy highway, and I could see my little twill skirt flutter in the wake from the passing cars. Maybe the fact that my uncle, who was only slightly taller than me, was on his knees before me, and for once, now that I was looking down into someone's face, I felt a stab of pity mixed with the joy of feeling (for once!) taller.

He swallowed and looked at his phone in my hand. "Who is it?" he asked in a raspy voice.

"My mother."

Without moving off his knees he reached out his hand for the phone. "Carly?" he said, and burst into tears again.

I couldn't help it, I ran into the car and locked the door. I couldn't watch him. I couldn't listen. It was all too much. I hunched over and covered my face with my hands.

After several minutes, I heard my uncle knocking on the window. I unlocked the doors and let him.

"What did you lock it for?" he asked, then added, "Oh, never mind. I'm sorry, child, I really am." He took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. "Are you alright now?"

Me? I thought. Am *I* alright? I'm not the one who ran from the car to scream and cry in the dark. But aloud I only said, "Yes, I'm fine, thanks."

"Good," he said. "Then let's get going."

"Your mother is one clever woman," he said. "One of the great regrets of my life is that I let her slip away and marry that ass of your father."

I glanced at him, but his eyes were fixed straight ahead, and I had the feeling he wouldn't hear a word I said. So I said nothing.

"Look, I deserved that question you asked about this being a joke. But this is not a joke. It's deadly serious. As far as the doctors can tell, your grandfather's going to die tonight. I just hope to God I get there in time."

Get there in time... I echoed mentally. Get there... "There" of course is the hospital. My grandfather is at the hospital. My parents are there.

A sudden thought hit me and stopped me cold.

"Uncle Mick?"

"Yes, Juliette?"

"Uh... my parents are at the hospital, right?"

"Oh, yes," he confirmed. "Everybody's at the hospital. All your aunts and uncles, many of your cousins..." His mouth tightened, and so did his grip on the steering wheel. "It'll be an informal family reunion, of sorts." His eyes narrowed as he considered the idea. "Yes. We'll all be together for once."

My jaw dropped open. Whatever this meant for my uncle, it was the end for me. Pretty much every relative I had — at least on my father's side — was going to see me dressed as Juliette, in my neat little Aeropostale outfit!

I looked down at myself: I was wearing a straw-colored twill skirt, a blue top, and a milk-color hoodie. My legs were bare, and on my feet was a cute pair of pink and white Skechers. There was no way I could pretend these were boy clothes, or that my hair didn't look like girl's hair.

"My God, Uncle Mick!" I cried out. "There's no way I can go to the hospital dressed like this!"

He glanced over at me, ran his eyes over my outfit, and replied, "Why not? You look fine. You look adorable, in fact. Don't worry. I'm sure no one will be looking at you, and if they do, you'll get a lot of compliments."

Compliments? I repeated silently. I don't want compliments! I want a way out!

© 2008, 2009 by Kaleigh Way

[OTHER STORIES]