I stretch out some spider webs but they don’t look nearly as good as Marcus’s. He grabs the middle of mine and pulls it down, evening it out. “I’m too old to dress up,” I say, pinning the web into place with a white thumbtack. “Plus I don’t think we’ll have any trick-or-treaters on our dead end road.”
“Psh.” Marcus shakes his head. “You are not going to sit at home on Halloween! You’ll be here, obviously. And you have to dress up or Sherry will kill you. Or worse, she’ll dress you up herself. She has a crap ton of old lady dresses and I don’t think you want that.”
My lips squish to the side of my mouth. “I guess I could come and see the fruits of all our hard labor. I’m not sure that haunted house could scare me, now that I know all the secrets.”
“It better scare Miranda. I might have oversold our haunted house making abilities to her.”
“Is she dressing up?” I ask. I might live with the girl but if anyone knows her day to day activities, it’ll be Marcus. He nods. She wants to be Juno. You know, that girl from the movie who was a teen mom?”
“Cute,” I say, thinking about the time I watched it with Miranda and she’d said her mother absolutely hated that film. If there’s one thing I can appreciate, it’s a costume created out of spite.
Marcus takes the bag out of his mouth. “Don’t you remember that conversation? It was like a couple days ago.”
“We’ve never talked about Juno. But it’s definitely a costume I can see her choosing.”
“Oh wait, never mind,” Marcus says, hanging up another spider web. I’ve pretty much given up because all of mine have sucked. “That wasn’t you. That was Elizabeth, on the porch the other day. Elizabeth’s going to dress up as a cowgirl which is just pathetic. I told her she’s just like Tyler, lazy as hell.”
My brows draw together until I can’t take it anymore. “What does that mean? The lazy thing?”
“Tyler is a ‘cowboy’ every year.” He makes air quotes at the word cowboy. “He just wears his existing clothes and adds a hat and carries around a lasso all night. It’s such a cop out of a costume.”
The annoying groan I think to myself must actually come out of my mouth because Marcus looks over. “What?” he says. “Did I piss you off?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what her freaking deal is.”
“Elizabeth?” Marcus’s eyes light up like we’re about to talk gossip and he’s not sure if he wants to join in.
“Yeah,” I say. “Elizabeth. And Tyler. I don’t know what the deal is with them. I thought he liked me, but sometimes it’s like she has him wrapped around her little finger.”
I regret the words the moment I say them. I’m about a thousand percent sure that I can’t trust that boy not to tell Tyler, or Elizabeth, or Miranda anything I say. The last thing I need is to be embarrassed about my stupid crush.
He shrugs. “I don’t know what the deal is. I mean it’s kind of obvious that Elizabeth has always had a thing for Tyler, but she’s been dating that Robert guy on and off for years.”
“So it’s not just me? She’s totally into him?”
“Hell, I don’t know. She’s always calling him needing something when I’m hanging out with Tyler. This went on way before you ever came here. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
My eyes practically bulge out of my skull. “What the hell does that mean? I obviously have a lot to worry about!”
“Nah,” he says. “The thing is, she’s always calling him. He never calls her. So even if she does like him, he likes you.”
“But what if he also likes her?”
Marcus shrugs again. It’s annoying how he doesn’t think this is an issue. “Claim him before she does.”
I roll my eyes. “Men can’t be claimed. This isn’t some kind of HBO sex show. Besides, I don’t want to date someone if they’d rather be with someone else. If I’m dating someone, I want to be the only woman they want in their life.” Ugh. Now I’m definitely saying more than I should. But I can’t help it. Once I’ve started, it all just comes tumbling out of my lips like the words have been hanging out there for days, begging to be set free.
“You sound like my sister,” he says with a snort of laughter. I punch him in the arm. “I should sound like every self-respecting woman in the world!”
He nods, shoving another thumbtack into the wall. “That’s exactly what I meant.”
Chapter 7
“Hey, Aunt Robin,” Miranda calls out from the hallway. I barely hear her over the scary Halloween soundtrack she downloaded onto her mp3 player and has been blasting through the house to celebrate the holiday.
“Yeah?” I mumble back while peering into my makeup mirror as my hand draws on a thick line of eyeliner.
“I need you to stop obsessing over your looks for one second and look at me.”