Two days later
“I’ll admit, you’ve made this place look way better than I imagined it would when we were sitting on a stack of plywood and paint.” Shane put his hands on his hips as he looked at the decorations.
“I told you that store-bought stuff is shit.” I smiled and put my paintbrush on top of the bucket. “All right, let’s get some lunch. I’m fucking starving.”
“Eat in or head to town?” Shane turned his head towards me.
“Let’s go to that diner we ate at the first day. It’s pretty close.” I looked at him and nodded.
“Sounds good.” Shane dug into his pocket for his keys and started walking towards the truck.
The Halloween decorations took us away from working on the house for a couple of days, but I still believed the payoff would be worth it. Plus, any excuse to pick up a paint brush was good enough for me. Painting felt more like a hobby than work, even when I was using my talent to paint wooden tombstones and pumpkins. I didn’t get much time to devote to actual artwork anymore. Most of my creativity went into the houses we flipped. It might not have been exactly what I imagined when I wanted to become an artist, but it was certainly better than starving. That was the road I was headed down before Shane convinced me to help him spend one of my summer breaks flipping a house. I had no idea that his vision was a lot different than what we saw on television, and after we realized how much money we could make, we started making plans to do it full time after graduation.
“All right, so we’ll take some pictures tonight when it’s getting dark, and get them online tomorrow.” Shane nodded as he drove. “I bet we’ll have a few more interested parties before Halloween.”
“It’s nice not to have the stress we had ten years ago when we flipped our first house.” I chuckled and looked out the window. “I was sure you were going to end up with a dump that you couldn’t do a damn thing with.”
“I almost did. It was all that crazy stuff you did that sold it. What did they call it? Unique?” He laughed and shook his head.
Shane and I were college roommates, so we spent a lot of time together, but after that summer we might as well have been brothers. Shane was the blue-collar kid on a scholarship because he got good grades and I was the crazy artist that liked to wear too much black. After that summer, we discovered that we had a few more similar tastes—especially when it came to girls. Our tastes were so similar that we had shared a few girls over the years before he got married. Once he was married and I was forced to pick up girls on my own, I delved further into my hunger for dominance while he played the good husband to a bitch. Shane was just starting to explore his own dark fantasies when he met the girl of his supposed dreams. She was so vanilla that she didn’t even like getting spanked, much less anything else remotely kinky.
But now we’re both single, and I intend to find a girl that helps him remember who he was before that bitch stifled his soul.
4
Brianna
“What?” I stared at Jackie with a horrified expression on my face. “It’s our last Halloween together! Your boss can’t make you work that night!”
“It fucking sucks!” Jackie exhaled sharply. “I even tried to bluff. I threatened to quit if he made me work and he said I wouldn’t have to—he would just fire me.”
“That’s insane! It’s just one night—the most important night. What if you call in sick?” I grabbed Jackie’s hand and gave her my saddest stare.
“I can’t risk it.” Jackie shook her head back and forth. “I need my job if I’m going to save up money and go to school. You know how hard it is to find work in Bakersfield.”
“Yeah.” I sighed and nodded. “Okay, well then, let’s celebrate early or something? We don’t have to give away candy at the church, but we could just hang out.”
“That sounds good, but I’m working all week. Maybe we could get together over the weekend?” Jackie forced a smile, but I saw the heartbreak resonating from her eyes.
“Okay.” I let go of her hand and nodded. “We’ll watch scary movies like the old days—you could even spend the night!”
“It has been a while since we’ve done that, hasn’t it?” Her smile got a little wider. “Okay, we’ll do it up like the old days with so much soda and popcorn we nearly pee our pants when something scary comes on!”
“Lights off—blinds closed. We’ll even jump when we hear the wind!” I felt a little bit of my excitement return.
We did our best to make something good out of a bad situation, but both of us knew how much it really did suck to miss our last Halloween together. It was another broken tradition, and a sign that our childhood truly was over. We had been talking about Halloween for so long that everything revolved around that night. I felt lost with my plans canceled. I could still go to the church
and hand out candy, but it wouldn’t be the same without Jackie. There were a few other events in town, but nothing that I cared to go to. All of the fun stuff usually involved the two of us. It had been that way since we were kids. That was where my memories were—and that was where they would stay. The weight of leaving Bakersfield suddenly hung around my neck like an albatross. The world was waiting on me, but leaving the past behind was going to hurt.
* * *
“Don’t forget you’re supposed to pick up candy on your way home from school today. The good stuff will be gone if you wait until the weekend.” My mother walked to the kitchen door as I packed my bag to leave for my first class.
“Yeah, I’ll grab some at the supermarket.” I nodded and smiled. “Maybe we should just give out candy in the neighborhood this year instead of going to the church.”
“Last time we tried that, we only had a few kids come back. Then your father spent the next two months gorging on candy every night.” She chuckled and waved off my suggestion. “No, if we hand out candy at church, we’ll be back home and in bed by nine.”
“Okay.” I nodded and picked up my bag.