Stacy

Stacy’s Halloween party was the biggest event of the entire year. Everyone came. No one was entirely sure who started it, presumably Stacy. Whoever did was certainly dead now. This party had been going on for almost a hundred years.

Everyone was invited. That’s what was so cool about it. Social status didn’t matter.

If it did, I wouldn’t be going.

My name is Kailee Weaver. Everyone calls me Kay though. I’m at the bottom of the popularity food chain.

But I have to go to this event. At least since I’m unpopular, I don’t have to dress up. I’m just going as a goth. I’m too lazy to put on an actual costume so I’m just going as myself.

The party is loud, filled to the brim with cliche costumes. The host this year, Allie Sommers, is dressed up as a strip club zombie. As you get older, the costumes go from bees and dinosaurs to full on gore and evil.

There were several other goths, but none as good as me. I’d mastered the art of goth because I wore it all the time. They just looked awkward and uncomfortable, their eyes smudged from itching. They must have used shitty eyeliner. Sucks to be them.

A girl in a skeleton hoodie comes up to me.

“Hey,” she says. “What up?” I stare at her.

“You talking to me?”

“Who else?” she asks before looking around and laughing. “I see your point. Yeah, I’m talking to you.”

“Well, I’m kind of regretting being here.”

“Why?”

“I’m not a people person.” She scans me.

“Neither am I. Wanna go outside?”

“Sure,” I say with a shrug. I return her body check. She is deathly pale, but that could just be makeup.

The wind outside is bitingly cold. This girl doesn’t seem fazed. I pretend not to be, but she sees through it anyway.

“You cold?” I try to shrug but it turns into a shudder. She pulls me into her.

“You’re surprisingly warm, for a bunch of bones.”

“Ha. Thanks. I think.” I’m staring into her eyes, feeling like I’m drowning. They pin me down and undress me. And I like it.

This is love.

Before I can think about it, I lean forward and kiss her. For a moment her eyes are frozen, staring at me wide and startled. Then they close. And then I fee her lips pushing back on me.

“That was my first kiss,” I say breathlessly. “Did I do good?”

“That was my first kiss,” she echoed. “Did I?”

“I think you did.”

“Well I think you did too.” I smile, red creeping up my face like poison ivy.

Behind me, I hear the clock chime ten. Ten already? Has it been an hour already?

I guess most of it was spent ambling around like a zombie. Still. Time flies.

The girl looks up at the sky, worry flashing over her face. Then she looks at me.

“I’m Stacy.”

And then I am talking to air.

I will never miss this party again.