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and advice, and there are special exhibits in the halls—science projects and shoe-box dioramas and, once, Alice’s popcorn map of Antarctica, which was pretty impressive till Claude and Ollie Herdman ate it, glue and all.
    Now, on Halloween night, it was almost the same.
    There were signs on all the doors: “Ghoul Gallery,” “Mystery Swamp,” “Ghostly Games.” The PA system was on with lots of screeches and ghoulish laughter. “That’s Jolene Liggett’s father on the PA,” Louella said, “but don’t tell her I told you. She’s too embarrassed.”
    There were exhibits, too—stacks of my mother’s pumpkins everywhere, cardboard bats hanging from the ceiling, and a big scarecrow right inside the front door.
    “That’s Dad’s wash-the-car pants on the scarecrow,” Charlie said.
    He was right, and this was good news for two reasons: it meant Charlie could see around the mop strings and I wouldn’t have to lead him everywhere; and it meant my father probably wouldn’t get drafted at the last minute to be the swamp zombie or something since he already gave them his pants.
    Of course nobody wore costumes on Back-to-School Night, so that was different. Now there were all the usual cartoon characters and ghosts and accident victims, some strange Dracula-types all wrapped up in black … and a King Kong. We saw Boomer at the end of the hall, all brown and furry, in a gorilla mask, so they must have found his grandmother’s coat.
    Alice got her wish—she was the only Christmas tree. She had lights and decorations hung all over herself, with a big star on top of her head and jingle bells glued to her shoes. There was a long extension cord, too, hanging down her back, so you knew that sooner or later she would plug herself in somewhere and light herself up.
    “Howard will like that,” Louella said, “and it won’t be too scary for him.”
    We weren’t supposed to take Howard to anything scary, but so far that didn’t look like much of a problem. We even heard Mr. Crabtree tell two kindergarten mothers, “Don’t you worry, there’s nothing scary here!”
    I guess that was important to the kindergarten mothers, but who knows what’s scary to kindergarten kids? Eloise Albright’s little brother is scared of fish; Wesley Potter’s little sister is scared of bald people, so she was probably scared of Howard till something sprouted on his head. Charlie used to be scared of Little Orphan Annie in old comic books because she didn’t have any eyes—just round white circles.
    So we really couldn’t know what would be scary to Howard … but almost the first thing we saw was scary to me.
    It was my mother, in a crooked witch hat and her take-out-the-trash sneakers, swooping back and forth in front of the Mystery Maze.
    “Now, Beth … “ She swooped—sort of—over to me. “Don’t look at me that way. I told you abut this, that Mrs. Coburn broke her ankle, and … “
    Then I remembered the torn-off note on the refrigerator. This was what it said—that my mother was going to be a witch for everyone to see.
    “After all,” Mother went on, “it’s not as if I
want
to be doing this, and I’m certainly no good at it, but somebody had to fill in for Thelma Coburn. So, are you having a good time?” She turned to Louella. “How about Howard … is he having a good time?”
    “I guess so, Mrs. Bradley,” Louella said. “He’s not scared, anyway.”
    “Oh, no,” Mother said, swooping back to the Mystery Maze, “there’s nothing scary here!”
    “That must be the whole idea,” Louella said, “but I thought the whole idea was no Herdmans.”
    “Maybe it’s the same thing,” I said.
    With nothing scary, nothing spooky, nothing unexpected, no trick or treat and no candy, and not even Herdmans to watch out for, it was turning into the worst Halloween ever.
    This is what everybody said—Boomer,Stewart, Joanne, Rosalie Sims, Albert Pelfrey—” … worst Halloween ever … “ Even Alice was