THE HALLOWEEN PRINCESS

                                           CHAPTER ONE

                                              Reflections

        Today is November 1st. I don’t like November 1st because it is the day after Halloween. It also happens to be Monday. That makes things worse because I have to go to school and a whole lot of very bad things happen at school that I don’t like.   

       Yesterday was different altogether. It was fun. In fact, it was so-o-o much fun that I can still picture Mom leaning over me as she whispered in my ear at bedtime, ”Gaily Narelly, dear, you haven’t stopped smiling all day. Now, you had better settle down and go to sleep or you’re going to have wrinkles all around your mouth before you even make it to your tenth birthday.”     

       Mom always calls me Gaily Narelly when I’m in the good books and yesterday I made sure I stayed in the good books all day because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss going trick-or-treating for anything in the whole world. I won’t tell you the names Mom uses when I’m in the bad books because some of them are so bad that you’ll want to plug your ears. Gaily Narelly is the name my favorite Aunty Tine always calls me.     

      Yesterday I awoke very early in the morning, much earlier than I usually do on Sundays. Our next-door neighbors, the very religious ones, hadn’t even left for the early church service and their car engine is our early morning wake-up call on Sundays. The husband usually runs the engine for so long that my mother starts muttering bad things under her breath. She’s most likely cursing about air or noise pollution since those environmental concerns really do bother Mom.  

      It sometimes takes the wife almost an hour to come out of their house and get in the car. I think she spends a lot of time putting on make-up since she’s getting old and she needs to cover up the wrinkles. She must have smiled a lot before she was ten years old. She usually has her arms full of fancy dishes with perogies and cabbage rolIs in them. Often she makes more than one trip from their house to the car because she has so many dishes. I imagine that she spends hours and hours making all those cabbage rolls and perogies because she brought some over to our house once when we had a neighborhood potluck dinner and they all looked exactly the same size. When Mom makes cabbage rolls, some of hers are fat and bulging out of the cabbage leaves and others are so skinny that people have to take two to start with or they don’t get enough to eat.  Our neighbor seems to feed Sunday lunch to almost half the congregation.     

       I can’t help but wonder why it takes her so long to get ready for church. Perhaps she is busy ironing the tablecloths for the lunch. Quite often I see a lot of laundry flapping in the wind on her outdoor clothesline and I have heard my mom mention that they seem to have a lot of laundry for just two people. I once heard Mom say that they are very good people and they really do a lot for their church so she doesn’t mind how much laundry they have flapping on their clothesline, even though some of our other neighbors, especially the not very religious ones, grumble about it. I knew that they would not be missing the early service because they’d have so much to do to get ready for Halloween when they came home.     

      Their place is one of the first in the neighborhood to be decorated and that happens well in advance of Halloween. They always have a whole row of odd-looking Jack-o’–lanterns on either side of their front door. Every year they have an increasing number of ghosts hanging from the branches of their crabapple and May trees. I think they save the ends of their toilet rolls to make the ghosts. They probably leave that last piece of paper that sticks to the cardboard roll for making  the ghost’s body. I’m not really sure if you’d call it a body or, perhaps a torso would be a better word, but I’ll think of it as a body for now, anyway.  A scarecrow that had a prime position on the front porch around Thanksgiving sits beside the garbage container in their carport. Rows of bright orange garbage bags, stuffed with leaves and carefully placed so that the Jack-o’-lanterns’ faces are towards the street, line the front path and the driveway. The decorating is done by their grandchildren who always come early in the afternoon to pick up their treats so that they won’t be late going trick-or-treating in their own neighborhood.     

       I always head to their house first on Halloween night since they give out the best treats. Last year they gave each of us a bag of potato chips and a bag of Cheezies. That was twice as much as we got from most of the other people in our neighborhood. I didn’t tell Mom how much I got from their house because I knew she would just say, ”Well that’s because they don’t have any of their own kids at home anymore.” I don’t really think that’s a legitimate excuse because they still have a lot of grandchildren. 

       Our whole neighborhood seemed unusually quiet yesterday. There wasn’t the slightest sign of Benny anywhere outside in his backyard and he is also one of the early risers. I had so many exciting things on my mind that I wanted to get a head start on the day.     

      Without wasting a minute, I headed straight for the main closet in the guest bedroom because that was where Mom was stashing our precious Halloween disguises. Wonderful! There was my gorgeous, fairy princess costume, hanging exactly where it was when I checked up on it last thing before bedtime on Saturday night. The sequins around the neckline and down the front of the bodice were shining brilliantly as the hallway light reflected on them.  Each one had been hand sewn individually onto the fabric. The stiffly starched, tulle skirt was taking up so much space that there was barely enough room beside it for my little brother’s knitted bumblebee costume. Most impressive of all was the tiara.  A thousand diamonds sparkled from every angle whichever way I admired it. Safely beside it, on the shelf, was the intriguing, magic wand.  Without the wand, it would only be an ordinary princess costume.  So many of the dainty, little girls in the lower primary classes at our school have ordinary princess costumes.     

       For as long as I could remember Mom had always been too busy around Halloween time to put much thought into my costume. By the time she bought the candy, made my little brother’s costume and hollowed out the biggest pumpkin that we could find for our Jack-o’-lantern, she always announced that she would be glad when Halloween was over. I had been content with being a ghost for a couple of years but the eye holes in my costume always kept slipping down so I couldn’t really see where I was going. When our teacher was giving us a lesson on Halloween safety she said that we shouldn’t wear things that obstructed our vision but I purposely didn’t tell her about my costume in case she phoned Mom. Oh no, there are some things that parents shouldn’t hear about. To make things worse, I kept stepping on the bottom of my costume, making muddy footprints that made it look yucky and I almost tripped over it many times. Once when I reached out to try to stop myself from tripping, I lost my grip on my treat bag and most of my candy slid out onto the edge of the roadway. Luckily there were no cars coming and all the candies were wrapped so my friend helped me to scoop them up in a big hurry. We decided that they would still taste all right.

                                           THE HALLOWEEN PRINCESS

                                                         CHAPTER TWO 

                                                    Last Year’s Costume             

        About two weeks before Halloween, last year, my friend announced that she was going to be a robot for Halloween. She was planning to make her own costume. She also informed me that she thought my ghost costume was rather childish-looking and that I should wear something different. Not only was I offended but I was also concerned about how I was going to approach this subject with Mom. I wouldn’t consider asking her to make me a different costume and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that she buy me a new costume, especially when it was so close to Halloween and the stores would be almost sold out of the good ones. Ah! Suddenly I had an idea. I could also be a robot and we could make our costumes together. What a great idea! We could be twin robots.     

      We decided that we wouldn’t mention anything about our plan to my mother until both costumes were finished and then we’d just take her by surprise. We’d make the robot costumes at my friend’s house and we’d dress up in them a few days before Halloween, on one of Mom’s good days, when she wasn’t too busy.     

      My friend’s brother brought us two big boxes home from the music store where he worked. He had just sold a pair of speakers and he knew that the boxes would be exactly the right size for our robots’ bodies. The smaller boxes for the heads were easy to find since we had lots of empty boxes piled up in our garage and I knew that Mom wouldn’t even notice if a couple of them went missing.     

      At the same time as my friend’s dad repaired their clothes dryer, some time ago, he also replaced the duct to the outside vent. It had been thrown on a stack of old lumber under their sundeck at the back of their house. It was probably too bulky to squash into the garbage can so that was where it had been dumped. I suggested to my friend that we could cut the duct into sections to make the arms for our robots. We agreed that we shouldn’t be concerned about covering our legs as the boxes were fairly long and we wouldn’t want to have our costumes interfering with our trick-or-treating, especially after what had happened with my ghost costume.     

      After a few lengthy work sessions, we were making good progress with our robots’ costumes. The next step was to cover the boxes with aluminum foil to match the arms. My friend’s mom generously supplied us with a jumbo roll of aluminum foil. She didn’t mind how much of it we used, provided we didn’t waste any. Fortunately, there had been plenty of duct tape left on the roll when the dryer was repaired so that came in very handy for attaching the aluminum foil to the boxes. The covering of the boxes took longer than we had anticipated but, when that was finished, we were feeling quite proud of our robots. The finishing touches took us only two more short sessions by which time we were looking forward to showing them to my friend’s parents.     

      How rewarding it was to be given such praise! “Your robot costumes are better than most costumes I’ve seen in the stores,” my friend’s mother remarked. My mother was equally positive so we were expecting the same kind of responses from our friends and all the neighbors.     

      Unfortunately the costumes were not very durable. After we’d collected our potato chips and Cheezies from our very friendly neighbor, we stopped for a car that was turning into our cul-de-sac. I made eye contact with the driver although it was difficult because his windshield wipers were smearing and I could barely see him. As we waited for him to go by, the rain poured down on us. The drops were so loud on the aluminum foil that they sounded like hail. He just wasn’t moving. What was the problem? Did he think we were going to cross in front of him? Were he and his passengers admiring our robot costumes? By the time he decided to continue, I could feel the head of my costume separating from the body and rainwater was trickling down my neck and onto my back. Yikes! It felt cold. I realized that the duct tape wasn’t holding.     

      The row of four houses to which we were heading was well lit. That looked promising so we lengthened our steps and chatted excitedly. My treat bag was swinging back and forth in time with my pacing. I was having a difficult time preventing it from banging into my friend's costume but she continued to tolerate the situation. From the first two houses we collected licorice strips. My brother likes licorice so I would trade those for something that he didn’t fancy. Since the rain was still pelting down, we agreed to take a shortcut across the lawn to the next house. That was a mistake. We had no sooner circled a cedar shrub than a stream of water came gushing out of a downpipe right in front of us. As my friend sprang backwards to avoid the full force, her arm caught one of the spiky branches of the shrub. Her automatic response was to free herself but, at the same time, the tape gave out and her costume lost one of its arms. She stuffed the arm under the cedar shrub, fully intending to collect it on our way home. We linked arms so that we looked like conjoined twin robots and headed for the next two houses. From then on, we had to synchronize our steps and that slowed us down a great deal. The owners of those two houses were so busy asking us about our costumes that we failed to notice what they slipped into our bags.     

      As we continued to collect our treats, the rain eased but the wind started to blow and we could barely hear ourselves talking for the rattling of the aluminum foil. I could tell by the expression on her face that my friend was not enjoying herself but still she didn’t complain. We covered a few crescents fairly close to home before deciding that the wind was becoming too strong for us to keep pressing on in our costumes. Realizing that our costumes had been our downfall, we retraced our paths towards home. My friend remembered that she needed to retrieve the arm from under the cedar shrub but it was nowhere in sight. Where had the wind taken it?     

       To help me overcome my disappointment, Mom promised that, if I were willing to take my little brother along with my friends when I went trick-or-treating next Halloween, there would be a surprise in store for me. One thing I never forget is a promise so this year I reminded Mom about the surprise as soon as she had one of her good days.

                                           THE HALLOWEEN PRINCESS

                                                     CHAPTER THREE

                                                             A Surprise         

            Not long after school started in September, this year, Mom mentioned one Saturday morning that Aunty Tine needed my measurements. At first I thought I was getting a new sweater since Aunty Tine was forever knitting me lovely sweaters for winter. However, when Mom started to measure me from my neck down to my ankle, that was a dead give away. No sweater would ever be that long. It suddenly dawned on me that Aunty Tine was going to sew the fairy princess costume that I had been dreaming and nagging about for such a long time. At least twice after the measurements had been taken, Mom casually asked me if my favorite color was still pink or if I’d changed my mind.     

            The day the costume arrived was one of the most memorable days in my life. 

            I’d paraded around in it so many times over the past few weeks that Mom was concerned that I’d wear it out before Halloween. The make-up was still there, in the middle drawer of the old dresser. I knew I was going to be the prettiest, the BESTEST princess Aunty Tine had ever seen. Now, if only it would hurry up and get dark! 

                                                THE HALLOWEEN PRINCESS

                                                             CHAPTER FOUR

                                                                Daydreaming            

        Oh, I wish I could just stay here in my cozy bed and think about yesterday all over again but today I have to go to school early since we’re having choir practice before school and the choir teacher reminded us on Friday that, if we miss any of the practices this week, we’ll automatically be dropped from the choir. It’s all because of the special assembly for Remembrance Day. We have it every year and I know it’s important but it’s boring and we’re singing two of the same songs that we sang last year. Miss Melody is proud of us because, this year, we all know the words so she can concentrate more on our diction and teaching us the nice, new song about peace.  I haven’t been able to figure out why she wants our singing to be so perfect because the parents always enjoy our performances, even when we sing off key. They are so busy trying to find their own little darlings on the risers that they don’t even notice. Mom becomes so excited when she finds me that she starts pointing at me and waving madly. I wish she wouldn’t because it’s rather embarrassing.     

       Although the vice-principal makes sure to remind everyone at the beginning of the assembly that, because this is a solemn occasion, it is inappropriate to applaud, Mom seems to forget. She begins to clap loudly after every song and, when she realizes that she’s the only one doing it, her face turns as red as a tomato.  That’s when I wish I could crawl right down under the risers but that wouldn’t be a good idea. I noticed when the choir helpers were setting them up that there are lots of sticky cobwebs underneath and, where there are cobwebs, there are sure to be spiders. I hope the combined grade seven classes don’t recite that same long poem again that I’ve heard every year since kindergarten. If that happens, I’ll just tune out everything and dream about yesterday.     

      After I made the final inspection of the costumes yesterday morning, I decided to organize the treats that Mom was handing out in the evening. It was always my responsibility to have the treats ready. Two large bags of different flavored suckers and one medium-sized packet containing seventy-five mini milk chocolate bars would surely be enough for all the children in our neighborhood. I didn’t think my friends would be too keen on the suckers because that’s what Mom handed out last year.     

       I remembered one of my not-so-polite friends saying that he hated suckers. I didn’t really believe that; I think he was just tired of them.  The teachers give them to us at school as rewards for good behavior and for trying very hard to do our best work. If you ask me, he’s always getting lots of suckers.  His mother says, “That’s probably because the teacher is trying to bribe him.” Why would Mom buy suckers again? Either, it’s because they were on sale, or she thinks my friends won’t remember. On the other hand, perhaps it’s because she was in such a hurry that she didn’t have time to check the supermarket shelves to find something more interesting. When it comes to candy, she isn’t really very imaginative.     

       Carefully, I tore open the bags in case Mom needed to tie them up again afterwards. I had to use her expensive, stainless steel dressmaking shears to cut open the packet of chocolate bars as the kitchen scissors were simply not sharp enough. The cardboard was so thick that first I had to carefully poke the pointed end of the blade right through the top corner of the packet. After that, it was easy to cut along one side of the top flap. Yummy! Those chocolate bars looked so inviting that I was tempted to sample one right there and then. No. I had better not because seventy-five was printed right there on the packet and what if we had exactly seventy-five trick-or-treaters? Would you believe that Mom always counts them? She claims that it will help her to estimate how much candy she needs to buy when next Halloween comes around. Smiling, I set the open bags and packet on the deacon’s bench just inside the front door. It felt good to have the treats organized well ahead of time.

      Just then the front doorbell rang. I should have expected Benny because he always comes early to show off his costume. I think he’s afraid of the dark and I know he’s scared of the children’s costumes. When I opened the door, he was standing there, looking ever so ridiculously proud. It was difficult to refrain from laughing. His pointy, little ears were barely showing through the slits in the hood of his bright, red devil’s cloak. Under his throat, the ties on the cloak were so thick that the bow resembled one of those on a chorister’s cape. His fierce-looking pitchfork had been carefully attached to his right foreleg. With his beady eyes fixed on the treats, he gave me one quick glance, followed by a threatening growl.  He was forever trying to be Mr. Tough Guy. I was about to give him my approval of his costume with a gentle pat on the head, when our wicked looking Jack-o’-lantern emitted the most raucous “Ha, ha, ha,” imaginable. With that, Benny pivoted on his hind legs into a one hundred eighty degree turn, revealing that little stub of a tail and he bolted down the driveway, as fast as his tiny, spindly legs could carry him, towards home. There, he would find refuge in the living room, behind the chesterfield, for the rest of the day and evening until Halloween was all over, especially the firecrackers. He was absolutely petrified of firecrackers.

                                                          THE HALLOWEEN PRINCESS

                                                                      CHAPTER FIVE

                                                                          November 1  

        Goodness me! Is that Mom I’m hearing in the kitchen, already? She must be unzipping my knapsack to pack my lunch and water bottle. I wonder what time it is. I must have been lying here much longer than I realized. I’ll take a peek through my blinds to see how light it is outside. That’s surprising. The streetlights are still on in the next cul-de-sac so everything should be all right. 

          From the reflection in the window, I see my eyelids are still that pretty azure blue and there is a lot of glitter left on my forehead.  I’ll need to use some more of Mom’s extra greasy cleansing cream to give my face a good scrub. Our teacher says, “Definitely, no makeup in this class.” The makeup can wait until I have my wash. Right now, I could do with a little longer snooze.     

       Now, where was I? Oh, yes. I hope Mom will pack me lots of jelly babies and some of those special homemade mints that her generous friend in the house behind ours, slipped into my treat bag. I don’t think she knows that our teacher warned us not to bring all the junk food to school on Monday and she was so busy with the housework and helping my little brother carve our Jack-o-lantern on the weekend that she didn’t have time to read our class newsletter. Perhaps, I could suck on some of the mints during choir practice. I don’t think Miss Melody can see me very well in the middle row. Anyway, she certainly won’t be able to detect the little bulge in my cheek. When she’s conducting, she wears her reading glasses so that she won’t miss any of the tiny symbols. She’d be wiser to wear her bi-focals so that she would have a better view of all of us but Mom says I shouldn’t tell her that because it’s none of my business. 

      If only I could be sick today, that would solve all the problems.  That way, I wouldn’t be late and risk being thrown out of choir. I could lie here, thinking about wonderful yesterday, for as long as I’d like and I could sample as many of those delicious-looking treats as my sweet tooth desires. No, that’s not going to work because Miss Melody said that today she’d let me exchange places with that tall girl who is standing beside my best friend. She’d give me a try and, if I could remain focused, there’d be no problem with me staying near my friend in all the practices and the performance. Mom might also decide that if I’m too sick to go to school, I’m also too sick to eat candy. I might only be able to eat tomato soup all day. That’s all I was allowed to eat the last time I was sick. After that, I couldn’t even look at tomato soup for at least a year or, maybe, it was half a year. 

       Once when I was sick on a school day, quite a long time ago, Mom made me stay in bed all day. She even kept the drapes closed in my bedroom all day and the only time I was allowed out of bed was when I needed to use the bathroom. Even though I was starting to feel better in the afternoon and felt like watching some television, TV viewing was right out of the question. I guess I’d better go to school, after all. 

      Except for choir practice, it’s going to be the most monotonous day that you can imagine. Our teacher will be grumpier than usual since she had to hand out way more candy than my mom last night. She has hordes of children living in her neighborhood and many of them are older so they probably kept her up late. She’ll likely make us do those math worksheets with the difficult Halloween word problems. When she introduced them to us last Friday, she pretended that they were going to be exciting because they were about Halloween. “You’re going to love solving these word problems. They’re all about monsters and a haunted house,” she began. How can word problems ever be exciting? Even if the word problems were about snow boarding or hang gliding, they wouldn’t be exciting. She copies them all from the same book so she doesn’t have to spend time preparing anything. They’re one of her favorites for Mondays, especially if she’s had a busy weekend, and that happens more often than not. 

      I know, for sure, that after morning recess, we’ll have to continue that long piece of creative writing called What Remembrance Day Means to Me. Ugh! I didn’t even finish the second paragraph of my draft on Friday morning because I was so wound up about the afternoon parade that I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Today, I don’t think the ideas are going to flow into my brain, either, because Remembrance Day really doesn’t mean much to me, besides making me feel sad, and it’s not easy to write a whole lot of paragraphs about feeling sad. I’d much rather write about yesterday. 

       I’m one hundred per cent certain that we’re also going to have a dental hygiene lesson instead of going to gym. Every year around Halloween, we learn how too much sugar causes cavities. Our teacher will inform us that we won’t need to exercise in the gym today as we had plenty of exercise running around the neighborhood last night. My friend in the next grade told me our teacher always does that the day after Halloween. If we complain, she’ll use the other excuse: the decorations from Friday afternoon’s Halloween parade are still up on the gym walls and we wouldn’t want to damage them. If you ask me, how could we damage the decorations on the walls, when we’re only playing that childish, little game on the floor where the witch jumps over the broomstick or the one where we roll the ball into the pumpkin patch and try to hit the pumpkins? It feels so silly standing in the circle, pretending to be a pumpkin. I suppose that, in the next new game we learn, we’ll have to pretend to be poppies. 

      Oh, what a dismal day it’s going to be! I really dislike November 1st.

      “Gaily Narelly, dear. Did I hear . . .”

      Was that Mom calling? 

      “Don’t you have to be at school early today for choir practice? Your breakfast is served – just toast with peanut butter this morning. No cereal and no jam. You don’t need any more sugar in your system.” 

      I suppose that’s it for my snooze. Before my wash, I must do a quick checkup on my costume. I was so keyed up after trick-or-treating last night that I’m not sure if I hung it in its exact spot in the guest room closet. I’d better hurry, though, because one thing I don’t like is cold toast with peanut butter. 

      Just as well, I came to check on it. One of those spiky antennas from the bumblebee is so badly bent that it’s sticking straight through one of the sequins. I think my little brother got caught on his friend’s bear costume last night. The fur was very long and a bit shaggy-looking. I see. There is a strand of fur hanging part way down the antenna. Easy now. I think I can gently pull it back through to the front without yanking out the sequin. Good. That worked. This antenna wire is sure tough to bend back into place. It’s a good thing that my brother only ran into the fur and not the bear’s eye. That could have ruined the whole evening. The tiara looks so lustrous up there on the shelf. I’m just going to move the wand away from the tiara down to the end of the shelf. It will be safer there against the wall where it won’t be inclined to roll onto the floor. Did I remember to put the makeup back in the dresser drawer? Yes. It’s here, safe and sound, ready for next year. Oh, I can’t wait to be a fairy princess again. I do hope though, that next time, I won’t be made to wear that tight, itchy woolen sweater underneath. No matter how often I tried to poke it back in, it kept sticking out at the neckline. Mothers sure know how to spoil the effect. In all the excitement and because she was so worried about me not catching cold, Mom forgot to take my picture for Aunty Tine.  She won’t find out that I was the bestest princess ever. Never mind, there’s always next time. 

      My toast must be getting cold. Well, it’s lukewarm so it’s tolerable.

      “Gaily Narelly, dear, did I hear you at the breakfast table before you had your wash? Yes, I know your toast is getting cold but that’s no excuse for not washing.” 

      Hmmm. Why do mothers and teachers always win? This cleansing cream is working. It got rid of all the sparkles and there’s only the slightest tinge of blue left on my eyelids. Now, back to the cold toast. 

      I’m beginning to hate November 1st. At the end of the day, our teacher will be wearing down so, the chances are, that she’ll let us continue with our art project. She likes art because she doesn’t have to use her voice very much or think very hard when we’re busy with our projects. Even when we are all talking at once and we sound like a cage full of chattering monkeys, she doesn’t seem to mind.  Actually, one day during art, I heard her whisper to the helper, “This is when they let off steam.” At the moment, our class is working on tissue paper poppy collages that our school’s vice-principal wants to use for the backdrop at the special assembly. My poppy doesn’t look too bad but the teacher suggested that if I have time to make another, I should make sure that it’s symmetrical and about half the size. The bad thing is that the dye gets all over my hands when I glue the red tissue paper squares onto the tag board. Therefore, I had better not even try to slip any jelly babies into my mouth during art. 

      It’s a good thing we had art early in the morning last Friday so that we had plenty of time to wash the dye off our hands before we put on our costumes for the parade. I wouldn’t have wanted red blotches on my gorgeous, tulle skirt. 

      “Good-bye, Mom. I’m leaving. No, I haven’t forgotten my hoodie. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t have time to wash my dinosaur T-shirt because we won’t be having gym today. Yes, I did brush and floss my teeth. No, I won’t be too late for choir practice.”

                                              THE HALLOWEEN PRINCESS

                                                           CHAPTER SIX

                                                       A Close Encounter             

       The sidewalk is dry so, if I scurry along, I should be there just as Miss Melody is opening the door for the last group, “the stragglers,” as she calls them.  Yuck! What is that sticky, orange mess all over my sneaker?  Don’t tell me I’ve trodden on a squashed Jack-o’-lantern. It was probably one of those funny looking ones that the little kindergarten students were learning to carve with their big grade three buddies. They worked on them for two whole days. By the time they were finished, there was a terrible pumpkin stench all through the school. None of them ended up looking particularly scary and they looked so much alike that I think most of them copied the teacher’s grinning Jack-o’-lantern. Every year she carves the same, old thing. You’d think she’d get tired of it.   

       I’d better not try to rub the pumpkin off in the grass or all the dead leaves will stick to it and make it worse. Instead, I should just stomp along quickly and that might make it fall off, or at least, most of it. Then, I can get rid of the rest of it on the grate in front of the school’s front entrance. I would be most unpopular with the vice-principal and the custodian if I walked pumpkin into the carpet in the main entrance, especially, since it’s only several days until the Remembrance Day Assembly when so many parents will be coming to listen to the choir. This isn’t easy. I wonder how many people have ever tried to stomp along quickly with pumpkin on their sneaker.     

      Hmm. I have another idea. Perhaps, that big, mean, black dog that lives in one of those houses beside the walkway might hear me coming, seeing as I’m stomping, and he’ll come racing to the fence and start snarling and clawing at it, like he does when I forget about him and he surprises me. I could put my foot up on a space between two of the palings, if his owner isn’t watching through the drapes, and he will probably come to sniff out my sneaker. If he likes pumpkin, he may actually lick it off and then he might become my friend for life. If he doesn’t like pumpkin, he might just get madder and start charging at the fence and the hard thumps just might loosen the pumpkin and make it fall off. Whatever happens, it’s worth a try and provided I don’t alert his owner, what have I got to lose? Careful now. I’ll just sneak along the fence until I find a wide enough space, where he can get a really good whiff of my sneaker. I never realized that this fence was quite as high as it is because I always stayed very clear of it. Oh no, this isn’t going to work because, the closer I get to the fence, the more difficult it is for me to see if the owner is peeking through the drapes. That chunk of rotten-looking firewood that’s lying between the blacktop and the fence might make a good perch for me if I can pry it out of the dirt without splitting it and prop it up against the fence. Here’s hoping. Well, that wasn’t too difficult. Apart from a few gruesome-looking slugs on its underside and several splintery pieces that fell off its edges, it’s all ready for me to do my spy work. Steady now. It could tip if I’m not careful since it’s fairly muddy here and I mustn’t grab onto the fence or the dog might just get a hold of my fingers.     

      Phew! I just got down off my perch in time to kick my foot up to the nearest space and stand perfectly still because the dog, no doubt, heard my stomping and came bolting towards the fence. Arf, arf, sniff, sniff, sniff. Slurp, slurp.

                                                    THE HALLOWEEN PRINCESS

                                                            CHAPTER SEVEN

                                                                A Dismal Day  

         Can anything good happen on November 1st? I know, from experience, that nothing good will happen at school but, maybe, we’ll win the lottery. That’s what my mom always says when one of us is having a very bad day. 

        Great! I made it to choir practice in the nick of time and there’s only a smidgeon of pumpkin left on the tread of my sole. It’s a strange bluish color. I wonder if that’s mould on it. That mean, black dog sure likes pumpkin but I guess he doesn’t eat mould. I should have slipped more of the mints into my shirt pocket. Miss Melody is standing by, watching us hang up our knapsacks. What good will they do in there? 

      “Remember, if you two are exchanging positions on the riser, you must stay focused.”

    The reminder didn’t hurt, I suppose, because I made it through choir practice without being separated from my friend but, just as I predicted, those word problems and creative writing were really a drag. Part of it was my fault, though, for being up later than usual last night.  Anyway, the jelly babies saved me from total boredom but I had to keep a very close eye on the teacher each time I retrieved one from my jacket pocket. 

      During the nutrition lesson the teacher glared at me at one point. That was when I tried to wink at a boy at the next table.  He had noticed me stuffing a mint into my mouth just before she started her spiel about sugar and cavities. I don’t think mints contain very much sugar, anyway. Well, they couldn’t have as much sugar as caramels or toffee or peanut brittle. Fortunately, I’m not very good at winking. Otherwise, I might have had to write my name on the chalkboard to stay after school and that would have made the very boring day even longer. 

    When it was time to hand out the poppies for art, the helper discovered that there was a real problem with my poppy. Last Friday morning, when she was hurrying to collect the poppies before lunch, she didn’t notice the big glob of glue in the centre of mine. She stacked the poppies and mine stuck to the one on top. This afternoon she was rushing when she tried to pry them apart. It was impossible. The harder she tried, the worse it got. In the end, my poppy was not only missing a whole lot of the red tissue paper but it was also missing a big piece of the tagboard. The result was that it had an ugly big hole in the middle. As I clenched my teeth and hands to prevent me from taking out my frustration on the helper, I noticed that the tall girl who’d been standing next to my friend in choir was smirking at me. I was about to explode. This gave me every reason to abhor Nov.1st. Then came the teacher’s consoling voice.     

      “This is your chance to make a smaller, symmetrical poppy.”     

      Did she really think this was going to improve the situation?  

      Tears welled up in my eyes. She realized that I was about to start bawling.

      “Perhaps, you would like to try again tomorrow,” she suggested.     

      I tried to read my library book while the other children continued working on their poppies. My head was nodding and my eyes were stinging. Even rubbing them didn’t help. In a short time, my mind was wandering back to yesterday. . . How adorable my fairy princess costume had been! How the sequins had shone and the diamonds had sparkled! How strangely the magic wand had behaved! Aunty Tine would have been so impressed. When the dismissal bell rang, my library book was still open at the same page. There was no point in taking it home. It had been such a terrible day and I was absolutely worn out.     

      As I trudged home through the fresh snow, I was reassured by the thought of admiring my costume once again but, when I opened the guest room closet door, it was nowhere in sight.     

      “Mom! Mom! My fairy princess costume!”

     “Gaily Narelly, dear, I knew you’d understand. After you left this morning, I …

and that’s another story.

GAIL RUNSCHKE