The air was crisp and cool and dry. Autumn in California doesn't mean swarms of yellow and orange leaves flying through the air. Our trees stay green, though they sway and sometimes break in the harsh Santa Ana winds.

Matty had this idea to camp out in our yard for Halloween. To pretend we were somewhere else, someone else. After we had roamed the neighborhood collecting candy, I as a white kitty and he as a white bunny, we set up his tent beside the orange tree, whose blossoms swirled around us in the wind like snow. We left our ears on as we unrolled our sleeping bags under the lantern light, and he told me a whispered story of a cat and a bunny who lived in the forrest, far away from here.

We sorted our piles of candy, discarding the cheap chocolate discs that burned the back of our throats. Then we traded. He loved Butterfingers. I loved Milky Way. I hated vanilla and grape anything. He hated lemon.

Once we had an acceptable assortment of sweets, we each stretched out on our stomachs. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I asked him. My teacher had asked this question of the class my first day of first grade, and I didn't have an answer.

"I dunno." He frowned. "Happy."

We lay there in silence, eating our candy for awhile. The only sounds were the tearing of plastic wrappers and the insistent pushing of the wind against the wall of our tent. Finally he spoke again. "Do you think you'll always want to be in the movies?"

I shook my head right away. I hated it. My mom was always pushing me to go to auditions. She loved it when people praised her, telling her how cute I was. How precocious I was. What a good reader I was. I wanted to scream.

He pressed the issue, his green eyes glowing eerily in the dim light. "What do you want?"

"I don't know. I like to read. I just want to read all day."

"And play piano." It's been three years. "You still miss it. I know you do. Mom would get a new one if you told her you played."

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head. "Mom would make me go to music auditions then, too."

"You should tell her." I shake my head again. "Tell her you don't like being in the movies."

"I can't." I put my forehead on my arms, hiding.

"You can."

The side of our tent tipped up on its side, the stakes pulled from the ground by the force of the gusts outside. We scrambled to collect our candy and ran back into the house, his words blown away and forgotten in the windstorm.