God help us all.
The spookiest thing about this extravaganza was all of the women in matching pink sweatshirts manically scrambling to make the parking lot into a Halloween casbah, each terrified that Head Courtney would find her efforts wanting and put her on cleanup duty. Given Head Courtney’s less-than-enthusiastic response to the prize boxes I was unloading from Big Bertha and the fact that the rest of the Courtneys had shunned me following my “outing,” I already knew who was going to be manning that stupid push broom all night.
Gabriel had wanted to accompany me to the carnival, but I asked him not to come, just in case I ended up stuck in the dunking booth. I didn’t want him to witness my humiliation. Fortunately, this carnival didn’t have dunking booths. Or clowns, which, for me, was another bright side.
Andrea was covering the shop for me while I served my carnival sentence. She and Dick would have the place to themselves for the evening. Emery had announced his intentions to attend a Christian-themed haunted house called “Hell House” weeks before. Emery had been spending less and less time at the shop lately. Andrea hoped that meant he’d found a girl to go to prayer meetings with.
We didn’t have time to overanalyze that possibility—or to consider warning the girl—because we were expecting a big Halloween-night crowd. Adults seeking a safely scary atmosphere. Teenagers looking for supplies to summon the Blair Witch. Having Emery standing in the aisles, trying to hand the customers religious tracts, would probably spoil the ambience.
Andrea was dressed up like Glinda the Good Witch, covered in pink sparkles from head to toe. The voluminous tulle skirt of her rented costume barely fit behind the coffee bar. Somehow she’d managed to talk Dick into wearing a Scarecrow costume. He looked like an extremely embarrassed Raggedy Andy doll and planned to stay in the stockroom for most of the night.
“Quit trying to put off going to the carnival,” Andrea had told me, filling a bowl with those rock-hard peanut taffy candies wrapped in orange wax paper. “We’ll be fine here.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” I muttered, sliding into my Pepto Bismol pink Chamber of Commerce sweatshirt.
“And I hope that you realize that as a witch, I am claiming double overtime for you making me work on a religious holiday,” she said, gesturing to her girlie ensemble.
“Watch it, or I’ll drop a house on you.” I sneered as I walked out the door.
Since Jenny had yet to show up, Nice Courtney was helping me unload and distribute the prizes to the various game booths. Zeb was pitching in, too, but I think he was just there to get first crack at the funnel cakes. Imagine how sad he was when he found out that this wasn’t that kind of carnival. The closest thing he could get to junk food was a sugar-free caramel apple. Nonetheless, he’d promised to come running, yelling that Jolene was in labor and we had to leave right away, if things got bad with the Courtneys.
“Well, it’s still pretty much a high school parking lot,” I said, hefting a box of free tote bags out of the trunk. “But I’m sure after everything is inflated, it will be a magical autumn wonderland.”
“Just keep telling yourself that.” Nice Courtney snickered. “Where do you want the popcorn balls?”
“Wherever Head Courtney won’t see them,” I muttered, throwing a blanket over the individually wrapped offerings from the A&P. “Don’t you know this is a no-carb charity carnival?”
Nice Courtney giggled. “I’ll smuggle them to the kids under the guise of giving them their complimentary hand sanitizer.”
“I’ve had a bad influence on you,” I said, gasping in mock surprise. When I made my escape from the chamber, I hoped that Nice Courtney and I could keep in touch. If nothing else, she’d proven to me that just because people are shiny and preppy, that didn’t make them automatically evil. It was entirely a matter of choice. She’d single-handedly undone a lot of damage that had been inflicted in high school.
“Jane!” Judging from the look on Jenny’s face as she barreled across the parking lot, I guess she’d heard about my visit with Grandma Ruthie. And being Grandma’s favorite and confidante, it was up to her to set me straight.
Speaking of shiny and evil personal choices.
“Oh, what now?” I muttered.
“Who do you think you are? Are you out of your mind, scaring Grandma like that?” she yelled, her face only inches from mine. “How could you do that to your own grandmother?”
“Let me get this straight. You’re yelling at me for my behavior during a conversation with Grandma Ruthie, in which Grandma Ruthie yelled at me for how I behaved during a conversation with you?” I sighed. “Do you two organize a ‘be a pain in Jane’s ass’ schedule?”
“She could have had a heart attack!” Jenny insisted.
“Oh, please, Ruthie’s an unstoppable force of nature, like the Black Plague or Richard Simmons.”
“That’s it,” Jenny growled through her clenched teeth. “Stay away from my family. Mama, Daddy, Grandma, the kids, everybody. You obviously don’t care about us or what we think. So, just stay away from us.”
“I know you’ve been lobbying for this since the day I was brought home from the hospital, but you can’t kick me out of our family, Jen,” I told her.
“It’s not ‘our family,’” she spat. “It’s mine.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I cried.
“Oh, don’t pretend you care about being a part of this family.” She sneered, snagging a foam-rubber “combat hammer” from the jousting game Head Courtney had banned from the midway. She jabbed it into my chest, backing me into the inflatable bouncy house. The giant clown head that hovered over the entrance leered down at me, and my latent coulrophobia forced me to change directions toward a muddy patch behind the staging area. But not before I was able to grab a foam weapon of my own.
Jenny poked me again with the hammer. “You’ve been waiting to get away from us for years. We’re not smart enough for you, not sophisticated enough. Do you think we don’t notice when you make your little jokes under your breath? You’ve wanted to get out of the Hollow for years. Why don’t you just go? We certainly don’t want to keep you.”
“How would you know that I want to leave?” I demanded, smacking her arm with the foam. “How the hell do you think you come close to knowing how I feel about anything?” Jab to her chest. “From our long heart-to-hearts? All those nights you came over to watch Sex and the City ?” Smack to her other arm. “Do you realize that the last time you and I had a conversation that ranged beyond the weather and whatever misinformation Mama’s fed you was at Aunt Jettie’s funeral luncheon? And I think you’d had too many toddies to remember.”
“Oh, you’re just all about the open, sisterly communication, aren’t you?” She landed a respectable blow to my face, knocking me on my butt into the mud.
Considering my vampire strength and speed, that was just embarrassing.
“When have you ever made an effort to spend time with me? To get to know me?” She hit my head to punctuate each point. “Oh, no, you’re just so freaking above it all, you couldn’t bring yourself to stop sniping for five minutes and just be my sister. Boring old Jenny with her husband and kids. Lame Jenny who likes to play Pictionary with her friends on Friday nights. Silly little Jenny and her silly little hobbies.”
“You’re mad because I won’t scrapbook with you?” I asked, dumbfounded, though I’m sure it was more from the ringing blow to my skull after she managed to rip the foam off the plastic bar that supported it. I shook it off and jumped to my feet.
“Even when we were kids, you thought you were so much better than me!” Jenny yelled, panting as we circled the mud pit. A crowd had gathered, cheering us on. “I never had to worry about you copying me like a normal little sister. No, you wouldn’t lower yourself to my level. I didn’t like the right books. I didn’t like the right music. I wasn’t sarcastic enough for you. Not good enough for Jane. And then you get turned into a freaking vampire! I have to hear from Mama about your fabulous undead makeover, about your undead rights group and your hundred-and-fifty-year-old boyfriend. How can I compete with that?” Each sentence was punctuated with an impressive smack upside my head.
“You’re mad because I’m cooler than you?” I guessed again, but Jenny was too worked up to notice I’d said anything. With a cry that would have made Xena proud, she swept my leg. My feet went flying out from under me, and I landed with a wet thwap on my back.
She growled. “You’re always saying that I’m the favorite, that you get treated like a child. You’re always bitching about Mama bringing food over to your house and folding your laundry. Do you know how many times she’s brought dinner over to my house? Twice. After each of the boys was born. I had to go through twenty-three hours of labor without drugs just to get a damn pot pie! You think Daddy ever just drops by my house for a chat and some pizza? You think Mama calls me before I leave for work or checks on me at night when I’m home alone? No, because ‘Jenny can take care of herself. She never needs any help,’” she cried, throwing her head back and screaming at the sky. I used her distraction to knock her back on her butt and pummel her repeatedly. Jenny, on the other hand, had resorted to flinging mud at me. Literally.
“Because you’re perfect!” I yelled, throwing a glob of muck into her face. “Do you think it was easy growing up with the Jenny Early as your older sister?”
Jenny spluttered as she spit the mud out and landed an impressive clump in my hair, considering that she couldn’t see. “Do you think I ever walked into a classroom where the teacher didn’t say, ‘Oh, you’re Jenny Early’s sister, we know what to expect from you?’ I have to live up to the example of a woman who color-codes her underwear drawer. ‘Jenny’s so responsible. Jenny’s house is always immaculate. Jenny cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner and still had time to make place cards out of acorns and rice paper!’ Don’t blame me because you’ve had to live up to your own hype.”
I pushed up onto my feet, scraping several layers of mud from my face. “And frankly, I’m tired of hearing ‘Oh, that’s just the way Jenny is’ and ‘She didn’t do it to hurt your feelings, she just likes things a certain way.’ ”
“When have I ever hurt your feelings?” She gasped, trying and failing to stand. She slumped to the ground and looked up at me, squinting through the blood and sweat dripping in her eye.
“Let’s see, holidays, birthdays, graduations, family dinners, baby showers, church functions, school plays. You put me at another family’s table at your wedding reception, Jenny.”
“Because I didn’t want Grandma Ruthie to drive you crazy with questions about when you were going to get married,” Jenny protested.
“And because I embarrass you,” I said, wiping a clod of dirt from my cheeks.
“You don’t embarrass me! You annoy me. You irritate me. You drive me up the damn wall. But OK, wait, the vampire thing, that did embarrass me a little bit. But still, I don’t hate you.”
Awkward silence. I looked into the future and saw the two of us, fighting and sniping at each other like Grandma Ruthie and Aunt Jettie. Though, obviously, I was immortal, ageless, and way hotter than septuagenarian Jenny. I didn’t want that. I chose not to have that kind of relationship with her. But I didn’t know how to fix it.
Fortunately, Jenny did.
“So, I hurt your feelings?” she asked, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly.
“Well, you don’t have to look so dang pleased about it,” I muttered.