SHIVER: 13 Sexy Tales of Humor and Horror (9 page)

Cora’s story was different. She didn’t choose to be brave. She’d been forced. When I’d found out Will had died, about a year after my divorce, I thought about reaching out to her. But in the end, I let it go. What could I offer her? I had no idea what it was like to lose the love of my life. I didn’t even know what it was like to
have
a love of my life.

And then we’d walked up on that intersection a few weeks ago. Same place, same time, again and again. What were the chances of walking up on my high school crush a dozen years after graduation? We were both single. We’d both been single for long enough to start dating again. I mean, if destiny was a real thing, it couldn’t have made its wishes any clearer.

But I resisted. A relationship with someone who’d been dealt such a shitty hand wouldn’t be easy. It would take work, time, and a ton of patience. I wasn’t sure I’d have enough. I didn’t know if I’d
be
enough.

But they said the best things never were easy. I’d gone for easy before, and I’d ended up alone. How many times would I let this girl slip through my hands? It was time for me to step out of my comfort zone, stop screwing around, and take a chance on something. I knew that. But knowing something, and acting on it, were two very different things.

Any day now
. That’s what I told myself every Friday. Just ask her out. It wasn’t like I had to marry the girl. I didn’t even know her. She could be one of those people who thought eating fruit on pizza was disgusting. She could prefer cats to dogs. Or worse, she could use
there
,
they’re
, and
their
incorrectly.

Or she could be everything I thought she was all those years ago – smart, kind, funny, loyal.

I needed to find out. If she was a cat lady or used improper grammar, I could just start driving Olive to school, or even send her to a private academy. But I needed to know either way. I couldn’t keep thinking about this girl without acting on it.

It was adorable this morning when she thought I was asking her to babysit. And tonight, the way she shyly glanced up from her phone after reading my texts, made me want to take her home. Tonight. I didn’t know texting someone who was standing right next to me could be so stimulating.

Remember, patience
.

After ninety minutes of trick-or-treating and secret texting, we were more than ready to head to the Hurrah. We rode over in Cora’s SUV. You could tell a lot about a person by the interior of their car. It was almost as personal as being in their bedroom. All signs pointed to good. It was clean, smelled like the Yankee Candle apple air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, and there was a pack of Trident gum sitting in the cup holder.

As she drove us over, I hoped we’d run into those Mean Moms at the Hurrah. I knew they gave Cora a hard time. They were like adult versions of the bully in
A Christmas Story
. Oh, I better find out if Cora is an
A Christmas Story
person or not. Nobody seemed to have mediocre feelings regarding that movie. They either loved it or hated it. If she didn’t love it, that could seriously impede our chances of a solid relationship.

We pulled up right next to Mean Mom #3, Tabitha, as she and her demon children were getting out of their ostentatious Hummer. I didn’t understand why these chicks thought they lived in Beverly Hills. This was a suburban, middle-class neighborhood, and they acted like it was the damn Hollywood Hills.

Ah, how nice it was that they would be able to see the four of us at the Hurrah together. Being here with Cora was great in and of itself. But having the opportunity to piss off those lunatics was a real nice cherry on top.

Cora grabbed Lucie by the hand, I grabbed Olive by the hand, and we walked towards the door to the gymnasium. Tabitha watched with her mouth hanging open.

***

7:48 P.M.

“Oh no,” Cora
said, as she shook her head subtly. “We’ll sit this one out.”

“What?” I asked. “Do you have something against apples?”

We’d already been to the pumpkin bowling lane, the eyeball bounce, and the candy corn relay race.

She shrugged and gave me that shy look again – the one that made me nuts. “No, I have something against sharing germs with a bunch of strangers.”

How could I argue with that? To tell you the truth, I didn’t care if she bobbed for an apple. I just wanted her to take off her clothes.

“Eh, you’re right. Let’s move on,” I said, and we headed toward the Pin the Hat on the Witch booth.

“Yoo-hoo.”

I recognized that voice. It was a sound that made me grind my teeth. By the look of annoyance on Cora’s usually-sweet face, I knew she felt the same way.

Shauna.

“Yoo-hoo, you two.” Who said yoo-hoo? Really? “We’re about ready to start the first grade treasure hunt. You guys are going to enter, right?”

A treasure hunt? Why was I just now hearing about this?

My competitive blood started to boil immediately. They thought
they
were competitive. Ha.

It. Was. On.

***

8:00 P.M.

I wish I’d
known about this sooner. I would have made us team t-shirts and water bottles.

“Each team will get an envelope,” Mrs. Lewis, one of the first grade teachers explained to all of us. “Inside you will find a list of ten items for you to take pictures of this evening. All pictures must be on the same phone or camera, and each picture must include at least one of your team members. When your team arrives back here with all ten photos, you will receive a map to help you find the treasure chest. Everyone understand?”

We all nodded and Miss Mater, another first grade teacher, started handing out envelopes.

“On the count of one, you may all open your envelopes. Five…”

There were about fifty of us standing in the corner of the gymnasium and we all started shouting the numbers out loud.

“Four, three, two, one!”

“Good luck!” the teachers yelled as the teams tore into our envelopes like animals.

I was glad to see that Cora and Lucie had the same competitive fervor as Olive and me.

I read the list quietly to our team and everyone started shouting out at once.

“The library!”

“The playground!”

“The science lab!”

I put my hand up to silence them. “Wait. We need a plan. We need organization.”

While the other teams scrambled off in chaos, I sat the four of us down at one of the lunch tables and mapped out a plan. We needed to hit many areas of the school, but we were going to do them in geographical order, instead of going back and forth six times. I went to this elementary school. I knew my way around.

“All right, team,” I said, when I was done mapping out our hunt, “we can get some of these done in this room. Like a photo with a skeleton.”

“The science lab upstairs,” Lucie said.

I shook my head and pointed to a skeleton decoration taped to the wall in the gym. “Nope. Right there. Cora, you’ll take the pictures.”

We ran over to the skeleton and took a picture of Lucie standing next to it. We got Olive with a jack-o-lantern near the bowling area, and a picture of both girls wearing witch hats from the pin-the-hat game. I didn’t see any of the other teams in the gym. I had a feeling they were making this harder than it needed to be.

“A book about ghosts,” Cora read over my shoulder. “We need to go to the library.”

The four of us exited the gymnasium doors. I expected to find the other teams scrambling around and tripping over each other out there. There was nothing, no one. We walked from a crowded gym and into a dark and quiet school.  Maybe it was the fact that it was Halloween, but it gave me the creeps. I had an eerie feeling as we climbed the marble staircase to get to the library. Where
was
everyone? There were nine or ten teams in this scavenger hunt. Where were they? And why hadn’t anyone bothered to turn on a light?

We opened the wooden door to the library. It was dark in there, too. The school had moved on from the card catalog system since I’d been there. The monitors of the computer systems glowed in the room. We headed toward them. Cora used the light from her phone to see the keyboard. She typed the word
ghosts
into the search bar with her free hand.

I was drawn to the way her face was lit by the light of the screen, and I studied her profile. Her little nose, her lips. Then I saw a figure move out of the corner of my eye. We weren’t the only ones in this room.

My skin filled with goose bumps instantly. I knew it was ridiculous for a grown man to be creeped out, but I sort of was. If someone else was here, why were they so quiet? Wouldn’t they be looking for ghost books, too? I shrugged it off and tried to concentrate on Cora’s lips again. I’d seen too many episodes of
48 Hours Mystery
. I should start watching more sports.

“Got it,” Cora said quietly. She looked up at me with innocent, non-freaking-out eyes. She hadn’t seen the shadows moving in the stacks. The girls hadn’t either. “This way,” she said, and nodded towards the back of the library.

I held up my phone to use as a flashlight as Cora led us to the aisle of ghost stories. Just then I saw a figure dart from one aisle to another. I turned around quickly to catch the person, but I wasn’t quick enough.

“What’s wrong?” Cora asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

She led us down the aisle and swept her fingers across the spines of the books on the eye-level shelf. She found the one she wanted, pulled it off the shelf, and handed it to me. I put it next to my face and gave her a huge, goofy grin as she snapped a pic.

“Oh shoot,” she said, looking down at the phone. “It’s too dark. I need to turn on the flash.”

She pressed a few buttons on the touch-screen and then held it up to try again.

I held the book next to my head and she took another picture, this time with the flash.

Then she gasped.

“What is it?” I asked, even though I kind of knew.

She silently handed me the phone and I looked at the picture on the screen. There was something, or someone, standing behind me in the photo. The figure had a pumpkin on its head. I turned and looked behind me, but the person was gone.

She shook her head in what looked like annoyance. I could tell she didn’t want to show any fear and scare the girls. She was clearly braver than I was. She probably killed spiders in her house all by herself.

She placed the ghost story back on the shelf. “Where to next?”

“The art room,” I answered. We needed a picture of one of us with an easel showing a pumpkin drawn on it. “Let’s go.”

The art room was empty and dim just like everything else around. There was one light pointing at the art easel in the middle of the room. The easel held a large pad of paper, but the pages were blank.

“I guess we need to draw our own,” I said, looking around for crayons or markers. There were none in sight. The last team had probably hidden them. Ha. Good idea.

Cora dug around in her purse just as I saw a fifth shadow appear on the floor in front of us. Someone was standing behind us! I whipped my head around quickly. There was no one there.

I tried to shake it off as Cora pulled a pen out of her purse. She drew a pumpkin in about ten seconds. She was so self-sufficient.

“Nice!” I commented. I held up my hand for a high-five. She slapped it with zest.

I loved being part of a team. It was that kind of adrenaline that had led me to a career in live TV. Having her there with me, on my team, was such a turn on. I didn’t care about a treasure chest that was probably filled with cheap candy like Smarties and Dum Dums. But I loved it that we had a common goal and a common enemy. The four of us, I had a feeling we could go places. I mean, metaphorically. We could be something.

“A picture of a team member on stage,” she read off the sheet. “The auditorium.”

We jogged down the dark halls toward the auditorium. It was on the opposite end of the school from the gym where we’d started. We were making our way down the hall when I heard a loud bang, like someone was banging on the door of one of the classrooms.

“What is that?” Lucie asked.

“Nothing. Just keep moving,” Cora told her.

A few doors down we heard another bang. Someone was inside the classrooms banging on the doors. Wow. Someone had really gone above and beyond to make this scavenger hunt scary. I wished haunted houses and hayrides put in this much effort.

We walked into the doors of the auditorium and walked past the rows of seats to get to the stage. I lifted Olive up, set her on the stage, and Cora snapped a picture.

We all turned around at once to go. The girls screamed.

There was a person sitting in one of the seats of the auditorium. He or she was wearing black clothes and the Ghostface mask from the movie
Scream
. The person didn’t move. I would have thought it was a prop if not for the fact that it was
not
there a minute ago when we came in.