Race for Candy

Race for Candy

“Why are you wearing a trash bag?” I asked my friend Stephen. I had just opened my door to find him standing there wearing a tall hat made of black tape, and a black trash bag with holes cut out for his head and arms. I knew it was the first time he was allowed to go trick-or-treating, but I thought he had to have a better idea of a costume than a trash bag with a hat.

            

“I’m a magician, Christina,” he told me with a beaming grin on his face. I just smiled back and accepted it since I still needed to get my mother to do my hair. I was going to be Princess Leia, but I was much too young to tame my unruly hair into two buns on the sides of my head. My mom was more agreeable with this costume than she had ever been with any of its predecessors simply because part of it was a white turtle neck and she had always had a fear of me freezing to death while trick-or-treating.

            

“If someone tells you that you can have however much candy you want, only take three or four pieces,” my mom told me.

            

“Okay,” I responded.

            

“And don’t walk in the middle of the road,” she continued as she yanked the left half of my hair into a bun.

            

“Okay.”

            

“And don’t run when you are going to get candy. The candy isn’t going anywhere,” she kept going.

            

“Okay,” I said. But actually, the candy was going somewhere: into the bags and baskets of the other numerous children in my neighborhood. And that just wasn’t okay.

After I was fully dressed as the Star Wars heroine in all my nerdy glory, my dad drove Stephen and me down my neighborhood to get on the hayride that all the kids got on to go around getting free candy from families that it seemed our parents had deemed trustworthy. When we got to the house where the hayride started, I immediately dragged Stephen along to hunt down my friends from school.

            

“Uh, why are you wearing a trash bag?” one of them asked Stephen.

            

“He’s a magician. Isn’t it obvious?” I asked. I had felt, since I met him in first grade, an inherent need to defend him. He was so short and bony, and people always picked on him. His mother was essentially a crazy-Christian and had a strong dislike for me because the word “sex” was on a paper I wrote in third grade. I was talking about gender. But anyway, until this year, his mother had told him that trick-or-treating was an act of Satan-worship and hadn’t let him go, nor would his parents give out candy to trick-or-treaters.

            

My other friend nodded. “I can see it. I mean, magicians definitely wear black. And the hat totally works. Nice costume Stephen,” she commented. Mr. Goodman, the owner of the hayride, called for everyone to get on and that it was time to go. Stephen and I went and sat down as close to the back as we could. After all, we wanted to get to the candy first.

            

We chuckled and ran from house to house, racing to ring the doorbell first and say “trick-or-treat” to the owners. One house was so covered in fake spider webs that I was pretty sure I could spot some real ones inside the fake ones. At one door, a Great Dane barked at us until someone shooed him away and brought out the candy. As an extremely small child, I was a bit traumatized from having a dog taller than me barking directly at my face through a glass door.

           

“Trick-or-treat!” we harmonized at the next door. A smiling old woman came out with a giant box of DVDs in her arms.

            

“Take whichever you like, dearies,” her voice creaked, almost like a wooden floorboard in an old house. I was pretty excited about getting a free DVD. At least, I was excited until I saw that they were all A Series of Unfortunate Events. That movie made me angry. It deviated too far from the book. And that old woman? Her greeting was misleading.

            

We were approximately three-fourths of the way done with trick-or-treating when some higher power decided to attempt to give me the life lesson of “always do what your mother tells you.” We were running, just like my mother told me not to, up one of the steeper driveways. No one came to answer the door, but there was a bowl of candy set out on the porch, so I took four pieces. Everything was going smoothly. However, when we were running back down the driveway to go to the next house, Stephen fell.

            

I’ve always had a problem with blood. The idea of something meant to be inside my body coming out freaks me out as well as making me feel light-headed and nauseous. Both of Stephen’s knees were completely bleeding, so I told another kid to find the hayride people or someone’s parents to help.

            

“Here, I’ll go pick up your candy,” I offered, scampering around, trying to find the loose candy in the darkness. Some of it had probably rolled into a ditch, but I wanted to salvage as much as I could. About five minutes later, the kid I had sent on his journey successfully returned with an adult.

            

“What happened?” he asked.

           

“We were going a bit too fast and I tripped,” Stephen answered. The whole mood on the evening was dampened for me. It was Stephen’s first Halloween and, in my need to not listen to my mother, I had completely ruined it for him. I looked in my pumpkin-shaped bucket. It was almost full to the brim. One of the next five houses was going to be mine, so I could just go home if I wanted to.

            

“I think I’m going to go home Stephen,” I told him. I felt guilty. I was the one who had encouraged him to run, and, in my childish mind, Stephen’s knee injuries were a lot more severe than any adult would think they were.

            

I hugged Stephen and my other friends goodbye and apologized to him before taking the turn down the road to get to my house. I made sure not to run, and I stayed as far to the side of the road as I could. My house came into view and I trudged up to the front door. My mother opened it after I rang the doorbell. I just looked at her for a moment and walked right past her, going into the living room to do my annual “sort the candy” ritual.

            

“You came home early?” she asked. I just nodded. “Are you okay?” Twizzlers go in the “icky” pile. “Christina?” Skittles go in the “super yummy” pile. “What happened?” she put her hand on my shoulder, forcing my attention. I looked up at her.

            

“Stephen fell,” I said.

            

“Oh? Is he okay? How did he fall?” she asked. I paused, throwing out an unwrapped piece of candy. I wasn’t allowed to eat those. I looked up again to see my mother staring at me expectantly. I let out a long sigh.

            

“We were running. Because the candy totally does go somewhere if we don’t get there before everyone else.”