My Miserable Life (6 page)

“Okay, would you like five pieces? The Halloween Fairy will give you a gift certificate if you leave her the rest, okay, Ben?” She picked up a basket she'd set by the door. “Would you like an apple?”

Hadn't she heard that you can't give out apples for Halloween? No one in their right mind gave out apples! I had barely eaten any candy, and I felt like I was going to throw up.

I was trying not to cry.

“What five pieces do you want, Ben?” my mom asked.

I picked the biggest candy bars and stuffed them into my mouth. I didn't even enjoy them. The whole night was ruined.

And if you think that was bad, wait till you hear what happened next. The doorbell rang, and my mom ran to answer it. She was holding the apple basket, and her wings were getting caught on furniture and dripping feathers everywhere. Monkeylad was following her in his hot-dog bun. I heard her talking to the kids at the door, and then she called out, “Ben, can you come here?”

I don't know why I did it. I was like a robot. I walked slowly toward the door, and there were three trick-or-treaters standing on the step. There was a boy dressed as a werewolf, a girl dressed as a vampire with tiny plastic fangs and a red velvet cape, and a kid with the same costume as mine. Only better. It was the version with the beating, bleeding heart and the blood that spurted out and dripped down the mask face when you squeezed the pump. And the kid? It was Rocko Hoggen. He was with Leif Zuniga and Serena Perl.

“Hi, Ben,” Serena said. She had glitter around her eyes, and it sparkled in the porch light. “I didn't know you lived here. Your dog is cute. Are you okay?”

“Hey,” I said, looking down at my feet, away from her glitter eyes, away from her dimples, away from her braids, away from her fangs.

A cop came up behind them. He was over six feet tall and bald. “Excuse me, ma'am, are you handing out apples to these kids?”

My mom took a step back and almost dropped the apple basket.

The man laughed and adjusted his black stretch pants. “Just kidding. I'm not really a cop. But some kids are going to use the apples to bomb cars. You really can't give out apples on Halloween anymore,” he said.

“Well, at least they're healthy,” my mom said. “You gave me a little scare there. I think our kids know each other?”

“I'm Peter Hoggen,” the cop said. “Nice to meet you.”

My mom shook his hand and smiled. “I'm Ben's mom,” she said. “Basically I just go by that now. Ben's Mom. Angelina's Mom.”

“Looks like our boys have the same costume, Ben's Mom,” Peter Hoggen said. “Almost.”

Rocko pressed the button that made his heart light up and seep blood.

Was I in a bad monster movie? Was I in ten-year-old-boy hell? No, I was in my own miserable life.

“Are you sure you don't want an apple?” my mom asked.

The cop had already walked away, waving his hand over his head and chuckling to himself. “An apple a day doesn't keep the cops away on Halloween.”

“Uh, that's okay,” Rocko said to my mom's apple. “Our bags are kind of full. Bye, Ben. Nice costume. Hope that cakewalk cake was good.”

“Bye, Ben,” said Leif Zuniga. “See you in class.”

Serena Perl looked back at me and flashed her little fangs with a worried look in her eyes before she disappeared into the fog that had crept up like a ghost.

I ran into the bathroom and looked at myself. My eyes showed through the mask. The eyeliner Angelina had applied to make me look scarier was streaked from my tears. And Serena Perl had seen.

*   *   *

My mom tried to talk to me while I lay in bed with the sheet over my face.

“Are you a ghost?” she said.

I didn't answer.

“Should we cut out some eyes so you can be a ghost?”

I threw the sheet off. “I told you I'm not five years old anymore, Mom.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I know you're too old to believe in the Halloween Fairy. That's why I dressed up as her, because it's part of the joke. And I'm sorry I gave out apples, too. I promise I won't do that again.”

I didn't say anything back to her.

“But I still don't want you to eat too much candy.”

Now I really wasn't going to speak.

In the morning there was a piece of paper under my pillow. Guess what it was? A gift certificate to the Lurning Bush school-supply store. There were a few pigeon feathers scattered on the sheet beside it.

 

NOVEMBER

MY MISSION STATEMENT

by Ben Hunter

Did you know that early Californians lived in mud huts and that missions were their first real buildings? Missions are interesting to me for several reasons.

Since building my own mission, I've learned how difficult they must have been to build. My mom took me to the Lurning Bush, and we bought Popsicle sticks and sticky white clay. The clay kept sticking to my fingers and not the Popsicle sticks. I wonder if the people who built the missions had this much trouble.

Another reason missions are interesting is that the people who built them wanted to be self-sufficient. They had to produce crops and maintain livestock and develop their own water systems.

For me, being self-sufficient is serving myself cold cereal and milk when my mom has an early-morning meeting and can't force me to eat oatmeal. So I think self-sufficiency is good. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to run away and be entirely self-sufficient. I would eat candy on weekdays, run through sprinklers in the morning instead of taking showers, and hang out with stray cats if I needed company. But I guess I would miss my mom and my sister and especially my dog, even though he gets demon eyes.

A third reason missions are interesting is that they were built close enough together so people could use them as rest stops on long trips. My family and I went on a long camping trip two summers ago, and we had to stop at rest stops. When you have one mom, two kids, and a dog, someone has to pee pretty often. Bathrooms at rest stops usually smell bad. My sister complained that there weren't any mirrors for her to look at herself or hot water to wash with or paper towels to dry her hands. My sister would not have done very well in mission days.

 

CHAPTER 6

AN IMPOSSIBLE MISSION

After I turned in my report, I learned more about missions. I learned from Ms. Washington that the Native Americans didn't just learn how to build big fancy whitewashed adobe buildings with tiled roofs overnight. They were conquered by the Spanish, who then tried to convert them to Christianity and made them work really hard at the missions.

My mission didn't come out very well, but I was still proud of it, since I made it without a kit. Angelina had told me that when she was in fifth grade, her class had to make missions and every-one except her used a kit. She got the best grade because hers was handmade.

When I arrived at school, I saw a playhouse-sized building standing in the middle of the class-room. It had a red roof, real glass windows, and a bell tower.

Rocko Hoggen stood at the entrance, ushering people inside. Only three kids could fit at a time, so the rest of the class lined up, trying to get back in again, except for Joe Knapp, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor reading. He looked up through his dorky glasses for a second and wiggled his fingers in the air at me in what might have been a wave.

“Hey, Ben,” Rocko said. “You want a turn? Can I see your mission?”

I wanted to hide it behind my back. It was a gooey blob. Some of the clay hadn't stuck to the Popsicle sticks, and they were showing through. I backed away, and the mission slid off the piece of cardboard I'd put it on and fell onto the floor. Ms. Washington helped me pick it up.

“You did a good job, Ben,” she said while we were crouched on the ground together. She smelled like butter, cocoa powder, and sugar. “I see you made it all by yourself.”

Unlike
some
people, I thought.

I looked up from my broken mission to see Serena Perl; she was ringing the real bell in Rocko's bell tower.