“Great, right!?” she asked as she bounced up and down.
“It’s great,” I replied, pulling the fabric on my dress down, doing my best to become a bit more modest and failing miserably. At least it would be dark out. Maybe that would save me, but when I came down the stairs and my mom got a look at me, she pretended to faint.
“Oh, Jesus!” she gasped. “My valedictorian daughter has become a floozy!”
“Stop, mom,” I laughed, picking her up and hugging her. “Margaret got it for me. It was the only costume left.”
“Well, at least it’s dark out,” my mom replied. “And maybe the husbands around here won’t notice!”
“Ew, stop,” I laughed.
“I have a pot roast in the oven for when you guys get back,” my mom smiled. “Have fun, be safe and don’t take candy from weird men in a van!”
“Okay, mom,” Margie groaned as mom kissed her on the forehead. “Let’s go, Emily!”
Feeling like the loosest witch in town, I stepped out the front door into the busy Halloween evening.
Our neighborhood was filled with kids and they were everywhere. It was safe where we lived, so there weren’t a lot of parents out, and Margie and I quickly began making our way up the streets collecting as much candy as we could.
“Let me have that!” she exclaimed, snatching a thick chocolate bar in the shape of a pig from me and stuffing it into her basket.
“Hey!”
“You snooze, you lose!” she laughed as she ran into the woods up a dirt trail that led to the next street over. I followed her and found her waiting on the other side with a cheeky look on her face.
“What?” I asked. She didn’t answer. “What!?”
“Oh, nothing!” she laughed as she skipped to the next house. “I just think you’ll like this house.”
She knocked as I came up the steps behind her. There was a portrait of what looked like a teacher who had turned into a zombie holding a pencil like he was ready to stab us both through the chest.
“And why’s that?” I asked. But there was no time for Margie to answer, and I didn’t need one anyway.
My heart almost leapt out of my throat and my knees went weak as the door swung open to reveal Mr. Cox standing there looking gorgeous in a pair of sweat pants and a white Henley.
“Well, what do we have here?” he smiled, dropping some chocolate in Margie’s basket. “A couple of witches—?”
He froze when he saw me, his hand reached out towards my basket.
“Emily?” he asked.
“H—hey, Mr. Cox,” I stammered. The chocolate fell from his hand, but Margie didn’t scramble to pick it up. She was too busy looking at me and smiling.
“Dylan,” he replied. “Call me Dylan.”
My pumpkin basket was just about overflowing with sweets, but all of a sudden, I had a new craving.
Chapter Three
Mr. Cox
“Nice costume,” I stammered.
It would look better on my bedroom floor.
That’s what I wanted to say, but I restrained myself—which was next to impossible considering the fact that my body was suddenly on fire and I was practically drooling all over myself.
There she was, Emily Powell, my former student who I’d been dreaming of for the last four months, standing on my porch wearing the skimpiest witch outfit you could get away with in a neighborhood like this. And boy, was she pulling it off (but not in the way I wanted to do with it).