Read Online All Hallows' Eve by Vivian Vande Velde - Free Book Online Page A

hers. It's like we both have two families.
    As kids, we used to share toys; now that we're teens, we've moved on to sharing makeup. On occasion we have been known (don't tell the teachers!) to share homework. We've always shared clothes. That's one of the main reasons to have a best friend! We once even shared a boyfriend—though that, honestly, was a bit of a test of our relationship. But then we figured you can get a boyfriend—especially one of Chuckie Zarpentine's quality—anywhere. But how often are you going to find a forever friend?! So we both dumped him.

    This picture is from last summer. Every year for, like, the last five years, Aimee Ann's parents have rented an RV for a week at Darien Lake and—because they know better than to try to separate two best friends!—they invite me to go with them. Camping, swimming, enjoying all-week passes at the amusement park, being together day and night: It's like one, never-ending pajama party for two.
    You can see the Ferris wheel in the background. Aimee Ann and I love riding on Ferris wheels.
    Notice how we're wearing our matching Mickey Mouse T-shirts? "You're like twins," my mother said, then laughed, when she brought them home for us, "separated at birth."
    Aimee Ann and I loved those T-shirts.
Aimee Ann
    I know I sound like a cold, hateful monster when I complain about Nikki.
    But, oh, those retarded Mickey Mouse shirts. I don't think I ever truly hated an article of clothing as much as I hated those. I mean, c'mon, we were about to start
high school,
not third grade—and they were secondhand from the Volunteers of America Thrift Shop. The one Nikki gave me had some sort of anonymous stain on the front, like maybe the previous owner had a problem with getting her food into her mouth in any consistent manner, or maybe she just drooled a lot.

    Nikki might or might not have noticed. She could be hard on clothes herself. She was always borrowing my stuff and returning it with stains or spills or snags or stretched-out waistbands.
    But, "Be nice," my mother kept telling me. "The Bianchis haven't had as easy a life as we have. It wouldn't hurt you to be bighearted."
    The Bianchis. Poor husbandless, friendless Mrs. Bianchi, who worked at the Stop 'n' Go Mini Mart in the afternoon and as a bartender in the evenings. Ever since they met, when she almost ran my mother down in the school parking lot (and any truly sane mother would have taken that as an omen), she and my mother were supposed to take turns driving us to and from school. But Mrs. Bianchi was always calling to say, "Could you please drive the girls in tomorrow? I'm having to work the late shift, and morning comes around so fast when I haven't gotten home till 3 A.M. I mean, I
could
do it if you can't..." Or, "I know it's my turn to pick the girls up, but I need to cover for one of the other cashiers, who didn't come in today..."

    Even on days when she
said
she'd pick us up, Nikki's mother wasn't reliable. After she forgot us at school two or three times, my mother learned to hang around the house around two forty-five or three o'clock so I could call her, just in case.
    Don't tell me Mrs. Bianchi didn't count on that.
    "It's rough for her," my mother would defend her, "with no husband and having to work two jobs." She didn't seem to mind Mrs. Bianchi taking advantage of her, and she didn't seem to mind Nikki taking advantage of me.
    And poor fatherless, friendless Nikki. Who only had me.
    Not counting my parents, of course, who always took her side.
    "Ooh, I've never seen such a beautiful doll," Nikki would say, and my mother would nudge me, hard, until I would say, "Oh well, I hardly ever play with her anymore. Would you like her?"
    Nikki never turned down anything my mother forced me to offer to her, no matter how grudgingly I made that offer.
    Or, "Ooh, that sweater is so soft. And it matches perfectly the stripe in that skirt my mother just got me at the consignment shop. You're so lucky. It's tough to get