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

matching pieces secondhand."

    Always in front of my mother, Mrs. We-Must-Be-Aware-of-Our-Standing-and-Our-Obligations-in-the-Community. Mrs. Soft-Touch. Mrs. Easy-Mark.
    Nikki always wanted to do whatever I was doing, be with who I was with. When we were younger, it was flattering, and I admit there was a certain fascination for me to be at the Bianchis, since Mrs. Bianchi believes the food pyramid consists of pizza, root beer, and chocolate, and in every other way, too, is just about as opposite my mother as two people can be. But after a while, Nikki became almost a stalker. She joined the choir just because I did, and the chess club, and the volleyball team. She'd ask to copy my homework; and if I didn't let her, it meant she'd get detention; and then I'd have to stay after, too, since we rode together, so what was the point of saying no?
    Last year, after Chuckie Zarpentine and I had worked together for a week on our final joint economics report, then skated together for four couples-only numbers at Krista Orsini's roller-skating birthday party, and I was just waiting for him to invite me to the Last-Chance-Before-Summer Dance, Nikki went ahead and asked him to go with her. Like she hadn't heard me saying, "Oh, I hope he asks me," every time he walked by for about two months.

    I refused to talk to her for a week, then she showed up at our house, crying and claiming she'd had no idea I'd been interested in Chuckie, offering to break up with him, and begging to be friends again.
    Did my father, who may be brilliant as a tax auditor, a church alderman, and a world-class Scrabble master catch on that she apologized only
after
the dance?
    That was when he invited her, yet again, to Darien Lake with us.
Nikki
    Now that I'm dead, I find myself kind of floating rather aimlessly.
    If there are other dead people around, I'm not aware of them. And living people seem totally unaware of me.
    The first person I tried to talk to after the accident was—of course—Aimee Ann, since she is, was, and always will be my best friend. I was sure if any two people could connect the world of the living with the world of the dead, it would be us.
    Nothing.

    I tried my mother, both before and after she was told of my death.
    Nothing there, either.
    I tried my deadbeat father.
    No wonder my mother left the creep.
    I even tried the guy who had run me over with his car.
    What's the good of being a ghost if you can't even haunt the person who killed you on Halloween night?!
    There's nothing—besides me—in the world of the dead. And in the world of the living, I can pass through walls, but I also pass through anything I try to pick up—unless I give it my absolute, total, don't-even-
think
-about-thinking-of-anything-else(!) concentration.
    But I can be single-minded.
    It's one of my best attributes.
    I concentrated with all my being.
    When a ghost tells you that, she is not speaking figuratively.
    I concentrated with all my being, and—eventually—I was able to pick up this picture that my mother had tucked into the coffin with me.
    I was able to take the picture out of my dead hands and up into my spirit hands.
    I am bringing it to Aimee Ann to comfort her in her sorrow. To let her know that not even death can separate us.

Aimee Ann
    I didn't mean to kill Nikki.
    We were walking home from Celeste Camillo's Halloween party because Mrs. Bianchi was supposed to pick us up, but—surprise!—she hadn't shown up. Meanwhile, my parents were at a tax auditors' Halloween party for my father's company (one can only imagine how much fun
that
was), and it was too embarrassing—half an hour after everyone else had left and Celeste was sitting on the couch yawning so hard her jaw was cracking—to ask her to roust her parents out of bed and drive us the few blocks to our houses.
    Nikki was wearing an outfit that was supposed to make her look like a rock star, because that was what I had told her
I
was going as. But I've known Nikki for ten years, so I