An hour or so passes and I see all the football players, Mark in front, walk across the grass. They are dressed up as mummies, zombies, ghosts, twenty-five of them in total. They sit in the bleachers of the nearest baseball field and the cheerleaders who were drawing on the children begin applying makeup to complete the costumes of Mark and his friends. It’s only then that I realize the football players will be the ones doing the scaring on the haunted hayride, the ones waiting for us in the woods.
“See that?” I ask Henri.
Henri looks at them all and nods, then picks up his coffee and takes a long drink.
“Think you should still go on the ride?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “But I’m going to anyway.”
“I figured you would.”
Mark is dressed as a zombie of sorts, wearing dark tattered clothes, with black and gray makeup on his face, splotches of red in random places to simulate blood. When his costume is complete Sarah walks up to him and says something. His voice becomes raised but I can’t hear what he’s saying. His movements are animated and he talks so fast that I can tell he’s stumbling over his words. Sarah crosses her arms and shakes her head at him. His body tenses. I move to stand, but Henri grabs my arm.
“Don’t,” he says. “He’s only pushing her further away.”
I look at them and wish with everything that I could hear what is being said, but there are too many screaming kids around to focus in. When the yelling stops they both stand looking at each other, a hurtful scowl on Mark’s face, an incredulous grin on Sarah’s. Then she shakes her head and walks away.
I look at Henri. “What should I do now?”
“Not a thing,” he says. “Not a thing.”
Mark walks back to his friends, head hung, scowling. A few of them look in my direction. Smirks appear. Then they start walking towards the forest. A slow methodical march, twenty-five guys in costume receding in the distance.
To kill time I walk back to the center of town with Henri and we eat dinner at the Hungry Bear. When we walk back the sun has set and the first trailer piled with hay and pulled by a green tractor takes off for the woods. The crowd has thinned considerably and those left are mostly high schoolers and free-spirited adults who total a hundred or so people. I look for Sarah among them but I don’t see her. The next trailer leaves in ten minutes. According to the pamphlet the whole ride is half an hour long, the tractor going through the woods slowly, the anticipation building, and then it stops and the riders are to get off and follow a different trail on foot, at which point the scares begin.
Henri and I stand beneath the pavilion and I again scan the long line of people waiting their turn. I still don’t see her. Just then my phone vibrates in my pocket. I can’t remember the last time my phone rang when it wasn’t Henri calling. The caller ID reads SARAH HART. Excitement rushes through me. She must have entered my number into her phone the same day she entered hers into mine.
“Hello?” I say.
“John?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, it’s Sarah. Are you still at the park?” she says. She sounds as though her calling me is normal, that I shouldn’t think twice about her already having my number despite my never having given it to her.
“Yes.”
“Great! I’m going to be back there in about five minutes. Have the rides started?”
“Yeah, a couple minutes ago.”
“You haven’t gone yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Oh, good! Wait so we can ride together.”
“Yeah, definitely,” I say. “The second one is about to leave now.”
“Perfect. I’ll be there in time for the third.”
“See you then.”
I hang up, a huge smile on my face.
“Be careful out there,” Henri says.
“I will.” Then I pause and try to bring lightness to my voice. “You don’t have to stick around. I’m sure I can get a ride home.”
“I’m willing to stay and live in this town, John. Even when it’s probably smarter for us to leave given the events that have already happened. But you’re going to have to meet me halfway on things. And this is one of them. I don’t like the looks those guys gave you earlier one bit.”
I nod. “I’ll be fine,” I say.
“I’m sure you will. But just in case I’m going to be right here waiting.”
I sigh. “Fine.”
Sarah pulls up five minutes later with a pretty friend who I’ve seen before but have never been introduced to. She has changed into jeans, a wool sweater, and a black jacket. She has wiped away the painted ghost that was on her right cheek and her hair is down, falling past her shoulders.
“Hey, you,” she says.
“Hi.”
She wraps her arms around me in a tentative hug. I can smell the perfume wafting up from her neck. Then she pulls away.
“Hi, John’s dad,” she says to Henri. “This is my friend Emily.”
“Pleased to meet you both,” Henri says. “So you guys are off into the unknown terror?”
“You bet,” Sarah says. “Will this one be okay out there? I don’t want him getting too scared on me,” Sarah says to Henri, motioning to me with a smile.
Henri grins and I can tell he already likes Sarah. “You better stay close just in case.”
She looks over her shoulder. The third trailer is a quarter full. “I’ll keep him safe,” she says. “We better get going.”
“Have a great time,” Henri says.
Sarah surprises me by taking my hand and the three of us rush off towards the hay wagon a hundred yards away from the pavilion. There is a line about thirty people long. We get to the back of it and start talking, though I’m feeling a little shy and mostly just listen to the two girls talk. As we’re waiting I see Sam hovering off to the side as though contemplating whether or not to approach us.
“Sam!” I yell with more enthusiasm than I intended. He stumbles over. “You coming on the ride with us?”
He shrugs. “Do you mind?”
“Come on,” Sarah says, and motions him in. He stands next to Emily, who smiles at him. He immediately starts blushing and I’m ecstatic he’s along for the ride. Suddenly a kid holding a walkie-talkie comes over. I recognize him from the football team.
“Hi, Tommy,” Sarah says to him.
“Hey,” he says. “There are four spots left on this wagon. You guys want them?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
We skip the line and jump up onto the trailer, where the four of us sit on a bale of hay together. I find it odd that Tommy doesn’t ask us for tickets. I’m curious as to why he let us skip the line altogether. Some of the people waiting look at us with disgust. I can’t say that I blame them.
“Enjoy the ride,” Tommy says with a grin, the kind I’ve seen people wear when told something bad has happened to someone they despise.
“That was weird,” I say.
Sarah shrugs. “He probably has a crush on Emily.”
“Oh God, I hope not,” Emily says, and then fake-gags.
I watch Tommy from the bale of hay. The trailer is only half full, which is another thing that strikes me as strange since there are so many people waiting.
