The front of the store was still just as clean and neat as it had been a few minutes earlier. I hadn’t expected anything less.
Lisa went to the front door and locked it and then turned to me. “I’ll get the vacuum out.”
“That’s okay. Why don’t you go ahead and go home? I’ll take care of the floor and you can go home and get rested for tomorrow.”
She grinned. “You don’t have to tell me twice. See you in the morning.”
“See you.” I headed to get the vacuum.
Chapter Three
“Wow, I like your costume,” Lisa said, looking me up and down.
We were standing at the parade assembly area and I was dressed as a hippie. I had put the costume together with items I’d found at a thrift shop and I was pretty happy about how it turned out. I had managed to find genuine bell-bottom jeans and a fringed leather vest, then added a beaded leather headband, round lens sunglasses, and painted a peace sign on my cheek. I was feeling pretty groovy. Lisa dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and she had a stuffed Toto dog tucked beneath one arm. Her dark hair was done in two braids and she could almost pass for Judy Garland’s double.
“Thanks, your costume is pretty cute, too.”
She beamed. “I bought it with my own money. I told my mom I wanted something really nice for the parade.”
“It sure is cute.”
Mom, Christy, Linda, and Carrie were all here to toss candy to the crowd, too. Carrie had dressed her twin girls as sheep to her Little Bo Peep. The girls were adorable in their fluffy sheep costumes, holding hands and talking to each other while we waited.
We each had a trick-or-treat bag filled with candy and we were standing behind the float for the junior high school. The junior high had a jack-o’-lantern theme on the back of a flatbed truck with a group of kids dressed in Halloween costumes and holding trick-or-treat bags. They had made six huge jack-o’-lanterns from Styrofoam and placed them on the bed of the truck, then carved some from real pumpkins and placed them around the truck, too.
We were assembling behind the shops on the parade route. Ethan was in a police cruiser, along with several other policemen in police cars and two fire trucks at the front of the line. They would start us off with their sirens and horns blaring. I had gotten a good look at the crowds on my way over and I thought this might be the best Halloween season we’d ever had.
“All right, listen up, listen up,” Darleen Grant shouted into a megaphone as she walked up the sidewalk. “We are going to get started at ten a.m. sharp. We don’t want any laggards. Try to keep the appropriate distance between floats and marchers. And most important of all, smile! People have come from all over the state to see happy Pumpkin Hollow citizens entertaining in the only way we know how. Happily!”
I glanced at Christy and she rolled her eyes. She had never been a fan of Darleen’s, ever since she had cheated for her daughter at a dance recital by giving gifts to the judges. Christy and Darleen’s daughter Hannah were nine at the time, but apparently my sister knew how to hold a grudge.
I chuckled when she rolled her eyes and I put my fingers to the corners of my mouth, drawing it up in an exaggerated smile.
She shook her head, laughing.
“My mom is going to take pictures,” Lisa said. The excitement in her voice couldn’t be missed. “She’s going to put them on her website. I told her to get some of us.”
“I hope she gets a lot of them,” I said. Lisa’s mom had recently taken up photography, and she had a real talent for it. I had seen a number of the pictures she had taken online and if Ethan and I ever had formal photos done, I wanted her to be the one to take them.
“Anyone have any questions?” Darleen asked.
We shook our heads.
“Good. Let’s get started then.” She trotted up to the beginning of the line and leaned into the open window of the nearest police car.
“Remember to toss the candy close to the crowd,” Mom said. “We don’t want the kids to go out into the street any further than they have to.”
Lisa straightened the stuffed dog beneath her arm. “Got it.”
The blare of the sirens began, and we all moved slowly toward the intersection where we would make a right onto Ghostly Avenue and then another right onto Spooky Lane. The parade would go down the length of the street and then make another right when we got to the end of the parade route as we made our way back to where we began. We were going slowly, and as long as everyone kept moving, we’d end up back where we started within an hour.
Christy was dressed as a roaring twenties flapper, my mother was a scarecrow, and Linda wore a cupcake costume she had made herself. Christy walked a few feet behind me while Mom and Carrie and the girls were on the far left side of us while Lisa and Linda took the middle position. We each had a handful of candy, and as we made the righthand turn, we could see all the visitors standing along the parade route. Some of the tourists wore costumes, but most were still in summer clothing. That was fine because other Pumpkin Hollow residents were dressed up and lined the parade route to show their support.
I waved at the kids and tossed a handful of candy. There was a mad dash for it, and I realized how important
