Never breaking eye contact with Hazel, Trace hunkers down over the bags, paws through, says gravely, “Are you a helper elf?”

Hazel stares. “Yes?”

He bounces back on his heels, nodding. “Okay, then. Sweet.” Finds the princess mask, turns it over in his hands. “This”—his laughter starts low, from the belly—“is mother-effing genius.”

“Don’t get caught,” Hazel says later, leaning into Trace’s backseat after we let her out at the Terraces, a blast of wind furling her hair around her neck and shoulders, her gaze on Bree. We rode over from the park with five of us crammed into the back, Sage and Bree sitting on laps so Hazel could wear a seat belt. “Okay? Promise.”

Bree, her neck flushing because Kincaid’s in the passenger seat, says, “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not dumb. I know you guys are going to do something bad.” Moon mutters about the cold, but I’ve got to give Hazel props—she stands her ground, refusing to look away from Bree. “Just promise.”

“Promise. Now go inside.” Bree catches the door handle and slams it shut, but Hazel doesn’t go. She stands where she is, watching us back into the street, her image continuing to shrink in the side-view, small enough to fit in a thimble, then to dance on the head of a pin as we go—

—gogogo—

Twelve

—CRUISING THROUGH THE night in our bubble of heat and music and laughter, the greasy smell of monster makeup in my nose as I layer it on, my reflection crammed into the mirrored lid of the makeup case with Bree’s and Sage’s as we do our faces up like death and decay.

Must be true what they say about smell being linked to memory, because at once I’m trick-or-treating in elementary school, riding through a black velvet night in the warm confines of Ma’s car. But now it’s a different car, Bree beside me instead of family, and instead of candy, we have beer, a six-pack stolen from the fridge of Moon’s older brother while they were stealing the weaponry now on the floor of the backseat, Bree and I drunk-giggling already because Kincaid’s here, so close, and anything, literally anything, could happen—

—and too soon we’re braking, crawling at a sloth’s pace into the new quiet, grit crunching beneath tire treads until we’re idling alongside a curb. Hushed residential streets come into focus again, most people at the homecoming football game, semiformal dance to follow, for those who give a shit about such things. The street sign on the corner reads Prefect.

And maybe I’m more scared than I thought.