Page 40 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“So am I. But sorrow doesn’t belong here. It’s a beautiful Halloween night, and we have places to go and people to see before the clock strikes twelve. Come on.” She started up the walkway to the nearest house. It was a whitewashed colonial, trimmed with gingerbread swirls. The roof was remarkably purple.

Lacking anything better to do, Vel followed her to the porch. Hailey rang the bell and rocked back onto her heels, waiting.

The girl who answered the door was slightly younger than Hailey. Her hair was deep purple, save for the orange skunk streak that ran from her temple to the back of her head. She was wearing a tattered black dress and a green apron, and her eyes widened when she saw the pair, shoulders stiffening.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

“We’re not here for you, Mischief,” said Hailey. There was nothing gentle in her voice now. She sounded older, somehow, and disapproving all the way down to her bones. “Go get your parents.”

Mischief turned and fled.

“You didn’t have to scare her,” said Vel.

“Yes, I did,” said Hailey. “She lives here. She’s not like you. She doesn’t get to leave. The Calendar Country nearly killed her parents, and they had each other. She grew up there, and it never made sense, and it never wanted her. So now she’s here, and she gets to live with the fact that half of Halloween thinks of Trick and Treat as trick-or-traitors, who turned their backs on us when we needed them. They’ll never be full guardians again. They’ll live here, until their daughter is old enough to try to prove herself to the holiday, and then they’ll decide whether they want to stay in an empty house haunted by the ghosts of all the times they failed her, or whether they want to pass their mantles and let someone else take up their roles. I’ll be honest. I’m hoping they choose the latter. This holiday needs the roles they’re no longer fit to play.”

“What would happen to them if they did that?”

“We’d die,” said Trick, stepping up to the door. She was an older version of her daughter, dressed in black slacks and an orange sweatshirt. She carried a plastic cauldron filled with candy, and paused to offer it ceremonially to her visitors.

Hailey took a huge and greedy handful before elbowing the motionless Vel in the side. “You have to take at least a piece,” she said. “If you don’t, you’re shaming the hospitality of the household, and that can open them up to all kinds of nastiness later on. There are rules. Even here, there are rules.”

Vel reached out and cautiously took a single piece of candy. The wrapper crinkled under her fingers like dead leaves. She slipped the candy into her pocket.

“This isn’t a social visit,” said Hailey, as Trick lowered the bowl. “Your husband home?”

“He’s with Mischief, trying to calm her down,” said Trick. “She’s terrified you’re here because it’s time for one of us to go.”

Hailey sighed. “I told you we’re not going to start trying to replace you until she’s come of age. You have years yet. If she’d grown up here, she’d know that I don’t lie about things like that.”

“I know,” said Trick, stepping to the side to let them into the house. “But she didn’t grow up here, and we have to live with that. Enter as you will, there is no danger here.”

“There is now,” said Hailey, and stepped inside.

Trick waited for Vel to enter before shutting the door and putting her bowl of candy on a nearby table. Then she turned, looking at the velvet-clad superheroine frankly. Finally, she beamed, offering her hands.

“Velveteen,” she said, and there was a warmth in her voice that Vel had never heard there before. “It’s so good to see you. Oh, don’t look so surprised. I know we were never friends, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t followed your career with interest. You had to be something special, if you were being courted by three out of the four Seasons.”

“This is her last night,” said Hailey. “She chooses a holiday home by midnight, or she’s back to the Calendar Country, and she may never darken our door again.”

“So soon?” Trick’s eyes widened. She gave Velveteen another look before smiling, this time sympathetically. “You must be awfully warm in all those rags. Would you like a place to change?”

“As long as all I’m changing is my clothes, please,” said Velveteen.

“The bathroom’s right through there,” said Trick, indicating the hall. Velveteen—Vel, she was still undecided; she could still be Vel—nodded understanding and appreciation before heading quickly out of the living room, leaving Hailey and Trick behind.

The bathroom was surprisingly ordinary. The fixtures were shaped like bones, and the wallpaper was a cheery mix of candy corn and skulls, but the light was bright, and there were no cobwebs. Vel smirked to herself as she removed her frilly doll dress and began unzipping the sack that had been her Halloween skin. Trick and Treat might be home for good. That didn’t change the years they’d spent in the Calendar Country, or the impact those years had had on them.

Then the false skin dropped away, and Vel stopped thinking about wallpaper or regional traditions. All she could do was stare at her reflection, and blink back the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her.

She was still wearing her costume. Even after everything she’d been through, everything she’d become, once it was stripped away, she was still wearing her costume. The burgundy velvet was torn in places, tattered, bloodstained, bleached by time and sun. Not all the blood was hers. The bandages that had been intended to keep her from bleeding to death were gone, and when she poked her fingers through the hole in the side of her leotard, she found smooth, fully healed skin. There didn’t even seem to be any scarring. She choked back something that was neither sob nor laughter. How about that for a medical plan: be snow, be flowers, be a rag doll, and you, too, can survive a life-threatening injury without any unsightly reminders.

“Vel?” Hailey’s voice was accompanied by a knock at the bathroom door. Vel jumped, whipping around to face the noise. “Hey, I know you’re probably all excited by having, like, internal organs and a vagina and stuff again, but we don’t have much time. Come out as soon as you can, okay? We need to get this done.”

Vel took one last look at herself in the mirror, took a steadying breath, and gathered her discarded Halloween husk in her arms before opening the bathroom door. Hailey was gone. Vel walked down the hallway to the living room where Hailey was waiting, seated on the couch between an uncomfortable-looking Trick and Treat. The Halloween Princess smiled wistfully at the sight of her.

“Look at you,” she said. “All bright and battered and half-starved. We’ve ridden you hard, haven’t we? But don’t worry. This is the last sales pitch, and then the last trial, and then, boom.” She hooked a finger in her mouth and pulled it out again, making a popping sound. “It’s off to the Hall of Mirrors to tell the big guns what you’ve decided. Whether you’re going to stay with us, or leave forever.”

“What do you think?” asked Vel.