The Silliest Halloween

A high school comedy for Halloween.

The Silliest Halloween

 

The silliest Halloween ever started when I was digging in my locker.  It was Halloween.  Even though I was 15, I had worn my costume to school.  I’d seen lots of other kids wearing costumes as I’d wended my way through the busy hallways and stairwells to my locker, in the deepest, darkest corner of the high school.  Although most kids thought this was the worst locker location ever, that made it prime real estate for my friends and me.  The block of ten tall, narrow, steel lockers was the only block of full-height lockers left in the school.  No one else wanted to be stuck down here, so my friends and I had offered to take the unpopular location.  The office had jumped at the chance to stop the complaints, even though only ten kids had complained,  No, the five of us had all ten lockers, and the secluded cul-de-sac at the end of the science lab corridor, all to ourselves.

“Hey,” grunted a familiar voice by my left shoulder, and I heard to rattle of a key in a padlock.

“Happy Halloween,” I replied, my face still buried in my locker, where I was shuffling books on the extra shelf I’d got one of the kids from the metal shop class in the voc-ed building to rivet into my locker.  He’d put them in all ten lockers, just because I held his hand to walk the length of the main corridor, which had boosted his reputation enough to let him get an actual girlfriend a week later.  Okay, it hadn’t been my finest moment.  I wasn’t even sure of the kid’s name.  Josh?  Joe?  I wasn’t sure.

Beside me, I heard Jamey shuffling books and papers in his locker.  We had a big trig test in first period, and were allowed one index card of notes, both sides.  I heard his pen scratching.  I made a few notes of my own.

My locker door smacked me on the shoulder, sending me toppling forward into my locker.  I felt Jamey stumble against me, and then regain his balance.

“Hey!” he shouted.  “I’m tryin’ t’ write!”

“So sorry, James!” I heard Robin laugh, just behind Jamey.  “Here, Debs, lemme getcha outa there!”  A pair of hands gripped my shoulders, and pulled me upright.

“Uck!  Thanks, Rob,” I gasped, catching the edge of the locker door.  “Watch who yer runnin’ into!”  I scribbled another note.  I heard a high-pitched, musical giggle.

“All my fault, Debbers!”Connie giggled.  “I pushed ’im harder’n I thought!”  Connie started twirling the dial on the combination lock to my right.  I heard Robin doing the same a couple of lockers past Jamey.

“Ready, Scholars, for Mr. Thibbideau’s trigonometry quiz?” called the way-too-cheerful, slightly formal voice of the fifth member of our little gang, Terry.  Terry’s parents were from somewhere in Europe, and his English came strictly from school, since not a word of it was spoken at home.  So, he sometimes sounded a bit like a teacher.  Besides, he was off-the-chart brilliant.

“No!” Jamey and I growled in stereo.  Then, “Test!”

At that, we both yanked our heads out of our lockers to stare at each other.

I dropped my pen.

“You!” we both gasped, still weirdly in unison.

Connie actually dropped to the floor, doubled over with hysterical giggles.  Robin fell back against the concrete blocks of the opposite wall, guffawing.  Terry, still a foot or two behind us, cried, “My word!”

Each of us had chosen the most unlikely Halloween costume ever.  We each wore a pair of dark brown flannel suit pants from a past era, a light blue dress shirt with an overly-large collar, buttoned to the top, and a comically large, red clip-on bow tie.  In the left shirt pocket, each of us wore a white plastic pocket protector, filled with two red ballpoint pens, a pencil topped by a wedge-shaped, yellow eraser, a folding slide-rule, and a stick of peppermint candy.  Hanging open over that, and falling past our knees, we each wore a white lab coat.  Even the blue ink stains at the bottom of the left breast pockets of the lab coats were almost identical.  Each of us wore a grey Einstein-esque wig, stiffened to stand out in every direction, as if we had just been electrocuted.  Stuck to each of our upper lips was an unkempt grey mustache.  To complete the effect, we each wore a pair of absurdly large, horn-rimmed spectacles; I was grateful Mom had got me contacts this year, so I didn’t need my own glasses.

Jamey and I stepped away from each other in shock.  Terry, never ruffled by anything, clapped each of us on the shoulder.

“You’re …” I choked.

“Mr. Thibbideau!” we all shouted.  Connie got the syllables out between giggles, which were tapering off into delighted chuckles.  Robin and Terry laughed in great delight.  Jamey looked like he was ready to cry, until, suddenly, he broke into to widest, sunniest smile that ever spread below such a grotesquely caterpillar-like false mustache.  Finally, I caught my breath, and then I dissolved in laughter, falling into a group hug with Jamey and Terry.  In seconds, Robin and Connie had joined the hug, and we all laughed together, until the first bell rang.

We broke apart, hastily stuffed books, notes and pens into the five matching, brown leather valises we were all carrying for this one day, and slammed the five tall, steel locker doors with a single, resounding clang.  The snicks of five locks being secured was like a snatch of crickets’ song: snick, click, click, whir (the combination wheel), clink, tap, whir, click!

We dashed around the corner, out of our quiet, if dim and slightly dark alcove, into the frantic cacophony of the science corridor.  We rushed past the kitchen, which already smelled sadly of overcooked spinach, boiled chicken, and something unidentifiably sour.  All five of us were across the room’s threshold when the second bell rang, signaling the start of the first period, but the clack of Connie’s heel touching down on the classroom bell coincided exactly with the fist vibration of the bell on the PA system.

Every other student in the room collapsed in a fit of laughter on sight of us.  There were whistles and cat-calls.  We started toward the row of five empty desks along the back wall of the classroom, but stopped, still standing, as Mr. Thibbideau turned from scribbling test rules on the chalkboard. 

He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with the tip of his right forefinger.  He blinked owlishly, and his mustache looked more like an angora caterpillar than ever as he bit his lower lip.  We all stared back at him.  Unconsciously, we all mimicked his motion, pushing our glasses higher on our noses.

“What the di-i-i-ivil is so fu-u-u-unny?” he asked, bewildered, stretching and stressing his vowels as he often did when he didn’t know what was going on.

“Happy Halloween!” Robin, Carrie, Jamey, Terry, and I chorused, before joining the general merriment of the class.

It was the silliest Halloween ever.

We couldn’t have planned it better, if we had tried!

Author's Note

Ignore typos and grammar. Also posted as a book chapter. Initial reactions and constructive criticism welcome.