It’s never easy being the new kid at school. High school didn’t make it any better either, even if you did come in at the beginning of the semester. He had begged his parents to stay, but his mother had had her heart set on their house for years, so when it finally went on the market, there was no talking her out of it.
“Max, isn’t this great?” she cooed as they dropped boxes down in his new room. “It’s just like the movie! Now don’t go lighting any black flame candles on me, okay?” She ended her sentence with a wink and quick elbow to his ribs. He responded with an eye roll.
Max got to start his sophomore year by moving across the country to start new in a town that took its Halloween obsession to the extreme.
To make matters worse, he made the mistake of sitting down with the least popular girl in the school on his first day. It had been the only free spot in the cafeteria, and he shortly learned it was because she was a social pariah. He didn’t want to give anyone an additional reason to make him a target. Thus, on the second day, he had every intention of passing by her at lunch, but he couldn’t bear to see the look in her eyes as he tried. So he filled the empty space in front of her again. The second day turned into the third, which then turned into a week, and that was how his friendship with Alice began.
They called her weird. He couldn’t see it. She may have worn black all the time, but she was kind and she was the only one to talk to him on his first day. And his chest did a weird flutter whenever her lips curled into a smile reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat.
He was in too deep.
He couldn’t abandon her now.
And part of him didn’t want to.
About a month into the school year, she had found out where he lived, and insisted that she come over after school to do homework. Max was reluctant at first, but agreed. His parents worked until late, so he wouldn’t get any questions from his mother if she left soon enough. It would be nice to have someone to keep him company, even if the knot in his stomach never seemed to go away in her presence.
“I can’t believe that your parents bought the Dennison house,” she said as they approached his front step.
“Yeah, well,” Max said. “My mother is a bit obsessed with that movie. Have you not noticed that she even named me after the main character?”
“I realized as soon as you told me where you live,” she replied. “Next thing, you’re going to tell me that you have a black cat named Binx.”
“We did. He died years ago, though. Our current cat’s name is Salem.”
“How fitting.”
They walked up the steps of the white colonial house overlooking the sea. Max unlocked the door and pushed on it as he turned the knob. He closed the door behind them after they had both stepped inside. There were still a few boxes in the foyer, stacked in a leaning tower just right of the staircase.
“I have a cat, too,” Alice said. “Her name is Luna.”
“This is amazing, Max,” she said when they got to the top of the widow’s walk above Max’s room. It felt weird bringing a girl through his room, but Alice wasn’t some ordinary girl.
They spent the rest of the afternoon sitting and watching the tide coming in. The smell of sea salt pervaded the air as Max continued to stare at Alice in the orange glow of the setting sun. Her red locks gently bounced in the autumn breeze as leaves of gold rained down around them from the trees above. She wistfully gazed out at the open ocean in front of them. Max would have to turn away when her bright green eyes occasionally wandered and rested upon him. The blush creeping up on his face shied him away each time. Otherwise, he could have stared into her jade orbs until the end of time itself.
When the sun had almost sunken below the horizon, he found the courage to ask the question that had been plaguing his mind all afternoon.
“Hey, Alice?”
“Hmm?”
“I know that it’s like a month away, but—” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose before continuing. “Do you think that we could go downtown together Halloween night?”
Her smile immediately vanished.
“Max I—”
“I’m sorry,” he replied quickly. “I just thought—I mean it’s my first one in Salem, and I thought you could be the one to show me around.”
Alice bit at the cuticle on her thumb. The squawking of seagulls filled the silence between them. He shifted in his seat, waiting for her answer.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she said as she started to rake her fingers through her hair, stopping at the end to pulled apart a particularly nasty snarl. “I just can’t. Halloween is a big deal in my family.”
“Oh,” he said, trying to swallow his burning disappointment. “I understand.”
She left shortly after, that afternoon, but she kept coming over as the month of October progressed, and Max kept trying to approach the subject. And every time, she would deny him with the vague mention of some family obligation. He couldn’t help but feel like she was hiding something from him.
Halloween night came and he found himself alone with his parents. He could have gone downtown with a few guys from school, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t Alice.
After the third round of listening to Bette Midler singing, Max got off the couch and marched up the stairs to his room. He glanced at his computer and the new game that had yet to be touched before deciding to head up the second set of stairs to the widow’s walk instead.
He sat down on one of the windowsills. It was unusually warm for that time of year. A balmy breeze sprayed the ocean mist at his face as he stared at the full moon in front of him.
The night grew steadily quieter as he watched the waves crash against the rocks. Before he knew it, the clock on his nightstand chimed midnight. He stood, ready to go to bed when he caught a glimpse of something in the corner of his eye.
He nearly lost his balance as he stuck his torso out of an opening to investigate. Above him was a redhead drifting along on an old broom.
“Alice?”
It had come out in a shout. She jumped at the sound of his voice. Her hands slipped off the broomstick, and she emitted a high-pitched scream as it bottomed out beneath her.
Max launched himself forward out the window and caught her, their bodies crashing against the roof. Alice rolled off him and outstretched her arm, catching the broom before it rolled off and fell to the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” Max snapped after they were both on their knees and had caught their breath.
“So you’re a—”
“Witch?” Alice said, finishing his sentence.
They were safely back inside, sitting on the wood floor of the widow’s walk, Alice’s broom now leaning against a wall. They were alone—everyone downstairs seemed to be still asleep inside, thankfully.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
He started at her. Her usual lion’s mane of red hair was held together in a ponytail, allowing him to see her face more clearly. She was beautiful. He ran his fingers through his own messy black hair.
“You could have shown me,” he said, though he knew she had a point.
Her eyes began to well up. “I know, okay? I was worried that if I told you, you would stop talking to me, and I would go back to being alone.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I d-don’t know. Because I’m the weird girl in school who secretly brews potions and flies around on a broom every Halloween night? Why would anyone want to be friends with a girl like that?”
“Oh Alice,” Max chuckled. “That’s just a bunch of hocus pocus.”
He gently cupped her chin in his hands, brushing her tears away with his thumb. He inched his face closer and shut his eyes as he pressed his lips against hers. He kissed her with intense desperation, needing to calm the fire within his soul. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him closer to her. Witch or not, he was never going to let her fly out of his life because she had put a spell on him, and now he was hers.
Sarah Henrich 