“I have reason to believe,
Maybe this year could be better than
The last…”
--Counting Crows, “Long December”


Thus began October. October, let me say, is my least favorite of the months. It’s the kind of month where everything feels like excitement and special things. Maybe that’s why I hate it so much. Because it feels like it should be so much cooler than it is.

But October started with a whimper…not the bang that I was expecting. I returned to lunches in the library, but Dashiel was there less and less often. It seemed now that Deke and Dara had made their entrance, he was needed to help them with the crowds that gathered.

I tried not to resent this. After all, we’d left off Hamlet, and picked up with Crime and Punishment, which was giving me an honestly new view of human guilt. I wondered if Bethany felt guilty about what she’d done to me.

The girl who I mentioned previously was still sitting in the back of the class every day, still not raising her hand. She turned in her homework on time, and she never missed a day, and that was honestly all I noticed. I still wish I’d paid more attention then. Caught more details then.

I could have saved myself all this heartache.

Instead I just drifted along through most of a lazy October, playing more basketball. Coach Wilkes reminded me a couple of times that there were scouts in the bleachers, that I should play harder, but I just couldn’t persuade myself to get really into it. That’s the curse of October I suppose. Or something.

I went to a few of Matt’s parties, went to a couple of the other “social” things that happened. I tried not to think about college, tried to pretend it was years off. Because in all honesty for me, it probably was.

Dad didn’t think I needed to go, but we weren’t poor enough that I could disregard that and apply for scholarships. So I just sort of hoped that it would somehow work itself out and stopped worrying about it.

I think that helped to color my surprise when one day Dashiel stopped in the library and dropped the Stanford application in front of me. “Fill it out,” he insisted, no teasing coloring his intonation at all. I laughed at the thought, but he continued to push.

I told him, as I tended to, that I would think about it.

I tucked it in my backpack, and it languished there, forgotten, for weeks. I’m surprised I ever managed to get it done on time. When you’re a teenager, you assume that you have all the time in the world for things like this. You don’t. Time goes by so much faster than you would ever think.

In all honesty, I think that’s the only things that got me through most of October. Got me to the day when Dashiel again stopped in at lunch. We’d passed each other a few times in the hallways, we’d nod and smile, and then we’d head off to class or the bus, or whatever it was we had to do.

I was getting used to not having any friends except Matt.

Anyway, one day late in the month, Dashiel came into the library at lunch, pulled down the standard textbook and sat down. I sat at his table and offered a hesitant smile. After all, we were acquaintances, not best friends.

“I have an invitation for you in my bag,” he offered. Somewhere I the back of my mind I perked up, but my conscious had forgotten that I was expecting anything from his court.

At the end of lunch he pulled out a black envelope that said Zach on it. It was the same writing I’d seen him forge a hundred times, but softer somehow. I doubted a teacher would notice, but I certainly did.

The ink was silver. The invitation smelled faintly spicy, as if someone had kept it in a drawer with cinnamon, cloves, and red pepper. I liked the smell, and I faintly recalled Dara had smelled something like it at the dance. Some part of me was hoping that she had missed me as much as I’d missed having a “group”.

I opened it eagerly when I got home, and say a sheet in the same handwriting. Something about a day of the dead party, Nov. 6th. The address was listed, and a second sheet had a map from Map Quest with directions from my house. An address that I know she couldn’t have gotten just any old way, but I figured Dara had her followers who would have given it to her.

She was more of a princess than Bethany had ever been. I wonder, now, if that burned Beth. If she couldn’t get over it because her place had been taken in her senior year of high school, and suddenly she wasn’t cute enough, blonde enough, or pretty enough.

I risked finding out whether or not Beth cared the Friday before the party. Figuring we’d been broken up for a couple of months, I passed her table at lunch, thinking it was safe.

She was grumbling about how they had all her friends, and her look, and how she was sure their party was gonna be lame, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be seen there. I thought that was a good thing, but didn’t see the need to comment on it, so I just kept walking and sat down next to Dashiel at an empty table.

Shortly after, Dara joined us, Deke in tow, and a few other kids with them. Sitting down next to me, she immediately struck up a conversation, as if we’d been talking the whole way down the hall and out onto the patio.

“You don’t have to bring anything to the party,” she added to whatever she’d been saying before. I had to admit I’d already been lulled by the echo of her voice in my head. Something about it lulled me into a sort of quiet place in my head.

The bell rang, saving me from the embarrassment of having to reveal that I’d just been smiling and nodding the whole time.

Saturday couldn’t pass fast enough, and that with me spending half the day in bed. For some reason I was excited about this party. I was thrilled to be going. I couldn’t place my finger on what had me so enthusiastic, but I somehow knew it was going to be great.

For some reason the drive to their house had me holding my breath. I’d never driven up Mulholland after dark, and something about it and the view and the night took my breath completely from me. It sounds like a stupid, romantic, mushy thing to say… But for the first time in my life since I was young, it seemed as if everything was full of possibility. Full of wonder. Full of excitement.

And the night was just beginning.