Iris: The American Dream Series Book One

Pudding Boy and the Redheaded Girl

Our street in Stanford was called California Avenue. We moved into our new house in October when the sun was just starting to put itself to bed earlier, and the afternoons were perfect for taking pictures of dying things in golden light. Our house was tall and the color of sand. It was set back from the street by a lawn that sloped down towards the sidewalk. The grass was thick and green, and the trees on our street dropped leaves so red and orange that they looked like they'd been scorched by fire.

Mom and Oma were in the big kitchen with its white cabinets. The oversized stove and refrigerator looked like they'd been made for giants. Oma spoke to Mom in Dutch as they unpacked boxes and put linens into cabinets and drawers. They didn't even notice when I crept through the laundry room and out the back door. The moving men unloaded our new couches and beds from a furniture store truck, and carried them in through the garage-I'd never lived in a house with a garage before. I ducked through the bushes next to our house, camera around my neck, ready to make my escape.

The camera had been a gift from Mom and Dad on my tenth birthday (just before Dad had left) and it was by far my most important possession-aside from Alice the fox. Just like Pim had said in the kitchen back in Laren, I'd taken photos of windmills and canals, but I'd also taken them of anything that interested me. Photography was my way of exploring, learning, and of processing the world around me.

I watched the moving men for a minute, but the windows of our new house were wide open to let in the clean autumn air, and I could hear my mom calling for me: "Iris! Come in here, please!" But I didn't want to help, so I clutched my camera and ran.

California Avenue was leafy and quiet. Almost all of our neighbors were other professors from Stanford University and their families. Mom had explained to us that it was a neighborhood of faculty housing, so most of the people who lived there would be working with her at the university.

All up and down the street the houses were decorated for this upcoming holiday called Halloween, the details of which thrilled me and the twins. How exciting to be somewhere new just in time for a holiday! And the name: Halloween-just saying it gave me a chill. When we'd first noticed the fabric ghosts swaying from the tree branches, the bright orange pumpkins on the doorsteps, and the twinkling amber lights hanging from the eaves of the houses, Pim and the twins and I were confused-we'd never celebrated Halloween. But Mom and Oma knew all about this strange tradition, because Oma had moved to New York with Opa in the 1960s, and they'd raised their family there. My mother had spent the first twelve years of her life as an American girl before they'd moved back to Holland. It's kind of funny: she lived here in America until she was twelve and then moved to Holland, and I lived in Holland until I was twelve and then moved here. I wanted to ask her how she'd felt being uprooted from the only home she'd ever known at my age, but I decided to save it for another time.

Mom described Halloween to us on our first night in the new house as we sat cross-legged on the dining room floor. We still didn't have a table, so we'd ordered a big pizza with sausage, olives, and mushrooms, and Oma had put a blanket out underneath the giant chandelier so that it felt just like an indoor picnic.

"Halloween is kind of like St. Martin's day, only a couple of weeks earlier," my mom explained to us, tilting her head so that she could take a bite from the end of her pizza.

"But why are there so many ghosts and scarecrows hanging up on people's front doors?" Romy asked, picking the mushrooms off of her pizza and putting them on Esmee's plate when she wasn't looking. Esmee noticed the mushrooms but didn't seem to mind.

"Because," said Oma, "people once believed that they needed to scare away bad spirits. But it's just for fun now. Children dress up in costumes and knock on doors, shouting 'Trick or treat!' and holding out their bags for free candy."