Good Things I'll Never Do Again

Twenty-Six: Ghosts, Ghouls, and Getting Even

"'Revenge" sounds so mean. That's why I prefer to call it "returning the favor"."

~Anonymous

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October 28th. The house is a wreck.

Dusty and I had a huge fight three days ago because she wanted to be Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead. Aimee was the first one to tell her no, which meant I had to reinforce it. Which meant I had to deal with all the problems.

In the end, after Dusty screamed for five minutes straight, we came to a compromise; she would be Rick Grimes, disguised as a fairy, so he can trick the zombies into thinking he's not human.

Finn and Jemma have been spending some time after school to get her costume ready. Like I had suspected, she was the only one who wanted to put a lot of effort into her Halloween costume. She wanted to be a female Iron Man...and insisted on it being realistic. I managed to talk her out of the laser-hands idea, so now she's piecing together the armor plates made of plastic. Finn helped her design the structure, saw off each piece, and, of course, paint it.

I get stuck with the crappy job of Dusty's fairy costume. Thankfully Eloise is indifferent to the whole thing, saying she'll pick out a costume eventually.

"Aunt Beverly," Dusty says behind me as I sit at the sewing machine, "the skirt needs to be bigger!"

"No," I mutter. "We're not going back to the store again. I have inhaled enough glitter as it is anyway. When the doctor tells me I have lung cancer, he'll open me up to find a coating of what looks like Michael's Jackson's glove inside."

I pull the sparkling fabric away from the machine, only to find that it hasn't been sewing. At all.

I curse under my breath and slam the button to turn the stupid machine off.

"I'm done!" I shout, tossing the skirt to the floor.

"But you can't be!" Dusty cries. "Rick Grimes will be spotted by zombies and eaten if he doesn't have the fairy skirt! You said so yourself!"

"I've never sewn in my life!" I retort. "All I wanted was a simple life," I sigh, "one with ice cream and The Bachelor. That's it. Why did I have to get all of this?"

I rest my forehead in my hands before rubbing my face. "Grab me some safety pins, Dusty," I instruct tiredly. "Maybe we can pin it together instead of trying to sew."

"You got it, boss!"

As she scampers away, I hear footsteps on the stairs.

"Hey Aunt Beverly?" Eloise asks.

I look up. "You want a fairy skirt too?"

She shakes her head. "No, I wanted to ask you something."

I sit up and lift an eyebrow. "Sure."

She steps over towards me, rubbing one sweatered arm nervously. "Uh, well, you know how the costume party is tomorrow?"

"If the world was ending and I was fighting the undead corpse of my great-aunt, I wouldn't be able to forget the costume party tomorrow."

"Well...there's another party happening at my friend's house that night, so I was wondering if I could go to that." She looks down. "You know, instead of the one at school."