“Hurry Up, Kaitlyn.”

Kaitlyn cannot hurry up. It is Halloween, and she is dressed as her favorite thing, a book. Every time she takes a step, her thigh bangs into the cardboard cover, knocking the costume to one side. The only way to walk is in tiny steps. Fast, tiny steps.

But Portia and Yesi keep getting farther ahead. She can see them talking. They are swinging their brooms above their heads and talking. They have forgotten all about her. Kaitlyn should call to them, demand they wait up. But she has the kind of voice that’s good at whispering with a best friend, not so good at shouting.

At least now they are walking down the Pine Street hill, which is straight and steep and therefore easier. Kaitlyn, Yesi, and Portia are twelve. They have Halloween figured out. Their plan is to walk down Pine hill, through downtown -- downtown Laconia, New Hampshire is Y-shaped, maybe five blocks altogether -- to Pleasant Street alongside Lake Winnisquam, where the houses are bigger, and the candy is too.

It had been the three of them alone at Portia’s since the school bus dropped them off, eating microwave pizza and watching Heathcliff. Yesi and Portia are both dressed as witches. They had flopped over at the waist and pulled combs the wrong way through their hair until it was puffy as a rat’s nest. Then they stuck their brooms between their legs and took turns chasing each other around the living room.

Now they are taking the long way, down Pine hill, rather than the shortcut down Batchelder, over the footbridge, and behind the old textile mill. They have to because Yesi lives this way, and her mom wants to take a photo. Kaitlyn’s mom wanted something similar just that morning, but Kaitlyn threw such opposition she backed off.

Kaitlyn did not want Portia to see her house with the flamingos in the yard. Her mom bought them two summers ago at a flea market in Sarasota during an impromptu trip to her grandparents after Kaitlyn’s dad moved out.

“Flamingos are funny. And flamingos in New Hampshire?” her mother had said, shoving the metal posts into the earth. “Even funnier.”

Kaitlyn had agreed. But then, one afternoon right after school started, when Yesi and Kaitlyn were practicing cartwheels, Yesi pointed out how the sun had faded the birds’ plastic from pink to white, and also, a hairline fracture along one wing.

“Flamingos are funny,” Kaitlyn said.

“Yeah,” Yesi said. Yesi was the sort of friend who would never say a mean thing. But sometimes, the way her face looked, you could tell she was thinking it.

Kaitlyn’s face is warm as she baby-steps down Pine hill. Ahead, Portia and Yesi turn right on Dixon toward Yesi’s house. By the time Kaitlyn arrives, Yesi’s mom is outside, oohing over the witches. She positions Kaitlyn in the middle, steps back. The shutter snaps.

“Wait here. I have candy.” Yesi’s mom disappears.

Yesi spots the neighbor’s black cat slinking through the yard. She cackles, assumes a starting position. “Look! The perfect costume accessory!”

The two witches beat it toward the cat.

Kaitlyn starts after them. She takes one step. She’s stuck. The cardboard edges of her costume have caught on the branches of a low bush. Her head hole and arm holes are too high to pull down. Her nose is inside, her eyes peeking over a cardboard horizon. A branch prickles against her leg, poking her through the too-small spandex leggings her mother ordered her to wear. The way her foot is pinned down, she can’t even move away from it.

There’s no use calling for help. Her mouth is inside the costume. Her nose has been running in the cold, and now it’s begun to drip. There is snot on the rim of the head hole. There is snot on her nose and cheek. It itches terribly, and she cannot reach an arm up to wipe it.

She could try rocking back and forth until she falls out of the bush. The costume is wide but thin. Easily toppled. But she doesn’t want to risk hitting her head.

In a moment, the door squeaks open, and there are steps. “Look at you!” She feels hands under her arms. She is being lifted. She raises her knees, points her toes, and her feet jiggle loose.

“Thank you,” Kaitlyn says, and waits with Yesi’s mom for an awkward moment as Portia and Yesi jog back. Candy is dispersed.

Yesi’s mom wants to talk to Yesi alone on the porch. Kaitlyn can tell she’s getting a lecture, probably about leaving a friend in the bush. Yesi’s eyes move between Kaitlyn and her mom. She’s frowning.

Then she’s back, and they’re walking toward Pine hill. Yesi walks on one side of Kaitlyn, and Portia walks on the other, which would be nice, except it proves that Yesi’s mom told her to. Also, the sidewalk is only just barely wide enough. Every time they reach a telephone pole, Yesi has to skip ahead to avoid walking into it.

They turn right at the bottom of Pine hill toward downtown and walk Main Street, past the tire shop, past the grocery store, past Dunkin’ Donuts. Streetlights blink on. They’re by the Lions Club when two boys on bicycles approach. They are in black, black sheets flapping behind them like capes. Last minute, low-effort teenager costumes designed to score candy. It’s Portia’s older brother, Tom, and his friend.

“There you are.” Tom sticks a foot out, brakes. “Mom said stay together. You’re late.”

“We know,” Portia says.

Tom pushes back his sleeve and checks his watch. “We were going to be at Pleasant Street by six-thirty before it gets crowded.”

“We know.” It’s Yesi this time.

“It’s already six twenty-six.”

Nobody speaks. Kaitlyn’s thigh is sore from where the book bangs. She wishes she was reading.

“Well, walk faster,” Tom says. He pedals away.

So Yesi gives up walking beside Kaitlyn. She and Portia go on ahead. Kaitlyn’s legs have turned to Jello. She feels weak, her face itches, and she has developed a tremendous thirst.

Nearing Court Street, out of desperation, Kaitlyn discovers another way to walk in the costume. She leans back, takes a wide step with her left leg. At the same time, she throws back her right shoulder. The cardboard goes back with it. Then she takes a wide step with her right leg and simultaneously throws back her left shoulder. Now she isn’t walking into cardboard! Now she can walk as fast as she’d like!

Kaitlyn-the-book sashays quickly down the sidewalk, enjoying her newfound speed. In minutes she’s close enough to hear Portia and Yesi talking. A block ahead, Tom and his friend do figure eights in front of Sawyer’s Jewelry.

When Portia and Yesi reach the Court Street intersection they press the button and turn to Kaitlyn.

“You look like you’re on the catwalk,” Portia says when she gets close.

Kaitlyn doesn’t know what a catwalk is. “Thank you,” she says.

The light changes and she sashays across Court Street with the witches. They bear left, onto Beacon. Tom, across the street now, lets out a holler and starts pedaling double speed. Portia yells too and begins running. Brake lights appear on a passing van. It pulls into the parking lot behind Melnick’s Shoes. The driver rolls the window down.

It is Portia’s oldest brother, Drew. Drew says he’s on his way to pick up his girlfriend. They’re going to a party. “What do you want?” Drew looks annoyed.

Portia walks to the passenger side door, opens it, and tosses her broom inside. “Give us a ride.”

“I’m not going that way.”

Tom bikes up to the driver’s side door, stops with a sudden thump. Words are exchanged. The engine is too loud. Kaitlyn can’t hear anything. Then Portia and Yesi are climbing inside. Tom and his friend are already racing each other to Pleasant Street.

“Come on, Kaitlyn.” Yesi motions for her to get in.

Kaitlyn just stands there. She doesn’t want to walk, but she can’t sit down with the costume on. And she can’t take the costume off. Underneath the cardboard, she’s wearing the too-small spandex leggings and a too-small turtleneck. Yesi knows this. Try as she might, the shirt and pants refused to meet in the middle, so her mom had ordered her to add the overall shorts, the stupid ones with the daisy print. Underneath, Kaitlyn is a mix of spandex, daisies, and turtleneck. She’s dressed like a crazy person.

She wags a hand. Her cheeks are warm but everything else feels cold. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Don’t be silly,” Yesi frowns.

“My costume doesn’t bend.”

Yesi climbs out of the passenger seat and behind her, Portia does too. Drew twists the radio dial. Portia pushes past Kaitlyn. She throws open the van’s double doors. “You can ride back here. It’s like surfing.” Portia sticks her arms out, wiggles her hips. “Tom and I do it. It’s fun.”

Kaitlyn does not want to ride in the back while everyone else rides up front. She knows they are being nice, but it doesn’t feel nice. Now that she can sashay, she would prefer to walk, and she says so.

But Yesi and Portia won’t have it. They discuss how to hoist Kaitlyn into the van. Drew gets out. He lifts Kaitlyn, as Yesi’s mom had done, forklifts her under her arms. Portia lifts her left leg, Yesi lifts her right. Kaitlyn is placed into the van. She leans forward, sort of shimmies onto her right knee. Her fingers bump against the wall, and she is inside.

The doors are shut, everyone else climbs back in up front, and they go. Drew’s blasting WAAF 107.3, Boston’s home for hard rock. It’s unmistakable with the squealing guitars. Drew turns it up so loud, the speakers crackle.

Kaitlyn props herself against the ceiling with one hand, and her other hand is on the wall. The van is not tall enough for her to stand upright, but right now the book’s at a forty-five-degree angle, and she’s on her feet, her knees to one side. Her chin is down inside her costume, like a reluctant turtle. All snot has dried. She watches Portia and Yesi in the front seat. They’re headbanging.

They exit the bank parking lot, turn right on Beacon. Then Drew hits the brake, and her hands slip.

Kaitlyn falls and the air is knocked out of her lungs. “Huh,” she says as if she’s just learned something important. But of course, all she’s learned is not to stand up in the back of a moving van.

Silvery specks float before her eyes. Her chest hurts.

They’re moving again. Drew must have caught sight of Tom on his bike because he’s speeding up on Beacon.

Kaitlyn is frictionless on the van floor. She tries to grip, but she can’t. Her fingers are not strong enough. She slides again as Drew switches to gas.

At a red light, Kaitlyn struggles to her feet. Then the light turns green, and Kaitlyn goes down backward. The back of Kaitlyn’s head bounces against the van door’s metal frame and she is once again face down. For a moment, everything goes black. When the world returns, it spins with pain, and feels fuzzy somehow, fuzzy and forgotten, like a fifth-generation photocopy of a story she used to know. Kaitlyn felt like this before, at the Bloodmobile three years ago when she was ten. She’d gazed too long at the blood bag attached to her mother’s arm and passed out right there in the Sacred Heart gymnasium.

Kaitlyn isn’t thinking she might be hurt. She is thinking her costume might be ruined. One shoulder has a dent. And the van floor is not clean. It is covered with gravel and leaves. Every time she slides, she can feel grit scraping the cardboard underneath her.

Probably the paint is already scratched. That’s sad. She and her mom worked hard on the costume. They began in September, with an idea Kaitlyn sketched on notebook paper. Her mom brought a cardboard appliance box home, carried it to the basement where they had the space, measured the whole costume out, cut, and glued it. The next day she procured a long sheet of butcher paper, clean and white, and they set about creating the cover.

Kaitlyn chose the book The Watcher in the Woods by William W. Johnstone. She’d read it last summer, in four days, at sleepover camp. Afterward, her best friend at camp had read it too. When they were done, they were full of shivery, delightful fear. Kaitlyn loved camp.

And Kaitlyn loved making the costume with her mom. Drawing the cover and writing the back cover blurb was great fun. Kaitlyn’s mom was busy, of course, but it was the sort of thing she made time to do after the divorce. Because Kaitlyn’s mom loved her, and she worried about her. And Kaitlyn worried about her mom too.

They turn onto Pleasant Street. Drew takes the corner fast. The van stops. Kaitlyn maneuvers toward the door. When it opens, she pushes down, shoves against the floor with her sweaty palms. Her feet sink. She pops up.

The lights of Pleasant Street are insufficient to show the blood matting the back of her hair. Even she doesn’t know yet.

“You’re right,” she smiles when they open the door. “That is fun.”