Not a California Halloween, with flowering shrubs and palm trees on people’s front lawns, but a real honest-to-goodness witches’ Halloween with dry, crackling brown leaves all over the ground and just a few red and gold and yellow leaves still hanging on for dear life to the crooked black branches overhead. It was chilly out, too, with a swooshing wind that got stronger toward afternoon. That morning at school, though, I had a shock. Mary Lou Blenheim passed me a note in homeroom. When the piece of folded paper reached me, I looked up and saw Mary Lou nodding her head to let me know it was from her and I should go ahead and read it. I immediately looked around for Glenda and saw that she was at the back of the room, tacking up some posters that Miss Ames, our teacher, had given her to put up. So I opened the note quickly, holding it flat on my lap. It was written in block letters in red ink, on graph paper. It said: “To Sara Mayberry—this is to invite you and Glenda W. to my party tonight—Halloween.
