Chapter Text
“Jennifer! Hey!”
Decked out in a full old-school Yankees uniform with grass stains marring his blurry knees, Ben bounced across the asphalt like a rambunctious, all-American puppy. The October breeze pressed back his shirt so his scrawny frame stood out against the fabric, except where his backpack strap creased a slash across it. His pockets bulged full of sepia baseballs.
Jennifer giggled.
“Hi,” she said, giving him time to skid to a halt in front of her. “Nice outfit.”
He glanced down. “My brothers are Giants players, but me and Judes said no way. You like it?”
“Yeah,” nodded Jennifer. She did like it, even if his costume paled in comparison to the armor that her father had searched through seven Targets to find. “It looks good.”
“Nice.” Ben grinned again, the flash of white, pre-braces teeth. “I like yours, too! Is that a beanie baby?”
Pulling her stuffed dragon from his Velcro perch on her shoulder-pad, she passed it to him for inspection. “He’s brown because the only red ones they make are classic collector ones that cost like a bajillion dollars, but he’s still Mushu. I wanted to bring her sword instead, but Dad said no.”
“He’s cool!”
“Thanks.” Jennifer took Mushu back. “Wanna get in line?”
Ben grabbed her hand in answer, yanking her along with his warm and dry little-boy grip. In a few years, this would be “weird,” them touching like this, even for something as innocent as running past the playground and under the bare-rimmed basketball hoops to class, but at the time it was simple, easy, fun.
Jadzia waited for them on the number six. Jennifer couldn’t stop herself from laughing at the sight of her—not that she tried that hard. Jadzia’s brown hair hid beneath a puffy white Party City wig only a few shades lighter than her skin, while her cheap summer-camp lab coat buttoned only to her bellybutton. A clip-on tie hung off her favorite blue shirt. What looked like hairy caterpillars were fixed above her upper lip and each of her eyes.
“What,” Ben demanded, “are you wearing?” He dropped Jennifer’s hand in favor of grabbing at Jadzia’s voluminous fake moustache.
She batted his hand away. “I’m Einstein,” she sniffed.
“You’re an old man.” Ben’s delight beamed from his features. “Older than my grandpa.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“No, I’m the best scientist ever!”
“Who’s an old man,” Jennifer chimed in.
Jadzia looked like she might stamp her foot, or start crying, or both, but then she did something very, very Jadzia—she started giggling instead.
“You’re right!” she said. “Einstein’s pretty old, right? He’s old.”
Their third-grade teacher, Ms. Marcela, approached the line.
“Ms. Marcela!” Jadzia called. “Can I tell you something?”
Ms. Marcela smiled, all gentle and nice, and bobbed her head. “Sure, Jadzia.”
“I’m Einstein, the best scientist ever!” She grinned conspiratorially. “And he’s an old man.”
Ms. Marcela laughed. “That’s very cool,” she said. “I like your costume a lot. Benjamin, a baseball-player, of course—which one?”
Ben shrugged.
“Yankees player, that’s awesome. Jennifer, are you Mulan?”
Something warm burst in Jennifer’s chest at being recognized. She nodded, unusually shy.
“Such a good costume. All three of you did a great job! Are you going to walk together in the parade?”
“Duh!” said Jadzia, who’d recently learned the word and always used it more enthusiastically than it was perhaps meant to be used.
“Yeah,” said Ben, “me n’ Jennifer n’ the old man!”
The three of them burst out into giggles.
“Alright, I’ll leave you three goofballs to it.” Ms. Marcela pressed a calming hand to Jadzia’s shoulder, shaking her head. “Just don’t blow up the school, Einstein.”
“Old man!” Jennifer corrected, and the three of them cracked up again.
Ms. Marcela moved on down the line to the next cluster of students.
“Are you guys going trick o’ treating tonight?” Jadzia asked.
“Yeah,” said Ben. “Ma’s taking me and Judith and Aaron out. Sammy’s too little so he’s giving out candy with my dad.”
Jennifer shrugged. “My dad has to work late, so I might go with Leeta from next door.”
“Leeta!” Jadzia grinned. “I like Leeta.”
They turned to look for her in Room 5 line. All the costumes made it hard—was she the one in the red riding hood? The karate uniform? The Harry Potter robes?
“There!” said Ben. He pointed to the back, to a girl in a green shirt, green pants, and green rainboots. When she shifted, they could see her face coated in green facepaint. Someone had written CRAYOLA on a piece of paper and taped it to her front and back.
“She’s a crayon!” realized Jennifer. “That’s so cool.”
As they watched, however, a short kid in a crown and a king’s purple robe stepped up to her and laughed. They couldn’t hear what he said, but Leeta’s green face crumpled. She crossed her arms and looked at the ground.
“What did he say to her?” asked Ben.
“I don’t know,” said Jadzia, her milky skin pinking in anger. “But I don’t think it was very nice.”
“We should go over there,” suggested Jennifer.
Jadzia frowned. “We’re not supposed to leave the line.”
“We’re also supposed to be upstanders!”
“You’re right,” agreed Ben. They dropped their backpacks on the ground and then they were storming over.
“Leeta,” said Jadzia. “Is he being mean to you?”
Leeta blinked at them. Up close, her pink skin peeked out from behind the paint at the corners of her eyes and in her nostrils. “Jadzia? Jen?”
“I wasn’t being mean,” said the boy, stepping back defensively. “We were just talking.”
“Really?” asked Ben.
The boy put his hands on his hips. “What’s it to you?”
“She’s our friend.”
He looked them over. “That makes sense. You have cheap costumes too. What are you,” he asked Jadzia, “an old man?”
“Yeah,” said Jadzia. “And what are you, a bully?”
He growled. “I’m a king!”
“A spoiled bully.” Ben nodded. “’That makes sense.’”
“You little–” And the boy lunged at Ben, catching him in the chest and knocking him backwards. The two of them thudded to the ground. The boy’s crown, shiny and plastic, skittered across the asphalt.
“Ow!” he howled. His groin had landed on Ben’s pocketful of baseballs.
“Hey!” called a grown-up voice. Leeta’s teacher, Mrs. Brown, had reached them. “What’s going on here?”
“That boy was making fun of Leeta’s costume!” Jennifer’s words tumbled over each other in their rush to escape her mouth. “And then we came over to tell him to knock it off, and then he hit Ben.”
Mrs. Brown helped the boy stand back up. “Is that true, Quark?”
“No!” said Quark.
“It is,” Leeta said quietly. “It is, Mrs. Brown.”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“Me!” said Quark.
Ben shook his head. “I’m okay.”
“Benjamin?” And now Ms. Marcela had arrived. “What’s going on?”
“These your kids?” asked Mrs. Brown.
“They are,” said Ms. Marcela. She ran a hand through her hair, exasperated. “I tell you not to blow up the school, so you decide to start a fight instead?”
“That’s not what happened!” Jadzia protested. “Honest!”
The morning bell sounded, the loud tone that always rattled Jennifer’s back teeth.
“Alright, alright,” said Mrs. Brown. “We need to go inside and start the day, and then we’ll sort everything out.”
“Back to our line, kids,” said Ms. Marcela.
Jennifer grabbed Leeta’s hand quickly. “See you tonight?”
Leeta smiled, small and bright, and squeezed the hand. “Yeah. My mom says seven o’clock.”
“Cool.” She let go.
“Come on, Jennifer.” Ms. Marcela’s hand found her shoulder. “Time to go.”
“Bye, Leeta!”
“Bye, Jen!”
She grabbed her backpack from where she'd left it, and then they were walking, down the sheltered hallway and towards their classroom. Jennifer found herself between Jadzia and Ben again. Jadzia looked somewhere between guilty and satisfied. Ben kept trying to swallow down a laugh that threatened to turn up the corners of his mouth.
“Do you think we’ll get in trouble?” asked Jadzia. “I mean, I did call him a bully.”
“He is a bully,” said Ben. “He hit me. Besides, it’s Halloween. You didn’t call him a bully, an old man did!”
Jennifer snickered. Jadzia joined in. Ben’s laugh refused to be swallowed this time, and so they all ended up giggling, gasping and snorting and squeaking, until their faces got hot and they had to wiggle into their seats so Ms. Marcela couldn't see.