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Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” is blasting over the speakers when Enola walks in the door, and that is the only reason she doesn’t immediately turn around and leave again. She’d expected nothing but pop and hip hop and whatever people are listening to these days—Ariana Grande? That’s a singer, right?—but the presence of that song tells her that at least whoever put together the playlist has good enough taste to recognize the greatest song ever written about a fashionable werewolf terrorizing London and eating beef chow mein.
In every other way, though, this party is awful and she can’t figure out why she’s here. It’s dark and crowded, and she knows that half of the people holding plastic cups aren’t old enough to be drinking what’s in those cups. Every dark corner has a couple attached to each other’s faces. Enough weird smells permeate the place that she’s heartily sorry that she has such a sensitive nose. And honestly, she doesn't even like Halloween that much. Why did she feel the need to come to a Halloween party?
And most of all, Enola feels terribly, terribly alone. (Her mother would arch an eyebrow at that and say “You can do very well on your own, Enola,” but in the last few years, Enola has come to suspect her mother used to say that so often that to assuage her own guilt over the fact that she’d always intended to abandon her daughter as soon as possible to leave the country and go be an activist overseas. Enola doesn’t begrudge her mother that, but it does rather hurt that Eudoria disappeared on the day after her high school graduation with nothing but a cryptic note that said “Our future is up to us.”) She doesn’t know any of these people; she has few friends, and the ones she does have are not the sorts to go to a massive college Halloween party.
Now that she’s had a moment to think about it, she realizes that her coming to this party was a terrible idea, and she’s not sure why she did it in the first place, and she has just turned around to leave again when she hears a voice call her name.
“Enola! You came!”
Ah, yes. That’s why she’s here.
She turns around to see William Tewkesbury—Tewky to his friends—striding toward her with a massive grin on his face. He’s dressed as a vampire, which really just means that he’s wearing a dark suit, a bat-shaped bowtie, and vampire teeth, but Enola doesn’t mind the lack of effort on his part because the boy can wear a suit incredibly well.
(Don’t do that, she scolds herself. Don’t even start down that path.)
“Hey, Tewkesbury,” she says, trying to look like she’s not massively uncomfortable and out of place at his party.
“I love your costume,” he says, his gaze running over her vintage dress and matching headband, and the magnifying glass in her hand. “You’re . . . Nancy Drew?”
It’s stupid that she should be so pleased that he recognizes her costume, but she is. “And you’re a vampire.”
“Yeah, but these teeth are driving me crazy,” he confesses, and pops them out of his mouth.
“Gross,” she informs him, and he just laughs. He always just laughs when she says things like that, which is remarkable because a lot of people don’t care for her brusque ways. “Look,” she says, “I can’t stay long. I just wanted to stop by and say hi.” It’s not exactly a lie; she can’t stay long. It just happens to be because she hates it here, not because she’s got other plans.
Tewkesbury’s whole face falls. Part of her thinks that his inability to disguise his thoughts is going to get him in trouble one day, but part of her likes it. She likes that there is one person in this world with whom she always knows exactly where she stands. “Really? But you just got here.”
She shrugs apologetically, and then starts in surprise when he grabs her hand and pulls her across the room. “If you can’t stay long, we need to get somewhere quiet so we can talk," he informs her. "I haven’t seen you in what, three weeks?”
They stop at the refreshments table long enough for Enola to grab a handful of fun-size Snickers bars (the table is beautifully decorated with pumpkins and autumnal foliage, and it looks completely out of place at this party, and Enola can’t help grinning because she knows it must have been Tewkesbury’s doing). And then they’re out on the back deck, which is lit with strings of globe lights. She sees a few couples out in the backyard, finding quiet spots to talk (or do more than talk), but for the moment, they have the massive deck to themselves.
“This house is insane,” she informs him.
He looks over at her in that unsure little way of his. “Bad insane?”
“Gorgeous insane,” she assures him. “This deck is bigger than my entire apartment.” Most students at their university—Enola included—live in crummy apartments that cater to students, all cinderblock walls and worn linoleum and furniture that hasn’t been updated (or cleaned) since the 1980s. But Tewkesbury’s family bought a house in town when he started school—imagine having the money to buy a massive house just as your son's college housing—which he now shares with a few other guys.
(“It’s an investment,” he said reasonably when Enola first expressed her surprise at the arrangement. “When I graduate, they can rent it out to other students.” Enola cannot figure out how the Tewkesburys could need even more money than they already have, but whatever.)
Tewkesbury flops in a deck chair with a contented sigh. “This is way nicer out here,” he informs her. “The noise in there was driving me crazy.”
“Why throw a party if you don’t like the noise?” Enola asks, choosing a chair near him.
“It was Tanner’s idea,” he shrugs. “He doesn’t even like Halloween that much. But any reason to throw a party, right?”
His tone says exactly what he thinks of that, and Enola smiles. It’s moments like these that her strange, tenuous friendship with William Tewkesbury, college royalty, doesn’t surprise her so much. They’re an odd couple, to be sure: he’s one of the most popular guys in school, simply by virtue of being rich and prominent. His late father was a Supreme Court justice (Enola has read every article about him and is pleased to see that she mostly agrees with his political views); his mother sits on the boards of a number of major charities and so is also constantly in the news (Enola reads every article about her and has a theory that if they met, they could be best friends). They’ve been sending their children and their charitable donations to this university for generations; there are at least six different buildings, labs, and centers on campus that are named in honor of various Tewkesbury ancestors. Everyone knows who William Tewkesbury is; everyone wants to either suck up to him or to date him.
The Holmes family, on the other hand, is reasonably well off but they’re nothing like Tewkesburys. Hardly anyone on this campus knows who she is, and she’s done nothing to change that fact: she lives alone, she never goes to parties (tonight being the exception), her only fun extracurricular is the jiu-jitsu club, and she’s friendly to everyone but she never seeks friendships. She’s very busy, working on her criminal justice degree and prepping for the LSAT . . . and also she’s just not terribly good at making friends. It’s homeschool’s fault, she tells herself, even though deep in her heart she knows that’s not the entire truth. The truth is that it's just her: her drive and her ambition and her lack of patience with fools.
“You know,” she says, “if you’re only here because your roommate decided to throw a party . . . you don’t have to stay. You could have driven home for the weekend. Gone to a movie. Something like that."
He looks over at her, his expression lit by the golden glow from the strings of lights overhead. “I had to be here,” he says earnestly. “You’d told me you might come.”
Now what on earth is she supposed to make of that?
She has no idea how to respond, so she doesn’t, and neither does he, and they sit in silence for a long few moments. It’s peaceful out here, with the stars overhead and the breeze occasionally rustling the leaves in the trees and the golden lights making everything look warm, and Enola feels herself lulled into a sort of peaceful, meditative state.
And maybe Tewkesbury feels the same way, because when he speaks again, it’s astonishingly open and honest, even for him. “You’re my only real friend, you know that?”
Enola blinks.
“Every person in that house,” he goes on, “every person in this school, they like that my family shows up in Time magazine. They like that I’m rich, and if they hang out with me, I’ll probably pay for their dinner. Not one of them actually knows me, or likes me for who I am. None of them want to hear about my thoughts or opinions or feelings. You’re . . . the only one. You listen to me, even if you don’t always agree with me. Or, you know, ever agree with me.”
There’s a warm glow in Enola’s chest, growing brighter with every word out of his mouth, and part of her wants to let that warmth gush forth, all over her companion, and another part of her wants to retreat from this conversation immediately; vulnerability has never been her strong suit. And she opens her mouth without quite knowing how she’s going to respond.
“You’re my closest friend too,” she hears herself say, and Tewkesbury just beams. He’s such a ridiculous human being, with his floppy hair and his love of botany and his perfect features and adorable smile (stop thinking that way, Enola, just stop it), but she’s beginning to suspect she needs a bit of ridiculousness in her life.
“Do you remember when we met?” he asks.
Enola rolls her eyes. “It was only ten months ago,” she reminds him.
He rolls his eyes right back. “It was a figure of speech, for introducing a new topic,” he informs her. “What I’d been going to say is that I was on the phone with my mom that night and I told her, ‘I think I’ve just met the most interesting person on campus.’”
Enola scoffs. “Come on.”
“I did! My mom still asks about you, by the way. She wants to meet you some time.”
(It’s happening! Enola and Caroline Tewkesbury could become friends!)
“I told my brother about the incident, and he just said it’s a lucky thing I know jiu-jitsu," says Enola. She thinks back to that night over Christmas break, when she stumbled across a group of local miscreants harassing a very pretty boy in front of a convenience store. She’d felt bad for the guy, and had stepped in to stop it, and only had to throw one of them over her shoulder before the rest of the guys had panicked and run off. She hadn’t even realized that the pretty boy she’d rescued was the William Tewkesbury until after; she would have stepped in to help anyone, because that’s what she’s like. Tewkesbury has insisted on being her friend ever since: he texts her constantly, and leaves little bouquets of flowers on her apartment’s front step, and every few weeks he badgers her until she agrees to meet him for lunch.
He’s quiet a long moment. “Did I ever tell you why I was in town that week?”
She blinks. “I just figured you came back to campus right after Christmas.”
He gives her a pained little smile. “I didn’t go home for Christmas last year.”
Her brow furrows.
He sighs. “My mother is wonderful,” he assures her. “But my uncle and grandmother are . . . difficult to be around. They have a lot of opinions about how I should live my life. Grandmother doesn't approve of my major, my political opinions, my clothes, my hair . . . and Uncle Whimbrel just thinks I should join the military like he did at my age, and when I finally got irritated enough to tell him exactly what I think of the military . . . well, we haven’t been on good terms since then. My poor mom tries so hard to keep the peace, but visits home can be really tense sometimes. And last year I just couldn’t face it. So I stayed on campus, and I celebrated Christmas completely alone, and then on the 28th I went out to grab a Slurpee and got threatened by a bunch of goons who wanted to beat me up outside a 7-Eleven. And I just thought, how is this my life? How is this my Christmas? And then this amazing girl appears out of nowhere and beats the crap out of the guy who’s threatening me. And ever since then, I've always known I could rely on you to have my back. To be on my side when it feels like no one else is.”
Enola stares at him a long time. She’d never realized that he'd felt so alone that day . . . that he'd felt as alone as she had. And she finds herself blurting out, “I spent that Christmas alone too.”
Tewkesbury’s brow furrows in confusion and surprise.
She shrugs. “You know things with my mom are complicated. And my brothers were both too busy with work to have me over. So I was alone too.” She hesitates. “I know I gave you crap about it, but I . . . appreciated that you kept texting me for the rest of the break. It made me feel . . . less alone.”
Tewkesbury grins that adorable grin of his. “Well, you’ll never be alone as long as I’m around, Enola Holmes.”
Any answer Enola might have given—and she honestly doesn’t know what that answer might be—is interrupted by the door to the kitchen opening. “Too hot in there,” Tewkesbury’s roommate Brad informs them as he props the door open with a chair.
This means the music from inside is now pouring onto the deck, but before Enola can complain, the song changes to one she knows and loves. “Is this ‘Almost Unreal’?” she asks, surprised. “By Roxette?”
Tewkesbury grins. “Seemed fitting for Halloween. ‘I love when you do that hocus pocus to me.’”
She tilts her head. “Did you put the playlist together?”
He nods proudly.
“Ah,” she says, “that’s why it doesn’t completely suck.”
“You’re a Roxette fan?”
She shrugs. “I only know this song, but I like it. I don’t really listen to anything modern.”
“I’ve noticed,” he laughs. “You’re too busy preparing to save the world to waste your time keeping up with pop culture.”
“Basically,” she shrugs. She hesitates, then: "My mom is into this kind of music. That's why I always listened to it."
Tewkesbury looks at her then, really looks, just a touch too long. And just when Enola is beginning to squirm, he holds out a hand. “Dance with me?”
"Dance?" she repeats.
"Yeah, dance. We're at a party. That's what people do at parties."
There's a part of her that wants to leave right now. Tewkesbury makes her feel things she doesn't want to feel, because she's really trying to focus on her schooling . . . and because it seems absolutely hopeless to feel that way about him, because even if he does say she's his only friend, he is rich and famous and stupidly handsome and just overwhelmingly good and she can't imagine that a guy like that would ever look at her that way. But there's another part of her that wants very badly to dance with him, because, well, he makes her feel things.
He's just standing there with his hand outstretched, and she knows he's not going to stop until she gives in. So she gives in. "Fine."
She's not completely sure what to do, as it's been a very long time since she has danced with anyone, and she wonders if she's supposed to go for a ballroom dance sort of hold or if she's supposed to put her hands on his shoulders. But Tewkesbury takes the decision out of her hands by putting both of his hands on her waist, so she has no choice but to put her hands on his shoulders. And she would literally rather die than admit how nice it is to be so close to him.
They sway to the music for a while, Enola growing every moment more comfortable with having Tewkesbury so close to her. And then he breaks the silence. "How much longer can you stay?" he asks. "You said you had other plans tonight, right?"
Blame the music and the moonlight for the embarrassing honesty with which she answers him. "I don't actually have to go anywhere," she admits. "I just made that up so I'd have an excuse to leave. Not because of you," she insists on seeing his suddenly stricken face. "I just felt so uncomfortable. I'm really awful at these sorts of parties."
He tilts his head curiously. "Then why did you come?"
She shrugs and they dance in silence for a while before she finally manages to admit, "Because you asked me to come."
Tewkesbury stares at her for so long that she gets uncomfortable and looks away. "Is that seriously why you came?"
She shrugs. "Why else would I come to this terrible party?"
At that, Tewkesbury stops dancing altogether. Enola follows suit, blinking in surprise, and then moves to step away from him, figuring their dance must be over. But he simply tightens his hands around her waist.
"Enola," he demands, "what are we doing here?"
That is a question that even Enola, with her prodigious intellect, can't make sense of. "Dancing?"
"No," he insists, "I mean—we text all the time, or at least I text you and you sometimes text me back. We go to lunch and we end up talking until dinner. I tell you stuff I've never told anyone before. We both came to this stupid party just because we wanted to see each other. But every time I even hint at us being more than friends, you back off. Am I just reading this completely wrong?"
Enola stares at him, blinking and feeling like an idiot and not at all certain that she likes the sensation of being so completely at sea about what is going on. "Are you—are you saying you want us to be more than friends?"
He releases her waist so that he can run a frustrated hand through his hair. "Enola, I like you. Like, I like you. I have since the moment that we first met. You are amazing and brilliant and funny and fearless and good at everything. And I keep hoping that someday you'll feel the same way about me, but honestly, half of the time we hang out I feel like I'm just bothering you."
She stares at him.
"Please say something," he says after a long moment.
So she forces her jaw to work. "I had no idea," she admits. "I wouldn't have thought—you're the most popular guy in school. You could get any girl you wanted."
"Except the only one I want, apparently," he says in a defeated voice.
He moves as though to walk away, but Enola freezes him in place with one imperious finger raised to tell him to give her a minute. He obediently falls still and silent.
For a long moment, her heart and her mind race, poring over everything he's done, everything she's thought and felt, since they met. And then she lowers her finger and looks up at Tewkesbury. "I had to no idea," she says again. "But . . . I'm not unhappy about it."
He blinks. "Not unhappy? Is that a good thing?"
She shrugs, feeling hideously vulnerable and embarrassed. But if he really likes her like that . . . that could be wonderful. "I had no idea you felt that way," she says for a third time, "but honestly, I've . . . thought about it before." She shrugs uncomfortably. "You and me, together, I mean."
Hope lights up his eyes like the candles in the jack-o'-lanterns on the front porch. "So, you want to . . . maybe sometime we should . . ."
She takes pity on him. "Go on a date," she finishes. She doesn't have much experience with relationships, but she's pretty sure that dates are part of it.
"Yeah," says Tewkesbury immediately, looking stunned. "Absolutely. Any time. We could go right now."
And in the face of his puppy-like enthusiasm, Enola's doubts and fears wash away. She wants this, she finally admits to herself. And she's always been someone who goes for the things that she wants. "Yeah," she says with a smile, "no time like the present." And before Tewkesbury can respond, she grabs the lapels of his suit jacket to pull him down to her height and press a quick kiss to his lips.
When she pulls back, he is looking completely dazed and adorably pleased. "You want to get out of here?" she asks. "Go somewhere quieter? Maybe grab some ice cream?"
"Yes," he says fervently. "Absolutely. Let's go do that."
And Enola grins as she takes his hand. She has just decided that she loves Halloween.
. . . . . .
fin