Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

his face, gave himself sharp nails and teeth, green hair and a club, and toted his bushel basket to the tree stump by the bridge over Raccoon Creek. Ghosts and corpses dangled in the trees along Maple. Jack-o’-lanterns glowed on every front porch. Earl leaned out of his window above the hardware store and dropped rubber spiders onto the heads of passers-by, then reeled them back in again, laughing like a child. Angela had painted the big front windows of the Kitchen so it looked vaguely like the gingerbread house in “Hansel and Gretel.” But the sky, in the distance, glowed with the light of hot spots, many now closer than anyone liked to see.

The odd light made the children walk quickly and laugh nervously, without reason. It made them quite literally jump when Frank rushed out of the Gas ’n’ Go in his werewolf costume. “Grrr,” he said, chasing them around the gas pumps. Their screams could be heard all the way down to the creek.

The mothers in town, accustomed to sorting out the cries of their children, stood on their porches and listened to the screaming and were not sure what to think. They had never before minded Frank’s high jinks or those of the other grown men who jumped out of their shrubbery when children walked past, or dressed like scarecrows and draped themselves in lawn chairs, springing to life when the children came their way. But this year such antics seemed stupid.

So did thirteen-year-old Jake McKinnen. He’d read all about the boy who cried wolf and should have known better than to start a fire in a trash can behind the library. “Help! Help! Fire!” he cried, throwing sheaves of newspaper into the flames until they soared.

Nearby children, hearing his screams, ran in all directions, shrieking, while grown-ups froze in their doorways, candy spilling from their hands, and then raced toward the light and smoke, white-faced.

“What the hell’s the matter with you!” Jake’s father snarled, dragging him home past a dozen shaken neighbors who had taken up posts along the sidewalk.

“It’s Halloween, Dad,” the boy whimpered, his arm hurting, at which his father snorted, “Not anymore. Halloween’s over for you.”

It ended early for everyone that year. When their children hurried home, tripping over their costumes, long before they were due, most parents shut their doors, turned off their porch lights, and called it a night. They felt a little silly, letting themselves be spooked by Halloween. At their age. But they looked forward to morning, nonetheless.

Joe, too, was glad when the last of the trick-or-treaters had made their way home. For weeks now he had spent too much time alone, working on farms here and there, passing his evenings in the Schooner with Pal and a book for company, and going to bed early. He sometimes visited Angela at the Kitchen or shared his newspaper with Rusty at the Schooner. And once a week he left Pal with Rusty and drove the Schooner out of town for the day. (“I’ve got an appointment,” he would say, leaving visions of doctors and dentists in his wake.) But more often than not he was alone.

He had not spoken to Rachel, had not heard her voice, since the night in the auditorium when he’d watched Mendelson tell her that her town was going to burn. When he saw her walking on the street, she was always on the other side. Whenever he went to Angela’s, it seemed she’d just left. Inside him, there was a longing as keen as winter wind, but in his head all was peaceful. He knew he’d been right to speak his mind.

Still, here he was, sitting alone on a tree stump, Pal shivering at his knee, and he had to admit he’d had better Halloweens. “Time to pack it in, girl,” he said. She had long since pawed away the paper horns he’d tied to her head. The apples he’d collected held no attraction for her. When he climbed to his feet, she started off toward Rachel’s hill, wagging her tail.

“No, Pal. This way,” he said, hoisting the basket of apples to his shoulder and heading across the bridge. But he, too, had been tempted to go the other way.

Joe stashed his apples in the Schooner, cleaned himself up, and put on some proper clothes. “Now what?” he said, looking at Pal, who didn’t answer. The Kitchen was closed. It was too early for bed. But there was always the Last Resort. “Don’t wait up for me,” he said to Pal as he headed out the door.

He did not pass a single soul as he walked through the town, and when he came within sight of the bar’s lighted windows, he lengthened his stride. The place was even more battered and grimy than it had been the first time he’d seen it, two and a half years since, but he smiled as he put his hand out and pulled open the blistered door.

It wasn’t until he had hung up his coat and turned to the bar that he saw Rachel in her tiger suit, whiskers painted on her cheeks and triangle ears pinned in her mahogany hair. Her face and lips were rosy, as if she’d just come in from the cold, and her eyes glittered with laughter over something Angela had said. She was sitting on a bar stool with Angela beside her, a bowl of popcorn between them, smoke swirling slowly above their heads like strange weather.

“Would you like to dance?” he said, his lips close to her ear, before she’d had a chance to see that he’d come in.

She turned so abruptly that she had to put a hand on his chest to keep from falling off the stool. “Joe,” she said.

“Rachel,” he replied.

She looked at him solemnly. “You want to dance?”

“I asked you first,” he said, smiling.

When they reached the dance floor in the back room and he took her in his arms, she found that her fist was full