A Girl Like You by vinnie Kinsella (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

out and closed the car door soundlessly. One bin had old vinyl records and Disney videos. Another had sheets and towels. But in the third, a shiny blue marbled bowling ball!

“What is it?” Eddie whispered over my shoulder.

“Holy shit, you scared the crap out of me. Don’t do that!” I scolded.

“You said we had to be stealthy,” he reminded me.

“Not with each other! If I scream, people will hear me and come out and catch us.”

“So what?” Eddie said reasonably. “It’s not like we’re stealing.”

We rolled the bowling ball onto his back seat and drove on.

I found a doll dress for Lily that looked like new and was 100% washable, a retro watch with an elastic band for Ian, and an antique school chair I knew I could easily refinish.

“Can you believe someone put out crutches?” Eddie asked me as we poked through one pile.

“Oh yeah? Well, check this out,” I said, holding up a blonde flapper wig.

“Could be a Halloween costume,” Eddie mused.

I considered for a moment, then the reality of putting a used wig on my own head hit me. I put it back down quickly.

We passed on 1980s clothing, plastic tableware, a broken picnic basket, a charred frying pan, a tattered green plaid ottoman. Eddie found a patriotic wooden birdhouse with a tiny American flag, and a set of Pilgrim salt and pepper shakers.

It was almost as good as Amazon shopping.

Another family had set out a dresser and placed smaller items inside. One of the drawers was stuck, so I tugged it hard, only to have it fall out and clatter to the driveway. A porch light went on and I heard someone opening the front door.

The back door of Eddie’s car was halfway open and I literally dove, head first, into the car floor. “Go, go go!” I hollered.

Eddie gunned it, then slowed down several houses later.

“Again…not stealing,” he said.

“Did you see me fly through that window? I can’t believe it. I haven’t moved like that since tenth-grade gymnastics.”

“Impressive,” Eddie agreed.

We wove through neighborhoods, munching popcorn and slowing down to take a look at curbside piles, bypassing anything in plastic bags or that looked as if it had already been pawed through.

When the kids were small, we went through the larger developments at Halloween for trick-or-treating. Adam would reluctantly join us, even though Halloween was never his thing. Maddy was always a Disney heroine, Snow White or Cinderella, and Ian was a policeman or vampire. I remember them running from lawn to lawn, Ian’s black cape billowing out behind him, Madd’s magic wand sparkling in the shadows, believing they would be young forever, knowing even then they were the best of times.

Every year, one of them would trip, spill their plastic pumpkin full of candy, and cry. The kids and I would get on our hands and knees to retrieve the Kit-Kats, bags of rainbow Skittles and mini Snickers from the damp grass.

We took baby Ian out in a stroller his first Halloween, dressed like a baseball player. For a few years, we pulled Madd and Ian in a wheelbarrow, which worked great until Ian stepped on the hem of her Belle dress and tore the lace.

Back then, families would leave their lights on past 9:00 and children traipsed the streets until they couldn’t go any further and begged their parents to carry them home. Our kids always got a second wind when they got home to dump their candy on the living room floor. They traded chocolate bars like baseball cards, threw away the lollipops, and gave me my favorite: Three Musketeers.

Every night after dinner they were allowed to dig through their candy and pick out two things for dessert (me included, but Adam didn’t like chocolate). After a week or so of this, all of us had enough sweets and I worried about their next dental exams.

“I miss the kids being little,” I told Eddie as we wove through streets to look at curbside collections.

It wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation.

“I know, sweet pea, but like I’ve always said, you can’t keep them little forever.”

“Meh.”

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘meh.’” I slumped down in the passenger seat.

Eddie sighed. “Look, it’s not like it’s all over. You guys will have a chance to do it all again in the next life.”

I sat up straight. “Really? You think so?”

“I do.”

Eddie’s reasoning was an enormous comfort to me. It made sense that I’d be with the kids in whatever came next. I couldn’t imagine a life without them.

“Now quit being sappy and let’s get on with the fun,” Eddie said.

Junk-picking with Eddie under the half moon was exactly that: lots of fun.

I pointed excitedly down the street to an unmistakable glow of a Jack-o’-lantern. Without a word, Eddie drove up and pulled over. It was a plastic, battery-operated pumpkin with a toothy grin. I immediately put it into the back seat on top of the gingham tablecloth I’d picked up an hour before. I felt the feverish thrill of the hunt as I opened the cardboard box under the pumpkin.

“Anything good?” Eddie called from the front seat.

“How many times do I have to tell you to keep your voice down?” I scolded.

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Eddie bellowed out the open car window.

I shook my head, rifling through the boxes, using my cell as a flashlight to peer into them. I found a pair of red and yellow oversized clown shoes, a witch’s hat, and a peacock-feather fan. Clearly, this family shared my good taste.

“If you find Halloween leggings, for god’s sake, leave them behind,” Eddie said. “You have more than enough already.”

“Ha ha ha,” I said.

At the bottom of the box, I hit the jackpot. It was an inflatable pirate skeleton on a Harley, still in its original packaging. It had to be four feet tall and six feet long. Triumphantly, I carried the box over to Eddie’s window to show him.

“Well, let’s go home and set it up,” he said.

Eddie knew me inside and