• Isn’t it funny? That our worlds just exploded? My world, formerly filled with little bubble-headed girls and the little bubble-headed boys who pursued them, with the mindless chatter they produced, with all of the little automatons happily going about their days? Yours, filled with vampires and werewolves, with all sorts of creatures that go bump in the night, with other spirits like you?
    Isn’t it funny how everything we knew up until now never mattered?
    But you still want me to tell the story. You’ve told yours, so it’s only proper for me to tell mine.
    I suppose it all started when I was little….
    I walked into kindergarten on the first day, wondering why all the girls wore pink. The boys wore various colors; blue, white, blue, orange, blue, and red, but mostly blue. Not a soul wore black.
    Except me.
    The teacher, Mrs. Pinkrael (pronounced Peen-Krael, not Pink-Rail, as she quickly told us) hurried over to show me to my seat (in absence of my mother, who was too busy drinking from a clear bottle full of what I now know was a very strong Tequila to bring her five-year-old to her first day of school) between two of the pink-girls. The one on my right had nearly white hair and brown eyes, with snowy skin. The one on my left had black hair and blue eyes, with cocoa-colored skin. I remembered thinking that they should trade eyes.
    Mrs. Pinkrael sat on a little stool in front if the blackboard and took attendance. “Raven? Where’s little Raven?” she called in an annoyingly sweet voice. I raised my hand, and she went on to the others.
    When Mrs. Pinkrael had finished attendance, she made us all sit in a little circle around her. She then asked everyone what they thought was best part of kindergarten so far. Some of the kids replied to the old woman, and she smiled a grandma-smile when one of the pink-girls answered that her favorite part of kindergarten was Mrs. Pinkrael.
    When she came to me, I replied that I thought it was too soon to tell; that I thought Mrs. Pinkrael would kill us when she had the chance. She called my mom to pick me up immediately afterwards.
    She never showed.
    I spent most of my childhood alone, being shunned and called names, like ‘witch’ and ‘devil worshipper’. The former never offended me, but the latter did.
    Until third grade, I never made a single friend. My first friend was Lilith, a little blond girl with blue eyes. She wore black on the first day, too.
    I’ll never forget the first thing she said to me. It was, “When I grow up, I wanna jump into an active volcano! Oh, and my name’s Lilith. What’s yours?”
    We’ve been best friends ever since, even though she’s never in Chicago. Her family moves a lot.
    My favorite holiday was always Halloween. One year, Lilith and I went trick-or-treating together. It was one of the few years she was in Chicago for Halloween, and she wanted our costumes to match. So we went as witches. She had sprayed purple temporary dye into her mid-back length blond hair, and wore a short black cotton dress with a ripped hem that she borrowed from me. I had just recently dyed my waist-length, mousy brown hair black. I wore a purple-spider-webbed black mini skirt with a matching tank top. We got the most candy we had ever gotten before, and when we were done treating, we stepped by our favorite haunt—the graveyard.
    We laughed and played for hours, admiring the way the full moon made the headstones glow silver. I never expected to run into you there.
    But there you sat; on a headstone that looked old as time itself. I remember thinking how strange it was that the moonlight illuminated everything around you, except for you. You looked over at me, and your dark hair fell away from your eyes. They were the only thing the moon shined upon, and they looked silver. You smiled at me like you knew me. I know now that you did. You leaped off the headstone and walked towards me.
    “You’re a witch, you know,” you said to me. I knew that you didn’t mean my costume. “I’ve been waiting a very long time for you, Lovette.”
    “My name is Raven, not Lovette,” I replied. You were so much taller than me, even then. I had to crane my neck to see you.
    “It wasn’t always,” you replied. “I knew you best when you were Lovette.”
    I was confused then, but I know better now. You told me how in a past life, I was Lovette, a French girl in the 1700s. We were lovers, but before we could get married, you were murdered. You became a ghost, only to find that while you were in limbo, I had died from the plague. You never told me you loved me.
    You explained that you were still a ghost, and that you were only visible at night. You explained that you were usually transparent, but on Halloween, when the veil between that living and the dead was thinnest, you were solid.
    Lilith remarked that you didn’t look dead. I tried not to giggle. She was right. But somehow I knew you were telling the truth. You said your name was Jameson. I knew right away that you were who you said you were.
    After that, we were inseparable. You were my best friend, besides Lilith. You were the only one I could talk to. So what if no-one could see you but me? So what if it looked like I was talking to myself? You helped keep me sane.
    Over the years, my skin got paler, my hair darker, my eyes greener. You stayed the same, just as pale, your eyes the same silver-green, your hair the same almost-black. And now here we are, on Halloween again, telling stories about our lives. You look exactly as you did back five years ago, in this same cemetery, on this same grave. It was your mother’s, you explain. She came to the new world just months before she died. Just days before you died.