One Mind

By the last week of October, our street had begun to change its mind about what kind of place it was.

All summer it had been sprinklers ticking over lawns, garage doors groaning open, scooters left belly-up on the sidewalk. Now plastic skeletons leaned from porch railings as if they had been waiting all year to gossip. Cotton spiderwebs clung to hedges. A pumpkin with triangle eyes watched from the Metzgers' front steps, already sagging a little on one side.

Briony said it looked like it knew a secret.

"It looks like it needs braces," I said.

She bent close to the pumpkin until her nose almost touched the carved mouth. "It heard that."

"Good."

We were crouched beside my front porch with our bikes lying in the grass and a shoebox of costume supplies between us. Briony had brought glitter glue, three kinds of ribbon, and a bag of silver pipe cleaners she had been saving since July. I had brought a black witch hat Dad bought from the pharmacy, which had a purple buckle glued on crooked and a brim that drooped if you looked at it too long.

"A real witch would not buy her hat from Clearbrook Pharmacy," Briony said.

"A real witch would not need glitter glue."

"A real fairy would."

She held up one finger, sticky with silver dust, and made a serious face. Briony could make a serious face better than any kid I knew. Her eyebrows went flat and her mouth disappeared into a line, like she was a teacher trapped in a fourth grader's body.

I tried to copy her expression. She laughed first.

That was how most things happened with us. She decided the shape of the game, and I rushed in after her, trying to make it better or stranger or louder. At school, the teachers put us in different reading groups because we talked too much. At lunch, we traded half our food without asking. She hated raisins and I hated the fake-cheese crackers that left orange powder in the corners of your fingernails, so it worked out.

"Mom would have known how to fix the brim," I said.

The words came out because I was looking at the hat, not because I meant to make anything quiet.

Briony stopped pulling ribbon through her fingers. She did not say the careful things adults said when Mom came up. She only turned the hat in her hands, studied the collapsed brim, and threaded a pipe cleaner along the edge.

"There," she said after a minute. "Witch engineering."

I put it on. The brim held.

"You look dangerous," Briony said.

"Good."

The front door opened behind us. Dad came out holding two cups of apple slices and peanut butter, one in each hand. His hair was flattened on one side, which meant he had been in his office for hours with his headphones on. When he worked like that, he forgot mirrors existed.

"For the engineers," he said.

"I am a fairy," Briony said.

"For the fairy and her consultant."

I took a cup from him. "Can we ride to the end of Clover Street?"

Dad looked down the road.

Clover Street ran through our neighborhood in one long curve, past the park, past the school bus stop, past the empty lot with the weeds that turned white in winter. At the far end there was a crossing where cars sometimes came too fast from the main road. Dad had rules about it: stop, feet down, look left, look right, wait even if it seemed empty, never race through.

He had made me repeat the rules so many times I could say them in my sleep.

"Helmets," he said.

"Obviously."

"Both of you. Straps buckled. And the crossing rule."

"Stop, feet down, look left, look right, wait even if it seems empty, never race through," I said in one breath.

Briony saluted with an apple slice.

Dad looked at my hat. "No riding in that."

"Witches need transportation."

"Witches can ride after they get home."

I groaned, but I took it off and set it on the porch post. Dad adjusted my helmet strap with two fingers under my chin. His hands smelled faintly of coffee and the lemon soap from the kitchen sink.

"Back before five," he said.

"We will be back at four fifty-nine," Briony said.

"Four fifty-eight," Dad said.

"Four fifty-eight and thirty seconds."

He gave her a look. She grinned.

When we pushed off, my bike wheels made a soft shushing sound through the dry leaves along the curb. The air had that bright, cold edge October sometimes gets even when the sun is strong. It made my cheeks feel awake.

Briony rode ahead, her ponytail swinging through the back of her helmet. She had taped paper wings to her backpack, and every bump made them flutter. I followed her past Mr. Alonzo watering mums, past a driveway chalked with ghosts, past the house where the dog barked at anything with wheels.

"Aren't you excited about the Halloween party?" Briony called over her shoulder.

"Of course!"

"I'm going as a fairy. What about you?"

"I'll be a witch."

"Good. Then if anyone gives us raisins, you can curse them."

"Only if they deserve it."

"Everyone who gives raisins deserves it."

We rode on, the whole afternoon opening in front of us as if nothing in it could close.