Halloween Karma

The October sun hung low over the quad, gilding the red brick buildings in that particular late-afternoon gold that made even the aging campus look like something from a brochure. Tisha paused at the top of the library steps, her olive skin drinking in the warmth, and let her long brown hair swing forward as she checked her phone one more time. Her roommate's text glowed there: **costume contest starts in 20, where r u??** She smiled, thumbs hovering, then pocketed the thing without answering. The student union could wait.

Something about the day felt too perfect to spend indoors, especially after yesterday's deluge had scrubbed everything clean. The park stretched beyond the east edge of campus like a promise, maples dropping their last fire-colored leaves onto paths that still smelled of wet earth. Tisha wandered toward it, her boots scuffing through drifts of copper and scarlet, her mind pleasantly empty of everything except the distant thump of someone practicing bass drum for tonight's Halloween parade.

She had almost reached the duck pond when the figure caught her eye—someone alone on the winding path that cut through the center meadow, moving with that particular hurried walk of someone late to something. From this distance, the pleated skirt suggested a girl, probably another contest-goer. Tisha almost looked away.

Then she recognized the gait.

The shoulders too broad for the outfit. The particular angle of the jaw, even from sixty yards. Tisha stopped mid-step, one boot still lifted, and felt her mouth open in a slow, unbelieving O.

Barry. Her Barry—ex-Barry, correction firmly noted—striding through the park in a cheerleading uniform so abbreviated it would have gotten detention at any self-respecting high school. The pleated skirt barely cleared his thighs, white and crimson, swishing with each step he took toward the hill that rose between him and the student union beyond. His light brown hair was pulled back and what she could now see was a crimson ribbon that bobbed with indignant cheerfulness.

Tisha's hand flew to her mouth, but the laughter escaped anyway—a sharp, delighted bark that scattered sparrows from a nearby bench. She ducked behind an oak, peering around its trunk, and that's when she noticed his legs.

Smooth. Shaved smooth, glistening in the autumn light, catching the sun as the skirt flipped with his stride.

"Oh my god," she whispered to no one, to the tree, to the universe that had finally decided to deliver something worth recording. Her phone was already in her hand, thumb sliding to video, the red dot pulsing to life. "Oh my god, Barry, what are you doing?"

He started up the hill, his white tennis shoes finding purchase on grass that still held yesterday's rain beneath its green surface. The hair ribbon bounced. The skirt flirted with the wind. Tisha held her breath and kept filming, already composing the group text to her girlfriends, already tasting the vindication of six weeks of him claiming she was the one who couldn't commit, couldn't relax, couldn't take a joke.

She was still smiling when his feet went out from under him.

The yelp reached her first—high, startled, almost feminine—and then the sound of impact, a solid meaty thud that made her wince and cackle simultaneously. Barry's arms windmilled once, twice, and then gravity took him completely. He hit the downslope of the hill on his backside and began to bounce, each jarring contact with the wet grass producing a squeak that carried perfectly across the silent meadow.

Squeak. Thump. Squeak. Thump.

Tisha bit her knuckle, tears already pricking her eyes, the phone steady in her other hand. At the bottom of the hill, the mud pit waited—she could see it now, six inches of yesterday's rain pooled in the depression where the path curved, brown and patient and inevitable.

Barry saw it too. She watched him stick his feet out, white shoes flailing for purchase, and for one moment she thought he might actually stop himself. Then momentum laughed at him. He pitched forward, arms spread wide, and hit the mud face-first with a splat so wet and definitive it sounded like someone dropping a melon from a great height.

The skirt flipped. The pink lace beneath it caught the sunlight.

Tisha doubled over, hand clamped hard across her mouth, tears streaming down her face before she could bother to wipe them. Through her phone screen, she watched Barry's scanty pink string-bikini panties—cheeky, desperately, hilariously cheeky—wink at the sky while his face remained planted in the muck. His butt pointed toward heaven like some profane salute.

She wheezed, gasped, pressed her forehead against the rough bark of the oak and let the laughter shake through her in waves. “Oh god! He’s in panties!” she whispered to herself.

Barry pushed himself up, mud dripping from his chin, and spat a mouthful of brown sludge to the side. He sat back on his heels, arms splayed for balance, and for a moment Tisha thought he might actually cry. Then he tried to stand.

His feet shot out in front of him—classic cartoon, arms pinwheeling—and he landed with a spectacular plop that sent mud arcing in all directions. Tisha howled into her palm, her whole body shaking now, the phone recording every glorious second of Barry’s descent into humiliation.

He tried again. Face-first this time, hands slapping the mud uselessly, another splat that coated his hair ribbon in brown. Then again, feet out, butt down, plop. Again. Splat. Again. Plop.

By the time Barry crawled from the pit on his hands and knees, mud dripping from every surface, Tisha was wheezing so hard her ribs ached. She had recorded the whole thing for good measure, capturing his shaky rise to standing, his arms straight at his sides in that particular posture of someone too defeated to even try dignity. He shook his hands. He reached behind him to wipe at his backside, found only more mud, and let his arms fall with a grunt of pure, abject humiliation.

Then he did something that locked the laughter in Tisha's throat for one perfect, crystalline moment: he shook his arms in a jerky, rhythmic motion, body rigid, exactly like Taylor Swift in that music video, exactly like someone trying to physically shed the shame that clung to him.

Tisha caught her breath, wiped her eyes, checked that the video had saved.

Barry turned and began trudging back toward his dorm, leaving a trail of muddy prints on the path. She slipped from behind the oak, phone warm in her palm, and jogged to intercept him. Her boots crunched leaves. Her heart pounded with something that felt almost like the old attraction, but sharper now, weaponized, delicious.