Family Circle

by Junyu Mai

Aric is no longer interested in cartoon costumes, so this year he chose a really scary one – a vampire costume. When he was walking on the street with his friends for trick or treat, he noticed someone wearing the same kind of costume walking past him. That kid is a little shorter than Aric, jump over the step stones, waving a purple light stick. Aric is not very happy to see he is wearing the same thing as somebody else. But, what can you do, the store is selling hundreds of them. And many people just have the same favorites.

As Aric was thinking, the boy suddenly fell down and his purple light stick was crashed. Aric went up to help him stand up.

“Are you OK?”

“Yes. But my light stick…” The boy was almost crying.

“Don’t worry. If you like, you can have mine. It’s orange color though.” Aric felt he instantly grew up a lot more.

“Oh, thank you so much!”

“You are very welcome!”

Aric quickly caught up with his friends and they visited the houses on the street one by one and got lots of candies. Strangely, that boy followed them all the way.

At the end of the street, behind a huge oak tree, there was a dark house with only a dim light at the porch. A basket of candies was outside the door. Apparently nobody was inside. When Aric was just about to pick a candy from the basket, the door opened by itself. It was totally dark inside.

The boy following Aric quietly entered. Aric could only see his orange light stick glowing.

“Come on in!”

The moment Aric stepped inside, the door shut closed. All of a sudden, he realized that the house was actually full of light and color. The living room was two-story tall, filled with all different kind of toys from the floor to the ceiling. There were robots walking on the floor, airplane models flying in the air, and fishes and crabs blowing bubbles inside a huge tank.

“This is my home. Would you like to stay for a while?”

“Wow!”

The boy began to show Aric how to play all those fancy toys. Aric was amazed.

Feeling a little bit warm, Aric took off his mask.

“Why don’t you take off your mask too?” Aric asked.

“I like it this way better. You know it is Halloween…”

Aric turned his head to the troop of automatic hotwheel cars jumping through a waterfall and didn’t pay attention to the boy’s words.

Aric tried all the toys and suddenly realized it was getting late. Fortunately, when he left the boy’s house, his friends were still waiting for him outside. Aric tried to tell his friends what a wonderful time he had, nobody believed him because,

“You had only been inside for a minute!”

…

The next morning, Aric couldn’t stop thinking about that boy and his toy house. Who is he? He must be in the same school as me. Maybe we can play again. So Aric asked his Mom to take him to the boy’s home.

To Aric’s surprise, that was a shabby one-story house. When an old woman answered the door, he could see nothing special in the living room. After Aric’s Mom explained their purpose, the old woman looked puzzled,

“Are you sure it is this house? Only me and my old husband are living here.”

…

On the way back home, as Aric was thinking about every toy he played last night, the boy’s voice flashed back together with the hotwheel cars,

“You know it is Halloween, my favorite holiday. It’s the only day I don’t need to wear any costume.”

- the End -

October 26, 2006