Childhood best friends to enemies to lovers.
Alina wants nothing to do with the rebellious bad boy, Liam Somner.
Which is difficult, because he goes to her school. And lives on her street. And keeps showing up at her apartment, and sitting in her ki...
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October slips away and with it, my goal to find a best friend seems to slip further. Hannah P. doesn't talk to me unless it's about Liam. A few other girls talk to me for that exact reason - asking me whether Liam is going to Ava Kelly's Halloween party, or whether he's dating anyone. I tell them I don't have access to his calendar and have no interest in his dating life. And like that, they are happy to ignore me again.
But the Halloween party does give me some kind of idea. If I go to Ava Kelly's Halloween party, and wear the coolest costume that perfectly toes the line between funny and sexy and self-aware and relevant, then maybe someone will actually recognise me as more than Liam's secretary, and actually want to be friends with me.
And thus begins my panic at finding the perfect Halloween costume.
Everything in the regular stores is out. No cat costumes, no sexy nurse, no witch or devil. Those are too basic. And Alina Cook, as I'm about to show the world (or at least my senior class) is not basic. Alina is funny. Alina is cool. Alina is smart and woke and self-aware and relevant, and knows how to turn that into a costume. Hopefully.
"Why don't you just wear what you wore last year?" Mom asks me, when she finds me mid-panic attack because I can't figure out what to wear.
"I didn't go to a Halloween party last year, Mom! In case you don't remember I was mid-mental breakdown!"
Mom sighs. "Okay, okay. What about a witch? Sometimes classic is cool?"
"Not a witch!" I snap.
"Don't take an attitude with me. I'm trying to help," Mom says.
At this point, Sonja peeks her head around the door. I didn't realise Sonja was here, but I should have known. It's Friday night and Mom and Sonja always hang out on Friday night.
"Liam's going as Ziggy Stardust," Sonja says.
"I have literally no clue who that is," I say. "Is she a Youtuber?"
Mom and Sonja laugh at this, so I glare at them.
"Alina, forget for a second about your school friends and what they think of you," Mom says. "Pretend this is like Halloween when you're ten years old. You just wanna go as the person you love the most in the world. Remember that year when Oscar went as Elsa from Frozen? He didn't care about what his friends thought, and they loved it!"
"I don't know why the fuck we didn't start suspecting he was gay then," Sonja said. Every time Sonja swears, my Mom winces. It's one of my favourite differences between them.
"Who's your hero, Alina?" Mom asks.
"I can't dress as my hero. The big difference is that Oscar always had friends in school. He was always popular, even if he did stupid shit like going as Elsa when he was in middle school," I say. "But I am decidedly not popular. I am probably the least popular person in that school. Everyone thinks I'm a freak and no one talks to me, and if I go as Elsa they'll think I'm insane."
