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It was Richard’s year to host the Staff Halloween Party.
Last year, it was held by the art teacher and a few of her lunch lady friends. It was also held on a Friday, which was probably a good thing, because none of the teachers could have taught the next morning. Rick woke up on the kitchen floor with Ms. Baxter at his feet and Mr. Starchman at his head, and Mr. Garcia standing over him, sipping a cup of coffee while staring at all of them.
Then Rick promptly made way to the bathroom in order to throw up all the ginger ale in his stomach.
This year, he swore, it would be good. He’d had to ask to borrow the Guerra’s house- his apartment wasn’t big enough for the every teacher and faculty member in Mayview Middle plus some more people- and he’d blown an unreasonable amount of money on chips and drinks and Halloween themed snacks, but this party was gonna be good. He could feel it.
Of course, he wasn’t anticipating Isabel and Ed deciding to throw their own party. And he wasn’t expecting every single one of Guerra’s students to come out of their rooms, where they spent most of their time skulking, to join the party. He wasn’t really planning on some of his students sneaking out of the kids’ party in the basement to try and convince an adult to spike the punch, but in all honestly he shouldn’t have thought RJ would just let a golden opportunity like that go.
And okay, the party might have become a little bit of a disaster, but Richard was dealing. He was fixing problems on the spot. He was thinking on his feet during a tough situation. He was changing a problematic situation for the better. He was coming up with things to put on a job resume, because the principal might fire him where she saw the mess the annual Staff Halloween Party had become on Spender’s watch.
Agent Day and Mina had come, Spender noted as he swung by the punch bowl to make sure it wasn’t contaminated. He didn’t understand their costumes- Day had wings? Why?- but they were making harmless chatter with Garcia.
Rick hoped it was harmless.
It was probably harmless.
Coach Oop had apparently not noticed his son and co. sneaking around the house- he was engaged in deep conversation with Master Guerra about fighting tactics. It was- violent. And graphic. There were a lot of arm motions involved.
Whistling, Spender ambled away.
Inside the kitchen, Ed and Isabel are looking adorable in matching costumes- a cowboy and cowgirl, respectively. They are also stealing roughly half of the snacks Spender has bought, but he can deal with that. He’s fine with that.
“Hey, Mr. Spends,” Ed said, looking up from his plates of sugar cookies to grin rakishly at Mr. Spender. “How ya doin’?”
Mr. Spender narrowed his eyes at him, though he doubted Ed could see behind his glasses. “I’d be doing a lot better if you weren’t going to eat so many of those cookies.”
“The people are hungry,” Isabel muttered, but both of them slid a few snacks off their platters. Then, quick as gasoline lighting up, they slid past Spender and into the living room, giggling all the way. Rick sighed.
In the backyard porch, spectrals were dueling. Richard was pretty sure some of the children’s friends were watching. Someone hijacked the speakers, and they started playing rap music so loudly Spender couldn’t even hear himself think. Mr. Starchman discovered Guerra’s training equipment, there was a small middle schooler in the middle of a dance floor surrounded her teachers, and Rick was pretty sure some Mayview Academy students had snuck in the back doors when no one was watching, armed with toilet paper and silly string.
He. Could. Deal.
“Rick! Rick!” Agent Day shouted over the crowd, waving an arm to get Spender’s attention.
Careful not to spill his drink, Mr. Spender made his way through the crowd to meet her. Zarei nodded at him and looked into her drink, but Day seemed perfectly happy to talk at length about the gesticulations of Dante and Bach, which was maybe something Spender didn’t understand, or maybe they’d just both had a little too much to drink. Garcia listened, eyes easy.
“How,” Garcia asked when Agent Day ran out of breath, glancing between her and Zarei and Spender, “do you two know each other?”
Spender stayed silent. Their relationship was a professional one, but it wasn’t a profession he could tell Garcia about, and he didn't have any other reason to know her.
“Mutual acquaintance,” Day said lightly, and her smile faltered for a second before she replied, “And you two?”
“We work together,” Garcia said after a pause. “Did I not tell you? I’m part of the Mayview Middle’s staff.”
Day didn’t respond, just hums tunelessly. The conversation went quiet, awkwardly so; Spender coughed. Zarei pressed her lips together, a familiar gesture, and Rick could tell she was itching to be somewhere else. They both were, really, but he doubted Day or Garcia can tell.
“Oh, are you?” Day asked easily. “What subject? I was always partial to English.”
“Ah, science.”
Shifting his glass from one hand to the other, Spender made eye contact with Zarei, held it for a second, then glanced away. His drink was something dark colored, but he’d forgotten what it was exactly. After taking an experimental sip, he decided it was Coke, probably.
“Oh, science,” Zarei interjected, then blinked, as if she hadn’t meant to.
“Oh, yes,” Day said delightedly, then told Garcia, “Mina is a doctor.”
Spender licked his lips; they were rather chapped. Maybe he should have bought some chap stick while he was at the grocery store- they had it in the checkout aisle. Would the cashier at the corner store look at him funny if he snuck out and bought some chap stick? They’d had that one encounter that hadn’t ended well, but-
“Well, Rick,” Zarei told him, pressing her lips together, “I expect you have a party to control; we should let you go.”
Garcia pulled out of his conversation with Day and, blinking, said, “Definitely, yes. Please don’t let this get to get crazy.”
Spender tried for a smile, managed one, and turned away.
He stepped on RJ.
They looked up, eyes light up by the dance floor lights. Neither said anything. RJ stuffed a cookie in their mouth; Spender wondered what they were doing lying on their stomach in the middle of a party. RJ licked their lips and didn’t break eye contact. The song changed, slower and softer than before. RJ took a sip of their soda. Spender blinked, then blinked again, then again. RJ chugged their drink, crumpled up the cup, and threw it into the dance floor.
“Nice seeing you, Mr. Spends,” RJ told him, then crawled away.
Spender swallowed, and, suddenly parched, went to refill his drink.
Downstairs was a train wreck.
When Spender, on a mission for more ice from the downstairs freezer, attempted to just climb down the stairs, he was awarded with the sight of a short, dark haired girl, a boy with curly orange hair, and Lisa from the school store all curled up against one another, Lisa and Jeff a little teary and the girl- Sarah? her name might have been Sarah, Spender thought- consoling them. All three looked up when Spender opened the stair door, and Jeff burst into fresh tears.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” Sarah whispered as Rick carefully made his way around them, and everyone else on the steps. “It’s okay, Jeff, the whole sports thing isn’t a big deal, it’s okay....”
It was even worse at the bottom of the stairs. Eight or so kids appeared to be in the middle of a game of The Floor Is Lava, all standing on top of exercise equipment or sofas or the ping pong table or, in Max’s case, the ceiling fixture. As Rick watched, Ollie Oop leapt off the top of a punching bag, swung on the ceiling fixture (Max clung a little and glared down at him, looking more annoyed than Rick had ever seen him), and landed on the shoulders of one of the kids sitting around on the floor chatting. The kid barely had time to blink before Ollie stepped neatly onto a chair and curled himself up, smirking.
Collin from the school newspaper let out a low whistle, and the burly kid in Spender’s fifth period started clapping.
Around the room, on the floor or the sofas, or just standing in loose circles, was what seemed to be the entire seventh grade and some of the eighth. Everyone had some snacks or a drink, and some were playing pool. Others were playing poker, it seemed like, and Rick would swear he saw some stars change hands. He decided to erase it from his mind.
“Ah, Mr. Spends!” Cody Jones called from atop Violet, the girl who enjoyed arguing. “Have you come to join the truly radical party?”
Spender squinted at him. Cody didn’t seem to notice. “No, I just need some ice.”
“Ah.” Cody’s face fell a little. “Well, have fun! And if any of your guests are feeling bored, be sure to direct them down here.”
“I… will certainly do that,” Spender replied, then ducked out of the way of a jumping child.
The walk through the crowd was fraught with accidents- as Rick watched, a girl spilled soda all over herself, two pairs of best friends broke up, someone got their first kiss without meaning to, a boy tripped over a banana while in ice skates, and three people lost separate Foosball games. Rick, luckily, made it through unharmed. One the way back, however, the ice did not.
Rick stared down at the eight ounce pile of ice sitting on the Guerra’s tile floor and gave up a little. Not much- he could handle it, he told himself- but a little. With a sigh, he looked around for a towel, and-
Thump. As a tablecloth hit Spender directly on the head, he caught sight of Violet grinning, Cody still balancing on her shoulders, and then he fell over. When he extracted himself from the fabric and stood up, her face was more neutral, but it still shined a little deviously. Spender frowned at her, and she shrugged broadly, almost losing Cody in the process.
Spender huffed, then bent to wipe up the mess. When he stood, tablecloth in hand, and made his way back through the crowd, he didn’t even bother watching the children and their disasters, and just focused on the ice, cold in his hand, and the tablecloth, damp against his fingers.
When he climbed back up the stairs, Jeff, Lisa, and Sarah had been joined by Suzy the journalist, the kid who spent all his time reading sheet music when he should have been learning about the Whiskey Rebellion, and one of the twins that Rick couldn’t tell apart. All of them were crying, apart from Sarah.
When Spender returned upstairs, he found it to be very peaceful. There were no crying people, apart from the some of the sixth grade teachers in the corner, and Maxwell Puckett was not hanging from a light fixture. Rick took it as a win.
He did find, however, find Johnny Jhonny talking to several spectrals, Mr. Starchman handing out stars to literally anyone in sight, someone trying to spike the punch, some Mayview Academy teachers, and a distinct lack of snacks.
He could deal with it.
Rick blacked out at around one o’clock in the morning, after he'd tried mixing orange juice, whipped cream, and ice. When he woke up on the floor of the Guerra’s kitchen, he found RJ, Stephen the conspiracy theorist, Isaac, and Dimitri Danger all sitting on the kitchen counter, staring at him. Lying on the ground next to him were the bodies of several more children, none of which Rick recognized, Agent Day, Master Guerra, and the school secretary.
RJ held out a box of store-bought cookies to Spender and asked, through a mouthful of food, “Cookie, Mr. Spends?”
Spender turned over and went to sleep.