Mandy is thirteen the first year she goes trick or treating by herself. She makes the best cowgirl costume she can from a flannel shirt and blue jeans to look like Jessie from Toy Story. She dots red freckles on her cheeks with mom’s favorite lipstick and rushes out of the apartment giddy at the idea of filling her plastic pumpkin with candy.

Mandy approaches doors in clusters of kids. At each home, she rings the doorbell and politely says trick or treat. Moms and dads answer with bowls of candy. Dads peer over Mandy’s head to see if her mom is dressed in her sexy cat outfit like last year, only for the other moms to respond to the dads’ disappointment with whispers of overdose, poor dear. None of them can guess Mandy’s costume. They all say ‘Oh’ when she tells them. They fill her plastic pumpkin with Nerds, Reece’s Pieces, and Twizzlers. The people who live in the big house hand out full-sized Twix, and when Mandy says trick or treat, they dump nickels and pennies into her pumpkin. When Mandy returns home to her apartment, her dad’s too busy drinking a beer and watching the game to bother with his usual candy check for safety, and Mandy sorts her haul herself, worrying if stories of razor blades hidden in candy are true.

School the next day, Mandy hasn’t washed off the freckles. The kids call her chicken pox. They trade full-sized candy bars amongst each other in the cafeteria but won’t trade for her candy corn. She jingles loose change in her pocket and is ten cents short of affording an ice cream. When she returns to class, there is news of a lice infestation, and although Mandy’s head is not itchy, and no one has checked her hair, she is sent home.

At fourteen, Mandy wears her mom’s red lipstick along with her mom’s old cat costume, clothes that are too small, too tight. Boys dressed as zombies, vampires, and Grim Reapers follow wherever she goes. When the moms and dads come to the door, the dads say, You look just like your mother. The moms whisper to the dads, Yeah, like trash. They pick the worst candy, Mary Janes, Bit-O-Honey, or Necco Wafers, and drop them in Mandy’s plastic Walmart bag. At the big house, an older boy dressed as Ken from the Barbie movie answers the door. He smiles, but before he can hand over a full-sized Twix, a woman closes the door slightly, only her hand visible, followed by the sound of pennies clinking in Mandy’s plastic bag. When Mandy arrives home, her dad is so drunk he doesn’t seem to know what day it is and mistakenly calls her by her mother’s name.

School the next day, Mandy oversleeps, and in a rush she wears her cat costume which she neglected to change out of the day before. In the cafeteria, all the boys fight over buying her an ice cream. The teachers object to her clothes, and they try to send her home, but during a phone call her dad tells the principal he’s in no shape to pick her up, so she gets detention instead. Mandy skips out on detention to hang at the 7-Eleven and smoke cigarettes she swiped from her teacher’s purse. When an older boy she recognizes as Barbie’s Ken from the big house puts an arm around her and offers her a full-sized Twix to take a walk with him in the alley, she isn’t gullible enough to believe he’s just being nice. And although she shrugs his arm off and tells him no, the way he calls her a tease before he storms off, she can tell he’s the type of boy to make up stories. And no matter what she says, everyone always believes people who live in big houses.

When Mandy is fifteen, she dresses as a ghost for Halloween. She finds an old sheet and scissors out two holes for eyes. It drags along the ground and the hem becomes a dirty ring. Kids avoid Mandy. She waits on the sidewalk, watching trick or treaters rush from house to house. When the moms and dads come to the door, they know exactly what and who she is. A ghost the dads say. The moms whisper to the dads, Trouble. Mandy stares until they close the doors and shut off their porch lights. At the big house, she throws pennies at the windows, delighted by the sound of cracking glass.

At school the next day, Mandy wears the sheet. She passes through hallways full of kids as if she’s floating, and no one makes fun of her or calls her names. No one bothers her at all. She stands in the corner of the cafeteria. Watching. When she returns to class, the teacher gently pulls her aside and escorts her to the principal’s office. Once there, the principal orders her to take off the sheet, tells her Halloween is over. Mandy doesn’t say a word. The principal calls Mandy’s dad, only for him to slur she hasn’t been home in a week, and by the time the principal hangs up the phone, Mandy’s already gone.

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Mario Aliberto III is the author of All the Dead We Have Yet to Bury (Chestnut Review, 2025), and his short fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Fractured Lit, The Pinch, trampset, and other fine journals. A graduate with a Creative Writing degree from the University of South Florida, he lives in Tampa Bay with his wife and daughters, and yet the dog still runs the house. Find him online at marioaliberto3.com