It was mid October and my family and friends are getting ready for our annual trip to pecks farmers market. Hallie, Forest and Draya are already here. I help my dad lift the cooler packed full with sub sandwiches and sodas and snacks into the back of the station wagon my parents bought when I was 5 years old, the station wagon that Hallie and I rode in, in the fold down seats in the back and would wave at the people in the car behind us until we were 14 and some guy flipped us off. The jerk! Hallie along with her boyfriend Forest would be riding with my parents and I.

Draya was riding with us as well.

My other friends were coming too. Kelsey and Phil were riding up with Brian and Raquel and Tracy was driving her VW bus there along with Jeff and his three younger siblings, the twin boys Adam and Andrew and his sister Rosie. I was sure that they would enjoy it. Peck’s had all kinds of stuff geared towards kids, a few little haunted houses, but they weren’t all that scary even as a little kid and there was the petting zoo where you can feed the goats, they also had a couple of swans and ducks and ponies and horses and pigs and peacocks, then there was the hayride and the corn maze and of course the pumpkin patch. Peck’s was always the highlight of the season well one of them anyway.

Hallie came over loading a few blankets in to the back as well. “Think you and Draya will be able to keep your hands off each other for the entire trip?” Hallie whispered quietly teasing me.

I of course told my friends that I had lost my virginity to Draya sparing as many details as I could of course. It had been a week and they still won’t let me live it down, well ok Raquel doesn’t say much about it except that she is happy that she is no longer the only one who gave up her V card and Tracy knows I hate it so kept her comments to herself after the first day. Hallie and Kelsey were not so kind.

“Don’t worry we’ll keep everything PG.” I said with slight annoyance.

Then I feel Draya’s arms slip around my waist. “I don’t know Darling we might have to take it up a notch to PG 13.”

”Ok cool it lover girl, we’re not even on the road yet.” Hallie said before walking away.

It didn’t take long for everyone to meet up at my house and then get on the road to spring green.

My dad had a Halloween cd that we played on the way up to Peck’s.

It had songs like “Thriller’ by Micheal Jackson and ‘Nightmare on my street’ by Will Smith and of course the ever popular ‘Scooby Doo where are you?’ theme which everyone sang along to except for Draya because she had never watched the show or heard the theme song and so didn’t know the lyrics.

“Guess I will have to add that to the playlist.” I said resting my head on Draya’s shoulder and closing my eyes contentedly and was contemplating taking a nap for the rest of the ride there. We had gotten up very early that day and Draya had kept me up later than usual the night before, not that I am complaining about the things that took place that were the reason for staying up late and I might have instigated the whole thing but still I did not get to bed any where near early enough.

“Tired?” Draya whispers to me.

“Mm hmm, but it’s your fault!” I scolded although my tone was teasing.

“I think we share equal blame for that darling.”

“I am not going to argue with you about it, I’m too sleepy and relaxed for it.”

“You rest I will wake you when we arrive at our destination.”

I smile contentedly as I snuggle into Draya and she puts her arms around me and pulls me closer to her and the Halloween songs fade into white noise as I drift off to dream land.

I am awoken by Draya playfully poking me in my side. I attempt to swat her away with little success. “We’re at our destination now darling.” she whispers in my ear.

“Mmm okay.” I say stretching and letting out a yawn and waited for my dad to open the back to let Draya and myself out.

When he opens the back we attempt to clamber over the stuff in the back and get out and some how we managed it.

I saw Jeff’s siblings getting out of the VW bus and the twins taking off towards the haunted house shaped like a giant jack-o-lantern. Jeff yelled after them not to run off as he and Tracy chased after them, Rosie sticking close to her big brother Jeff’s side.

My mother said something about going into the shop to get tickets for the hayride and disappearing from sight.

I joined up with my other friends to discuss what we wanted to do first.

“Well I saw Tracy and Jeff go to the jack-o- lantern haunted house because Adam and Andy took off towards it.” I informed them.

“Well then jack-o-lantern haunted house it is!” said Brian making his way towards the afore mentioned haunted house.

The inside of the jack-o-lantern house was, as you might expect, round inside with triangle eye nose and mouth pieces cut out on both sides in the center of the house was a pillar which I expected was holding the whole structure up. Hanging from the ceiling were strips of white cloth and there was strobe lights and fake fog and up against the right wall of the house was an enormous fake hairy spider with light up red eyes which believe it or not did creep me out a little. Usually I have no problem with spiders, leave them alone and they will leave you alone. I always liked the complex and interesting webs they wove and they eat flys and misquotes and other insects we don’t like. Yet the one that they had against the wall on a even bigger web yeah no thank you.

The twin boys were currently chasing each other around the pillar.

Tracy was kneeling down talking gently to Rosie who seemed frightened and it didn’t seem like Tracy was having much luck in calming her. I went over and knelt down to Rosie’s level and asked “Hey what’s going on here?”

“I don’t like it in here.” Rosie whimpered.

“Because it’s kind of scary in here huh? I think it’s scary too. You want to know what I don’t like in here?”

“What?” The small girl asked

“That giant spider against the wall.”

“It’s fake so it doesn’t scare me I don’t like the lights and fog and the machine making the fog makes a scary noise.” she said

“I see I guess it is scary but the flashing lights are just like if you flicker the lights in your house and the fog is actually kind of fun look…” I said moving my hands around making the fog swirl around “…as for the noise the machine makes, well how about we make a even bigger noise so we can’t hear it?”

“What kind of noise?”

“Well can you laugh like a witch?”

Rosie nodded.

“Let me hear it.”

Rosie did an impression of the laugh that the wicked witch in the wizard of Oz did it was actually pretty good.

“Ok so when ever you hear that fog machine you just do that witch laugh as loud as you can and I will howl like a wolf and we’ll be so loud that we won’t be able to hear the scary noise anymore how does that sound?”

“Ok I can try” she said.

I smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up.

When the fog machine came on and I noticed Rosie looking frightened I let out my best wolf howl and Rosie did her witch laugh and then beamed up at me.

“You seem to be good with children.” Draya commented

“I babysat for my neighbor one summer and picked up a few tricks like for example the little girl was afraid of the monster in her closet so I went to this old fashioned toy store and got the kid a pop gun pistol the kind with a cork in it and then read her the book There's a Nightmare in My Closet and told her if anything came out of the closet to just shoot it with their pop gun like in the book it worked like a charm.” I explained.

As we continued through the attraction we exit the jack-o-lantern to a small grassy walk way with wooden shelves on either side lined with pumpkins and that led into a small wooden structure about the size of a garden shed. There was chain link on either side of the structure leaving a space about a foot wide to walk through. On the one side behind the chain link was a werewolf animatronic that was chained to the wall and on the other side behind the chain link was the grim reaper. After exiting the haunted house we all went into the shop and got large bags of corn to feed the animals in the petting zoo.

The goats all rushed over to the fence of their pen when they saw us obviously having learned that people meant yummy food. Draya and I however wandered over to the horses.

Draya seemed to especially like the horses, feeding them hand fulls or corn or petting their velvety snouts while telling them how beautiful and majestic they were.

“So you really like horses?” I inquired while I fed some corn to a horse with a gold colored coat.

“I love them I had three of them growing up …” she said as she stroked the muzzle of a beautiful paint “…I spent lots of time in the stables that’s how I met…well I thought he was my first love but I was only a child. I was ten when we met. He was a stable boy two years older than me. At first we were just good friends but when I was thirteen we started a secret relationship, my parents would have never approved, honestly that was part of the attraction. The fact that I was thirteen and he was fifteen didn’t seem to matter, as far as we were concerned age was just a number. He said he loved me and I believed him. I lost my virginity to him when I was fifteen and he was seventeen.”

“You were only fifteen!”

“Why are you so shocked by that? After all it’s only a year younger than you are now and you certainly don’t seem to mind that you lost yours to me.”

“I’m also not dating someone two years older than me!”

“You know tetnicly I am one hundred sixty seven years old so I am one hundred fifty one years older than you.”

“You are also frozen at seventeen. You are physically, mentally and emotionally seventeen the fact that you have existed on the earth for one hundred sixty seven years is inconsequential.”

“Good point.”

“So what happened to that guy?”

“When he was eighteen he had an opportunity to move out west and work on a ranch. He said once he made enough money he would buy his own piece of land and start his own cattle herd and once he was settled he would send for me but only 6 months later he fell for someone else and broke up with me via telegram.”

“That’s awful! I am so sorry that happened to you.”

“It was for the best and anyway I ended up with you.”

I smiled.

We ventured away from the horses and rejoined my friends who were all going into one of the biggest attractions, a large log cabin with a sign on the door that read pirates tavern. Inside the theme to Pirates of the Caribbean was playing. There was a large black flag with the Jolly Roger on it and a pirate captain manikin standing in front of it one hand on his hip the other holding a sword aloft. here were three other pirate manikins sitting around a table playing cards stacks of gold coins around them and in the very back was a skeleton sitting by a table with an eyepatch and red bandanna on his head a sword wedged between his ribs.

After that we reconvened at my parents car for lunch. Draya and I sitting in the fold down seats in the car to eat our subs which was more comfortable than the hard wooden picnic tables my friends were sitting at.

After lunch we decided to be daring and take our chances with the corn maze. Adam and Andy were having fun chasing each other through the maze but Jeff told them to “Stay in sight we were going to have enough trouble finding our way out with out having to track the two of you down if you got lost.”

Luckily Tracy had the foresight to get a map of the maze but it still took us a long time too navigate our way out.

Two hours later we finally found our way to the exit.

We all convened near the pirate tavern because that is where the hayride picks you up. My mom hands each of us a ticket to get on the hayride.

The horse drawn hayride goes around the entire area and you get to see Peck’s deer farm which not only has deer but elk and buffalo too.

Rosie and her twin brothers excitedly pointing them out.

Draya and I weren’t much interested in the scenery. We had a big blanket wrapped around the both of us and we were just enjoying snuggling close together with the soothing sounds of the horses hoofbeats and the blowing and snorting noise of the horses.

After the hayride everyone went to pick out a pumpkin. Adam and Andy both picked out pumpkins that were very bumpy and almost deformed looking. “They make the scariest jack-o-lanterns.” They both claimed in unison.

Rose picked out a pumpkin as big and round as a basket ball.

Draya didn’t pick out a pumpkin she was more interested in the gourds and Indian corn.

“Celeste grows pumpkins in her garden we always have them in abundance but not the gourds and Indian corn.”

We made our purchases in the shop and loaded them into the vehicles.

Everyone wanted to go to somewhere to eat and we decided to go to Denny’s when we got back into town.

We were all seated at a corner booth and talking and laughing. I have absolutely no clue how we ever got any food in our mouths with how much laughing and talking was taking took place but somehow we managed it.

After the meal we all bid each other farewell as at this point we were all going our separate ways either taking people home or going home ourselves we took Forest home first then Hallie then Draya.

I walked Draya to her front door “See you later tonight?”

“Of course darling.”

Then we shared a quick kiss and I got back into the car with my parents I was smiling the entire way home.

As usual I waited up for Draya and she arrived around 11 as she usually does.

She doesn’t say anything as she crawls into bed next to me a puts her arm around me as it is her turn to be the big spoon and runs cool fingers through my hair and my eyes droop closed and I drift peacefully off to sleep.

THE END… to be continued in story titled Masquerade Ball