Room 516, Tuesday Morning

[thewrathofkaan]

Roscoe woke up to a long string of text messages from his grandpa that he tried responding to before he ultimately got bored trying and forgot about it. He was more interested in spending his day in other ways, like laying on his stomach with his tablet on his bed, browsing through online shoe stores.

Look, it was fall. He needed new boots. It was important.

He had a nicely creepy Halloween playlist playing in the background, getting him in that mood. Pumpkin spice and spooky scary songs and boot shopping, it was a whole thing.

[[door and post open!]]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

A few hours before sending his school-wide message, Dante showed up to Roscoe's doorstep. He rapped his knuckles on the door before stepping inside with a, "Yo, Roscoe. What's up?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"Hey!" Roscoe called, perking up. He flashed his tablet screen at Dante. "Real quick, what do you think of these?"

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante leaned over and squinted at the tablet. "Holy fuck," he said. "Those are awesome. Outta this world."

Dante, no. That one was especially bad.

[thewrathofkaan]

Roscoe had bad taste, so he laughed loudly at the bad pun. "Great. Add to cart," he narrated, decisively tapping the corresponding button on the tablet. "I'm kinda excited to do some fall shopping. I've never lived anywhere with, like, seasons before," he shared.

"Anyway, what's up?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"West coast kids," Dante said, shaking his head. Then he grinned. "So did you know your big sib has her birthday around now?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"Guilty," Roscoe sing-songed. The west coast was the best coast, don't lie. "Shit, really? What's the plan?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Iiii was wondering if you wanted to put a dent in your asshole dad's credit card and rent some carnie crap for the party warehouse," Dante said.

That was less of a grin and more of a smirk.

[thewrathofkaan]

"You came to the right place," Roscoe said, scrambling to sit up and patting the space next to him for Dante to come over. He quickly swiped out of the shoe shopping site and opened a new tab to start doing some research in. "Does she know about it?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"She knows I'm throwing her a party, but not what or when yet," Dante said, sinking down on the bed next to him. "Saw a bunch of places that do like, blow-up midways and stuff."

[thewrathofkaan]

"Ooh, yeah," Roscoe said, tabbing out one contender, and then another and another. "Holy shit, look at that thing. You think Ada wants to hang on to a bucking shark? It's maybe a little more 'beach party' than 'carnival' but it's all the same umbrella, right?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Okay, we definitely need that first one," Dante said. At the shark, he cackled. "Oh, no, we need it," he said. "Put carnival lights on anything, it fits in, right?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"Definitely," Roscoe agreed. "Oh shit, you know what else we have to get ahold of? Whatever carnies drink. Authenticity."

It would probably corrode his entire liver but it would be worth it.

"Possibly including that thing."

He was having way too much fun with this and it was pretty much guaranteed that he was going to get a lot of angry texts from his grandpa after he made all these purchases, but hey, your school-assigned big sibling you'd only known for six months only turned...whatever age she was turning... once, right?

[rebelseekspizza]

"Oh, fuck yes," Dante snickered. "It probably tastes like ass but who fucking cares, right?"

He leaned over to eye the set-up some more. "Oh, and we need to get one of those LED lamp things that rotate and show stars and shit," he said. "And ask everyone to come sparkly."

[intotheout]

"Isn't it a little early for Halloween stuff?" Tip asked. It was her day off, and rather than hang out in her room reading and arbitrating arguments between J.Lo and her mom over the phone, she'd decided to go wandering. "I mean, we've got like a month and a half."

[thewrathofkaan]

"No, the rule is it's Halloween season as soon as the pumpkin spice lattes are in," Roscoe assured her. "Plus the weather's getting cooler, which automatically means it's fall."

Who needed calendars when you had an autumn-happy West Coast kid to tell you the months of the year, honestly?

[intotheout]

"It's like 80 degrees outside." Which was admittedly rather a bit cooler than this area got in August, so. "Are you already planning your costume or something?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"Not yet, but I so should!" See what you did, Tip? This was on you. "Assuming they actually do Halloween parties here. They have to, right? They better not just pull some 'every day is costume day on Fandom island!' thing."

[intotheout]

"Maybe the whole island takes a trip to a magic Halloween world," Tip guessed. "This place seems like it'd be pretty all-or-nothing on the holidays."

[thewrathofkaan]

"Oh man, that would be so cool, though," Roscoe said wistfully. He was going to be the biggest Halloween fanboy ever now that he was living somewhere with seasons. He'd just decided. "With, like, talking pumpkins. And dancing skeletons, but not the really scary ones. And you have to go everywhere by hayride."

[intotheout]

"That just sounds itchy." Tip was a city kid. Halloween to her mostly just meant drunken strangers in costumes and candy everywhere. "What if you're allergic to hay?"

[thewrathofkaan]

"Wait, you can be allergic to hay?" Roscoe wondered. "Full disclosure, I've never been on an actual hayride. They just look cool in movies."

[intotheout]

"It's basically dry grass," Tip pointed out. "I always kind of figured it was the sort of thing they only actually did in movies, not in the real world."

[thewrathofkaan]

"Probably," Roscoe laughed. "I bet a lot of the whole teen experience they show in movies is fake. Like, I don't know, those high school football teams that everyone in town worships for some reason. Does anyone's school actually have a football team?"

[intotheout]

"I think the one back home does," Tip said. "They have a homecoming parade and everything." Suburbs were weird. "I don't know why anyone who didn't know someone on the team would care, though. I hear they're pretty bad at it."

[thewrathofkaan]

"And football is the most boring sport to watch, anyway," Roscoe added. "I mean, maybe it makes sense if there are cheerleaders."