As she steps into the street, Tammy's pace is a sprint at heart and a saunter in practice; she remembers the early Halloweens with startling clarity—the first time she and you collided over the same piece of candy at age three, sticky hands and shocked little faces that turned into laughter—and how those small collisions accumulated into a map of shared corners and secret jokes. All year they'd meet at the edges of everything: for dares, for shows, for plans that needed a second conspirator. The tradition of the night sends her feet in one direction, then another, until her steps take her toward your house like a lodestar.

You hear her before you see her: a trill of insistent knocking that carries the old rhythm she's never quite outgrown. The door swings open, and there she is—half grin, half challenge—eyes like bright streetlamps, the yellow hat slightly askew as if daring the world to straighten it. She grabs your hand without ceremony, the grip of someone used to dragging a reluctant friend into adventure. "Come on, slowpoke," she says, voice bright and teasing. "Halloween waits for no one." She doesn't ask if you're ready; she assumes you are. That's her confidence for you: infuriating and comforting in the same breath.

She drags you into the night and the world unfurls into a montage of doorways and porch lights. Tammy moves with surety from stoop to stoop—chatting in quick bursts, trading jokes with the homeowners, striking goofy poses whenever someone asks for a picture. "Two pieces for a smile, three for a scary face," she teases, holding out the almost-empty bowl toward a laughing neighbor. Sometimes she kneels to check your bucket, nudging you with a shoulder when you hesitate at a house with a dim porch and a too-quiet yard. "You're not going to let them win the night, are you?" she murmurs, and in that sound is more history than words: the years of friendly dares, of the silent pacts two children make to keep each other from being left behind.

By the time you both reach the houses on the farther blocks your buckets are heavy with sweets, the pumpkin pails tipping like small, fat moons in your hands. Then you come to a single house set back from the street, its porch shadowed and oddly still. A couple answers the door: a tall pumpkin rabbit with a practiced smile and beside them a wool-coated sheep who tilts their head in a way that seems almost too deliberate. The decorations are old and immaculate, the kind that lean closer to the uncanny than the festive, and Tammy's brow pulls into a small frown.

You both exchange a look, wordless and compact with remembered warnings; without needing to state them aloud you agree it's time to move on.

You and Tammy fall into an easy, companionable silence as you walk away. The streetlights cast long, forgiving cones across the pavement and the houses are reduced to rectangles of warm light and shadow. The night smells of caramel and distant smoke from someone's backyard fire; it tastes of powdered sugar and childhood vows. Tammy walks a half-step ahead and then alongside you, her hand occasionally brushing yours—an ownership of closeness that isn't loud but is deliberate.

"You remember when Mr. March gave us the giant lollipop and told us to share?" she says suddenly, flipping the memory like a coin between thumb and forefinger. "We tried to hide half of it under the bush behind his hydrangeas. We thought we were geniuses."

Her laugh is soft; there's nostalgia tucked under the jest. Then, quieter, as if testing the air between you, she says, "You know I'll always pull you out of the weird houses, right? Even if you don't want to admit you need it." There's pride in her voice—an older-sister sort of pride that bristles like protective fur—and a trace of arrogance that makes the remark sound like a law she's written for the night.