"What did you say?", Reggie had asked his boys when they suggested it to him. Now, he sits at the back of the plant's first floor, hoping and praying it doesn't turn out bad. The rest of the boys hide in various rooms on the first floor, getting their best scary faces on.
They were sipping a bottle of corona when he met up with them—though he found it quite absurd to get drunk before the big game—because Trevor swiped it from his parent's liquor cabinet. Dimitri was gulping down the beer when Reggie showed up, and he believed Dimitri must have drank three quarters of it himself, because he was already too ecstatic about the game and slurring his words a bit.
When they offered it to him he rejected it quite fast. Reggie was many things: A bit of an asshole at times; A bit conceited at times. But an idiot, with no common sense, he was not. He heard enough stories about blacks being thrown in jail for him to stay out of trouble, and besides, doing those selfish things would be a sin to the church. However, what really took him by storm is what they suggested next, each with a smile of opportunity on their faces.
He refused, not for selfish reasons like wanting to spare his head, but because he was genuinely worried that Ian would get hurt. Not that he'd ever seen Ian hurt. In fact, he couldn't remember Ian ever getting hurt while he was staying with them. There was one instance, the first time they brought him to the plant, where he saw Ian bleed for the first time. While entering one of the rooms, Ian reached his hand around the wall to guide his way, and sliced his left hand off a sharp part of the wall that was sticking out.
It was a slight grimace. Not one of pain. That, Reggie was sure of. It was a face he recognized, nonetheless. It was the face of a girl after her boyfriend raised his voice at her. The face you'd make when you smelled something rotting in your kitchen garbage. A face of disgust, curiosity, confusion, but definitely not a face of pain. It was like the cut was an annoyance to Ian as well as something he was curious about, in a twisted sort of way.
Perhaps he would've overlooked it, if only something like that hadn't happened before. But, it did. Not in the same sort of fashion, however, but it was still a peculiar occurrence to Reggie's mind. When Ian strolled into his room after he had a bad day,—he was crying in his bed, because his girl had cheated on him with some foreign exchange student—he had asked Reggie if he wanted to go get snacks for a movie. Reggie blew up, yelling at Ian and slamming the door in his face. Later that night, he found Ian crying in his room, but it didn't make Reggie feel bad about the way he spoke to him.
The crying was artificial, at least to Reggie's ears, and it sounded the way a younger sibling intentionally cries in order to get his or her way. He simply left the room the same way he entered, rolling his eyes and returning to his room. That's what the grimace was to him, as artificial as the sympathetic crying at night. But it wasn't like Ian was a robot, he had bled from the cut at the plant (and his blood was red). But, nevertheless, both circumstances didn't sit right in his stomach, like his body wanted to rid itself from the toxicity of them.
But now, as his buds plan to surprise Ian with a Halloween scare, those thoughts from before have been thrown out the window. He'd only seen Ian cry one time—he didn't even cry at his parent's funeral or when they found him on those linoleum steps—and he felt that with this scare, all the emotions Ian was holding in would start to pour out with ease. He would start bawling, and have a breakdown from all the shit he'd been given from the past few months.
So, he's sitting out on it, refusing to go forward with such a plan. He can't stop them from doing it though, their minds were set before they suggested it to him. Now he just hopes it doesn't hit Ian too hard, and that he'll be able to recover from it with flying colors.
Reggie hears Ian coming before he actually appears, hears the bits of rubble under Ian's feet move (which is near the cement plant, no doubt). Making his way to the first floor hall, he peers over the edge of the wall to watch it all go down, being careful not to let Ian see him lurking there.
Ian's so excited, a big cute grin stretched across his face, and he holds a nice grip on the edges of his blanket. Out of sympathy, Reggie considers just jumping out into the hallway, greeting Ian with a wave and ruining the plans of his friends. But he doesn't, he lets it happen, watching Ian walk farther down the hall while calling for them.
It all happens so fast. Dimitri signals the scare, waving his forefinger like a military soldier, and pointing his finger towards the hall. Dimitri, Trevor, and Dexter, are all hiding in the broken-down bathroom. The mirror is shattered, with pieces of glass on the floor, and there is grime and dust all around the bathroom floor. The toilet is filled with old bottles and bags, and the lid of the water tank is lying broken on the floor. Across the hall in the other room, the rest of the boys are hidden and make snickering laughs. When the time comes, Dimitri pulls down his Jason Voorhees mask, and they all jump into the hall with their hands lifted to make a menacing scare.
Ian sees them all in front of him, some with masks and dark clothes and others in white, and his eyebrows raise and his eyes go wide.
And then, after a moment of silence, he breaks down laughing with a content smile on his face. "Good one guys!", Ian says with a laugh, "Nice mask, Dimitri! I could hardly tell it was you under there."
There is a brief moment of awkwardness—they all are stunned because Ian's utterly unfazed by the scare—but then Dexter walks forward and breaks the silence. "You know what? Respect.", Dexter says, extending his hand to Ian. Ian dabs him up, which surprises Reggie, because he's never seen a white boy know how to dab before. Reggie supposes that Ian has seen him do it with his buds before, so it isn't completely crazy that he knows what he was doing, but it still surprises him.
"Here, let me help you out there.", Dexter says, grabbing the edges of Ian's blanket and tying it in a knot over his chest. "There, now it won't fly off when you run.", He says with a smile.
Others step forward and greet Ian with a dab, and while they do, Reggie silently joins the group. But, Dimitri and Damonte don't seem to budge, and stay right where they are with disappointing faces.
"Oh hey, Reggie! I didn't even notice you there!" Reggie awkwardly waves back with a slight smile, and Dimitri gets the train going with a big sigh.
"Alright, are we going to play the game or not? It's already 9:42", He says with a check of his watch.
The game begins, and it is one helluva good time. Dexter opens his backpack to get the flashlights, because the ghosts will need them to play the game. They aren't big, in order to keep the game balanced, and they shine a light no bigger than a quarter. The ghost team for this year is Ian, Reggie, Dexter, and Damonte, while the rest of the group are the ghastly ghouls.
The game is simple. The ghosts stay outside while the ghouls hide in the plant, allowing them only two minutes to do so. The ghosts' objective is to go untouched, and make it back to home base without being tagged. Here, home base is a big tower of rocks to the right of the plant, and if the ghosts can reach it without being tagged, they win the game. The ghouls' objective is to go unseen—for as long as possible, at least—until they have the advantage against the ghosts. When they reach the advantage point, they'll jump out from their respective hiding places, and chase down the ghosts to try and tag them.
When the two minutes are up, the ghosts enter the plant, and must keep going farther into it until they see a ghoul. If they see a ghoul, they can yell the keyword "Graveyard!", which signals that all the ghosts can run back to home base.
They play about 5 rounds, laughing and stumbling to avoid each other. It's exhilarating for the ghosts, because they must run for their life after the ghouls give them a jump scare, and it's exhilarating for the ghouls because they're the ones to chase them down. Reggie is surprised at how well Ian picks up the game, and in the second round, Ian is the one who spots the first ghoul and yells "Graveyard!". When they make it back to home base that round, he even gives Ian a high-five, congratulating him on his first win as "one of the boys".
However, in the fourth game, Reggie feels his stomach do a double-take, and that uncomfortable feeling returns in his gut. While running away from the ghouls this round, Reggie glances backward and sees Ian stub his toe,—Ian practically slams his foot on the edge of the wall while running—and a grimace appears that Reggie's seen before, right before Ian is tagged by Dimitri. That's when he remembers the cut, and the artificial crying, and it leaves a bad taste in his mouth during the whole course of round five.
After finishing round five, the ghouls exit the plant smiling and breathing heavily, bragging about the win they just achieved. "Hold up, I have to piss.", Ian says with an embarrassed chuckle, running off to the woods in an abrupt manner. The boys wait for Ian in the plant, and Dimitri downs the rest of the beer, as a reward to himself for a job well done.