This chapter is a bit shorter than my recent ones but I hope you like it!
Thanks for your support it means the world to me!!
"Come with us tonight," Madge pleaded. "Trick-or-treating is stupid," Johanna grumped, slugging back a swig of her coffee.
"You just knock on doors and get free candy from people!"
"Exactly! It's weird! I don't know where their hands have been!"
"The candy is wrapped, you ding dong," Annie said with a quiet laugh, earning her a wink from Finnick and looks of subtle surprise from the rest of the group. Annie had been in the hospital for over a week following the night of the dance, so the girls and a few of the guys had decided to each take a turn staying with her, as her mom had been working late shifts in the hospital (though she visited when she could, she could never get out of work to stay with her daughter overnight). Johanna got pretty beat up in Combat the night she was supposed to stay with Annie, so Finch had taken over her turn, as well as Katniss', because she couldn't get a ride. Finnick, Thresh and Cato had each taken a turn, as had Madge, Glimmer and Delly. Finch was still really worried about Annie, despite the latter's insistence that she was fine, and-
"We could always use a Maria Reynolds..." Clove said suggestively, pulling Finch out of her thoughts.
"Yeuch, and help Alex cheat on Eliza? No thanks," Johanna snorted. "Y'all are wild."
"So, who's going with you guys?" Finch asked.
"Oh, we've got the whole Hamilsquad," Madge grinned. "Clove, Annie and I are the Schuyler sisters-"
"Who's who?" Glimmer cut in eagerly.
"Clove is Angelica, I'm Eliza, and Annie is Peggy," Madge said quickly. "And anyways, Clove's friends Josiah and Finnigan are Hamilton and Mulligan, respectively, Cato is Laurens and Finnick is Lafayette."
"I can picture that," Glimmer giggled.
"The unrest in France will lead to on-archy," Finnick quoted in a goofy French accent.
"On-archy?" Cato repeated.
"How you say?" Finnick recited. "How you- oh! An-archy. When I fight I make the other side panicky with-"
"My shot!" finished the rest of the makeshift Hamilsquad.
"Too bad you guys don't have a Jefferson," Glimmer teased.
"This prick is asking for someone to bring him to task; somebody give me some dirt on this vacuous mass so we can at last unmask him," Finnick smirked, without the phony accent this time.
"But he's Lafayette," Glimmer said.
"Daveed Diggs played both in the musical," Cato reminded her.
"Then why isn't Finnigan playing James Madison? Oak played both."
"Because Hercules Mulligan is more prominent in Hamilton," Clove reminded her.
"But Thomas Jefferson was in much more of the musical than Lafayette was, so why isn't Finnick going as Jefferson?" Glimmer countered.
"Because Lafayette is better," Cato said.
Finch smirked when she saw Clove and Cato high-five under the table. They looked at each other and grinned, and Glimmer got a funny look on her face.
"Yeah," Clove laughed. "Why would we have some ass who consistently undermined someone who formed the financial system of the United States when we could have a French goof who made us laugh with every line that came out of his mouth?"
"Because Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence."
"Hamilton wrote fifty-one of eighty-five Federalist Papers," Cato shot back.
"While Jefferson was off in Europe getting drunk and hooking up with random French girls," Clove added.
"Would y'all shut it about all this nonsense?" Johanna said, rolling her eyes.
The group laughed. "While the Hamil-nerds are trick or treating tonight," Marvel smirked, "do the rest of you guys want to come over?"
"I will," chimed Finch, taking a sip of her latte.
October and November were her favourite months of the year- the perfect time to curl up in leggings and a big sweater with a good book and a latte. She relished the weather, cool but still sunny, and the goosebumps she got from the wind. She loved the red and yellow foliage, and the dried out caramel-coloured leaves that decorated the ground. Autumn was the best time for a friendly basketball game, what with the perfect temperatures of spring but without the dampness, or a walk through the woods. All year long, she yearned for apple pie and warm breezes and crunchy leaves and pumpkin spice lattes: and now it was here. She wanted to savour it.
"Me too," said Glimmer, tucked under Marvel's arm.
"I've got nothing better to do," Johanna groaned.
"I might have to take Prim and Rue trick-or-treating," Katniss said, "so I'm not sure if I can. I'd ask my mom to, but she hasn't exactly been up to things like that lately."
"My mom is taking Angelina and her friend Pixie; I'm sure she wouldn't mind if they tagged along," Marvel suggested.
"Okay, well as long as that's okay with your mom, I'll be there."
"Me too," Peeta added quickly.
"I'll go," said Thresh.
"Don't you have to take Dannick?" Gale asked.
"No, your mom asked my mom to help her take a few of the boys trick-or-treating," Thresh explained.
"Oh, yeah," Clove said. "Hazelle and Samuela are taking Callum, and they're being nice enough to let Sean tag along, even though he's only eight."
"Yeah, Graham is going too," Johanna said of her ten-year-old brother.
"So is Matthew," Annie said.
"Terrence got invited, but Mom says I have to take him," Delly added glumly.
"I take it you aren't coming over, then?" Marvel asked.
"I can't, sorry."
Finch knew that Kiona was going out that night with Faith and Chelsea (Finnick and Cato's sisters, respectively), but to be honest, she didn't exactly know who was taking them.
"Finnick?" she asked.
"What's up?"
"Who's taking Kiona and Faith and Chelsea out tonight?"
"Um..." Finnick stalled. "Now that you mention it, I'm not really sure."
"Cato?"
"You know what? I don't know either," he replied.
Clove sighed. "Julia is taking them," she told them.
"She is?" Cato asked.
"Yes."
"She's your mom," Finnick laughed. "Shouldn't you have known that?"
"I guess- wait how did you know that?" he asked Clove, and Finch held in a snort at his incredulous expression.
"Julia texted me to see if Callum and Sean wanted to tag along," Clove said plainly.
Cato gasped dramatically. "And she didn't ask if I wanted to 'tag along'?" he exclaimed mockingly, making air quotes with his fingers. "The nerve!"
That afternoon, Finch and her mom gave Katniss a ride to Marvel's house.
Finch walked up to the porch of Katniss' small house and opened the screen door, knocking on the glass. Prim opened the door.
"Hi, Finch," she said politely. "How are you?"
"I'm pretty good, thanks. How are you?"
"I'm good," she smiled. "Just let me tell Katniss you're here."
She disappeared into the house and Finch could hear her call up to Katniss.
"Katniss! Finch is here!"
Katniss called back a sort of grumbled response that Finch couldn't make out. Prim returned to the frobt porch.
"Have a seat," she said courteously, gesturing to the pair of wicker armchairs.
Finch sat on the one tucked into the corner. "I like your costume," she smiled.
Prim straightened her silvery halo and pushed back her angel wings.
"Thank you," she said graciously. "Rue is going as a devil."
"That's sweet," Finch smiled.
"I like yours," Prim said.
"Thanks." She had prepared her costume only thirty minutes before: she hadn't had a clue what she wanted to be, but Marvel had asked everyone to come in costume. She had taken one of her mom's old dresses, a green and white checkered gingham garment that fell halfway between her knees and ankles, sewed on a few buttons, put on a simple white apron, frilly white socks and Mary Janes and tied her hair in two simple braids with white ribbon.
"Anne of Green Gables is one of my favourite books."
"Really?" Finch asked.
"Yes, I love everything about it," she gushed.
"Have you seen the show?"
"Anne With an E? Of course; I've finished the whole series about six times. I love the casting. I adore Diana. And Gilbert, of course."
"He's cute," she winked, as Katniss stepped out in a lab coat with painted-on "stains" and a crazy grey wig. "Albert Einstein?" Finch asked, practically jumping up and down. Science always excited her.
"Yeah," Katniss said.
"Love it."
"Thanks. Yours too."
"Thank you."
"No problem."
"Well, we'd better head out. Have fun trick-or-treating, Prim," Finch smiled.
"Have fun at Marvel's."
It was a short car ride from Katniss's house to Marvel's, his just being in the next neighbourhood over. When they arrived five minutes later, Finch kissed her mom goodbye and her and Katniss walked up to Marvel's front door.
"Hey," he grinned, opening it.
"I like your costume," Katniss said.
"Thanks. Come on-"
"BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE!" Johanna called from the basement.
"They've been doing this to me all night," he growled, rushing down the stairs, Finch and Katniss following awkwardly.
"Nice look, Jo," Finch said, examining Johanna's costume: a knee-length pink skirt, a pink collared blouse, a pink cardigan, pink stockings and Mary-Janes, and to top it all off, a pink bow nesting on her curled hair.
"It's disgraceful," Marvel scoffed. "Of all the fantastic characters brought to us by J.K. Rowling, she chose Umbridge."
"Her costume is well done!" Finch said defensively.
"Disgraceful," Marvel repeated.
Peeta had come as a honest-to-God hobo, complete with ratty jeans, a patchy button-up shirt and a cloth tied to a stick stuffed with items of different sizes and shapes (Finch could see them prodding at the red and white checkered fabric).
Glimmer's costume was much more elegant (of course): with her shimmery blue dress, ballet flats, shiny white ribbons in her hair and her iridescent fairy wings, she was a thing of beauty.
Thresh's costume was the best of all. In a long, frumpy, frilly nightgown (yes, you read that correctly), a pair of slippers, a pair of small glasses he left perched halfway down his nose and a wig of grey hair that was twisted into a knot, he had taken on the role of none other than an elderly woman.
(As he told it, he'd given Clove a ride to Cato's on his way to Marvel's, and she had teased him endlessly about his costume, but when she saw Cato in his knee breeches, she crowed at him for five minutes straight until Julia told her to give it a rest.)
While Marvel rifled through his expansive DVD collection, Finch took out her phone (it wasn't a fancy iPhone like most of her friends had, but she liked her Motorola G7) and scrolled through her Instagram feed. She liked a post from one of her basketball friends, and one from her cousin Kaitlyn, and laughed out loud when she reached a post from her cousin Sam's friend Kyle that showed the two of them in their Halloween costumes: Tinkerbell and Peter Pan. Nice costumes, she commented. Very manly.
She stared at Clove's post in awe. There was the 'Hamilsquad', as they'd called it, in their costumes. They looked phenomenal. Clove looked regal in her peachy coloured dress, and Madge and Annie looked so sweet and old-fashioned in their robin's egg blue dress and daffodil yellow dress, respectively. Josiah and Finnigan cleaned up nicely, Finch noted, and in their old-timey knee breeches, socks, shoes and blue and gold soldiers' uniforms they looked as if they'd come straight out of the 1770s. (She wouldn't have known who was who; she'd never met them; but Clove had tagged them. She clicked each of the labels and requested to follow both of them, then returned to her feed.) Cato slouched a little, his pants and coat a little bit too short for his tall figure, and Finnick, as usual, was being a total peacock, preening around in his costume, but otherwise, they looked spectacular as well. She liked the picture and fired off a quick comment. Love the costumes!! Have a great time!
"Found it!" Marvel exclaimed, holding up a DVD case with the words Stephen King's 'It' printed on it.
"Isn't that on Netflix?" Katniss asked.
"It is," he replied, chuckling at his own pun- Katniss groaned- and grinning at Glimmer, "but my dad hasn't paid the subscription fee for this month yet, so our Netflix is on temporary hold."
"I see."
"Said the blind man-" Thresh began quietly.
"-as he picked up his hammer and saw," Finch grinned, finishing with him.
He winked at her and she got butterflies in her stomach. Well, not so much butterflies as a herd of buffalo stampeding through her insides without so much as an apology.