Trick or Treat: Part II

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Trick or Treat

Part II

An R.L. Mathewson Chronicle

“So, are you ever going to tell me why you didn’t want to go Trick or Treating?”

“No,” Sebastian said with a simple shake of his head as he adjusted the large bucket by his side as he watched his uncle head across the street to join them.

“I thought Aunt Haley banned him from Trick or Treating,” Mikey said, reaching for the bucket, but one look from him had her rolling her eyes and shaking her head as she reached over and grabbed one of the many baseballs that could be found around her house and yard and began rolling it between her hands as they waited to see what was going on.

“I thought so too,” he murmured, looking down at the apron with “Kasey Cooks” printed across it in pink and kicking himself for not borrowing some of Mikey’s zombie makeup instead.

“Didn’t the neighbors sign a petition?” she asked, rolling that ball around her hands as they watched as Jason stopped on the sidewalk to give a group of kids dressed up as ghosts and goblins a chance to walk past him.

By the time the kids made it past Jason, he’d somehow managed to swipe a handful of candy from their buckets and devoured all of it by the time he’d joined them on the porch. “Ready?” Uncle Jason asked around a peanut butter cup.

“Sure?” Mikey said, not really sounding all that convinced that this was a good idea.

Sebastian knew that it was a bad idea.

“It’ll be fun,” Uncle Jason said, gesturing for them to go ahead, but Sebastian knew better.

“How much?” he asked, deciding to cut to the chase since he wasn’t in the mood to play any Bradford games tonight.

“Twenty percent,” Jason said with a shrug as he reached into his back pocket and produced a large Hershey candy bar.

Shaking his head, Sebastian said, “Ten percent.”

“Twenty,” his uncle said, already looking bored.

“Yeah, no that’s not going to happen,” Sebastian said, because that was never going to happen.

“It’s a good deal,” Jason pointed out, tossing his wrapper into the bucket.

“It’s really not,” Sebastian said, wondering why his uncle was trying to play him like he was one of the little kids.

“Umm, what exactly are we talking about here?” Mikey asked, looking a little lost.

“We’re negotiating,” he said, staring his uncle down.

“Twenty percent. Take it or leave it,” Jason said even as he gave Sebastian a look that told him that he’d be an idiot to turn this down and he’d have to agree, especially since what his uncle was offering him was a once and a lifetime opportunity and they both knew it.

That didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to try to negotiate better terms.

He was a Bradford after all.

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