In my day to day life I was a very shy and reserved girl. I didn’t speak unless spoken to, I dressed modestly, which meant no sleeveless shirts or above the knee skirts or dresses. Halloween was different, though. Halloween was my time to shine. Every time October came around my heart would race and my mind would count down the seconds until we fell onto that glorious day of costumage.

My outfits were always carefully planned and executed. I rocked the costume contests every fucking year since I was 14, just not anywhere I might run into someone I knew. Since I just turned 18, I decided to take my costume to a much riskier place. My crush, and bully, was throwing a Halloween party that I, of course wasn’t invited to. So I was going to crash it.

He made fun of my clothes, my hair, my lack of makeup. He just put me down in general and made me feel like crap about myself, which made me less willing to take those risks and change the things he didn’t like about me. But over the past summer and through the beginning of the school year he hadn’t bothered me as much and I found myself ridiculously enamored with him. He was basically the embodiment of everything I wanted to be, but was afraid of doing.

He had tattoos up both arms, on his chest and back, up his neck and from what I’d seen during gym they continued down to at least his hips. He had a lip piercing and an eyebrow piercing, his tongue was pierced and he wore gauges and had shoulder length brown hair. He was the bad boy of our school and he ran the hierarchy of students.

When I got home from school on the 31st, a Friday, I ran straight to my room and started getting ready. The first step was to dye my normally brown hair a coppery red. (I suggest following the directions and not dying your eyebrows, but I did it anyway.) With that done and after having a shower to remove every inch of hair on my body, I started tying my hair up close to my head, ensuring my hair dried in perfectly formed ringlets as I worked on the rest of my costume.

My makeup was bold and heavy, a rich royal purple smoked out into a thick black winged eyeliner. My complexion was already very nice, but I wanted that chiseled model look so I contoured and highlighted appropriately. Then I put on a pinkish nude lip and a bit of an emerald and violet glittered gloss. I shimmied my way into my dress, which was little more than a bodice and v shaped skirt that came up to my hipbones on either side. I put body glitter over my chest, arms, and legs, creating the slightest glitter when I turned around. The emerald and violet beads and gems on the princess cut bodice shimmered with a similar twinkle and I smiled. Technically the dress had sleeves, but they were essentially decorative ribbons of black lace that d****d loosely over my upper arms. When I stepped into the ridiculously overpriced designer purple velvet high heels I’d bought for the outfit it suddenly felt worth it.