Just Dessert

                                                                                                         By:  Anna Voronkova

 

                   As Mason and I drive on the highway, we listen to the news, telling another story about a shooting in a nearby town. I can tell Mason is listening to it, but to me, it means the same thing every other news story these days means: our world is crumbling. I don’t really pay any attention to them anymore, because if I do, it gets overwhelming. Mason turns up the volume on the radio. “Could you shut it off?” I ask after five minutes.

“Why should I? It’s my car,” he answers.

“You’re the worst brother ever,” I whine. He smirks. This wasn’t anything new to him.

Today was October 31, also known as Halloween, which used to be fun, but now is forgotten. My mom, however, still wants to live on with the tradition of carving pumpkins, so here we are, looking for the tiny shack on the side of highway 26 that used to sell anything related to Halloween. We drive for a couple of hours before we find it. It is small and frail-looking but is still somehow holding up. Pumpkins sit beneath the dirty windows. We get out of the car and walk to the door. Mason knocks. We wait for about 40 seconds before he starts getting impatient.

“Let’s go,” he says.

“No!” I answer angrily, “I did not spend the past few hours in that smelly, beat up car just to walk away, and I’m not going to! Besides, there’s such few things that bring joy to mom anymore, and if she wants to carve a pumpkin, well, then I’m not leaving without one!”

                  I try to open the door, but it’s locked. I get a bobby pin from my hair and try to open the door that way. It clicks and swings open. I walk in slowly.

“Bianca,” Mason warns me, “Do you really think intruding into someone’s private property is a good idea? I don’t think mom would approve of what you’re doing either. Can’t you just take one of these?” He points to one of the pumpkins beneath the windows.

“No, because I don’t really want to be one of those people on the news,” I reply and step inside the shack. I look around and realize there are no pumpkins, only carving tools.

“You realize that what you’re doing is exactly like that,” he mumbles. I ignore him.

“Hello?” I shout. No answer.

“Let’s just go. This is starting to creep me out,” Mason whines. “Be quite,” I say. Mason can be such a scardy cat sometimes!

I look around for some more and then I hear shouting. Mason seems to realize this about the same time I do because his eyes get wide. I turn to see where the noise is coming from. That’s when I spot a door in the corner, barely visible. I walk over to the door and look back to see if Mason follows me. He seems to be hesitating. His eyes wonder up from the floor to my face. I plead for him to follow me because, well, as much as he annoys me, there are still times when I’m reminded by how nice he can be. He thinks it over, sighs, and walks over to stand beside me. I can’t help but grin.

I twist the doorknob open and look inside. There’s about a dozen stairs leading down. It’s dark except for a faint glow at the end of the staircase. I start walking down. I’m only three steps away from the bottom when the shouting stops. I look up. Looking back at me is a woman who’s about in her mid-twenties, with eyes so cold, it felt like I was standing on ice.

“What are you doing here?” She hissed.

“Um, well, we’re looking for a pumpkin, and, uh, there was no one upstairs. We heard shouting, and I thought that I should, like, check it out or something,” I mumbled. I dared to look up. Her eyes were blazing fire.

“And you thought it was your business to ‘Check it out’?” she asked.

“Kind of,” Mason answered for me, “You know, these days, if somebody yells, it’s not a good thing.” The woman sighed and looked at something on the table behind her. All I saw was an orange blob.

“Is that a… pumpkin?” Mason askes the woman. That’s when I noticed that the light glow was coming from the orange blob. I moved over to the right to look closer, but the woman shifted so all I could see was the glow.

“Do you think that it’s your responsibility to know what it is or isn’t?” she answered back angrily. Mason seemed to think that over and was about to answer when I said, “Look, all we need is a pumpkin. As soon as we get one, we’ll be on our way back to our home.”

“We’re out of business,” she grunts. I look at Mason and he seems to be thinking what I was: we have to find out what was up with that pumpkin. “You may be out of business, but we’re not leaving until we get a pumpkin. Come on. I mean, you don’t have any? Not even one? What about that one behind you?” Mason askes, and before the woman could react, he ran around her.

The next few moments came in a blur. Mason tried to grab the pumpkin, but something happened, and he fell on the floor, with one hand around the other, his face in a scowl. “Stop!” screamed the woman. Her reaction time, though, was one second too late, and she tripped over Mason, and skidded across the floor. I knelt toward Mason.

                  “What happened? Are you okay?” I ask him

                  “Yeah, I’m fine. As for what happened, I’m not sure. As soon as I touched that pumpkin, I felt searing pain in my hand,” he explained.

                  I looked over at the woman, who was muttering to herself. Then she noticed that I was watching her, and she stood up and said, “Well, at least we now know that you’re not the one who has to cut it.”

                  “Cut what?” Mason says, his face scrunched up in confusion.

                  “Um, the pumpkin. Duh,” explained the woman. We both just stare at her. She sighs and says, “You want an explanation, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for us to nod. “This pumpkin contains the only pumpkin flames in the world. And what exactly are pumpkin flames, you’re wondering. Well, they’re this, like, uh…” she seemed to be at a loss of words. “Let’s just say that it’s this liquid, and if we pour it over the earth, the earth will heal, and heal everyone on it, physically and mentally.

                  I stare at her like an idiot. “So basically, if we get these so-called ‘pumpkin flames’, we can save everyone from tearing each other apart?” I ask.

                  “Well, that’s the plan,” she mumbles.

                  “Well, why aren’t you cutting the pumpkin then?” Mason points out.

                  “Ugh. What’s your name?” the woman rubs her forehead like the conversation was giving her a headache.

                  Mason raises his eyebrow. “I’m Mason, and that,” he points to me, “is my sister, Bianca.”

                  “I take it your sister is the smarter one?” the woman asks. I smirk at Mason, even though I had no idea what was going on either. She continues, “The pumpkin can be cut only by one person. My mother has been searching for that person even before I was born, and I’ve been helping her ever since I could walk. You both saw what happened when Mason tried to touch the pumpkin. It zapped him with electricity because he isn’t the one who has to cut it. Make sense?”

                  “No,” Mason and I both say at the same time, though I wasn’t sure if he was being funny, like I was, or if he was serious. Knowing him, it could be either one. The woman sighed.

                  “What’s your name?” I ask out of curiosity.

                  “Laura,” the woman replies simply.

                  “Why were you screaming when we were upstairs?” I asked, remembering when we first entered the shack.

                  “Frustration, I guess. See, when the person that has to cut the pumpkin comes in, say, about a half a mile radius, the pumpkin starts glowing,” Laura explains and looks over at the still glowing pumpkin, “and it was just so out of random, I didn’t expect it. It’s hard to know that the fate of the world lies in one person’s hands. But what’s even harder, is knowing that the person is somewhere near, and you can’t do anything but try to find them. That’s no use here, though, because it’s all fields out there.”

                  “Okay. I want to help you find the person. Two heads are better than one, right?” I ask.

                  “Make that three heads,” Mason exclaims stupidly.

                  Laura looked like she was going to argue, but she just shrugged. “Well, we better get on our way then.” Mason and I exchanged looks.

                  “Where are we going?” I ask.

                  “If you want to help with finding the right person, you’re going to meet my mom,” Laura said.

                  After that, time went by fast. Laura gave us one of the pumpkins underneath the windows to give to my mom. We headed back to town and stopped at our house to drop my mom’s pumpkin off, and told her that we were going to a friend’s house. We drove for another ten minutes before we stopped at a house that had a garage the same size as our whole house.

                  “This is your home?” I ask in awe.

                  “What? You think that this war we are fighting with ourselves affected everybody?” Laura spat back. I guess she still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of trusting us.

                  “Well, you’re no longer in business, so that should put at least a dent in your earnings, don’t you think?” Mason bickers. Laura glares at him. I figured he wouldn’t be getting on her good side any time soon.

                  We enter the house. Laura guides us through the living room into the biggest kitchen I’ve ever seen.

                  “My mom loves to cook,” Laura whispers, and sure enough, there was someone who looked like an older version of Laura standing behind one of the counters, chopping up something that looked like onions. The woman looked up, and gave Laura a questioning look. Laura shrugged.

                  “Hi. I’m Jen, Laura’s mom. And you are?” Laura’s mom asked

                  “I’m Bianca and this is my brother, Mason, and we would like to help look for the person who has to cut the glowing pumpkin,” I say. Jen looks around at Mason and me, and sighs.

                  “First of all, the ‘glowing pumpkin’ is called the Pumpkin of the Flames. Secondly, ‘the person who has to cut the pumpkin’ is called the Saver,” Jen explains.

                  “Because if we find that person, they’ll save the world?” Mason asks. Jen looks at Laura, and raises her eyebrows.

                  “Bianca is the smarter one,” Laura reassures her. Mason throws his hands up in the air as to say ‘Why does everyone say that?’

                  “Look, if you want to help, we’ll need to strategize,” Jen tells us, “We need to know where the Saver is located. As you may know, I’ve been searching for the Saver for a long time, and I know that he or she lives in this town.”

                  “If you have known this, why didn’t you just take the pumpkin, and go around town? It glows, so it would be easy to know if you were close,” Mason points out.

                  “Because not many people would react well to a glowing pumpkin. They would think it’s valuable, and try to steal it. And we can’t have that many people getting zapped with electricity,” Laura tells us, “and there’s something else that’s been bothering me. When I was in the shack, the pumpkin was glowing only a little bit. But when you came in, it grew the brightest I’ve ever seen.”

                  “What are you saying?” Mason asks, but I knew what she meant.

                  I glanced at Jen and ran out of the house to the car. I unlocked the back of the car and took a good look. Sure enough, it was glowing very bright. I took a deep breath, and reached for the pumpkin. I was half sure that it would blast me with electricity, but nothing happened. I heard several gasps, and realized that only one was mine. I turned around, and saw Jen, Laura, and Mason all staring at me with shock.

                  “Quickly, grab the pumpkin, and bring it inside,” Jen ordered. I did as she said, and Laura handed me a knife. Mason grabbed a jar off of a table.

                  “So, what exactly is going to happen? I mean, if it’s liquid, like Laura said, then won’t we need, like, a spoon to scoop the flames from the pumpkin into the jar?” I ask. To be honest, I was just stalling for time. I didn’t expect this, and truly, I was scared, but I still knew it must be done.

                  Laura nodded and went into the kitchen to get a spoon. Jen was looking at me. I think she knew I was scared, because she said, “Don’t worry Bianca. Everything is going to be fine.” She gave me a stern look that I understood: she knows that everything is going to be fine.

                  Laura came back and sat with the rest of us. I noticed that Mason hasn’t said anything since we brought the pumpkin in the house. I glance at him. He looked pale, and was staring at the floor. I couldn’t blame him. I’m sure I was pale too.

                  Jen gave me a nudge. The pumpkin was glowing bright. I lifted the knife above the pumpkin and took a deep breath. I started to lower the knife. As I lowered the knife, it grew even brighter. It was now so bright, it was hard to look at. The knife met the pumpkin and there was a slight jolt sent to my fingers. I looked at Jen and then to Laura. They both nodded, allowing me to go on. I sliced through the pumpkin, and I felt the glow leave the pumpkin. That’s right, I felt it. I sliced a circle along the top of the pumpkin like I was carving it, and Jen took the top off. I peeked inside, and I saw liquid the color of gold. Mason handed Laura the jar, and she scooped all of the liquid into it. We all walked outside and Laura handed the jar to Jen. Jen got down to the ground and poured all of the liquid into the earth. As soon as the liquid hit the ground, it turned to flames and sunk into the soil.

                  “Huh,” Mason mumbled, “When you called them pumpkin flames, I didn’t really expect them to be… flames.”

                  Jen stood up. We all looked at each other. “Good job,” she said.

                  “Thanks,” I whisper.

                  We say our goodbyes and tell them our address, so we could keep in touch. Mason and I drove home in silence. We came home to a very happy mom. She has already finished carving the pumpkin, and honestly, it looked awesome.

                  The next few days came in a blur. There were news stories about people coming out and saying they were guilty of something. The earth and everyone on it were healing. Even I could feel myself getting happier. About a week after I cut the pumpkin, Laura came by and invited my family to dinner at her house. We went, and all had a great time. When it was time for dessert, Jen brought out two pumpkin pies. I looked over at Laura and she grinned at me.

                  “So,” I mumble to Jen quietly, “Is this some magical, life-saving, Pumpkin of the Flames pie?”

                  She laughs. “Not really,” she whispers to me, “It’s just dessert.”