Halloween is coming up, my favorite holiday of the year except for Christmas, and we’re going to rent Halloween movies with our friend Chris and eat candy but Alex will try not to look because candy makes him vomit.

I think it’s cruel and unusual for preacher’s kids to have to give up their holidays for church functions. Holidays happen once a year, and kids haven’t had a lot of holidays by that point. I had, like, ten Halloweens under my belt when that stupid church in Texas decided it would have a Halloween carnival to keep kids from going from dangerous house to house.

Obviously, my brother and I were the only teens from the youth group there. The other teens got to dress up in costumes (my favorite part of Halloween, which I had to skip that year) and get candy from all those dangerous houses.

I didn’t really want to go, but it’s not always the kid’s choice when your dad is the preacher and the church wants to do something for the community. And they did bribe me with a turn in the dunking booth. I was excited about that. And they were having a petting zoo, which Toni, the woman in charge of the little kids’ classes, the woman who kind of ignored me once I aged out of her class, had set up. And she’d said I could bring one of my cats for the petting zoo, and I love showing off my cats. Except I didn’t want my favorite cat to run away, so I brought one of the cats who would definitely run away if anyone opened the carrier. Which was dumb, but hey, I was eleven. (Autumn. She’s still alive and living with my parents.)

So I rode with my mom and brother and they had the dunking booth up and a pony was hanging out on the other side of the parking lot, and just to the left of the dunking booth was our pot luck building, which had the church kitchen and tables and some bathrooms.

And when I offered my kitty to Toni, she looked at me like I was crazy and my mom said I could put Autumn under the hot dog table, since they wouldn’t need her with the pony there. I felt dumb for bringing her and discouraged by Toni’s reaction.

But then I went to the dunking booth and had fun taunting the younger kids that they wouldn’t be able to dunk me when it was my turn. There was this one black boy, I forget his name, but he was rambunctious and liked me and he in particular wanted to dunk me as many times as possible. He made me laugh.

Now, one thing you want to remember about dunking booths is that you keep your hands to yourself as you fall. If you reach out, you can get hurt. So, of course, on my third or fourth dunk, guess what I did?

It wasn’t my fault, not really. I was distracted because I’d forgotten it was “that time of the month” and I was worried about the water now that I’d been dunked in it. Not for myself, but for the other dunk-ees. Kind of an awful thought. And I felt guilty. And while that was going on in my head, another ball hit the goal and I instinctively reached out as I fell — and gashed my hand.

I had to tell them to stop and climb out, my hand bleeding and hurting, and a little bit relieved with an excuse to get out. The young guy in charge of the dunking booth, who was nice but still a guy and might not have realized I was about to cry, laughed kindly and said, “I told you not to do that.”

So I went inside, alone, and washed my hand in the bathroom and changed into dry clothes, all the while expecting a woman to come after me and ask if I was okay and would I need any help? And I would say, No, I’m fine, thank you. But the question needed to be asked, because I needed it, and I expected it. “Are you okay? Do you need any help? An ice pack, maybe?” “No, I’m fine, thank you.” And inside, I would glow with the warmth of being loved.

Somehow, I didn’t doubt someone would come to check on me, someone not my mom because she and my brother were busy at other stations and hadn’t noticed what had happened, and I really didn’t need my mom to coo over me to know that she would be sorry I was hurt. She was my mom. It was a fact, like how Autumn would run away if anyone opened her carrier.

No, I expected someone else to come in and check on me. Someone not-family.

So I was crying from the pain, but it would all be okay, because someone was about to come in and check on me.

Except no one did.

So I thought, Maybe no one noticed. And since I was right beside the kitchen, and I’d almost mopped my nose up enough to be in public (I hate crying in public because my nose runs and I have to blow it and I’m embarrassed to blow my nose in front of other people), I decided to get some ice for my hand and sit down with it until it hurt a little less.

I went to the bustling kitchen, filled with old women who admired my red hair, all of them cooking or cleaning, and filled a paper towel from the bathroom with ice, and sat at a table nearby, pressing it to my hand. Pressing it quite obviously, and turning it in such a way that anyone glancing at me would see I was hurt, so that someone would come over and say “Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?” And I could sniffle and say yes, and they would give me a hug and make it all better.

But, again, no one did.

And that was probably the most crushing blow of all. It was the loneliest, the most disappointing moment of my whole life. Women who claimed to adore me, one who wanted to be my “sort of adopted grandmother” ignoring me while I was hurt, while I was bleeding. While I was crying.

So I went and found my mom and showed her my hand and asked for the car keys. And she gave them to me, and I got Autumn and took her to the car, where I had a book I’d been reading on the way over. So Autumn and I were alone together, both rejected by the same people.

And I hated, positively hated, that pony. I think it was a culmination of everything that night — the way Toni looked at me when I showed her Autumn, the way the young guy hadn’t offered comfort when I got hurt, the way no one in the kitchen who claimed to love me noticed that I was hurt. And I ended up hating that dumb pony and swearing to never, ever go to another holiday church function.

I’d like to claim I learned something from it, or that there’s a rainbow at the end of the story, but honestly the memory only brings pain and wariness. If there was a moral to the story, it would be to rely on the people who really love you, not the people you wish would love you. If I had just gone to my mother and said “I hurt myself and nobody cares,” she would have dropped everything to comfort me. Because she’s my mom. And maybe, then, I wouldn’t remember that night as the loneliest night in the world. Maybe I’d remember it as the time my mom hugged me when no one else would. And that would have been a memory to keep.