By Invitation Only

This story is a “round-robin story,” meaning it was created collaboratively by writers in the Tuesday Night Writing Workshop. Each person wrote a few sentences and then emailed it to the next person who added their part until the story reached the last person who wrote the ending.

 

Matilda had always hated Halloween. She couldn't understand why anyone liked wearing silly costumes, eating gobs of candy, and trying to scare each other. She tolerated neither trick nor treat.

But all of that was about to change.

One crisp Saturday morning in October, Matilda was in her room watching an old episode of Girl Meets World when her mom appeared in the doorway.

“This came in the mail for you,” she said, thrusting a black envelope toward her.

Matilda had been waiting for this particular piece of mail for months. She thanked her mom and quickly closed the door. She hopped up on her bed with the letter, closed her eyes, and whispered three times, “Oranum…Cabtabum…Jasanum…” before ripping open the envelope.

“Drat!” she whispered when she realized this wasn’t the letter she’d been waiting for. Instead, it was another invitation to a Halloween party that was being thrown by a girl named Duende, who lived across the street.

Matilda did not tolerate Duende particularly well and could not understand why she had invited Matilda. After all, Duende didn’t even take the bus.

Matilda had hoped the letter was the one she had been waiting for. The letter that would help her escape, perhaps into another realm, or at the very least let her forget about all this Halloween nonsense she so dreaded.

But then she read the small print at the bottom of the invitation —"wizards only" — Could it be? The girl across the street? Did she also know about the magical school that Matilda had so wanted an invitation from? Was she also the decedent of Merlin and Maleficent and all the other greats? She turned to the back and used her magic marker to see if the true wizard emblem was there — that would prove the party was for real wizards, not just kids in costumes.

Lo and behold, the emblem burned with electric purple flame upon the paper! Matilda squealed with delight as she watched the flame reach its height before it fizzled out. Finally, the confirmation that she, too, was of powerful and ancient wizard stock and not just the ordinary and average. She rushed over to her bedroom window and peeked through her blinds, spying on the house across the street where the gathering would be held, where she hoped her life would change.

She looked down and saw that she was hovering three feet off the ground. She could levitate! So, with her newfound power, she floated to the window. Still floating, she willed it open, and out it flung, so she sailed into the night.

Across the street rose a cyclone around Duende’s house and lawn. As Matilda approached, the cyclone pulled her. She watched in wonder as other children in full wizard regalia flew around the cyclone catching candy in their mouths. Now, this she could tolerate. So, so she joined in and soon found she had captured a multi-colored candy that took her on a flavor escapade—first blackberry, then chocolate, then lemon, and just as the next flavor teased her tastebuds, she felt a gentle push on her shoulder and heard a playful cackle. She found herself spinning in the air. She could see Duende laughing, her pinwheel curls spinning out from beneath her wizard’s hat. On her next twirl, Matilda caught the hem of Duende’s robe, and down they whirled, rolling and laughing through the cyclone and onto the lawn.

The great bacchanalia ensued into the night. Most of the ways in which Matilda’s life changed forever cannot be divulged to the ordinary and average, but no one ever saw her take the bus to school again.

 

The following writers in the Tuesday Night Writing Workshop each contributed a few lines to this story: Jonathan Bell, Paula Behrens, Courtney DuChene, Rachel Kobin, Jonathan Leeds, Caitlin McGinley, Grue Shackelford, Michael Shapiro, and Katrina Starr.