If you’re looking for a fun, spooky read this fall I highly recommend Small Spaces by Katherine Arden! It’s the first in a middle grade horror series but it is so good and fun, not to mention creepy. 🎃
"It's a circus... what's the worst that could happen?"
Bright Lights: A Small Spaces Quartet Sequel by @after-witch
Samantha Adler has never been to the circus--or the farm or the carnival or an endless number of places that her mother Olivia deems too dangerous for reasons she never fully explains. When her school plans a class field trip to a new circus coming into town, Sam decides that she's going to go regardless of her mother's rules. After all, it's just a circus--what could possibly go wrong? Sequel fic to the 'Small Spaces Quartet' by Katherine Arden.
What are you going to do? How are you going to face it? How are you going to be brave (because you being brave isn't at all a debate here, you will be brave the question is how)? How are you going to be clever? How are you going to love??? What are you going to choose are you going to choose right? How are you going to understand that sacrifice changes things for the better? How are you going to live?
Summary: The smiling man offers Phil a deal near the beginning of Empty Smiles
A.N: okay, so i really enjoyed the first two books in this series, enjoyed the third one fairly well, and was deeply disappointed by the fourth book, Empty Smiles. this is a snippet into something i would have liked from that last book
I just finished reading The Small Spaces Quartet, which is a middle grade scary story series by Katherine Arden. It’s such a good time! I don’t usually like horror but since this is aimed at a younger audience, it’s just enough for me to feel Scared without being too scared to sleep at night lol
The last book kinda ends abruptly though, so I keep tossing around different endings in my head. What I would want to see in an epilogue or where the series could go if Arden suddenly decided to do Just One More book. Even so, I loved this series!!! The characters are so well written and the pacing is great and the puzzles are clever!
I seriously need to find someone else (not a child) who’s read this series. I keep gushing about it to friends and family but it would be nice to discuss it!
Synopsis: Sam tells her friends about her mom's refusal to sign the permission slip for the circus, and they have a plan.
Word count: appx 1700
“You’ve never been to a circus? Like, never never?”
Owen Sannerson’s eyebrows raised in scrupulous disbelief. He had moved to Evansburg two years ago, and while Sam and Elisa considered him a best friend by now, he still had a hard time accepting that Samantha Adler simply didn’t do what most teens her age did.
Sam shrugged. She wanted to change the subject. She also wanted to finish her sandwich before the cheese got all cold and gloppy, and maybe work on her poems one more time before English class. Anything to forget about the permission slip and poster handout that Elisa had slapped in the center of the table at the start of lunch period, eager to find out exactly what had happened with Sam’s mom.
“Nope. Too much like a carnival, I guess, and my mom hates those.” Sam made a sour face. She didn’t really like talking all the things she couldn’t do, especially after this morning’s latest rejection. If she piled all the cool field trips or friend hang-outs she had to stay back from on top of one another, it might just reach the top of a skyscraper.
“She hates farms, too,” Elisa chimed in, popping a lukewarm fry into her mouth. “And ski lodges, unless it’s the Battersby’s place.”
Sam sighed and took another bite of her sandwich. Blech. Too late. The cheese was gloppy. Yet another reason to ask grandpa to teach her his recipes, so she didn’t have to put up with school lunch.
Elisa curled a bit of her shoulder-length dark hair around a finger. She was wearing her in-school hockey jersey and cozy sweatpants. The team had a game next week and Elisa never missed a chance to get hyped, especially now that she was taking lessons from Sam’s uncle Brian. He ran a sports camp in the next town over and offered lessons in just about any sport imaginable; even games like chess, although those classes were taught by his wife Coco.
Elisa tapped the unsigned permission slip with her short fingernail.
“Do you remember when she flipped out when we were supposed to go to the re-opening day of Misty Valley Farm, or whatever they renamed it?”
Sam wished she could forget. That was back in 6th grade. Sam wasn’t allowed to go to the farm with the rest of her class, but she’d cried so pitifully to her teacher Mrs. Norris that the sweet lady had called Sam’s mom on the spot to ask permission as the buses were being loaded.
That had ended with Olivia Adler peeling up to the school in her car about 15 minutes later and taking Sam home for the day while a bewildered Mrs. Norris and snickering classmates had watched.
The car ride home had been quiet, save for Sam’s occasional sniffles. At a stoplight, her mom had turned to her, and opened her mouth as if she wanted to explain something… but she only closed it again and drove them home without another word.
It was always like that, like there was something her mom really wanted to tell her that would explain away everything; but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. It made Sam mad. More than that, it was frustrating. Couldn’t her mom see that she was old enough to take care of herself? Couldn’t her mom see that she didn’t need to be coddled all the time?
Although a small part of her wanted to defend her mom. There was clearly something going on that made her act this way, when she was otherwise pretty rational, as far as parents went. The divorce probably didn’t help things. And grandpa being sick didn’t help things. That’s why they had to move back to the Egg in the first place.
Sam sighed and shoved her lunch tray to the side, suddenly not feeling very hungry. “It’s shitty. But what can I do? I guess I’ll be 18 before I see a circus or go to a farm.” She snorted through her nose at the thought of scampering up to farm animals or picking pumpkins for the first time after graduating high school.
Elisa was uncharacteristically quiet. This usually meant that she was coming up with a plan or a scheme--with Elisa, plans and schemes tended to amount to the same thing.
“Elisa,” she said slowly, carefully.
Elisa looked at Owen, who held her gaze before suddenly becoming very interested in his lap.
“What?” said Sam, half-worried, half-excited.
Elisa’s chair screeched as she scooted closer to Sam, before gesturing for Owen to do the same. He tucked a stray piece of his chin length blonde hair behind his ear and copied Elisa, until the three of them were close enough to whisper.
“So, me and Owen have been talking,” Elisa began, pulling the permission slip from the center of the table until it was right in front of Sam. “And here’s the plan. You forge your mom’s signature. Go on the trip. Have some fun for once in your life.” She tapped the paper decisively. “Your mom never has to find out. Perfect plan, right?”
Was it possible for your stomach to drop out from underneath you? Sam thought it might be possible, because that’s what her stomach was currently doing, gloppy cheese and all.
“I can’t.” Her words were stiff. “My mom would know. Or she’d find out. I’d be in trouble.” A half-laugh forced its way out of Sam’s throat. “No, I’d be grounded for the rest of my life and even after that. She’d ground my ghost.”
Elisa began to twirl the paper on the table with her finger. “Not if you pretend to be super upset about not going before and after the trip and she never finds out you went…”
“I’m not that good an actor,” Sam mumbled.
“I can give you tips!” Owen said suddenly, sitting up a little straighter. “I’ve only done tech here but I’m really into acting.”
Sam sighed. Then put both hands on her cheeks and shut her eyes and groaned. The idea was tempting. It wasn’t like she hadn’t considered it before. But the fear of her mom finding out always outweighed the desire to go through with it.
“C’mon, Sam.” Elisa picked up the circus poster handout that their teacher Mr. Wheeling had given them two weeks ago. “There hasn’t been a circus here since… I can’t even remember one coming to Evansburg. You have to go.”
The poster was crinkled a little from being in Sam’s backpack, but at least it wasn’t torn. It was designed to look old-fashioned, which Sam supposed was “in” nowadays. There was an illustration featuring a cluster of tents, and a banner across the top that said: “MR. ELIM’S CIRCUS. ALL AGES WELCOME.”
At the bottom of the poster, there was a close-up illustration of a man in a ringmaster’s uniform gazing up at the tent and grinning. Something about him was a little unnerving, like his grin was too big or something. Sam wondered if her friends felt the same; but probably not, especially Elisa, who didn’t even flinch when they’d watched IT Chapter One and Two in Owen’s basement last Halloween. Sam, by contrast, had slept with her desk lamp on for a week.
Next to the ringmaster were a series of faded blue banners that described circus acts.
“FEROCIOUS BEASTS! SEE TIGERS TAMED!
FLYING TRAPEZE! DEATH-DEFYING HEIGHTS!
REAL LIVE FIRE BREATHERS! HOTTER THAN HADES!
ENDLESS SIGHTS THAT WILL ASTOUND AND AMAZE!
PERFORMANCES YOU WILL NEVER FORGET!”
They did sound amazing and astounding and wonderful.
And her mom would never, ever let her see them.
And even if Sam did try to forge her mom’s signature and go on the trip, who’s to say she wouldn’t find out somehow, anyway? Sam might pop in the background of someone’s video online or Mr. Wheeling would call Olivia to say how glad he was that Sam was going on a field trip for once.
Besides, Sam was too scared to forge her mom’s signature. Especially on something as serious--well, in the Adler household, it was serious--as this.
Sam felt a familiar tightness in her chest begin to grow and pushed back from her chair. Before Owen or Elisa could say anything, she grabbed both papers and shoved them deep into her backpack.
“Sam,” Owen said, and reached out to touch her on the arm. Owen was good at one-on-one talks like this, sort of like her grandpa. But she didn’t feel like being reassured right now. She just wanted to be mad at the unfairness of her life.
“My mom would find out,” Sam said shortly, hoisting her backpack over her shoulder. “Or I’d mess it up somehow and blab or copy her signature wrong or…” She sighed. “Sorry.”
Owen did touch Sam’s arm, then, and looked incredibly thoughtful.
“Why don’t you ask your mom again tonight? Like, sit her down and have a full-on discussion about it? Maybe you can find the website for this circus or whatever and show her that it’s not a big deal. It did say all ages, so it’s got to be mild enough for little kids.”
Sam shook her head, but didn’t outright say she wouldn’t do it. Owen was just giving her advice. She couldn’t be mad at him for that, even if it was something she’d tried to do on her own countless times over the years.
And maybe… maybe her mom would listen, if she took the time to explain. Her mom had been in a rush that morning, what with Sam running late. Her mom was always stressed in the morning, especially if her grandpa needed help during the night.
Was it worth a shot?
Sam nodded at Owen and tried to smile, but it wasn’t anything to write home about. “Maybe. Text me after school, guys. Or during 6th period, I’ll have my sound off. I gotta go to the bathroom before lunch ends.”
With that, Sam Adler walked away from her friends with thoughts of permission slips and serious discussions weaving heavily on her mind.
“Tell your mom, it’s just a circus!” Elisa called out after Sam, all 15 years of her life experience weighing behind each word. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Synopsis: When her school plans a class field trip to a new circus coming into town, Samantha Adler decides that she's going to go regardless of her mother's rules. After all, it's just a circus--what could possibly go wrong? Sequel fic to the 'Small Spaces Quartet' by Katherine Arden.
Word count: appx 1500
notes: I won't really be putting notes on this one like my regular fics; there isn't anything to really warn for outside of what you might find in a middle-grade or maybe YA horror book.
The brilliant blood-red and orange leaves came by mid-September in sporadic patches, lining the neighborhood with mismatched trees in varying shades of summer green and autumn colors. In October, the older leaf-peepers that arrived on tour buses and clogged up local bed-and-breakfasts would complain that some of the trees had already gone through their good colors and they never used to be gone by then, but in Samantha Adler’s view, it was their own fault for waiting.
Samantha--Sam, unless she was feeling fancy or was in trouble--liked the way the trees looked as she walked to school this time of year. She often admired the way the patches of red and orange contrasted against the green, and the way the sunlight sometimes shone through them if she ran out the door a few minutes early and caught the sun rising at a certain angle.
This morning was, unfortunately, not one of the mornings where she got out the door early. She forgot to unpair her headphones from her phone before going to bed, so she didn’t hear her early alarm. It wasn’t until her mom rapped on the door and stuck her head inside, saying her name way too loud and way too frantically, that she’d realized she overslept.
Her alarm had been set early because she would’ve liked to take a shower and spend a little more time on her outfit and maybe put on some makeup. And because she had something really important to ask her mom, and she wanted to think a little more about how she would approach it. It was hard to convince her mom of anything, especially since they moved back to Evansburg.
She really wished she had remembered to unpair the headphones, because the thought of showing the permission slip to her mom without at least twenty minutes of preparation made her feel like she might just vomit up last night’s bedtime snack all over the carpet.
Well, if wishes were fishes, I’d have an aquarium, she thought to herself. There was nothing to do but speed-run her morning routine and hope for the best.
She only had just enough time to throw on clean clothes (or mostly clean; they passed the sniff test, anyway) and tie her curly brown hair into a ponytail before heading downstairs. She took a curious sniff before she made it all the way downstairs; it didn’t smell like anything, which meant that her grandpa was either having a bad day or he was still sleeping.
Sam lived in a colorful house with faded paint that had seen better days. It was the house that her mom had grown up in. Inside and out, it was varying colors of a faded Easter Egg that desperately needed a fresh coat of paint. The neighbors--and everyone else--called it “the Egg.”
There was a time when she didn’t live at the Egg with her mom and grandpa Roger. When she was very young, she, her mom and dad all lived together in an apartment in Burlington. Eventually, her parents had moved into a rental house with a patch of grass big enough for Sam to run around in. That had been Sam’s home until she was 12 years old, or about three years ago.
That was before the divorce and… everything else.
Sam hopped off the last stair and grabbed her backpack from its spot leaning against the staircase. It was a terrible place to leave her backpack, her mom routinely reminded her, which is exactly why she often left it there. Rebellion had to be taken wherever it could in the Adler household.
“Grab some breakfast,” her mom said as Sam crossed the threshold into the kitchen. She already had her laptop out on the kitchen counter and from the way her fingers were flying over the keyboard, was knee-deep in work emails. Aside from her mom, the kitchen was empty, which was a small relief.
Olivia Adler worked at the Evansburg History Museum, which was a small local museum that wasn’t even open to the public most days, except during leaf-peeping season when it drew in a modest amount of tourists. It was a noted step down from her previous job in Burlington, Sam knew, but her mom took it because it was mostly work-from-home.
Sam eyed the bowl of pre-poured cereal, plate of leftover muffins and orange juice that her mom had set on the counter. Definitely not her grandpa’s doing. If her grandpa Roger was having a good day and woke up early enough, the kitchen would have smelled like freshly baked bread or cinnamon french toast or homemade apple cider. Her mom cooked, too, but not as often as she used to; and nothing she made was ever as delicious as grandpa’s food.
Sam sighed and sat down on one of the stools shoved up against the table. She picked up one of the leftover muffins that her grandpa had made the day before and began to chew. It still tasted great, though she would have to hurry up and eat breakfast or she’d be late for school.
That was okay, she thought, because it meant she didn’t have time to agonize over what she was supposed to ask her mom this morning. She would just have to get it over with and ask and that was that.
As if on cue, a notification popped up on her phone. It was her group chat with Elisa and Owen, her best friends. Elisa’s text was in all-caps on the top of her screen: “DID YOU ASK YET??” Sam quickly shoved her phone back into her pocket and hoped her mom didn’t see it. But her mom still had her eyes glued to her laptop.
Just ask her, Samantha Adler, and stop being such a scaredy-cat.
Sam hated the way her stomach did flips when she was nervous. She took a drink of orange juice to wash down her muffin and then cleared her throat, glancing at her mom to see if she noticed.
Her mom looked up and paused in her typing. She grabbed a muffin of her own and took a small bite.
“What’s up, kiddo?”
Sam fought the urge to roll her eyes. She wished her mom didn’t call her things like kiddo or honey-bun anymore. They were such childish nicknames, and she was 15 going on 16. She wasn’t a little kid anymore. It seemed like her mom had started using them again more frequently in the last few years instead of less.
The orange juice tasted too sweet for her nervous stomach, but Sam took another sip before she spoke up again. Her hands were starting to sweat a little as she pulled up her backpack and unzipped it, then pulled out a crinkly piece of paper that had been weighing her down like a brick for the past few days.
Olivia Adler raised her eyebrows.
“Did you get detention?” The question was said in jest. Samantha Adler never got detention. “Or expelled?” Her mom smiled a little, which made Sam feel a bit less horrified by what she was about to ask.
But only a bit less horrified.
“No. It’s um,” Sam said, feeling like her throat was both too dry and too sticky at the same time. Just get the words out, she thought. Maybe she won’t say no this time. “It’s a permission slip. For a field trip.”
She quickly set the paper on the counter and shoved it towards her mom with slightly shaking fingers. “It’s also extra credit for Humanities.” She took a too-big bite of her muffin, chewing through her words as if that would somehow lessen the blow of a possible rejection. “It doesn’t cost any money unless you want to send me souvenir money, but I don’t want to buy anything there, it’d just be fun to go for once.” The last words came out quick and hurried and, she hated to admit it, hopeful.
Olivia’s eyes scanned the page and Sam felt like she could practically read her mom’s thoughts as the text went from generic permission slip form to a detailed description of where they’d be going. Because that’s when her mom’s face went from coolly neutral to frowning, her lip quirked down in a thin way that Sam knew meant she was biting the inside of her cheek. It was a habit she’d seen her mom do a lot lately.
Olivia sighed and set the paper down. She tapped her fingers on the counter. It was like the words floated in the air before they left her mouth, filling the empty kitchen with a heavy tension.
“Sam, I’m sorry, but…” She began, but Sam snatched the paper from her mom’s hand, shoved it in her backpack, and made for the front door.
Tears pricked at the edges of her eyes and she was glad her grandpa was sleeping, because if he was awake, he’d probably make her stop and talk it out with her mom.
She didn’t want to talk it out. She was tired of her mom always gently saying “Sorry, but…” She was even tired of the way that her mom always looked genuinely sorry about it; looked like she had something she wanted to say to Sam to explain away her refusals, but never did.
“Sorry” wasn’t going to get her on the bus to the field trip with her friends, was it?
Ignoring her mom softly saying her name, Sam shoved her feet into her shoes before she hoisted her backpack around her shoulder and left the house.
Grandpa Roger was sleeping, so she didn’t slam the front door.
But she really wished she could have slammed it hard enough to shake the house.
