total cheese-wizardry!

Yo-Yoji think it's gnarly—he says it as he's ripping out seeds and tossing them onto the marble top island instead of the bowl his mom put out. "This could work as a really killer brain, yo!" he exclaims, squeezing the inside in his hand; juice runs down his arm and seeds spill out, and it all makes a gross squelching sound.

Cass is standing next to him, spinning her swiss army knife between her fingers and scrutinizing her gut-less pumpkin, deciding what she's going to carve. She could use one of the kitchen knives Yo-Yoji's mom provided them with, but that wouldn't be very survivalist of her. "Do you have to make a mess?" she asks, internally mulling between carving a duck and carving an instruction manual on a makeshift shelter if you find yourself lost in the woods.

"Of course I do. It's, like, tradition when you're carving pumpkins." He slams a handful of seeds onto the countertop, and they splatter all over. "If you're not making a mess, you're not doing it right."

Max-Ernest presses a careful, gloved finger into the pumpkin through the the hole in the top before gagging at the squelching and yanking his hand away. "I don't want to do it right," he whines.

Cass decides on a duck.

"I'll help you in a second, Max-Ernest," she says, pulling her pumpkin closer to her to start lightly carving the hard skin into a cartoonishly goofy duck.

Yo-Yoji has made a mess. Aside from all the seeds just from the beginning, he's also left pumpkin skin carvings and shavings everywhere, as well as a few trickles of blood form when he nicked his palm with his knife because he was cutting so carelessly.

And then that just scares Max-Ernest. Cass de-guts his pumpkin for him and spends ten minutes trying to convince him that everything will be fine if he just holds the knife, but he doesn't let up. She ends up having to carve the chocolate bar for him for, like, a foot away.

Now the pumpkins are outside on the porch, candles inside them glowing in the dark. The three are huddled around them, Cass' arms crossed, Max-Ernest's hands behind his back like the pumpkin will try try to bite him, and Yo-Yoji's palm bandaged.