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It was Halloween night in Haddonfield. The streets were full of police vehicles and an ambulance. There was talk of a mysterious masked figure in that neighborhood. A body was found hung inside the Wallace home, while a young teenage girl was found barely breathing inside the home, bloody, beaten, and bruised.
Two kids were left in the care of some cops who were not investigating an abduction. Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace, two young children, ranging in the ages of 9-10. Lindsey sat next to Tommy in the back of the ambulance with tears seeping out of her eyes and trembling from all of the terror she just witnessed. Covered in a blanket, she leaned closer to Tommy.
“Hold me, Tommy!” Lindsey said with her voice breaking and leaned in closer to him. “Hold me!”
Lindsey sniffed and breathed hard as she cried. Tommy didn’t know how to react to all of this. Right before everything happened, he just saw Lindsey as a girl, which he was still unsure about. Given his age, he was not sure what to think about girls, although some male classmates and friends of his teased him about a rumor circling around his class that Lindsey had a crush on him. They all teased about a possibility that he may have liked her as well, which he often denied. Although deep down, it was something he didn’t want to admit, because he did kind of like her.
However, with Lindsey traumatized from everything, all Tommy could do was put his arms around her and pat her on the back.
“I’m scared, too, Lindsey,” Tommy said. “I hope Laurie’s okay.”
Laurie Strode babysat for Tommy on occasion. It was enough that the two developed a rapport with one another that he would catch her on the street before school and talk to her, despite the age gap and that Laurie was in high school while Tommy was in elementary school. Laurie also babysat for Lindsey on occasion. Unbeknownst to Tommy, Lindsey had confessed to Laurie about her crush on Tommy. Lindsey told Laurie not to tell Tommy about it, but despite that, Laurie talked about it with her friends Annie Brackett and Lynda van der Klok. Despite how they would act around each other, Laurie’s friends thought the crush Lindsey had on Tommy was cute, especially at their age.
In this situation, Tommy came to terms about his feelings for Lindsey. With all of the trauma they faced that night, all they could do was hold each other in the hopes that they would make it through the night, as well as hope that their babysitters would be okay from “The Boogeyman.”
“Tommy, I don’t know how to say this,” Lindsey said while still crying. “But I like you. I know you think I’m just a girl and you say that you don’t like girls, but I just had to tell you.”
Tommy breathed hard and cried, too. Although many boys try to tell themselves not to cry or display any fear, this was something different. The Boogeyman could have killed him and Lindsey but went after Laurie instead.
“I like you, too, Lindsey,” Tommy said. “Stay with me. We’ll be okay. I hope Laurie will be okay.”