Halloween in the city has been escalating the past few years. Now the parties start the weekend before, and trick-or-treaters are a mix of kids and adults. It’s five when Cate gets to Neale’s house; the winds have died down and evening is coming in—mild, with a thin glaze of winter approaching. The crowd is already swelling. Trick-or-treaters flood the sidewalks and parkways, a renegade traffic jam, stumbling over their elaborate costumes, blinded by their masks, urged by their parents toward the candy.

Lawns set up as small graveyards also feature zombies emerging from holes in the grass. Feet stick out of a glowing Weber. Fog billows from doorways. A couple of guys lie in their front yard moaning, knives stuck in their bloody chests. Behind one front window obscured by a translucent shower curtain liner, stooped ghouls creep back and forth, then press their palms wildly at the window as though trying to escape. Someone has hung a giant plush-toy tarantula from a tree branch over the sidewalk. It’s on an elastic string and a pulley, and drops down on one unsuspecting kid after another, so there’s about a scream a minute.

BLOOD—5 CENTS

with a pitcher and cups is offered at an unattended card-table stand.

Almost as many adults as children are in costume. Pennywise the evil clown is popular this year, along with a strong perennial contingent of SpongeBobs. A significant part of the population has made its own costumes, some so idiosyncratic you have to ask, “What are you?”

“I went out for a look earlier. We’ve got some stiff competition this year,” Neale says as she hangs a cardboard sign in the front window, drawn to approximate neon tubing:

BATES MOTEL

VACANCY

“What do you think?” Joe says about his costume. He has just come out onto the front porch. Kiera is right next to him. She’s wearing a lime-green jacket and dark green tights. Joe has on a white dress shirt he asked Neale to get him at Value Village. This now has the initials NV markered in monogrammy letters on the front pocket. He’s also wearing a Richard Nixon mask he must have found at one of the pop-up costume shops along Clark.

“We’re together, that’s what you have to think about,” Kiera says.

“You’re green with envy!” Neale says, and both kids start laughing so hard they have to hold each other up. Sailor jumps up on both of them, to join in the fun.

“Do you think everyone will guess right away?” Joe says, his voice boxed in by the mask.

“No,” Cate reassures them. “It definitely takes some putting together. I didn’t get it until your mother did. What’s the Richard Nixon part, though?”

“Just I don’t like my face so much tonight. The mask is good.” Cate wonders what this is about, this self-consciousness. He is a beautiful boy.