It all started on Halloween, my freshman year. I was Edward Scissorhands, and Willow (twelve years old at the time) was Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice. With Mom and Dad’s help, our costumes and makeup were on fucking point. I had ultra-realistic fake scars on my face, my longish hair was moussed up into a gravity-defying mess, and I had, like, honest-to-Gozer scissors for hands! (I’d tell you how expensive my costume was, but then I would have to kill you with my bare scissorhands, because it was a shameful, ridiculous amount.) We got the costumes for Mom and Dad’s Halloween work party. The two of them were dressed as Morticia and Gomez Addams (The Addams Family), respectively, and they seemed as madly, macabrely in love with each other as their TV personas.

The Slevin family stole the show at the Memorial Hospital of Carbondale.

When we came home, Willow and I couldn’t get out of costume. The costumes were just too good to be shed like snake skin, discarded ritualistically, never to be seen again.

So we went trick-or-treating.

For the record, Willow had vowed not to go trick-or-treating that year—or ever again, for that matter. And I hadn’t gone since I was eleven, out of some skewed sense of maturity and/or masculine responsibility. It wasn’t unwarranted. The last time I went, I was the victim of an insidious form of prejudice known as You’re a Bit Old to Be Trick-or-Treating, Aren’t You? It wasn’t always spoken, but it was always conveyed. You could see the disappointment in the eyes of some old dude, expecting toddlers dressed as cupcakes, or princesses, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and instead getting this lanky impostor dressed as the purple ninja turtle. To be fair, I was a smidge tall for my age—at least a solid foot taller than my trick-or-treating companions, Holden (dressed as the red turtle, Raphael) and Willow (April O’Neil). Everyone thought they were fucking adorable. I mean, they were—but still!

The injustice of it was infuriating and humiliating and dehumanizing.

But the Edward Scissorhands year was different. That year, my costume filled me with power. Willow and I were high on the spirit of Halloween, and we talked each other into it.

It was amazing.

Even though we were starting late, catching the tail end of acceptable trick-or-treating hours, the people loved us. All of them. Every. Single. Door. Not only did I not get the stink eye—not once—but they praised me! Hailed me as some sort of All Hallows’ Eve hero.

The costume didn’t just make me feel powerful. The costume, itself, was power.

As we walked home, bags heavy with candy, my mind was reeling. Churning over the events of the evening. Processing what had just happened.

People thought I was cool.

People liked me.

When was the last time I was liked? I couldn’t even remember. Maybe I was never liked. Not like this.

I had an idea.