The Lantern on Sycamore Lane

For three weeks, Leo had worked on his deep-sea diver costume in the corner of the garage. He had painted an old cardboard box with metallic copper paint to make a helmet, gluing plastic bottle caps around the circular viewing window to look like heavy bolts. By the afternoon of October thirty-first, his excitement was almost unbearable. Then, at four o'clock, the sky turned the color of a bruised plum, and a cold autumn rain began to drum against the windowpanes.

"If the cardboard gets soaked, the helmet will collapse like a wet pancake," Leo's older sister, Maya, pointed out from the kitchen table. She was dressed as a nineteenth-century detective, complete with a heavy wool cape that could easily handle a drizzle.

Leo slumped onto the sofa, staring at his copper helmet. The weather forecast predicted the rain would stop by five-thirty, just in time for trick-or-treating, but the wind was another problem. Gusts were already shaking the maple trees outside, stripping away their yellow leaves and plastering them to the wet sidewalk.

"We can reinforce the inside with duct tape," Maya suggested, setting down her magnifying glass. "And if you wear your clear plastic rain poncho over the chest plate, the cardboard will stay dry. A real deep-sea diver has to be prepared for water, right?"