Karen Banned Kids from Trick-or-Treating on HALLOWEEN — So the Neighborhood Turned Against Her!

 

Part 1

I never thought a bowl of mini Snickers could be political until the day our HOA tried to ration joy.

The air had that perfect October edge—crisp enough to make every breath feel like biting into an apple. Leaves skittered down Willow Creek like orange confetti. Skeletons dangled from porches, inflatable ghosts bobbed on front lawns, and the street smelled faintly of damp earth and pumpkin guts. Even the gutters looked festive, lined in copper and red.

Then my phone buzzed.

SUBJECT: HALLOWEEN GUIDELINES — IMPORTANT NOTICE.

I clicked expecting reminders about candles and costumes with reflective tape. Instead:

This year, trick-or-treating will be limited to residents of Willow Creek Estates only. Please do not invite or allow children from other neighborhoods to participate. Rationale: safety; overcrowding; preserving our family atmosphere. Compliance will be monitored.

Monitored. As in…what, candy checkpoints?

My jaw tightened. Five minutes later, my neighbor Greg texted, Dude, did you see this? Are we really banning kids from outside the neighborhood?

Apparently, I typed. HOA wants “our families only.”

He replied: My wife’s sister brings her kids every year. Guess they’re contraband now.

I stared at the email again, at the word outsiders, like the children who waddled around in plastic masks were an invading force. Then I scrolled to the signature line and wasn’t surprised: HOA President — Catherine W. Anyone who lives here would recognize the green blouse that made monthly appearances at board meetings, the sunglasses big enough to double as shields, the voice pitched sweet as lemonade and twice as acidic. “Karen,” half the street called her when the blinds were safely closed. To her face—never. To her face, she was Catherine, and she wore it like a crown.

I ran into her that afternoon at the subdivision entrance, where she stood with a clipboard as if the gate monument were her personal lectern. Two men in black windbreakers hovered by the brick sign, performing a budget version of “security presence.”

“Hi, Catherine,” I said, keeping my tone even. “Quick question. Since when does the HOA control who knocks on my door?”

“It’s not about control, Evan,” she answered, smiling a smile that never reached her eyes. “It’s about order. We’ve had too many outsiders. The streets get crowded. People leave trash. Candy runs out. We’re preserving the family atmosphere.”

“By punishing kids in costumes?”

“Our goal is to make this event special for our community.” She clicked her pen like a gavel. “You’re free to take it up with the board, but the decision’s final.”

Her heels tapped away—one, two, three—like punctuation marks. The green blouse flashed under the turning leaves.

That night my wife and I sat on our porch steps, the grinning pumpkins at our feet casting warm ovals of light onto the walkway. The neighborhood sounded like a pre-party: little tests of music systems, plastic tombstones thumped into lawns, a teenager two houses down trying to perfect a witch cackle and cracking himself up instead.

“You’re not really going to follow that rule, are you?” my wife asked quietly, eyes on the pumpkins.

“No way,” I said. “You can’t legislate generosity. The porch stays open.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ve already bought enough candy for half the county.”

Word spread faster than a rumor in a middle school cafeteria. There were the loyalists—those who liked their lanes quiet and their trick-or-treaters counted—that’s what they called “safety.” But plenty of others were furious. Martha, our widowed neighbor down the block who wore her silver hair like a crown and kept a jar of peppermints by her mailbox, called me before lunch.

“Evan,” she said, voice shaking with anger she’d polished into dignity, “I’ve lived here thirty years. I love those kids—how their voices bounce up the steps, how they forget their lines and then remember: ‘Trick or treat!’ It’s the only night the street feels alive. I’ll hand out candy to whoever knocks. If they want to find me, they know where I sit. I’ll be the old lady with the purple blanket and the bowl big as a birdbath.”

“That’s what I needed to hear,” I said.

By Friday, the community Facebook page looked like a battlefield decorated with pastel cakes. Catherine’s post with the rule was pinned to the top. Hundreds of comments bloomed under it, some cheering her “leadership,” others telling her to take a long walk without a clipboard. Every time someone criticized the ban, Catherine replied the way an autocorrect does when you try to swear: “This is an HOA decision. Please respect the rules. We will be monitoring compliance during the event.”

Monitoring compliance. On Halloween. What were they going to do—carry a scale for candy bowls?

Greg detonated the conversation with a single post. Forget it. My haunted yard is open to everyone. If a kid shows up in costume, they get candy. Don’t care where they’re from.

Dozens of likes stacked under it. Martha commented with a pumpkin emoji and wrote, Count me in.

Greg showed up at my porch after sundown with that grin that tends to mean trouble and improvement at the same time. “You in?” he asked.

“You even have to ask?”

We made a quiet plan. The kind of quiet that isn’t timid but exact. No signs. No speeches. No fighting in the comments. Just light the way, fill the bowls, and let the night do what it does best.

Still, the next morning I saw Catherine at the subdivision entrance again, that bright green blouse like a flare. Clipboard. Windbreakers. She pointed at the main street, talking while the men nodded solemnly as if receiving instructions to secure a visiting dignitary. A chill went through me, the kind you get when you realize the antagonist in a movie isn’t a cartoon. She didn’t intend to lose.

By Halloween afternoon, Willow Creek looked like a glossy postcard. Webs strung between porch posts. Coffins propped open to reveal skeletons in sunglasses. Greg’s front yard was a full-blown haunted maze with PVC-pipe arches, a fog machine that refused to be subtle, and a “graveyard” so convincing I’d seen a jogger slow down and whisper, “Nice.”

Dusk pooled in the gutters. Porch lights flicked on like a constellation deciding to show up. Children bloomed from car doors and front steps—tigers and astronauts and tiny, waddling pumpkins with feet. You could feel it: a softness in the neighborhood you didn’t have to squint to see. For an hour, it was exactly what you hoped it would be. Parents waved from sidewalks, costumes swished, candy buckets clinked. A boy with a crooked cape said, “Trick or trick!” and collapsed into giggles. My wife, who plans for everything, had her “backup backup” bowl stashed behind the pumpkin.

Kindness was winning. Until it wasn’t.

Catherine’s green blouse appeared at the end of the block like a marker on a map. Clipboard in hand. Sunglasses on though the light had already done its kindest work. The two “security” volunteers, walkie-talkies clipped to their belts, flanked her like lowercase letters.

“Don’t start something,” my wife whispered.

“I won’t,” I said, and meant it. “Unless she does.”

She did.

She stopped at the mouth of Greg’s haunted maze where kids were lined up, bouncing in place with adrenaline and sugar. “Excuse me,” she called, voice pitched to project over laughter. “Parents, please be advised—this event is for residents only.”

The laughter shrank and tucked itself into collars. Kids froze mid-bounce. Parents frowned at each other like they were trying to solve a riddle someone had delivered too late.

Greg stepped from the fog, wiping fake blood from his hands. “Catherine,” he said, incredulous, “you’re doing this now?”

“This violates the HOA notice,” she said, folding her arms so the clipboard became a shield. “You’re attracting outsiders. This isn’t allowed.”

“They’re kids,” Greg said, pointing at a tiny witch whose hat kept slumping over one eye. “You gonna card ‘em?”

“We have a responsibility to keep things orderly,” she replied. “We’ll be issuing violations.”

I took a step forward before my better judgment could arrange a leash. “Go ahead and fine me too, Catherine,” I said. “My porch light is on. Come and take my candy bowl if you want.”

A few parents chuckled. Someone clapped once, sharply, like the start of a storm. From down the block, Martha called, “You tell her, Evan!” Her purple blanket looked like royalty under porch light.

Catherine pivoted, and for a second the street became a mirror—her sunglasses reflecting our jack-o’-lanterns back at us. “You’re all in violation,” she snapped. “You’ll regret this defiance.”

Phones rose like flowers to the sun. Record buttons flashed red. The volunteers shifted, suddenly aware of how it looks to stand next to a person who says “compliance” on Halloween. Catherine noticed the cameras and, calculating, turned on her heel. She strode away, chin high, the green blouse a small parade of victory.

It would have been a win if I hadn’t seen one of the volunteers lift his walkie-talkie to his mouth and murmur into it as if summoning a sequel.

 

Part 2

The sequel arrived on cue—with headlights.

Half an hour later, when the street was again ribbons of laughter and plastic swords clacking together in mock battle, I heard the low thrum of engines. Two black SUVs rolled into Willow Creek, deliberate as sharks, their beams sweeping lawns like searchlights. One had a magnetic decal: Neighborhood Security — Willow Creek HOA.

“You have got to be kidding me,” a mom near me whispered.

Greg leaned in. “She didn’t.”

“Oh, she did,” I said.

Catherine climbed out of the first SUV like someone stepping onto a stage. Clipboard. Sunglasses even though the sky had softened to blue-black. The windbreakers unfolded from the second car, faces arranged into stern.

“Good evening, everyone,” she called, loud enough to set off a motion-sensor skeleton that shrieked in reply. “We are conducting a safety check to ensure compliance with HOA guidelines. Please clear the streets if you do not reside here.”

Silence flattened the block. The only sound was a candy bucket clinking as a child shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“Is this lady serious?” someone muttered.

“Catherine,” a dad called out, “they’re just kids. Nobody’s doing anything wrong.”

She ignored him, slicing the air with her free hand. “Rules are rules. We’ve had complaints.”

“You wrote the complaint,” I said, walking toward her. I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t have to; microphones had been replaced by phones. “You took a holiday and turned it into a power trip.”

“Evan,” she said in the tone you use when a puppy drags toilet paper down a hallway, “you’re being confrontational.”

“No,” I said. “I’m being normal. You’re being—this.” I gestured to the SUVs, the decal trying and failing to look official, the way kids were shrinking into parents’ sides. “This is ridiculous.”

A security volunteer stepped forward, squaring his shoulders to approximate authority. “Ma’am,” he asked Catherine, “should we start clearing?”

“No,” I cut in, stepping between him and the maze of kids. “Because if you start clearing children off the street, you’ll be trending by midnight. You think parents are going to let you bully their kids on Halloween?”

He hesitated, eyes bouncing between my face and all the faces behind phones. Even the skeletons seemed to be watching. Somewhere a fog machine coughed like an elderly dragon.

Greg cupped his hands around his mouth. “Yo, everyone—keep recording! HOA wants to ruin Halloween!”

Laughter rippled down the street. Someone shouted, “Trick or treat, not trick or ticket!” The kids, more fluent in chant than law, picked it up immediately. “Let us trick or treat! Let us trick or treat!”

Catherine’s face flushed a color that did not appear in nature. She looked around and saw exactly how outnumbered she was—not by bodies, but by a shared unwillingness to be bullied. She turned to the volunteers and hissed, “We’re leaving. Now.”

They backed toward the SUVs. Someone yelled, “Happy Halloween, Officer Clipboard!” The street cracked up.

The SUVs rolled away with studied slow dignity, decals flashing in porch light. You could feel the moment the tension snapped—like the pop of a balloon and the relief that follows. Music surged back to life. The fog machine exhaled. Kids poured back up steps like the flood had been paused and someone had remembered the button. My wife pressed the “backup backup” bowl into my hands and whispered, “Go, before Greg’s maze eats all the neighborhood.”

We gave out candy until my back creaked and my feet sent suggestions like, perhaps chairs were invented for a reason. When the last “One more house, pleeease” had been defeated by a yawn, the street settled into a soft, sugar-trance quiet. I sat with a beer on the porch steps and watched the fog in Greg’s yard drift apart like thoughts after a good argument.

Greg dropped into the chair beside me and clinked his bottle against mine. “Well,” he said, grinning, “that was… municipal.”

“Didn’t think Halloween would turn into a standoff,” I said.

“Oh, I did,” he replied. “I just didn’t think it would come with SUVs.” He nodded toward the street. “She is going to lose her mind when she sees herself online.”

He was right.

By morning, the neighborhood Facebook page looked like a live-streamed bonfire. Clips of Catherine scolding a line of tiny pirates and princesses had outrun our cul-de-sac and sprinted onto TikTok, Instagram, places where self-importance goes to meet its natural enemy. Comments bloomed under a video labeled HOA Boss vs. Batman Age 6. Imagine calling the candy police. This HR lady needs a hobby. Let kids be kids. By lunchtime, a local news van had parked crookedly under the maple at the corner. The banner on the story read: HOA Attempts To Restrict Trick-or-Treating — Faces Backlash.

There she was, in all her clipboarded glory, caught mid-rant, the green blouse luminous under LED porch lights. The reporter interviewed Greg (earnest, slightly damp from fog machine proximity) and Martha (regal, purple blanket draped around her shoulders like a coach’s cape). I stood out of frame, relieved to be a voice without a face.

Rumor said Catherine tried to issue citations to a handful of us that morning. The HOA board—suddenly very aware of being a board that lives in the age of the internet—refused to back her. By evening, an email arrived from the same address that had announced “compliance.”

We recognize that Halloween should be a night of joy and togetherness for everyone. Thank you for reminding us of the true spirit of community.

Translation: We lost. You can stop filming.

A day later, a board member resigned with an email that contained more spine than I’d given him credit for: This is not what our community stands for. Catherine shuttered her social media accounts like closing blinds against a storm she’d made. For once, her house was the only dark porch on the block.

Martha stopped by with a basket of leftover candy as big as a toddler. “Haven’t laughed that hard in years,” she said. “Nearly choked on a Milk Dud when they called her Officer Clipboard.”

“It wasn’t about candy,” I said, setting the basket on the porch table. “It was about choice.”

“And the right to hand a Kit Kat to a dinosaur without checking his zip code,” she added, eyes bright. “Think she’ll try something like that again?”

“If she does,” I said, “she’ll be famous. Again.”

Greg rolled up in his truck, speakers insisting we all hear “Monster Mash” one more time. He leaned out the window and yelled, “Next year—block party. No HOA rules. Potluck. Fog machines mandatory.”

“Count me in,” I called back.

“Save me a chair,” Martha sang, already halfway to queen of the parade.

For the first time in a while, the neighborhood felt less like a map of property lines and more like a quilt—stitched by different hands, warmed by the same light. People who had never spoken now swapped candy stories at the mailboxes. The fences seemed lower. The smiles, wider. All because one person tried to own a night that never belonged to her.

A week later, I walked past Catherine’s house. The porch was stripped. No pumpkins. No strings of orange lights. Curtains drawn. She stood by the front window—phone at her ear, gaze sliding away like rainwater when I raised a hand in a polite half-wave. We had already said everything that needed saying, and most of it without words. The neighborhood had said the rest.

 

Part 3

You’d think that would be the end of it—clipboards defeated, candy bowls emptied, lesson learned. But neighborhoods don’t heal with headlines. They heal with repetition—with choosing, again and again, to be a place where people say hello in driveways and kids test their independence half a yard at a time. So we leaned into that.

Greg followed through on the block party threat like a man building an ark while the rest of us checked the sky. By mid-November he had a Google Doc labeled Fall Light Parade (Because Why Let The HOA Name It) and a sign-up list that read like a love letter to a potluck: Nina’s jalapeño cornbread; Coach Reed’s chili; Samira’s cardamom cookies; Martha’s famous deviled eggs (48 halves, “or more if Greg keeps sampling”).

We made a rule we didn’t write down: bring more chairs than you think you need. Another one: if a kid picks up an extra cookie, that was always the plan. We banned clipboards. We allowed lanterns. Someone found a bubble machine at a yard sale that made the street look like the inside of a snow globe in need of a better season. Elliot from the end of the cul-de-sac brought a guitar. No one asked if he could play. He could.

On the afternoon of the party, I stood by my grill with a stack of paper plates and watched the street gather itself. Brownies and toddlers and dogs with bandanas. A grandmother and a teenager laughing at the same joke. A little girl in a Batman hoodie marching with the solemn importance of an honorary marshal. Martha held a paper cup of cider like a monarch testing the temperature of her realm and declared it “proper.”

If you’re looking for drama, community building is actually kind of boring. In the best way. It’s a hundred small decisions—open the folding chair, pass the ladle, remember the neighbor’s kid is allergic to peanuts, keep an eye on the toddler near the curb. It’s “Take some home to your dad” and “Let me see that drawing” and “Yes, of course you can play with my dog, just ask him politely first.” It’s “I’m sorry about your mom” whispered next to the cooler when the music is loud enough to give the apology privacy.

Weeks later, the local paper ran a small follow-up, buried under football scores: Willow Creek Celebrates Community After Halloween Dispute. The photo showed Martha’s purple blanket, Greg’s stupid fog machine belching theatrically in daylight, and me holding a plate stacked with food I hadn’t cooked. Catherine was not in the photo. I didn’t miss her.

But the story was not nothing. The story traveled. A mom from outside the neighborhood stopped me in the grocery store and said, “We came through your street. My son was the astronaut who mixed up ‘trick or treat’ with ‘good night!’ Thanks for letting us belong for twenty minutes.” My barber said, “That clipboard lady from Facebook? She tried that mess over on Oak Park three years ago. Didn’t fly there either.” The UPS driver leaned on a stack of packages and grinned. “You got the phrase ‘officer clipboard’ trending. That’s service.”

Some nights, when the street went quiet and the pumpkins collapsed into themselves like folded tents, I caught myself staring down the block at Catherine’s dark porch. I won’t pretend there wasn’t a sliver of satisfaction in seeing the darkness where there could have been a strand of orange lights and a bowl with a Take One sign people would ignore. But more than that, there was a prayer—if a practical person like me is allowed to call it that—that she’d learn the difference between power and place, between making a rule and making a home.

The HOA scheduled a “listening session” in December. The agenda was bland and apologetic. “Feedback welcomed,” the email said, “as we reconsider community events policy.” Fifteen of us showed up. Catherine did not. The remaining board members, looking like teens sent to apologize on behalf of a sibling, nodded at everything: yes to a non-resident policy that read be kind first; yes to volunteer-run crossing guides instead of pretend security; yes to a page on the website that said, Our neighborhood has a porch code: lights on mean welcome.

In January, a notice slid into mailboxes with a rare tone—plain, human. It said: We forgot that neighborhoods are not clubs. They are places where people live. We will try not to forget again.

Winter came properly after that—gray and quiet and useful for teaching patience. But even in the hush, the street had changed shape. People waved more than necessary. Martha began keeping hot chocolate packets in her mailbox (“for cold hands,” she said, and then whispered, “and cold hearts”). Greg plowed driveways with the beat-up riding mower he swore one day would be “upgraded to something with flames.” My wife started a Little Free Library in the median strip, painted orange like a pumpkin survivors’ shelter. The first book placed inside was, fittingly, a battered copy of The Giving Tree with a sticky note on the cover that said, “We prefer boundaries.”

One afternoon in late winter, as I adjusted the crooked door on the little library, Catherine walked by with her head tipped down, talking into her phone the way people do when they’d rather not talk to anyone else. She slowed, looking at the rack of children’s books and thrillers and a random manual about houseplants with a dragon on the cover.

“It’s cute,” she said, almost to herself, almost to me.

“It’s ours,” I said.

She nodded, not exactly agreeing, but also not disagreeing. Then she kept walking.

That felt like movement. Not forgiveness. Not forgetfulness. Just…less clipping every step with a pen.

 

Part 4

Halloween came back around like a promise kept.

On the afternoon of October 31, the sky wore that particular blue that makes orange brighter. Greg’s maze had evolved into a full-on neighborhood collaboration: Samira contributed lanterns shaped like moons; Coach Reed engineered a motion-triggered raven that cawed once and startled everyone every time; Nina found a fifteen-foot inflatable cat that looked like it could eat a compact car and brought it on a dolly as if she were escorting a celebrity. Kids on scooters flitted around like confetti with knees.

We’d named it the Light Parade now, officially, not because we needed another tradition but because traditions are how communities write themselves down so they don’t forget. The HOA had printed signs that said WELCOME, and a teenager I didn’t know had decorated them with glitter and ghost doodles. Two volunteers with neon vests (real ones, not pretend cops) held LED batons at the corners to slow traffic. The porches were lit like altars, bowls brimming.

At dusk, the first princess hit my step with her speech rehearsed. “Trick-or-treat,” she said, then peeked back to the sidewalk to see if her performance warranted parental approval. It did. They all did. A miniature firefighter read the name tag on my shirt like it held hidden meaning and declared, “You’re…EV-AN,” triumphant as a detective solving a case. A teenage vampire with smeared eyeliner said, “I know I’m too old, but I’m walking my little brother and I haven’t eaten since lunch,” and I handed him an extra peanut butter cup because honesty deserves sugar.

Halfway through the second hour, as the street had reached its particular Halloween chorus—plastic swords, laughter, the rustle of costumes—my wife nudged me subtly and tipped her chin down the block. I followed her gaze.

Catherine stood at the corner. No clipboard. No sunglasses despite the lingering light. She wore a sweater the color of the sky behind the trees. For a long minute, she simply watched. Kids tumbled up steps and down again. Parents stood in little knots that looked like commas. The raven startled Coach Reed. Someone’s fog machine coughed theatrically and a child said, “It’s a dragon!” with such certainty that for a second, I believed him.

Catherine took a breath I could see from here, then crossed the street and approached Martha’s porch. I held my breath in reflex—old habits die the kind of slow death that teaches patience. Martha stood, purple blanket over her lap, bowl of candy at the ready like a queen with a coin purse. Catherine said something. Martha’s eyebrows lifted. Then they both laughed.

Not the kind of laugh that erases what came before. The kind that says, I recognize you as human again.

A minute later, Catherine walked slowly up my path. She stopped one step below me and looked, for a heartbeat, like someone arriving at a conversation she had rehearsed too many times. “Evening,” she said.

“Evening,” I answered.

She looked at the bowl, then at the parade of costumes. “It looks…good,” she said. “Better than last year.”

“It does,” I said. “It’s uncomplicated.”

She nodded. The silence that followed wasn’t unfriendly. It was new.

A child barreled up the steps in a dinosaur hoodie, hollered, “Trick or treat!” then saw Catherine and froze, re-mapped, decided she was, in fact, not a threat, and thrust out his bucket. Catherine reached into my bowl and dropped in two fun-size Twix. “Happy Halloween,” she said to the dinosaur. He roared; she smiled in surprise, like kindness had done a magic trick in her hands and she wasn’t yet sure how to repeat it on command.

She glanced at me. “We—” she started, then corrected, “I was wrong last year.”

I nodded. “We were loud about it.”

“It helped,” she said, and then almost laughed at herself. “It hurt, but it helped.”

A teenager with a cape brushed past, and the moment dissolved into more practical magic—a hundred small transactions of delight. Catherine stepped back, gave a nod that was not an apology and not not one, and moved on down the path toward another porch with a bowl and a person on it. Maybe she would talk to them. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe that wasn’t the point.

When the night thinned and the porch lights clicked off one by one and parents performed the ancient ritual of candy taxes and “No, not that one, I love that one,” the street let out a sigh big enough to share. Greg dragged the inflatable cat back to his garage like a triumphant fisherman with a ridiculous catch. Martha tucked her purple blanket under her arm and declared the raven “insufferable and perfect.” My wife and I stacked empty candy bags like trophies, then sat at the top of our steps and watched the fog dissolve into the cool.

“Think it’ll hold?” my wife asked. She meant the feeling, not the weather.

“Only if we keep choosing it,” I said. “Traditions don’t maintain themselves. People do that with their hands and their stubbornness.”

She nudged my knee with her toe. “You were very stubborn.”

“I had a good teacher,” I said, nodding toward Martha, who was instructing three teenagers on the proper way to coil an extension cord so it never tangles again.

Days later, the videos would circulate again—not of confrontation this time, but of kids chanting “trick or treat” and neighbors chanting “welcome,” and lanterns bobbing down a street that for one night had remembered how to be soft. The news wouldn’t come. The internet would be busy. The HOA would send no email beyond the one that said “Thanks to all volunteers.” And that would be exactly right.

A week after, I walked past Catherine’s house. Her porch glowed with a simple string of lights she’d forgotten to take down or decided not to. There was a small pumpkin left, stubbornly round, refusing collapse. As I passed, the door opened. Catherine stepped out, looked like she might say something, then simply raised a hand. I raised mine back. It felt like a wave goodbye to a version of us I never liked much.

Here’s what I learned: the scariest thing on Halloween isn’t a plastic skeleton or a fog machine coughing like a smoked-out dragon. It’s a clipboard in the hands of someone who thinks rules can replace relationships. But a neighborhood has a long memory and a good heart when you let it beat. We didn’t just fight an HOA decision. We fought for the idea that no committee owns a porch light, no title owns a doorway, and no decal on a car can outrank a child in a dinosaur hoodie roaring for joy.

The kids will remember the laughter, the lights, the way the night smelled like sugar and wet leaves. They won’t remember the SUVs or the word compliance. That’s the point. That’s the win I wanted. That’s the win we got.

Next year, Greg will build a bigger maze. Martha will bring a bigger bowl. My wife will buy too much candy on purpose and pretend she didn’t. The raven will caw at exactly the wrong time and startle exactly the right person. Catherine might sit on her porch and pass out chocolates to kids whose parents she doesn’t know. Or not. Either way, the porch lights will be on.

And the neighborhood—the real kind, the kind you make—will answer the door.

END!

Disclaimer: Our stories are inspired by real-life events but are carefully rewritten for entertainment. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidental.