“No one ever does,” said Claude.
There was a party at school in the morning, then a parade through the neighborhood so all the parents and grandparents could stand along the streets and shiver and take pictures, then a dance, the elementary-school version of which was that everyone wiggled around on the blacktop drinking hot cider and eating bat brownies and pumpkin bars and doing the Monster Mash. How that song was still in circulation, Penn could not fathom. Roo and Ben had their own Halloween dance, the alarmingly grown-up kind, at the middle school, which suddenly seemed impossibly far away. Penn had deliberated what sort of fatherly advice might be most appropriate and useful for an almost teenage dance and finally decided that the greatest assistance he could give them was not making a big deal about it. Still, he was glad he didn’t have to watch. Instead, he stood and chitchatted with the other elementary school parents and watched his little ones. Rigel and Orion, stuffed together into an XXL T-shirt, looped ear to ear by a custom-knit extra-wide orange-and-black headband, were fighting about whether both of them or neither of them wanted more cider. Claude was off by himself under the basketball hoops, slow dancing with his tinfoil knight, the catalog text balloon bouncing lightly against the top of his head.
“You still here?” said a voice by Penn’s shoulder. Dwight Harmon. The principal.
“Afraid so.”
“Rosie at work?”
“Halloween. Big day for emergency rooms.”
“I can imagine,” the principal said. “How are the boys?”
“Which ones?”
“Roo and Ben. How’s middle school?”
“So far…” Penn trailed off. He’d meant to add “so good,” but he wasn’t sure. He and Dwight went back a long way—they were on their fifth boy together after all—and Penn knew better than to bullshit the principal.
“Big dance today?”
Penn nodded.
“You got out of chaperoning?”
“I had to be here, didn’t I?” said Penn.
Dwight grinned. “That why you keep having kids? So you never have to go to the middle school dance? Lucky bastard.”
“You too.” Penn smiled. The superintendent’s office had wanted to promote Dwight to middle school principal, but he liked where he was.
“Speaking of dancing, isn’t he sweet?” The principal nodded toward Claude and his knight errant. “Your youngest grooving with his robot.”
“First love,” said Penn. “Breaks your heart. Every time.”
“What’s he dressed up as? An engineer? An inventor?”
“Honestly?” said Penn. “He’s not dressed up as anything.” That crisp fall afternoon—not too cold, still bright, the air sweet with cookies and cider and leaves about to die—was very nearly the last time that was true.
“Is he doing okay?” said the principal. “Is he happy?”
Penn’s first concern. He tore his eyes from Claude to look over at the principal. “I think so?”
“I’m not so sure,” Dwight said gently.
“Is he … acting out? Falling behind?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. He’s smart. He’s bright. He’s well behaved. He’s a good little student.”
“But?”
“But for a five-year-old, he’s awfully quiet.”
“Sensitive?”
“Yeah, maybe. But he doesn’t seem to have many friends.”
“Shy?”
“Yeah, maybe. But his pictures give us pause. He does not draw himself as we would expect from such a bright child.”
“Lacks artistic talent?”
“Yeah, maybe, but he’s just fashioned a larger-than-life robot out of cardboard, tinfoil, and a balloon.”
“It’s a knight,” said Penn. “And I love it, but I don’t think it bespeaks artistic ability. Maybe the kid just can’t draw.”
“Maybe,” said the principal, “but I’d bet not.”
“What would you bet?”
“You’ll tell me, Penn. Whenever you and Rosie figure it out. Whenever Claude figures it out. Whatever it turns out your boys need, you know you have only to let me know. And maybe everything’s fine. Really. But, well, there are some warning signs. It’s good to start thinking about these things early.”
As far as things that went bump in the night, this was the scariest thing that had ever happened to Penn on Halloween.
Homeworking was suspended for the holiday. Snack was deemed redundant given the number of bat brownies and pumpkin bars consumed. There was halfhearted dinner. There was full-hearted trick-or-treating. There was an even-more-protracted-than-usual-owing-to-the-amount-of-sugar-ingested bedtime. Rosie came home, finally, exhausted. Penn wiped peanut-butter-cup remnants from his lips and handed her a folder.
“What’s this?”
“Claude’s artwork from the last year or so.”
“They gave it to you at school?”