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Time marched on, and so did our war with the neighbors. Patrick incensed Mr. Lang from across the street when he pulled out his own binoculars and started spying on him. Someone called the police with a noise complaint the night Sam, Patrick, and Adena jammed over at our house with some of their friends from the orchestra. Women continued to come by and wake us up at all hours of the night and day, driving Jude past the point of distraction. "I'll get a big, carnivorous dog. I'll nail the front door shut. I'll nail their front doors shut, I just can't take their constantly coming over here at eight a.m. on a Saturday when I just got off work an hour ago. I mean, seriously. I'll do anything to get rid of them. Anything," he said, and he had a little bit of a desperate gleam in his eye.

Actually, what finally got rid of them was something we didn't even plan. Jude didn't really even have a part in it. It all started when Patrick asked me to help him with his Halloween costume. "I want something scary. Or at least, scary like in a cheesy B-movie. I had this idea," he said, and he told me what it was.

"I think it's brilliant. I know just the way we can do that. Go and change your shirt and we can do it right now," I said. "Meet me in the garage."

"Why do I have to change my shirt?"

"Because I might mess it up. Just do it!"

When Patrick met me in the garage, I had filled a Tupperware container with paste and warm water and was pulling a garbage bag of old newspaper cuttings down off a shelf. "I knew that this stuff would come in handy someday," I said. I cleaned off my work table and made sure there were no shards of glass leftover from my latest stained glass project. "Lay down."

"Uh, Emily?" Patrick asked, suddenly worried. "Why do I need to lie down?" He asked.

"Because I'm going to make a papier-mch mask of your face," I said, and snipped a drinking straw in half with my craft scissors. "Stick these up your nose." I handed him the two ends of the straw. He looked at them with a dismayed expression on his face. "Don't be a baby, you'll be able to breathe through these. You can put that pillow I sit on under your head."

Patrick's idea was to be someone who had been decapitated, and he needed me to make him a replica of his own head to carry around. I could have just molded him something out of clay, but that took too long and I wasnt incredible with sculpting. Besides, I had a better idea.

"We can fit this mask onto one of those orange jack-o-lantern buckets and

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