The Costume Disaster

Benji had been planning his Halloween costume for exactly twenty-three days.

He knew it was twenty-three days because he'd been crossing them off on the calendar in his bedroom with a big red marker. Twenty-three days of imagining, drawing, cutting, gluing, and — most importantly — telling absolutely everyone at school about his amazing robot costume.

"It has silver arms!" he told his friend Maya at lunch.

"It has blinking lights!" he told his teacher, Ms. Patel.

"It has a chest panel with REAL buttons!" he told the crossing guard, Mr. Howard, who said, "Well now, that sounds like something."

And it was something. Benji and his dad had spent two whole weekends building it out of cardboard boxes, aluminum foil, bottle caps, and a string of battery-powered lights that blinked red and green. When Benji put it on and looked in the mirror, he felt like he could walk right into a movie.

Now it was finally Halloween. One hour before trick-or-treating. Benji's pillowcase was ready. His sneakers were tied. The sun was just starting to turn the sky orange and purple through the kitchen window.

"Okay, Dad," Benji announced. "It's time."

His dad helped him step into the big cardboard body. Benji pushed his arms through the silver-wrapped tubes. His dad carefully lowered the box-head over Benji's head, lining up the eye holes.

"Looking good, Superbot," Dad said.

Benji grinned inside the helmet. He took one step forward.

Then another.

Then he turned sideways to walk through the kitchen doorway, and —

RRRRRIIIIIPPP.

The entire left side of the costume caught on the door handle. The cardboard buckled. The foil tore. The string of lights popped off and clattered across the kitchen floor like a tiny glowing snake. The left arm tube crumpled, and the chest panel — the one with the REAL buttons — folded in half with a sad, soft crunch.

Benji stood completely still.

He looked down at the dangling foil. The crushed buttons. The box that now looked less like a robot and more like a recycling bin that had lost a fight.

His chin started to wobble.

"No, no, no, no, no," Benji whispered. Then louder: "NO! Dad! It's RUINED!"

His eyes burned. A hot tear slid down his cheek and dripped right off his chin onto a crumpled bottle cap.

"Hey, hey," Dad said, kneeling down. "Let me see."

But there wasn't much to see. The costume was torn beyond repair — at least beyond repair in fifty-three minutes.

"We can tape it," Benji said desperately, even though he could tell they couldn't.

Dad picked up a piece of crushed cardboard. It flopped over like a wet noodle. He put it down gently.

"I'm not going," Benji said. He sat down right on the kitchen floor, still half inside the broken robot. "I told EVERYONE about this costume. Maya's going to ask about it. Mr. Howard's going to ask about it. I can't just... show up in NOTHING."

Dad didn't say anything right away. He just sat down on the kitchen floor too, right next to Benji, their backs against the cabinets.

They sat there for a moment, surrounded by foil and bottle caps and one blinking light that was still working, flashing red-green-red-green on the tile floor.

Then Dad's eyes got that look. That sparkly, slightly dangerous look he got sometimes — like when he decided they should make pancakes shaped like all fifty states, or when he built a catapult out of wooden spoons to launch grapes into each other's mouths across the living room.

"Wait here," Dad said.

He jumped up and started opening cabinets. Not carefully. Not quietly. BANG. BANG. CLANG. He pulled out a colander — the big silver one with all the little holes — and held it up next to his head, staring at it like it was a precious jewel.

"Dad, that's for spaghetti," Benji said flatly.

"That's what they WANT you to think," Dad said.

Before Benji could ask who "they" were, Dad was already moving. Fast. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from the junk drawer. He snagged two oven mitts — the shiny silver ones Grandma had given them last Christmas. He found the roll of aluminum foil. He pulled a pair of swimming goggles from the coat closet.

"Stand up, Space Cadet," Dad said.

"I'm not a Space Cadet, I'm a—"

"You're not a robot anymore, Benj. You're something better." Dad placed the colander upside down on Benji's head. It fit perfectly, the little holes letting in tiny dots of light. "You're an intergalactic space explorer, just returned from the moons of Jupiter."

Benji blinked.

Dad taped two long strips of foil to the colander so they stuck up like antennas. He slid the silver oven mitts onto Benji's hands. He wrapped duct tape around Benji's sneakers in crisscross patterns until they looked like moon boots. He strapped the swimming goggles over Benji's eyes, on top of the colander, so they looked like a visor.

Then he grabbed a flashlight from under the sink, taped it to Benji's belt, and said, "That's your laser scanner. For scanning aliens. Very important work."

Benji looked down at himself. Silver mitts. Taped-up moon boots. A flashlight on his belt. He reached up and touched the colander on his head.

"There's holes in my helmet," Benji said. "I'll lose all my oxygen."

Dad pointed at him. "See? You're already thinking like a space explorer."

He grabbed a piece of plastic wrap from the drawer and stretched it across the inside of the colander. "Emergency oxygen seal. Standard issue."

The tiniest smile crept onto Benji's face. Just at the corners.

"It doesn't have blinking lights," Benji said, but his voice had changed. It didn't sound broken anymore. It sounded like it was testing something — poking at it to see how it felt.

Dad picked up the one string of lights still blinking on the floor — the survivor — and wrapped it twice around Benji's waist.

Red-green-red-green.

Benji looked in the hallway mirror.

He did not look like a robot. He didn't look like anything he'd planned for twenty-three days. He looked... weird. He looked like a kid wearing a spaghetti strainer and oven mitts and swimming goggles and a flashlight, wrapped in blinking Christmas lights.

He looked ridiculous.

And something about that — something about the colander and the oven mitts and the fact that his dad had just sat down on the floor with him and then gone completely bananas with the kitchen supplies — made a laugh start bubbling up from somewhere deep in Benji's belly.

It came out as a snort first. Then a giggle. Then a full, doubled-over, colander-nearly-falling-off kind of laugh.

Dad started laughing too.

"You look magnificent," Dad said, wiping his eyes.

"I look like the kitchen exploded on me!" Benji howled.

"MAGNIFICENT," Dad repeated.

The doorbell rang. It was Maya, dressed as a vampire, with her mom.

Maya stared at Benji. Her eyes went wide.

"What ARE you?" she breathed.

Benji stood up straight. He adjusted his colander. He clicked on his flashlight laser scanner.

"I'm an intergalactic space explorer," he said, in the most serious voice he could manage. "Just returned from the moons of Jupiter."

Maya grabbed his arm. "Can you scan me for aliens? Scan me! SCAN ME!"

Benji pointed the flashlight at her and made a beeping noise with his mouth.

"You're clean," he reported.

"COOL," Maya said. She turned to her mom. "His costume is SO MUCH BETTER than a robot."

As they headed down the sidewalk into the Halloween evening — the streetlights glowing, the jack-o'-lanterns flickering, the air smelling like leaves and candy — Benji reached up and tapped his colander helmet twice.

The lights around his waist blinked red-green-red-green.

His oven mitts were already getting sweaty.

And when Mr. Howard saw him at the corner and said, "Well now, what happened to the robot?" Benji just grinned the biggest grin of his life and said:

"Robots are last season, Mr. Howard."

Then he aimed his flashlight at a tree, made his beeping noise, and marched into the night — scanning for aliens on every doorstep, all the way to the end of the street, and back again.