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Maple Hollow wakes bright and slightly glittered after its centennial parade crisis. Nora, a meticulous event coordinator turned improv leader by necessity, manages the aftermath: sponsors, a museum exhibit for a mascot’s misadventure, and the odd fame of a confetti-sneezing foam head. The town hums with warmth, mends seams, and keeps a space for surprises.
Nora treated checklists like sacred texts. If a neighbor asked for a loaf of bread, she wrote it down. If a child asked for two helium balloons, she penciled in an exact shade of blue and a contingency plan in case the helium failed. On the morning of the centennial parade she carried three clipboards because the town had ordered three versions of “perfect.” One was for logistics (permit, barricades, porta-potty schedule); one was for aesthetics (banner strings, ribbon lengths, which shade of bunting was least likely to collide with municipal pigeons); and the third was a small, defiant list she called “Nora’s Nerves”: breath, posture, smile, remind self not to micro-manage the mayor’s speech.
She liked lists because lists behaved. Lists didn’t call at two in the morning to complain about confetti placement. Lists didn’t reinterpret “do not forget the mascot costume” as “maybe leave the mascot costume in a suspiciously unlocked vehicle.” Lists were finite; a box could be checked and order would follow. That morning had been exhaustingly finite: vendors confirmed, school band staggered into tolerable numbers, the centennial cake was promised in three tiers exactly the shape of a municipal map leaf. Nora glanced at each item as if by touching the word she could sedate the town’s inevitable chaos.
Collecting the mascot was supposed to be the easiest line on the itinerary. Mr. Maple—the town’s oversized mascot, a plush-faced nod to the tree on the town crest—was scheduled for a final fitting at Edna Bloom’s Costume Alcove, a place that smelled like cedar and decades of theatrical glue. Edna had sewn more sequins into Maple Hollow than anyone else alive and she had a trunk for things she insisted would someday be useful. Edna’s trunk contained palmed shoe lifts, a pair of false eyebrows that could startle a raccoon, and enough costuming tape to rig the school float if the whole thing needed heroic patching.
Picking up Mr. Maple felt almost ceremonial. The costume’s head was heavier than it looked—foam and fabric and an internal grin calibrated for a hundred schoolchildren—and Nora carried it like a crucifix of civility. It sat in the passenger seat of her van with the solemn dignity of an honored guest, its big foam smile catching the sun. She tucked a rolled-up list under the head for ballast because that was how you made a costume feel welcome in your vehicle: secure, labeled, and rationed for emergencies.