Once there was a girl who really wanted a cape but had no money. Her name was Nicole and she was short, with long, dark brown hair. She lived in Michigan with her twin sister Rebecca and their dog Charlotte. Even though they were twins, Rebecca didn’t look the same as Nicole. She was tall with short blonde hair.

So the thing you should know about Nicole and her home is that the town she lives in loves Halloween. Every year they celebrate and everyone in the town wears a costume. In fact, nobody had ever once forgotten! So it was a really big deal and if she were to show up on Halloween night without a costume, everybody would laugh at her.

Rebecca already had her costume — she was dressing as a spooky witch. She bought the costume down at the dollar store, and it was the very last costume they had. Nicole had wanted to be the witch, but now she couldn’t. More importantly, she couldn’t wear any costume because the dollar store was all out, and the only other store in town that sold costumes was really expensive.

“I think we need to make a lemonade stand,” Nicole said to Rebecca.

“Why’s that?” Rebecca asked.

“Because I want to earn money for my costume.”

“Sure thing,” said Rebecca. “I’ll help!”

So they went about building the stand using wood from the porch. They got paint from the basement, and they painted a big colorful sign on the stand. Then Rebecca and Nicole made the lemonade using a special recipe from their grandma’s cookbook. The book was kind of old and skinny with pages missing. They made five full gallons of lemonade. When Nicole tasted it, she said, “This is really good.”

Rebecca tasted it, too, and said, “Yeah! It is!”

So Nicole lifted the lemonade and started carrying it out to the stand on the side of the street. Suddenly, Nicole heard the sound of a barking dog. She looked up to see if it was Charlotte, who was known to escape from time to time. Just then, Nicole tripped on a rock and spilled all five gallons of the lemonade.

Rebecca came outside and saw Nicole and the spilled lemonade. “That was all the lemonade we made, and now you’re not going to make any money!” said Rebecca angrily.

“It was an accident,” said Nicole.

“Now you’re not going to get your costume, and I’m going to be humiliated!” Rebecca said.

“We can make more lemonade,” said Nicole.

“We’re out of lemons!” said Rebecca. “You need to think of something else to make money.”

“We could sell the candy inside the house that we got for Halloween,” said Nicole.

“Okay, we can give it a try,” said Rebecca.

So Nicole and Rebecca went back inside and got the candy and started going door to door selling it to people who had forgotten to buy some already. And, as it turned out, a lot of people had forgotten to buy candy for Halloween so they were able to sell theirs for a lot of money.

When it was all over, they had made a pile of cash.

“Now you can buy your costume,” said Rebecca.

So they went down to the fancy Halloween store and Nicole bought the fanciest costume in the shop! She bought matching witch costumes — capes and all! — with Rebecca and some of their friends. They even bought a black cat costume for their dog, Charlotte. And when they went out Trick-or-Treating, everyone complimented their costumes.