September only ever gave the field two good weeks before the frost took it, and that was why they called it a riot. The porch lantern swayed against a bruised purple sky, a bitten moon caught in thorn branches, and the clover behind the house woke up all at once. Fireflies stitched the dark with slow gold while from the middle of it all lifted the headliner, a cricket the size of a shoebox with circuit-board wings burning orange and violet, antennae throwing sparks. CHIRP! SNAP! It wasn't singing, it was cueing. GLOW! CLAP! On cue the silhouettes in the tall grass broke. Mara had taped a hand-drawn flyer to the shed that said NOCTURNAL RIOT - THE CRICKET SESSIONS and this was it, the last session before the field went quiet for the year. The cricket mixed everything, the hiss of the lantern, the clap of hands on porch steps, the kids dancing barefoot in the weeds, into one rattling September anthem. By morning the neon bug was gone, but the tape deck she'd left on the boards was still warm, humming with crickets holding that one month just a little longer.