I shook my head gloomily, as we walked back round to the front. “It’s no good,” I said. “It’s because of all the burglaries. Before Dad went out he told me and Mum to keep everything triple locked. And I know all the downstairs windows are shut because I locked them myself.”
“Fantastic,” said Frankie, and she sat down on the front step. I gave the doorbell one last punch. It gave a weird clunk, and stopped ringing. When I tried again, nothing happened.
“Well, that’s blown it,” I said, and sat on the step beside Frankie. The trickle of red from the box was longer now. It looked exactly like blood, and I stared at it.
“Frankie – what exactly is in these boxes?”
Frankie sighed heavily. “It was the best thing ever. Look!” And she opened the first box. Inside was something that looked exactly like a head with pale green sightless eyes gazing up at me. Well, it was almost like a head, but a head that was getting softer and squishier by the second.
“Wow!” I gasped. “Sculpted ice cream. It’s utterly awesome!”
“It was,” Frankie said. “I spent hours on it. The eyes are grapes, by the way… they’re probably all that’ll be left soon.”
“What’s in the other box?” I asked, and she opened the lid. Inside was a plate with a melting block of – frozen blood?
“It’s beetroot and raspberries mashed up,” Frankie said, and she sounded even more gloomy. “I was going to mash it some more and put the head on it… but it’s ruined now.”
“I’ll kill Molly,” I said.
“Maybe we could put her head on the plate,” Frankie said, but at that moment it didn’t sound much like a joke.
Suddenly I sat up. I’d thought of something to make us feel more cheerful. “Hey,” I said, “Molly’s going to be in mega trouble with Mum for shutting us out! It’s all Molly’s fault that this has happened.”
“Yeah,” Frankie agreed, and we both felt a tiny bit better.
We sat on the step for at least ten minutes watching Frankie’s ice-cream head gradually dissolve. Actually, after two minutes we gave in and ate some of it. After all, we couldn’t let it go to waste, could we? But it wasn’t long before it was just a soggy mess with the two grapes swimming in the middle.
“Do you think we’d better move the other box?” Frankie asked. “It seems to have made a bit of a mess.”
I looked across, and she was right. The blood mixture was dripping all the way down the steps. “Hmm,” I said. “It’s a pity we can’t leave it like that. It’d be a great entrance for the others – blood on the doorstep!”
Frankie laughed, but we both knew my mum wouldn’t agree with us. Mums are so boring when it comes to things like blood.
“Hey, Frankie!” I leapt to my feet. I’d suddenly had an amazing flash of inspiration. “We could still use it! We could make a trail of blood drops!”
Frankie’s eyes shone. “Wicked! A trail of gruesome spots leads the detectives in and out of the bushes and trees. In and out they hurried, until they found—”
“A body!” We both yelled together, and then we collapsed, laughing.
We did a fantastic job – we made the most life-like trail of blood you ever saw. It started just round the corner of the house, because I didn’t want Mum telling us to wash it away before we’d shown Rosie, Lyndz and Fliss. We started with a few drops, and then a few more – and then a big puddle. Actually, we didn’t mean to make it quite so big but the plate slipped.
Frankie said it didn’t matter. “We can pretend that’s where the victim tried to pull the knife out of his back,” she said.
It looked wonderfully ghoulish.
We put a few more drops on the bushes, but there wasn’t much mixture left to do anything else.
“We ought to make a body, and half-hide it under the bushes,” I said.
Frankie nodded. “Or we could just leave half a body!”
You can see why Frankie’s my very best friend. She likes blood and gore as much as I do!
After we’d finished the blood trail we took both boxes round the back of the house and dumped them in the bin. Quite a lot of the melted ice cream dribbled out on the way, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. We couldn’t get back into the house to fetch any buckets of water or anything like that. If anyone said anything, it was all Molly’s fault.
As we wandered back to the front door Mum came walking up the path with some strange woman beside her – our new neighbour!
“This is our house,” Mum was saying. “It’s—” And then she saw us. Her jaw did the thunking open thing mine’s been doing for days, but the woman screamed. She really did! And she clutched at my mum!
Mum is made of steel. She put her jaw back in place, and glared at me. “Is this your idea of a Friday 13th joke?” she began. “Just look at the state you’re both in!”
She was right. Frankie and I did look rather gruesome. I suppose the beetroot mixture had got all over us while we were laying our trail.
“Mum,” I said. “Mum, it really and truly isn’t our fault – we got locked out and Molly wouldn’t let us back in!”
By the time we’d finished explaining what had happened, Mum was steaming mad with Molly, just as we’d hoped.
“That’s it!” she said. “There’s no way that young lady’s going out tonight. She’s grounded!”
Frankie and I gasped. That wasn’t part of the plan. Mum couldn’t do that – not tonight!
But she did. Even though I begged her not to. Even though Frankie begged her not to. We pleaded. We said it was all our fault. But it was no use. The new neighbour didn’t help, either. She kept going on about how dangerous it was, us two little girlies being outside with a manic burglar tramping round the area. That made up Mum’s mind. Molly was not going anywhere that night.
Frankie and I made faces at each other as we tipped soapy water over the front steps.
“If only the door hadn’t shut,” I said. “That was so unlucky.”
Frankie nodded. “Friday 13th,” she said. “Bad luck day!”
And it was only just beginning…
Mum realised how unfair it was that Molly being grounded had ruined our plans for the sleepover, so to make it up to us she said we could have the sleepover in Emma’s room – as long as we promised to be careful and not spoil anything.
But thanks to Molly the Monster we were only just getting ready to make our scary noises tape when Rosie arrived. We didn’t hear her, of course, because of the doorbell not working and Emma’s room being at the back of the house, so Molly came and told us Rosie had arrived. No, she wasn’t being nice to us. She was just being a creep because Mum had been so angry with her.
We both charged past Molly and rushed downstairs to see Rosie. Her bowl of spaghetti was super mega gross! It was a sort of horrible grey colour, and the currants looked exactly like dead flies… or even worse! We shoved it in the fridge, and dragged Rosie upstairs to help with the tape.
Emma has this totally fabulous stereo with