Trick or Treat (5 page)

And that decided it.

Our Hallowe’en sleepover was going to be in the famous McKenzie caravan.

Personally, I couldn’t wait.

“Frankie, can you pin on my wings?” I asked.

“Wait ’til I finish sticking on my witch’s talons,” came Frankie’s muffled voice from behind her witch mask.

“I’ll do it,” offered Lyndz, ever helpful. Though she made the whole caravan shake as she clumped over in her riding boots.

“Woof, woof!”

“Pepsi, stop rocking the boat!” Pepsi was jumping about like a mad thing, and
making the caravan rock even more.

“Woof, woof!”

Yes, you guessed it! We were in the caravan dressing up in our Hallowe’en costumes.

Hallowe’en at last!

Everyone had got fantastic costumes. Fliss was a fairy in a pink (natch!) tutu from her ballet class. Her mum had curled her blonde hair into ringlets and she even had a sparkly tiara on top. She looked dead good. Rosie was a white witch (that means she was a good one) in one of her mum’s nighties and Lyndz was a jockey in jodhpurs and riding hat. Frankie, as you know, was the famous wicked witch who had scared Molly before…

And me? Well, I was Cupid the love cherub who was going to shoot my lurrrrrrve arrow straight into the heart of Molly and Robin. Unfortunately the arrows were only rubber tipped! Though I say it myself, I looked fab with my curly clown’s wig and tissue paper wings. I’d even got a plastic bow and arrow from an old Robin Hood costume. Mind you,
Frankie reckoned if I really wanted to look like Cupid, I should go starkers!

Thank goodness Rosie pointed out I’d freeze my bum off in this weather!

October in Leicester is not the best time for running round in skimpy costumes. That’s why our mums made us promise to wear our school coats between houses when we went trick-or-treating. But nothing was gonna stop our gang having a wicked Hallowe’en.

Mind you, Frankie was not keen on doing trick-or-treat at all at first. She reckoned we were too old for all that baby stuff. But Lyndz, who wouldn’t miss out on the chance for sweets, won her over. She said it’d be cool if we only went to friends’ and neighbours’ houses.

“Does Robin Hughes count?” I asked, aiming an arrow at his imaginary heart.

“’Course,” said Fliss, waving her sparkly wand about. “He’s my neighbour, isn’t he?”

Fliss was right. And luckily that made my plan to save the Sleepover Club easier.

Soon all our troubles would be over. Molly would give up swimming and go to Chess Club, Mum’s ban would be over and Silly Jilly would never have to sleep over at our house again!

We had our spell-making Hallowe’en Sleepover all planned out.

1. Dress up in caravan

2. Trick-or-treat

3. Get Robin Hughes’ fingerprint

4. Cast spells

5. Eat Hallowe’en sweets

6. Tell ghost stories

7. Eat more sweets

8. Stay up

9. Eat loads more sweets!

10. Oh yes, and go to sleep some time

By 7.30pm, we’d nearly finished number two of our list. We’d visited our houses and our neighbours’ houses and got a ton of goodies. Our bags were bursting!

Fliss’s street was the last to go…

“Thanks, Mrs Sidebotham!”

“Happy Hallowe’en!”

Outside the gate, we slipped our coats back on, swapped sweets and wondered whether to knock on the Grumpies’ door. The Grumpies are Fliss’s snooty neighbours, the Watson-Wades, and they didn’t get their nickname for nothing! They’re so fussy about their posh house, our gang’s always getting into trouble with them.

“It’s no good asking them for sweets,” Fliss sighed, probably remembering the earwigging she got from her mum over the Grumpies. “Mrs Watson-Wade says sweets are nasty sticky things and she wouldn’t have them in her house.”

“So…” Frankie was sucking on a ginormous gobstopper, “we should play a trick on them!”

“Like what?”

“T.P. their house.”

“What’s that?” asked Rosie, unwrapping another treacle toffee.

“T.P. stands for toilet paper,” said Frankie with a grin.

“And it means we wrap their house in toilet paper. The roof, the tree, everything,” I added.

“Don’t be daft, Kenny!” said Rosie with her mouth full. “How could we climb…?”

But she didn’t have time to finish, because Frankie-the-witch was already creeping up the Grumpies’ driveway.

NEENAH! NEENAH!

Suddenly alarm bells went off and lights floodlit the garden. Dogs barked and the whole place was lit up like a prison camp in one of those old war films. The door to the Grumpies’ house was flung open and Mrs Watson-Wade, with a face like a gruesome zombie, appeared.

“SCARPER!” hissed Frankie, so the five of us legged it down the driveway and up the street. And before Mr Watson-Wade had time to shout, “Pack of wild animals!” we had disappeared round the corner.

“That was close!” panted Frankie.

“I’m not going back there,” Fliss said breathlessly.

Me neither. We had enough to do without getting arrested by the Grumpies for disturbing the peace. For a start, we needed to collect a fingerprint from Robin Hughes.

Holding on to my side, I panted, “Fliss, have you got the cupcakes for Robin?”

Fliss nodded and opened a tin of scrummy chocolate cupcakes. Yum, yum! Mrs Sidebotham may be strict about keeping her kitchen clean, but she is an ace cook! Little did she know how her cooking was going to help save the Sleepover Club…

The Hughes’ house didn’t have any burglar alarms, but the nerd himself still looked surprised to see us.

“Hello, Robin,” said Fliss, putting on her soppy ‘fairy’ voice.

Robin was too interested in Frankie’s mask to notice Fliss’s fairy outfit. “We don’t have any sweets,” he said, staring at the mask. “My mum doesn’t believe in sugar.”

“You can have some of ours…” Fliss opened the tin of cupcakes. “Your mum won’t mind these, cos they’re homemade.”

“Thanks!” Robin licked his lips. Then he picked the biggest cupcake and took such a huge bite he got chocolate all over his big nose.

Frankie snorted behind her mask and Lyndz started to giggle. But it gave me a perfect chance. “Wait!” I grabbed the cake.

“Hey!” protested Robin.

“Er…sorry. That’s the one the dog licked,” I lied. I put the cupcake very carefully back in the tin. “Have another one instead.”

Robin looked puzzled but he scoffed another cupcake anyway. (Some boys may be clever, but girls can still get one over them.)

“Molly sent her love to you,” was my parting shot to the Chess Wiz. And underneath the globs of chocolate his face turned pink.

“What are you going to do with that cake Robin started?” asked Rosie as we turned the corner.

“Mix it in the Love Potion, of course.”

“Why?” Rosie can be so dim sometimes.

“Because it has his thumb print on it, Lame Brain!”

“Ohhhh. Clever.”

“You said it!” My plan was going so well that I almost danced down the street.

Lyndz started to giggle. “What about when Robin got chocolate all over his nose?”

“I think some even went up it.”

“Eeeuw.” Fliss made out she was being sick.

“That cake’s probably got his snot all over it!”

“Or a big bogey…”

“What a nerd.”

We fell about the pavement, killing ourselves. “What a nerdy nerd nerd!”

That’s when Rosie went haywire. She started waving her arms about, shouting, “The Curse of the Nerd’s Nose! The Curse of the Nerd’s Nose!” and chased us down the street.

The five of us raced, yelling like mad, all through the dark streets of Cuddington…and all the way back to the caravan.

The caravan looked magic in the candlelight. Mum had given us candle holders and shown me where it was safe to stand them, and we had draped fake spider webs everywhere. We’d stuck glow-in-the-dark pumpkins and ghosts all over the walls and Lyndz had tied a magic wreath to the caravan’s door handle. She’d made it with straw from the stables and ivy from her back garden.

“It will bring us fairy luck,” she said, and Fliss did a little bit of fairy ballet, just to be sure.

“Fliss, you’re s’posed to say:

“Come in from the mist of silvery dew,
Come gather dance and play,
Pixies, elves and fairies too
Come to us today,”

Lyndz chanted.

“I did already. I said it on my own in my
garden.” Fliss was still nervous about doing spells.

Not me. I think Hallowe’en is coo-ell!

So does Frankie. She loved all the mystery and witchcraft and she wanted to do a Broomstick Incantation before we got started on our spells, to make the caravan more magical. So we sat in a magic circle on the floor and watched while she got herself into a witchy mood. Frankie’s blue plastic kitchen broom didn’t look much like a witch’s broomstick, but as Rosie said, “a broom is a broom”.

“Now for my incantation,” Frankie muttered, dead creepy-like.

“Uh-oh.”

“Sshh!” hissed Frankie as Lyndz started giggling.

“Sorry.” Lyndz clapped her hand over her mouth so hard she got the hiccups. “Hic! Hic!”

Uh-oh. Once Lyndsey Collins gets the hiccups, that’s it. We tried scaring her and making her hold her breath, but it was
no good. In the end, Frankie said she we’d have to ignore her or we’d be here ’til next Hallowe’en.

So apart from the occasional ‘hic’, everything went quiet. In the eerie candlelight Frankie tied a green ribbon on her broom handle. Then she tied a yellow one next to it. Dead tricky with witch’s talons glued to your fingernails, so it took an extra long time.

“Pretty!” said Fairy Fliss when it was done. And she tapped the broom with her sparkly wand.

“The yellow ribbon’s s’posed to be gold,” Frankie explained, “but I couldn’t find any. Ooops! I forgot, I’m supposed to say something while I’m tying the ribbons!” So Frankie had to untie the ribbons and start all over again. This time she chanted:

“This caravan is filled with magic,
And this broom is my lucky charm.”

It made you shiver. Especially when Frankie
closed her eyes and walked round our magic circle with the broom stuck out in front of her.

“What are you doing now?” Rosie wanted to know.

“Sweeping away unwanted energy…Clearing away for the new…” Frankie whispered in a strange voice.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry,” said Frankie who’d stepped on Lyndsey’s hand.

“Hic!”

Frankie sighed and closed her eyes to concentrate. Then she turned round and round on the spot, sweeping around herself in one big circle, and chanting:

“Here I sweep,
Round and round,
Drawing a magic circle
On the ground.”

We were all getting totally spooked when
Frankie snapped open her eyes and announced in her normal voice, “That’s it.”

We all jumped.

“It’s dead magical in here now!”

“Coo-ell!”

It did feel magic. Our gang is so good at Pretend you end up believing it.

Next it was Lyndsey’s turn for her Merrylegs spell. She had all the stuff for it, but the trouble is, Lyndz can’t be serious about anything. When she started pawing in the sprinkled sand, she hiccuped so much she got the giggles big time. So we all made horsey noises to help her along.

“Neeeeeigh…”

Dunno if spells work when you’re mucking about, but Lyndz was ever hopeful. “Now all I have to do is wait for my horse.”

“How long?” Rosie looked round the caravan as if expecting the horse to gallop in any minute.

“Dunno,” said Lyndz.

Rosie had already done her spell, so she
didn’t need to do any more. She’d had to thread shells and bells on to two long bits of thread and hang one each outside her own house and her dad’s. “It’s s’posed to help bring peace and harmony in divorced homes,” she explained.

Nobody said anything. We knew how much this meant to Rosie and we hoped, for her sake, it worked.

Next it was Frankie’s turn to do Pepsi’s Puppy Spell. Pepsi was dead good when Frankie tied bits of pink and blue wool to her tail, and she wagged it like mad when it was finished. But when it came to turning three times in the middle of the circle, the daft dog was hopeless. She thought it was a game and kept trying to jump on to Frankie’s lap.