When I told Frankie and Ashley the idea for the haunted house, they couldn’t get over what a great idea it was. That was, until they realized that if they were going to help me with it, they were going to have to give up trick-or-treating.

“I don’t know, Zip,” Frankie said. “You’re asking me to turn my back on a huge bag full of sweets. Those sweets last me two months.”

“Sweets are very bad for your teeth,” I said to him. “You don’t want to develop cavities, do you?”

That wasn’t the best argument, I know. But understand that time was short and we had a lot to do. I didn’t have time for quality debate.

“Could I at least wear my dolphin costume in the haunted house?” Ashley asked.

I wanted to say yes, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that dolphins do not live in haunted houses.

“I’m afraid not, Ash,” I said. She looked disappointed.

“Look, guys,” I said, “I know this is asking a lot. And I promise that next year we’ll go trick-or-treating together and get the most sweets any three kids have ever got. But this year, I need your help. Just think about how rude and mean McKelty is. The guy needs to be put in his place.”

“That’s definitely true.” Frankie nodded. “The big jerk shouldn’t get away with that lousy attitude of his.”

“Picking on little Mason like that,” I added. “And making fun of Emily and Robert. They can’t help it if they’re geeks.”

Frankie can’t stand bullies. I knew my arguments were getting to him. I turned to Ashley.

“What about you, Ash?”

“Well, I suppose building the haunted house could be very creative,” Ashley said.

“A great opportunity to explore your artistic side, which we all know is very strong,” I agreed.

It was quiet for a long minute.

“OK, I’m in, Zip,” Frankie said.

“Me too.” Ashley nodded.

Do I have great friends or what?

“If I’m giving up on trick-or-treating, I at least want to be in charge of the haunted house decorations,” Ashley said straight away.

“And I want to be in charge of all slimy things,” Frankie said.

“Unless they’re slimy decorations,” Ashley told him. “Then I’m in charge.”

“What about a slimy eyeball that’s hanging from the wall?” Frankie asked her. “Tell me, Ash, is that a decoration or is that a slimy thing?”

“Guys,” I said. “Tick-tock. We don’t have time for this now. We have to get to the shop and get going.”

“Race you to Gristediano’s,” Frankie said. And he shot out of the lobby door like a bolt of lightning.

Gristediano’s supermarket is just around the corner on Broadway, right next door to Ricardo’s shoe-repair place. Since we don’t have to cross any roads to get there, we are allowed to go there by ourselves. We were there before you could say “Nick McKelty is a scaredy-cat”.

We grabbed a shopping basket and raced up and down the aisles. I felt like one of those contestants on a TV game show who runs up and down the aisles throwing things into a trolley as fast as possible. Frankie and Ashley and I were all talking at once, because the ideas were shooting from our heads like a volcano that had just blown its top.

“We’ll need grapes for eyeballs,” I said.

“As the chief of all slimy things,” Frankie said, “I’m not sure grapes are slimy enough for eyeballs.”

“I have an idea,” Ashley said. “Let’s get lychee nuts. They’re slimier and squishier, like a real eyeball.”

Ashley’s family is from China, and they eat a lot of things that I’d never heard of before. Sometimes when I eat dinner at her house, we have lychee nuts for dessert. I know they sound like they’d have a shell and be crunchy like other nuts, but actually they’re soft and sweet and syrupy.

“I like the way you’re thinking, Ashweena,” I said. “Lychee nuts will give our haunted house an international flavour.”

Unfortunately, Gristediano’s didn’t have lychee nuts, so we had to give up on international flavour and settle for just plain American grapes.

“Purple or green ones?” Frankie asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “because we’re going to peel them anyway. Underneath their skin, they’re all the same color.”

“Wait a minute, Zip,” Frankie said. “You expect me to peel grapes?”

“Yup.”

“That’ll happen when I change my name to Bernice.”

“Frankie, you said you wanted to be in charge of all slimy things,” I told him. “And a grape feels like a grape. But a peeled grape feels slimy, like an eyeball.”

Frankie saluted, like I was the captain of a spaceship.

“Aye, aye, captain,” Frankie said.

Ashley giggled and saluted too. “You lead, we follow,” she said.

“Good, that’s the way I like it,” I answered in my best Captain Kirk voice. This was really fun. “Now, I figure we’ll need two boxes of spaghetti.”

“Smart thinking, captain,” Frankie said. “We have to have dinner.”

“Frankie, we’re not eating the spaghetti. We’re boiling it until it’s mushy so we can make it into brains.”

“Brains are good,” Frankie said.

Papa Pete’s words echoed in my head. Two things a brain has to be – slimy and mushy.

We raced down Aisle 9 and found the pasta section. As I was putting the spaghetti in the trolley, Ashley started twirling her ponytail like she does when she’s thinking.

“Captain, I have a suggestion,” she said, wrapping her ponytail round her index finger. “How about we get some hot dogs and tell people they’re intestines?”

“Yeah, we’ll drown them in ketchup and make them into oozing intestines,” Frankie added.

Their imaginations were both in full gear now, I could tell.

We got four bottles of ketchup, because we knew we’d need extra to make mummy blood. Then we got batteries for the tape recorder. We were going to record Cheerio making scary sounds, and I certainly didn’t want to risk the tape recorder stopping right in the middle of a howl.

On the way out, we were lucky enough to find the last bag of rubber spiders. Ashley thought they were too ugly, but I insisted on getting them.

“Ash, we’ll tie some of my mum’s thread round them,” I said, “and we’ll use a fishing rod to lower them into McKelty’s hair. Wait. I don’t have a fishing rod.”

“My dad does,” Ashley said. “We’ll borrow it.”

“McKelty will think he’s being attacked by man-eating tarantulas,” Frankie said with a laugh.

“I can’t wait to see his face,” I said. “We have to remember to blindfold him before he enters the chamber. Everything is twenty times scarier when you can’t see.”

“Boo!” somebody said from behind us.

All three of us flew three feet in the air. We had been concentrating so hard on getting our supplies that we hadn’t heard anyone behind us. When we turned round, we saw that it was Mrs Fink, filling her trolley with bags of fun-sized chocolate bars. She was wearing her false teeth, which she doesn’t do all the time. But I guess when you have a big date, you want all your teeth in place and reporting for duty.

“Hi, darlings,” Mrs Fink said. “Listen, I won’t be at home tonight when you go trick-or-treating, because I have a date with a very special someone.”

My stomach flipped. I wasn’t sure Papa Pete knew what he was letting himself in for.

“I’ve baked your grandfather a cherry strudel and an apple crumble,” she whispered to me. “With an extra poppy-seed Danish thrown in because it’s Halloween.”

Obviously, when older people get crushes, there is a lot of baking involved.

“So, Hank, darling,” Mrs Fink went on. “I’ll leave a big bowl of chocolate bars outside my door. Just help yourself, and make sure the other children do too.”

“Thanks, Mrs Fink,” I said, thinking that now Frankie could get some of his Halloween sweets. “And good luck in the costume contest. I bet you guys win first prize.”

I wondered if she knew she was going to be the hind end of an elephant.

“I’m just looking forward to spending the evening being close to your grandfather.”

Boy, they were going to be close, all right. If she only knew how close.

“Come on, Zip,” Frankie said, pulling on my sleeve. “We don’t have much time.”

“Right. Bye, Mrs Fink.”

She waved and continued to load her trolley with sweets. What a nice lady, that Mrs Fink.

At the till, the bill came to seventeen dollars and ninety-two cents. I pulled out a crisp twenty-dollar bill from my pocket. It was the one Papa Pete had given me the last time we’d gone to a Mets game. I had been planning to use it to buy a new Mets cap. But if that twenty-dollar bill could help me get even with McKelty for being such a mean, big-mouthed jerk, I’d sacrifice a Mets cap any day. Sure, my old one had some pretty major sweat stains on it. But I ask you, who cares about a few sweat stains when crushing McKelty is so close at hand?