First thing the next morning, Mr. Shelley dropped me off on his way to Las Vegas. He had been very relieved I had somewhere to go. Mr. Shelley’s brother-in-law had insisted there was room in his ice cream truck for only one more, and Mr. Shelley didn’t want to argue with him. I couldn’t blame him. From what I had overheard of their phone conversations, his brother-in-law sounded pretty tough for an ice cream man.

I said goodbye and thanked Mr. Shelley for everything, including the ride.

Having lived my whole life in the same room at Mr. Shelley’s Orphanage for Lost and Neglected Children®, I didn’t have a lot of experience finding my way to new places.

After Mr. Shelley drove off, I forgot to breathe for a minute. What if this didn’t work? What if I never found my family? What if they didn’t want me to find them? What if they were happy without me? And how could an orphanage director leave a kid behind without even waiting to see what happened to me?

Actually, the answer to the last question was pretty obvious. Mr. Shelley never was a very good orphanage director.

“Don’t panic,” I told myself, like I’d told Mr. Shelley a thousand times. “I’ll figure something out.”

I double-checked the address to make sure I had it right. But I already knew I did. Every house on the block looked the same. Except this one.

This one looked like a HAUNTED CASTLE.

I knocked on the door. A minute later, a voice came from inside: “Yes?”

“Um . . . is this the Frankenstein residence?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as nervous as I was.

“Yes,” answered a muffled voice through the door.

Would Dr. Frankenstein be some kind of scary mad scientist with wild hair? Or a nice old man who wanted to help me?

As the door began to open, I tried to be ready for anyone or ANYTHING.

I totally wasn’t ready for what I finally saw.

Holding the door open was a GIRL, maybe three or four years older than me. “This better be important,” she said. “You’re interrupting a moment of brilliant insight.”

“Oh,” was all I could think to say.

I had been expecting some ancient scientist, not a teenage girl. It didn’t help that she was kind of cute, too.

“Okay then,” she said, starting to shut the door.

“Wait!” I said. “I’m here to see Dr. Frankenstein.”

That got her to stop closing the door slowly.

Instead, she slammed it shut — WHAM-O!!

“No one by that name lives here!” she shouted through the thick door.

“But, but —” I pleaded. “You said this was the Frankenstein residence!”

She opened the door a crack.

“I must have misheard you,” she said, looking down her nose. “This door is very thick. I thought you said the Fran Kenstein residence.”

“Right,” I nodded. “Frankenstein.”

The name made her shudder. “No,” she said, annoyed. “Fran Kenstein. My name is Frances Kenstein. There is no Frankenstein here!”

“Oh,” was all I could think to say again.

I felt like someone had jumped on my stomach and pushed all the air out.

If this was a dead end, I didn’t know where to look next.

“Are you ill?” she asked. “Something about you looks a little . . . off.”

“Oh, no, that’s just me,” I said. “I get my looks from my dad,” I added proudly.

“I must have made a mistake,” I told her, picking up my bag to go. Although I had no idea where I’d go. “It’s just, I found this journal, and it said —”

I reached into my bag, past my own journal, and pulled out Dr. Frankenstein’s.

As soon as I did, her eyes lit up. Like there was a glittery flashlight inside each one.

They actually kind of sparkled. (Give me a break. I said she was cute, didn’t I?)

“Why didn’t you say so!” she exclaimed as she grabbed my big left hand and dragged me inside the house. “Come in!”

It was the FIRST TIME I had ever held hands with a girl.

Fran sat me down in her kitchen and offered me anything I wanted in her fridge. When I opened it, the only thing I saw inside was big ol’ bowl of GUACAMOLE.

“Sorry if I was rude before,” she said as she placed the bowl of green stuff in front of me. I was hungry, but I wasn’t sure how to eat it. There didn’t seem to be any chips.

“Dr. Frankenstein was my father,” she told me. “But I’m so sick of hearing his name. I’m tired of people comparing me to him. I’m a brilliant scientist myself, you know. I was in the middle of a RIDICULOUSLY challenging experiment when you knocked on the front door.”

“Oh,” I said, impressed. She was cute AND smart!

“I want to be my own person and do great things of my own without people always thinking of Dr. Frankenstein when they hear my name,” she said. “You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Definitely,” I nodded, because it seemed like the right thing to say. But actually I didn’t really understand. Nobody had ever thought of my dad when they heard my name. Mostly because, until today, nobody — including me — knew who my dad even was.

“So that’s why I changed my name,” she said.

“To Fran Kenstein?” I asked.

“Exactly.” She nodded as if that made perfect sense. She took a bite of guacamole. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounds without any chips. Or even a spoon!

“I’ve lived alone in this house since my father died,” she said, pointing at the kitchen and the large house beyond. “Doing my own experiments. Which are really quite brilliant.

“But enough about me.” She smiled, and then gave me a serious look. “Let’s talk about my father’s journal! I had no idea where it went. Your dad must have stolen it. He and my father never really got along very well.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” I said, then stopped short.

I was about to stick up for my dad. But then I thought, maybe he did steal Dr. Frankenstein’s journal. I didn’t know him well enough to be sure he wouldn’t do something like that (he was a MONSTER, after all). And Fran seemed to be positive that he had.

Suddenly, I realized something else.

“Wait, did you know my dad?” I asked excitedly. “What was he like? Did you know my mom? Do I even have a mom?”

I had a million more questions. But Fran stopped me before I could get any of them out.

“There’s so much I can tell you,” Fran said. “But first we should get to work on finding out who the people who went into your father were!”

I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t even told her why I had come here, and she was going to help me do it!

Did I mention she was cute, too?

Fran asked if she could see her father’s journal. I reached into my bag and pulled out a book.

“WHOOPS! That’s my journal,” I said, stuffing it back in my bag. “Here’s your dad’s.”

Fran took it and started scanning the pages into her computer on the kitchen table.

“Once the pages are scanned, it will be easy to cross-reference and find whom each part of the monster came from,” she explained.

I felt that happy tingling in the back of my shoulders I only felt when I was sure something AWESOME was about to happen. I loved that feeling.

True, every time I had felt it before, the awesome thing I was sure was about to happen turned out to be a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT.

But I was sure this time would be different.

“And as soon as I find where each part of the monster came from, I’ll be able to build a new one,” she went on. “And when I do, no one will ever compare me to my father again!”

“You mean, after you do the same thing he did?” I asked, confused. That didn’t seem like the smartest idea to me. But I knew Fran was really smart. (Mostly because she kept telling me.)

“I’ve tried so many times to build my own monster,” Fran explained. “I’m not going to say I failed, because a genius never fails. Those setbacks were a necessary part of the process. They showed me that there was something special about the parts that went into the original that made it work. I realized that to have any chance of recreating the monster, I would need to use the same genetic material. I could get that from the people whose body parts went into the original monster. If they were still alive. Bodies that have been dead for too long don’t work anymore. My other experiments proved that.”

For some reason, I didn’t want to ask what those other experiments were.

“But there’s another possibility,” she went on, scanning more pages from the journal. “I could use body parts that share the same DNA. The left arm from a relative of the original left arm. The right eye from a descendant of the monster’s right eye. But the problem, of course, was finding those people.

“And then you show up!” She smiled. “With my father’s journal! He was a maniac about writing things down. I’m sure that somewhere in his journal is all the information I need to track down every single living descendant of the people who went into his monster!

“Once I use them to create a new monster, no one will ever compare me to my father again!” she exclaimed.

“You mean, after you do the same thing he did?” I asked, still confused.

“Exactly!” she nodded, as if that explanation made perfect sense.

“But how are you going to do it?” I asked her. “I mean, I’m sure all those people are using their feet or eyes or whatever.”

Fran just smiled a creepy little smile. And then I got it. Oh, no! No way!

“Okay, wait. Hang on. You may be cute,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t. “But I just found out I have a family. I haven’t even met them yet! I’m not going to let you use them for some kind of experiment!”

“It’s not an experiment!” she roared. “I know it will work! Just like I know this will work . . .”

Fran pushed a button on the counter next to her. And then I, the stool I was sitting on, my journal, and the bowl of guacamole fell into darkness.

“WHOA!” I cried, falling down and out through an opening in the side of the house. CLANG! A metal flap slammed shut behind me as — SQUOONCH!— I landed in a pile of moldy guacamole. My journal splashed down next to me.

I picked it up and put it in my bag. I was in a small pen with a doghouse.

Fran must have sent me down the shoot that she used to feed her dog!

Only what came out of the doghouse was no dog. Or maybe it had been once. The awful BEAST was clearly one of her experiments.

It growled hungrily. Then, the “dog” opened its mouth (at least, I think it was its mouth) and leaped!

But not at me — at the fresh guacamole. As it snarfed it down, I climbed onto the stool, balanced on my big feet, and jumped over the fence. I ran around the house and back inside through the open front door. But when I got to the kitchen door, I stopped short. What would Fran do to me when I came in?

I counted to three. And then four. And then FIVE. And then I charged into the kitchen! What I saw was even scarier than I had imagined. FRAN WAS GONE! And she had taken Dr. Frankenstein’s journal with her!