Overnight, there had been another heavy snowfall. Super-early the next morning, Matthew called at Danny’s house.
‘I raided Mum’s jumble-sale bags last night,’ said Danny as the boys crept up to his bedroom. ‘Look what I’ve made.’
He opened the wardrobe door and showed Matthew a costume made up of Dad’s old cricket jumper and a pair of Mum’s stretchy white leggings.
‘This one’s yours,’ he said. ‘And here’s mine.’
Danny held up another outfit. The upper half was one of Natalie’s white disco tops. It was covered in shiny circular sequins that glittered and sparkled like tiny slivers of ice. He had added a pair of Dad’s white track pants, with the legs rolled up.
There were also threadbare white towels for capes, white bobble hats with eyeholes cut out for masks, and two pairs of silver gloves.
‘My Grandma Florrie’s bedsocks will cover up our wellies,’ said Danny as the boys put on their costumes over their ordinary clothes.
‘Just one more thing.’ He handed Matthew a pair of Dad’s baggy old off-white Y-fronts. ‘The best superheroes wear their underpants on the outside.’
They gazed at themselves in the mirror.
‘Ace!’ said Danny. ‘Cool,’ agreed Matt. Danny swirled his tatty bath towel across his body. ‘With our Cloaks of Invisibility, no one will see us against the snow!’
‘Let’s go and make snowmen!’ laughed Matthew, pretending to fly towards the bedroom door.
‘Ace! I’ll have to be back before lunch though,’ said Danny. ‘I told Natalie I’d tidy her room and do her nails. It’s all part of my plan to catch Skunk Flu from her.’
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Matthew. ‘I’ll do the tidying, you do the nails!’
After a morning spent building more naughty snowmen, the boys sneaked back home. Danny hid their disguises at the back of his wardrobe and gave Matthew a paper flu mask before they entered Natalie’s toxic room.
Matthew arranged Natalie’s CDs in alphabetical order and sorted all her shoes into pairs, while Danny carefully painted his sister’s fingernails with shiny pink varnish.
She sneezed. ‘A . . . a . . . atishooooo!’
Danny felt the little droplets of sneeze-juice shower his face. Ace! he thought, breathing deeply and filling his lungs with Natalie’s germs.
‘You’ve missed a bit,’ she sniffed, snatching a handkerchief from a box with her free hand, and blowing her nose. ‘Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnk!’
Danny was just finishing the last fingernail when he heard a gurgling, burbling, slurping sound, like bath water being forced down a blocked drain. He looked up at Natalie. Her eyes were stretched wide in surprise and alarm, and her cheeks ballooned out as though she was blowing an invisible trumpet. Then her mouth gaped like a goldfish and she let out a window-rattling, ear-splitting, hair-raising, rotten-egg-whiffing burp, right in Danny’s face.
‘Mega Ace!’ he cried.
‘Mega Cool!’ agreed Matthew.
‘You’ve got Skunk Flu Phase Two!’ Danny told his sister. ‘How’s your chin?’
‘Why?’ replied Natalie, frowning with worry.
‘Because I can’t wait to see Phase Three!’
Just then, Mum came into the bedroom, also wearing a mask. In one hand she held a copy of the Penleydale Clarion, and in the other, one of baby Joey’s particularly dirty, gooey nappies, which she waved in front of her.
‘I know this smells disgusting, but it’s a lot better than Natalie!’
She glanced out of the bedroom window and smiled. ‘There’s one of those silly snow-sculptures that have been appearing all over town!’
A small snow-kennel nestled in the far corner of next door’s garden. A perfect copy of Buster, their bull-terrier dog, stood with his leg cocked up against a rhododendron bush nearby, as if frozen in place by the Arctic weather.
‘It’s front-page news,’ said Mum. ‘Look, I’ve brought the paper to show you.’
Danny and Matthew gazed at a photograph of the vampire they had built emerging from a wheelie bin outside Gracie Green’s house. Danny grinned as he read the short article:
‘I wonder who’s making them?’ said Mum.
Just then, Natalie’s chin started to waggle up and down like a monkey chewing a mint. Long, sticky strands of drool dribbled and dangled from her lips.
That’s Skunk Flu Phase Three!’ laughed Danny. ‘You’ll have to wear a bib like baby Joey!’
‘Mum!’ wailed his sister. Her chin wagged furiously, sending ropes of spit flying in all directions. ‘Tell him!’