Chapter 1
Banktown Avenue was a cosy, rundown sort of place. There was a park filled with trees nearby, and the houses all had circular windows in their attics, but other than that, the houses were all different. This was how the people in Banktown Avenue liked it. the Avenue was dusty and well ridden on, by people in big cars going on business trips, who just happened to ride through, and kids on skateboards who threw rocks through the windows of number 14 Banktown Avenue, which was said to be haunted, and smelled like lemons. The rest of the Avenue smelled like eucalyptus. But aside from all the weirdness, Banktown Avenue was pretty quiet…in most of the houses.
Number 12 Banktown Avenue was different to all the rest. Not because it was weird, no, all the houses were weird. Number 3 Banktown Avenue even had a large chicken farm in the front yard with a miniature rocket for the chickens to sleep in instead of a chicken house. No, number 12 was weird because of the girl who lived there. The girl, whose favourite hobby, was playing with daggers and swords.
Leena Tavin stared out of the circular attic window, taking careful aim with her dagger. Leena was a tall 12-year-old girl with dark red hair, and sharp dark brown eyes. she wore a belt hung with daggers around her waist, and her hair was in a messy ponytail. It was the holiday, and she had decided to spend the day throwing daggers at the target hung up on their ewe tree. She was a great shot.
As she went down to pick up the 4 daggers she had thrown, Leena saw her best friend, Bill Drake, coming out of number 4 Banktown Avenue, holding a large donut covered with black icing.
Bill’s house was peculiar, because it had 3 chimneys. Leena had once asked why the house had 3 chimneys, but Bill had just said, ‘it’s for some good reasons,’ and gave no further explanations. Leena suspected it was so that the explosions continually issuing from Bill’s room (which all the chimneys connected to) would let out the smoke. Bill said he was going to invent something useful one day, and Leena believed him. He had a great mind. He just got distracted by food often.
Bill had large glasses, with purple frames, and with tape all over the arms. He had curly hair, and was short for his age, which was 13. He was thin and gangly. He usually wore overalls over his black jeans, and bought donuts online with the computer he made out of a kit. When he wasn’t eating, he was thinking, and when he wasn’t thinking, he was making. So far, he had made a robotic toy for cats, which ran around while his pet cat, Fluffles, chased it.
‘Ey Leena,’ Bill said, his mouth full of donut. He quickly swallowed all the donut, and licked his lips. ‘Why are you throwing daggers now? It’s a holiday! You should be, I dunno, relaxing at a beach in Hawaii, not throwing daggers in a dangerous sort of way?’ Bill never got why Leena loved weapons so much.
‘This is all I can do,’ Leena said. ‘I don’t like reading, or inventing, or eating, or sleeping, and we’re not going on a holiday, so this is what I do. You’ll thank me when someone tries to kill us, and I stop them.’
‘Alright,’ Bill said. He knew there was no point arguing with Leena. ‘Hey, did you notice, there’s a new guy. His van is over there. I think he’s moving into number 8. Leena looked over, and saw a large moving truck with Barry’s Best Dog Food spray-painted on the side. Then, she saw the man.
Chapter 2
The man was old. His skin was wrinkled. He was wearing a baseball cap, a plaided shirt, white pants, different coloured shoes, one black, the other pink, and gloves. He yawned, and his teeth glinted in the light, pure white. He brought out a walking stick.
‘Hey kids!’ the man said. ‘Is this Banktown street?’
‘Yeah,’ Leena said, flipping a dagger. ‘What of it?’
‘Have a donut.’ The man said, bringing out a giant box of donuts and throwing one at them. Bill caught it, and looked down.
‘Strawberry icing! Awesome!’ he said, biting down on the donut, an expression of ecstasy on his face as he ate it in 2 bites. The man threw the donuts over his head, and they landed on the dusty Avenue, exploding in colours, and colouring everything in icing. The man didn’t seem to care that he had wasted all his donuts. Bill looked on in an expression on horror on his face now, at the way the man had wasted the donuts. The man brought out a pink teddy bear, gave it to Leena, patted her on the head, and said, ‘what a nice young girl.’ He then walked to the house, dragging a suitcase behind him. In that second, Leena came to a conclusion. She hated that man.
