Kitabı oku: «The Verruca Bazooka»

CHAPTER ONE

It started like any other Saturday, but for Jack Brady this particular weekend was the beginning of an adventure he would never forget.

Little realising that he was destined for greatness, Jack woke up, went to the loo, washed his face and hands and cleaned his teeth. Jack was a very clean nine-year-old boy.

He was also very clever. A genius, in fact. Only no one else seemed to have noticed.

At school he got into trouble for drawing sketches of his latest inventions all over his exercise books. At home Mum just wanted him to keep his room tidy. In his heart, however, Jack knew that it was just a matter of time before his genius was recognised.

He slipped on his glasses and took a look at the ‘TO-DO LIST’ pinned on his notice board.

1 COMPLETE CANINE SCUBA DEVICE.

2 DRAW UP BLUEPRINTS FOR AUTOMATIC TOAST BUTTERER.

3 SOLVE WORLD ENERGY PROBLEMLIF TIME BFFORE TEA).

He shook his head in annoyance. He never got round to the last item on his list. There just weren’t enough hours in the day!

Oscar thought Jack was a genius. Oscar was Jack’s best friend. He was taller than Jack, braver than Jack and better-looking than Jack but he wasn’t smarter than Jack. In fact sometimes Jack wondered if Oscar was actually a bit dim. He was certainly courageous though – he was always first to volunteer to be a crash-test dummy for Jack’s latest invention.

Thinking of Oscar made Jack frown and check his watch. It was Saturday morning. Eight o’clock. Why hadn’t Oscar come round? Most kids, after a long, boring week at school would choose to lie in on Saturday morning. But not Oscar. Oscar didn’t like to waste a single minute of the weekend.

Normally he was up before Jack, planning some kind of adventure. So where was he?

Oscar lived in the house that backed onto Jack’s garden. They shared a den – a tree house – perched in the branches of the tree at the bottom of Oscar’s garden. From Jack’s bedroom he could see into Oscar’s house.

Jack opened his bedroom window.

THWACK!

“Ouch!” exclaimed Jack.

“Sorry!” came an apologetic voice from the tree-house opposite.

Whatever Oscar had thrown at him had lodged in Jack’s unruly mop of hair. He reached up to see what it was. It was small, ovoid and very hard.

“Why are you throwing acorns at me?” he demanded.

“Because I couldn’t find any pebbles,” said Oscar, as if the answer was obvious. “Come on” he continued, “climb down the drainpipe and let’s get started.”

Jack leaned out of the window and cast a suspicious glance at the drainpipe. “Since when do I climb down drainpipes?” he asked.

“Got to be a first time for everything,” grinned Oscar. “I’d do it.”

Yes, thought Jack, but you’d stick your head in the oven to see if the gas was still on. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he promised, and closed the window.

Having taken the safer option – the stairs -he hurried through the kitchen and out into the garden, squeezed through the gap in the hedge that separated the two plots and climbed up the wooden ladder that was fixed to the trunk of the tree.

The tree house the boys shared was pretty impressive. Oscar’s dad had won it in a competition in the local paper. It was actually a small shed that had been lifted into place by a crane and secured safely to the tree. It had a little porch area at the front, a pair of windows and room for Jack’s workbench where most of his brilliant ideas took shape. It was, without doubt, the coolest tree house in town.

Jack found Oscar lying on a beanbag, clutching a skateboard to his chest. Oscar sighed loudly and theatrically as Jack, slightly breathless from the climb, came into the tree house.

“Good afternoon,” he sighed.

“Hilarious,” said Jack.

Oscar was always like this – everything had to happen right now. Jack felt that most things that were worth doing needed proper planning and preparation. But for Oscar if it wasn’t instant it wasn’t interesting.

“What’s the plan then?” asked Jack, sitting down in the other beanbag.

“Mum got me this,” said Oscar, holding up the skateboard. “But it doesn’t go fast enough.” He sat up with a wild look in his eyes. “So I thought…you could maybe fit it with some rockets. Or, you know, something…”

Jack stared. “You want me to put rockets on your skateboard? Why? So you can do an ollie into orbit?”

Oscar stopped to consider this – for half a second. “Could you?” he asked.

“No,” said Jack firmly. “Hurtling at high speed into brick walls might be your idea of fun, but I prefer to spend my time working on my gadgets.”

He got up and went over to his workbench, where a number of projects were underway. He picked up a dog-shaped rubber suit which had twin silver tubes running down its back. “See this,” he announced proudly, “it’s a scuba kit for a dog. Now man’s best friend doesn’t have to sit by and wait when you go for a scuba dive.”

“You don’t have a dog,” Oscar pointed out.

“Well, no,” agreed Jack, “but I’d like to.”

“And you don’t scuba dive,” continued Oscar.

“Er…no. But—”

“You’d like to?”

Jack shot Oscar a dirty look. “Not really,” he confessed. “It looks a bit dangerous.”

Oscar sighed again. If it wasn’t a bit dangerous then what was the point?

“What else have you got then? There must be something we can have fun with.”

“There’s the heli-frisbee,” offered Jack. “I was thinking that it’s really annoying that I can’t ever throw a Frisbee properly so I designed a Frisbee that even I can use.”

Jack showed his friend his prototype: it was a normal Frisbee, but attached to the middle of the disc was a pair of model helicopter blades.

“It’s remote-controlled,” he explained.

Oscar jumped to his feet. “Brilliant. Let’s go to the park. You can fix up my skateboard and then we can test drive your remote-control Frisbee. OK?”

Jack nodded and then looked concerned as Oscar started to climb out of the window.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Oscar turned and grinned. “You’re not the only one who can come up with brilliant ideas you know. I thought we should have an emergency exit, so I fixed up this zip line.” Now Oscar could see there was a cable running from the tree house to Oscar’s house. Jack watched in fascination as Oscar clipped a karabiner to the line, grabbed the rope running through it and slid off down the zip wire.

Jack looked at where the zip wire was connected and made a rapid mental calculation. He started to call out a warning but it was too late.

SPLAT! Oscar slammed into the side of his house and dropped into the muddy flowerbed below.

“Just a few technical hitches to iron out” Oscar croaked weakly, before falling back into the squelchy mud.