Free My Sister's an Alien by Gretel Killeen

 
    It’s not every day that your sister shrinks to the size of a strawberry, gets tangled in your yoyo and ends up in outer space … but that’s what had happened so far today.

    Early this morning Zeke got bored while he was sitting in the car waiting for his mum to take him to school, so he burped the alphabet, picked his nose, did a little fart, checked under the seats for jewelled boxes of hidden treasure and found his precious yoyo instead. Then he offered his sister two million dollars if she would get out of the car and play yoyos with him but while she was leaning out of the car she fell out the window, landed in a pothole, got run over by a truck that was carrying a house and got squished to the size of a strawberry. Now, Zeke knew that he had to stretch his sister back to her normal size but before he did that he thought he might whirl his yoyo on Eppie’s head just for a bit of fun, but it got tangled up really badly in her hair and that’s when their mum finally came out of the house todrive Eppie and Zeke to school. So Zeke hid Eppie in the bottom of his schoolbag and then Eppie ended up getting dropped down a toilet, stuffed in a bin, stuck up a tree, confiscated by the teacher, stolen by a bird, pinched by a puppy, stuck in a bike wheel, grabbed by a garbage truck, mistaken for a tennis ball, stolen by a bully and saved by Zeke who, at the very end of the day, was going to untangle Eppie from the yoyo and stretch her back to normal size (just in time for Mum to pick them both up from school and never be any the wiser), but he unfortunately decided to do some tricks with Eppie attached to the yoyo first … Walk the Dog, Rock the Cradle, Bite Your Bum and Around the World. And it was while he was doing this particular trick that the yoyo string broke, and off Eppie went …all the way round the world.

    So, Eppie was attached to Zeke’s yoyo looping round the planet.

    Meanwhile Mum had arrived to collect both her children from school, and Zeke was standing all alone in the playground desperately wondering if he should:
    a) tell his mum that her daughter was lost in outer space and somehow, quite skilfully, make it all Eppie’s fault
    or b) invite all his friends over to help him celebrate the fact that his sister had flown off the face off the Earth and his wish had finally come true.
    or c) run after Eppie and try to save her
    or d) just stand there and act like nothing had happened.
    Well, Zeke was feeling a little lazy and so he chose d) just stand there and act like nothing had happened. ‘Dum de dum,’ he sang to himself, ‘Dum de dum hoola de dum.’

    Mum was getting closer so Zeke tried to think of what he might say should his mum happen to ask ‘Do you know where Eppie is?’ ‘Um, who?’ he could say. ‘I don’t know anyone by that name. Perhaps you mean that poodle over there.’ Or else he could say, ‘She’s gone to play at a friend’s? Uh, she’s on detention? A wizard put a spell on her and turned her into dog poop. Or actually she’s been kidnapped, and the kidnappers want a huge ransom that I know we can’t afford so I suggest it would be cheaper to buy another sister. ‘
    (Actually, Zeke realised, that last excuse was not a very good one because there’s no way anyone would believe that a kidnapper would want a ransom for Eppie. More likely after five minutes with Eppie, the kidnappers would pay Mum to take her back).
    Mum was waving. She was gettingclose. Act normal, thought Zeke, act normal.
    She was coming closer and he was nearly acting normal except that he was bouncing up and down like a tennis ball and opening and closing his mouth so fast he looked like a mixture of a wide-mouthed frog and windscreen wipers stuck on FAST. (Please note that although boys do often act very weird this is not what Zeke normally looks like.)
    â€˜Oh my goodness,’ thought Zeke. ‘I should