Free My Sister's an Alien by Gretel Killeen Page B

might have some disgusting disease where your ears blow up … and your nose explodes … and your legs and arms fall off. You can’t hug her. If you do, you might die! And then I’d die of starvation and Gran and Pops would die of shock and then all the neighbours would come to look at our bodies and they’d catch the disease and they’d all die and all their friends and relatives too. So basically, Mum,if you go up and hug Eppie now you could end up killing at the very least forty seven thousand million people and their pets who need to be fed!’
    â€˜Zeke, sick little children need to hug their mothers, so I simply must hug Eppie. But if it will make you worry any less, I’ll tie a hanky round my mouth and stick a peg on my nose. Now then, I’ll look for my glasses for just one more minute and then I’ll be up to hug you both.’
    â€˜Oh no,’ thought Zeke. ‘What should I do? My life is about to be completely over and I never even got to grow my hair really long and play the drums in a rock band. If Mum finds her glasses and sees that Eppie’s a tennis racquet I am definitely going to be dead. Oh, please somebody save me!!!!!!!!!!!!’
    Now sometimes, if you make enough wishes throughout your life and none of them ever comes true,the wish accountants who wear suits and live up in the clouds realise that you’re owed a really big wish, and that’s the wish they’ll try to fulfil. Get it? So that’s what happened to Zeke. He hadn’t had any wishes come true for ages and ages (except the wish that his sister would disappear, but that one didn’t really count because she was still haunting him anyway). So the wish accountants decided it was time for Zeke to be given a really, really big wish and they made this wish come true. (Of course this meant that none of his other wishes would ever come true: he would never win the lottery or be given a Ferrari or represent Australia playing football … but Zeke decided he’d just happily blame Eppie for all of this.)
    So what do you think happened? Do you think Zeke’s strawberry-sized sister suddenly dropped from the skies and came plonking down thechimney, where she got stuck just long enough in the grate for Zeke to pull her out by her feet and stretch her back to normal size, so their mother never discovered there’d been one single problem and they lived happily ever after and became incredibly rich and all became actors on Neighbours ?
    Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr , drum roll please!
    No, nothing so fabulously exciting unfortunately. What happened exactly then and there was that the family cat walked past Zeke, and he was wearing Zeke’s mother’s glasses. Fantastic! Mum wouldn’t find them for a million years.
    The cat often secretly borrowed glasses because he liked to read, but his eyesight was getting worse. Of course he knew that he really should go to the eye doctor and get his own set of reading glasses, but the nearest animal eye doctor was a dogand there was no way this cat was going there.

    â€˜Thanks, wish accountants,’ Zeke said to the ceiling. ‘Although I do agree with the kids who are reading this book and think you really could have done a whole lot better and just dropped Eppie down the chimney.’ Then Zeke grabbed the biggest fattestbook he could find (a cookbook on one thousand and one things to do with fish), showed it to the cat and put the book and the cat outside the back door. ‘Enjoy your read,’ he said to the cat. ‘And take all the time you want.’

    Then Zeke went back inside.
    â€˜This is great,’ thought Zeke. ‘Mum won’t find her glasses for ages now.’ And he sat down to relax, put his feet up on the coffee table, stick his finger in his ear and see if any mice were living in there. But suddenly heinterrupted himself as he shrieked, ‘Oh no,’ and got such a shock he jabbed his finger so far