Free Selby's Secret by Duncan Ball

now,” he sang. “Let’s do that slip-slap hip-happy Slim-Slam shoeshine shuffle! And a one and a one and a one two three, I can see you but you can’t see me!”
    â€œThis had better work,” Selby said, shuffling along at lightning speed and then throwing open the door to get some fresh air, “because it’s (puff puff) painful!”
    â€œAll right all you beautiful Slim-Slam slimmers!” Ronald Ringlets yelled as he jumped on his exerciser bicycle. “If you want to take pounds off your paunch and years off your age, just remember: one two three five six five four, pedal that bike now, more more more!”
    Selby grabbed Dr Trifle’s exerciser bicycle and propped up the back of it with two stacks of books to keep the back wheel off the ground. He jumped on it and started pedalling furiously.
    â€œI may be a little out of shape,” he said, trying to keep up with Ronald Ringlets, “but an out-of-shape dog can beat an in-shape human any day of the week.”
    Selby pedalled faster and faster till the back wheel made a whooshing sound as it sped through the air. Then, suddenly, the bicycle lurched and fell off the books and when the speeding wheel hit the carpet, Selby and the bike shot out the open door and down Bunya-Bunya Crescent.
    â€œCripes!” Selby yelled when he realised that there were no brakes and that he was headed straight down the steepest part of Mulga Hill towards town. “I think I remember doing this before! Somebody save me!”
    Selby went faster and faster till — when he passed the exhausted Trifles who were puffing their way up the hill — he was nothing more than a brown streak.
    â€œThat’s funny,” Dr Trifle said, slowing down to a walk. “Did you feel that breeze?”
    â€œYes,” Mrs Trifle said, wiping her brow and sitting down by the side of the road. “And did you hear it?”
    â€œHear it, dear?”
    â€œWhy, yes. It made a sound that sounded curiously like someone saying ‘
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!’
.”
    â€œYoooooooowwwwwwweeeee!”
Selby screamed, barely making the corner at the bottom of the hill and then tearing out of control through two of the longest flowerbeds in the Bogusville Memorial Rose Garden.
    Later, Selby sneaked back into the Trifle house with the bicycle just ahead of the Trifles. The three of them lay back on the lounge-room floor watching
The Lucky Millions Quiz Quest.
    â€œI don’t know if all this puffing and panting is worth it,” Dr Trifle said, barely able to keep his eyes open. “I’m so tired all the time I can’t get anything done. Yesterday I started filling in the hole in the back of the garden shed and now I don’t know when I’ll have the energy to finish the job.”
    â€œI know what you mean,” Mrs Trifle said. “Somehow it’s no substitute for a good holiday. I only wish we had the money to get away from Bogusville for a while. But just a minute,” she said suddenly, “don’t fix that hole in the shed.Put it back the way it was. Selby likes to go in there for a snooze.”
    â€œCrumbs, the hole
was
getting smaller after all. And I thought I was getting fat,” Selby thought as he pulled another rose thorn out of his leg. “But I’ll say one thing for Ronald Ringlets and his Slim-Slammers, he said that exercise would take years off my age and he was nearly right. I almost lost all my years at once!”

Lucky Millions
    â€œPoor Mrs Trifle,” Selby thought as he lay alone in the house curled up in the bean bag watching
The Lucky Millions Quiz Quest.
“It really isn’t fair. She works so hard. If only I could earn a lot of money and give it to her. Then she could have a proper holiday.”
    No sooner were these words out of his mouth than Larry Limelight, the compere of
The Lucky Millions Quiz Quest
said something that made Selby leap to his feet: “And