My Sister's a Yo Yo (2 page)

He laughed at Eppie of course, because she looked so silly grabbing at the air, and Eppie pretended to sulk of course, and then she said she didn't want to play anymore of course, and that she was going to tell Mum that Zeke had got out of the car.

‘And what are you going to say happened to you?' Zeke demanded, looking straight at his berry-sized sister.

Eppie started to sob, great big little-girl sopping wet tears (not little little-girl sopping wet tears), and each tear was nearly as big as her head, and Zeke was worried that Eppie would drown in the flood and then he'd have no one to tease.

And so he said in his nicest voice, which he only used when he really wanted something, ‘I'm really sorry for laughing at you, Eppie. I promise I won't do it again.'

And Eppie was bored so she
said, ‘Oh, okay.'

‘Now this time just stand there, and we'll see if you blink,' Zeke said as he whirled his yoyo right near Eppie's face. But Eppie blinked, and Zeke called her a scaredy cat, and then he got bored again, and she got bored again too. They were going to pick a fight in fact, just for something to do, but instead Zeke said, ‘I've got an idea: I'll whirl the yoyo on your head!'

Their mum was nowhere to be seen.

She could have been sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

She could have been swallowed by the sink.

She could have been eaten by the goldfish, or she could have blindly locked herself in the broom cupboard, thinking that she'd found the front door.

Whatever the case, Mum wasn't nearby, so Eppie agreed to let her brother whirl his yoyo on her head.

So Zeke stood over tiny Eppie
and took very careful aim, then he gently dropped his yoyo down the string, and whirled it on Eppie's head.

And Eppie laughed, and Zeke laughed, and so they did it again.

Faster.

And they laughed.

And so they did it again.

Faster.

And they laughed.

And so they did it again.

Faster.

And they laughed.

And so they did it again and again, and they laughed until they thought they would split, and they did it again, one more time, faster and faster and faster and faster, and that's when they heard their mother finally coming out of the house.

‘Aaaaaaagh!' screamed Eppie.

‘Aaaaaaagh!' screamed Zeke.

‘Get back in the car!' they both screamed.

Eppie went to run one way and Zeke went to run the other, but they only made it a few steps each before something suddenly stopped them.

Was it the hidden force of evil, or maybe guilt or fear? Or was it perhaps some invisible alien attempting to kidnap them for a rather huge ransom that their mother would probably never pay because it would ‘only encourage them'?

Or was it something far more boring?

Well yes it was something incredibly boring, too boring really to mention. It was Eppie's hair tangled up in Zeke's yoyo — but there was definitely no time to get her off.

Their mother was coming, they were going to get caught, they had to think quickly or else. Mum had said, ‘Don't get out of the car' but get out of the car's what they'd done. And not only that but Eppie had shrunk and her hair was an absolute mess.

They could hear the clip-clop of Mum's heels on the drive. They could almost feel her breath. In just a few moments their lives would be over, with probably no tv for a week!

Think
, thought Zeke.
Think,
thought Eppie.
Think, think, think, think, think.

Suddenly Zeke had an idea and quick as a flash he wound up his yoyo and Eppie as well, shoved the whole lot into his school bag and started to sing
I Will Always Love You,
that all-time classic by Whitney Houston.

‘Ah, my favourite song,' hummed Mum as she fumbled her way out to the car.

‘Have you seen my glasses?' Mum said to the tree, and sat in the back seat of the car. ‘Where's the steering wheel gone?' she continued to say before moving to the front seat to drive.

Anyway Eppie and Zeke didn't get caught, and Mum drove them to school wailing like a police
siren to warn people that she was approaching. When they finally got to school Mum said, ‘Have a nice day, try hard, be good, concentrate, eat your lunch, have fun, blah blah blah, I'll pick you up at half past three. Bye, Zeke.'

‘Bye, Mum.'

‘Bye, Eppie.'

‘Bye, Mum.'

Mum continued to look for her glasses and kissed the car seat goodbye.

Meanwhile Zeke clambered out of the car with little Eppie in his school bag. By this time Mum had found her glasses on top of her head, but Zeke and Eppie had already gone into school.

In the playground Zeke stood wondering what to do. He had a sister the size of a nose attached to his favourite toy and stuffed in the bottom of his school bag.

Life was not looking good, especially when Joel Slime grabbed Zeke's school bag for a joke and threw it way up in a tree, and the strap got caught on
a high pointy branch, and Eppie just hung there, in the bag, swaying in the breeze until Zeke took a pot shot with a rock, and Eppie and the bag and the yoyo and the string fell back down to earth — with a thump.

Clang!
rang the school bell.

Zeke was worried about his sister (but only because she might have splattered all over his lunch and he liked to eat enormous amounts and he didn't have any money for tuck-shop and he couldn't possibly die of starvation today because he was wearing embarrassing undies). So as all the kids filed off to class, Zeke ran to the toilets as fast as he could, opened the zipper of his bag and searched inside for Eppie.

The first thing he found was that his whole lunch
was
squashed and squished all through his bag, and the second thing he found was that Eppie was squashed and squished all through his bag as well. Strawberry-sized Eppie looked like fruit salad as she sat there all covered in banana.