My Sister's an Alien (3 page)

Well, I'll tell you. She did fly round and round and round the world high up in the sky, but then after a while she started to drift down, closer and closer to earth. France was right there underneath her and she was just about to get spiked in the bottom
by the Eiffel Tower when she flapped her arms like a bird to raise herself higher and was caught by a giant gust of hot air that pushed her up safe above the poking point. And the gust of wind blew her on and on.

‘I could fly all the way home like this', thought Eppie as she flap flap flapped away.

As she flew over America a group of farmers tried to shoot her, a flock of lazy finches perched on her shoulders as they migrated to Brazil, the Tahitians tried to catch her in a net and put her in the zoo, and in England they wanted to eat her. But strawberry-sized Eppie flapped on and on until finally she got so exhausted that she caught the nearest passing cloud, sat on it and had a little snooze.

The sun was warm and snug as it shone down on the cloud but as Eppie slept, more and more clouds
joined onto hers. Clouds joined to the sides, below and above until the whole sky was filled with clouds, the sun was hidden and Eppie got cold. And that's when she woke up.

‘Hey, how come it's so dark?' Eppie wondered. ‘It couldn't be night time yet.' A crack of thunder and a blaze of lightning and a most frightening roar of wind followed—rushing, howling, bellowing louder. And before Eppie
could click her heels and say, “There's No Place Like Home”, she was caught inside the most terrifying twister.

Round and around and around she spun higher, faster, all in a twirl. ‘I'm going to die,' Eppie gasped. ‘I'm going to be sucked up, twisted and spat out. I'll never be able to see Mum again. I'll never eat ice cream or see my school friends or play at the beach or have another birthday. Oh this is an absolute disaster—except for one amazing thing: Zeke is going to get blamed for it!'

And with that Eppie was squeezed up higher into the tornado and whirled like a banana in a blender (and let me say here that it was just as well that she had tied her shoelaces with a double bow because otherwise there is no way her shoes would have stayed on).

Now one of the good things about
being twisted and turned and spun around if you are a girl who has been squashed to the size of a strawberry is that all of the tugging and pulling and whirling around does tend to stretch you back to normal size. So that's what happened to Eppie. Then there was a great big pop, like the
sound you make with your finger and your mouth but much, much louder.

pop

and Eppie was blurted right out of that twister and upupup into space where she floated around for quite a while and then landed

thump

on a place called Planet Sock.

Meanwhile Zeke was still lying on his bed wearing his sister's nightie, a pink bow in his hair and a smudge of his mother's bright red lipstick, and being squished under the heavy sleeping weight of his absolutely exhausted mother who you may remember had just begun to snore. The room shook with every rumbling snort, the curtains flapped, the bed springs groaned and a gust of humphy-galumphy Mum—snore—air would go right up Zeke's nose and nearly make his hair blow off.

This torture continued for quite some time until Zeke got completely and utterly fed up and yelled out ‘Oh, bottom!' (because he wasn't allowed to say “bum”). ‘This is terrible,' he said. ‘With all this noise the police are definitely going to come here to see what all the fuss is and try to rescue our family, but they'll only find Mum
and me and they'll guess Eppie's been killed by Mum's elephant snoring—maybe sucked up her nose and got stuck in her brain. And then they'll have to take Mum's head off and clean her brain with a vacuum cleaner to look for Eppie and they won't find her of course and all the police and doctors will be so upset that they'll stop concentrating and probably sew Mum's head back on round the wrong way, which will make it impossible for her to sit down and have dinner with us, let alone hug us good night. Oh bottom, bottom, bottom.'

‘Stop snoring, Mum!' Zeke ordered urgently. But it was too late, because just then there was a tap tap tap on the window and he looked up in fright. But it wasn't the police; it was, to Zeke's surprise, the three possums who lived in the attic. They were dressed in their party gear, bright
frocks and floral shirts, and were very very mad.

‘What on earth do you think you're doing down here?' asked the biggest possum whose name was Ralph Gorgeous. ‘We're trying to have a party upstairs and no one can even hear the band because of this terrible, deafening, rumbling noise. It's making the whole house shake and
shake and making our fabulous party drinks spill all over our lovely fur coats.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Zeke. ‘The noise is my mother. She's really tired from looking for her glasses, which are actually being worn by the cat. But I couldn't tell her that because if Mum had her glasses, then she would have seen that my stinker sister is nowhere to be found. So Mum would have asked me, “Zeke, where on earth is Eppie?” And I would have had to say, “Well actually, Mum, she's not on Earth at all; she's attached to my yoyo and is flying round the world … oh and by the way she's shrunk to the size of a strawberry.”'

‘And then of course Mum would have got absolutely furious and confiscated the rest of my life … and that's probably exactly what she will do when she wakes up … straight after she's killed me!'

Then Zeke burst into tears (but he pretended that he just had a cold), gave a great big blow on his nose and then wiped the snot all over his sleeve.

‘Ar yuk!' said the second possum whose name was Fluffybigbum. ‘Don't be such an animal!'

‘Do you think you could help me?' Zeke asked the three possums as they sat perched on the window dressed in
their party clothes which didn't really fit because they'd been pinched from neighbours' clotheslines. ‘Could you spread the word on the bush telegraph, perhaps ask the flying fish, or the secretive snakes or those gossipping goannas … just spread the word that we need to find where Eppie is because, much to my regret, we have to get her back.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' said the third possum, whose name was Nosewhistle Jo. ‘Asking animals one by one—I've never heard of anything so primitive.'

‘You're right of course,' Zeke replied. ‘I should hire a plane that writes in the sky,

 

lost:
one stupid strawberry-sized sister,
contact Zeke,
and don't tell my Mum.

 

‘Are you joking?' said Ralph Gorgeous. ‘Or has some horrible slug slid in your ear and into your head and eaten half your brain? Because if you really want to find where Eppie is quick smart, I suggest you hop on the Internet.'

‘But I don't know how to use the Internet,' moaned Zeke.

‘Then we'll find Wise Old Owl and he can teach you,' said Nosewhistle Jo as he whistled
Hey diddly
through his nose.

‘Well could you help get me out from under here first?' said Zeke in a muffled voice as his mother made one more enormous snore, rolled smack bang on top of him and said, ‘I love you too, Tom Cruise.'

‘Quick! Get me out of here!' said Zeke, and with that Fluffybigbum jumped off the window sill and into the bedroom, walked straight up to Mum and said in a very deep voice,
‘Hello, I'm Tom Cruise. Follow me.' And up Mum got and followed Fluffybigbum the possum all the way down the hall and safely to Mum's room, where she fell fast asleep once more, snoring like a dillion pigs.