Even Weirder! Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  I was out shopping for a birthday present for the seventh-best-looking girl in the class. So why do I have five years’ worth of toilet paper in the trolley?

  Because

  my life is weird.

  If something’s on sale at the shops, Mum will buy lots of it.

  And guess what was on sale today?

  That’s right,

  toilet paper

  There we all were … looking like

  the family that does the

  MOST POOS

  in the world.

  The fact is, we don’t just use toilet paper in the toilet. We use it for other stuff around the house …

  Like blowing your nose.

  Wiping up spills.

  Ten Pin Rolling.

  Did I tell you my mum was cheap? She’s one of those people who gets a little too excited about the lady in the corner of the shop giving out the free sausage samples.

  Mum will make us all line up for a taste, no matter what the sample is.

  You’re only allowed one sausage per person, but Mum makes us walk away and then come back looking slightly different, just to get more food.

  And if the sausages are REALLY tasty, she’ll make us come back one extra time.

  Roger’s the worst at shopping. Somehow strange stuff always ends up in the trolley when he’s around.

  Anyway, there we were at the checkout with our

  2000

  rolls of toilet paper when I looked across and saw … BELLA ALLEN!

  ‘What are you buying?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re just buying a … birthday present for you,’ I replied.

  ‘Is that my present behind your back?’

  she asked with a smile.

  ‘Oh no, that isn’t for you either.’

  I brought out the itchy bum cream to show her.

  What was I saying?!

  ‘Okaaaaay, bye Weir,’ she said.

  Nooooo!

  Now Bella Allen thinks I am the king of poo. That I need a trolley full of toilet paper all for myself!

  Can my life get any worse?

  My life just got worse!

  Now the whole supermarket’s looking at me!

  How did the lady at the checkout know my name? Must have been

  a lucky guess!

  CHAPTER 2

  My first name is Weir. My last name is Do. (Yep, rhymes with go.)

  Just in case you missed my first book, let me tell you a little bit about me and my family.

  You already know I’m a bit weird. Like when they handed out talents, I wound up with …

  And when they handed out family hobbies …

  And you already know that my mum is cheap. She really is.

  For Roger’s birthday, instead of paying for real helium balloons that float up to the ceiling …

  … she just blew up plain balloons and then stuck them to the ceiling with sticky tape.

  My sister Sally is super neat. She does

  everything perfectly.

  She even peels an orange all in one go.

  And she’s really good at making things, like balloon animals.

  Sally never makes a mess eating her noodles.

  But me, I always seem to get that one long noodle that goes on and on forever!

  At least I’m not as messy as Roger. Sometimes he even ends up with noodles

  coming out of his nose.

  Roger is my little brother and he likes to destroy stuff. This week he’s been throwing things into the bath. To ‘clean’ them.

  Often important things …

  Mum refused to waste the soggy bread … and I have to say, the soggy sandwich was one of the worst three sandwiches I’ve ever had in my life.

  My dad is just plain strange.

  He can do a burp that lasts for a

  BUU

  Dad can also fart from the front door to the back door but we won’t go into that.

  The other thing Dad likes to do is dance really badly. He tries to copy people on TV.

  Finally, there’s Granddad. His teeth come out and his body parts make funny noises …

  And he likes to play silly tricks.

  He also pulls his pants up really high which is the opposite to some of the cool kids at school.

  Even our pet bird is weird. Most birds like to make happy chirpy noises. But Blockhead always makes strange sounds, like …

  And sometimes…

  And if he’s eaten some funny bird seed he’ll say …

  Henry’s my best friend from school. He doesn’t care that I’m weird, or that I like to draw silly pictures.

  Like this one …

  Me and Henry like to make up new words for things, too … like ‘Finkles’.

  That’s the word we invented for the wrinkles you get on your fingers when you’ve sat in the bath

  for too long.

  We reckon if we say it enough everyone will start to use it,

  even the Queen.

  CHAPTER 3

  Bella’s party is two days away, so I want to be as normal as possible at school to make sure that she won’t un-invite me.

  This was going to be hard since today we were going on a school excursion to the zoo and Granddad was coming as a teacher’s helper.

  I knew it was going to be trouble when Granddad showed up at breakfast wearing fake monkey ears.

  When we got on the school bus, Granddad took the empty seat next to Henry, and the only seat left for me was next to …

  Bella.

  I like Bella. I like her But I’m not sure if I’m ready to sit next to her on a bus.

  We said hi …

  … and that’s it!

  I didn’t know what else to say to her. She didn’t know what else to say to me. We just sat there staring at the back of the heads of the people in front of us!

  The sight of Granddad’s monkey ears and Henry’s fuzzy orange hair gave me an idea.

  I took out my sketchbook and started drawing …

  ‘What are you drawing?’ Bella asked.

  Bella reached down into her bag and pulled out a pair of glasses. She put them on and looked closely at my drawing.

  I hadn’t seen Bella wearing glasses before, and I must have been staring at them because she noticed.

  ‘The glasses are new,’ said Bella. ‘The eye doctor said I need to wear them when I’m looking at something closely.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said. ‘Can I try them on?’

  The glasses made everything look different.

  They made Granddad’s ears look

  even bigger.

  And Henry’s head was HUGE!

  You do not want to know what Toby Hogan looked like …

  That was when Bella asked me to draw her.

  YES!

  This was my chance to impress Bella with the one thing that I’m

  really good at!

  I picked up my sketchbook and pencil and started drawing Bella as well as I could.

  When I finished, I showed her the picture of herself.

  Bella said it was nice but I don’t think she meant it, because she had the same look on her face that Mum had when she found that dead mouse in the laundry basket …

  Then I realised …

  Oh no!

  I forgot to take off the glasses and they made me draw her really badly!

  Oh man … What a way to start the day.

  CHAPTER
4

  When we got to the zoo, the first animals we saw were the monkeys.

  I love monkeys, so me and Granddad went right up close to the fence.

  I thought Granddad’s monkey ears looked silly but the monkeys must have thought they looked real, because the first thing that happened was

  a monkey threw a banana right at Granddad!

  Granddad ducked out of the way.

  Then I ducked out of the way.

  And the banana hit Henry …

  right in the face!

  It was sooo funny, I started laughing.

  I was laughing so hard

  I didn’t see the second banana that was thrown.

  Bella ducked it.

  Blake ducked it.

  Toby Hogan ducked it.

  And it hit me right on the side of the head!

  Now everyone was laughing at me! Even Granddad!

  I guess it looked pretty funny!

  As Henry and me stood there flicking the banana off ourselves, a whole bunch of ducks ran up to eat the bits off the ground.

  They were funny, those ducks. Fat ones, skinny ones, and a big spotty one.

  The spotty one had three little ducklings following it, which was very cute.

  Bella gave me a hanky to wipe myself. ‘Here you go, Weir,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. And that’s when I realised the hanky had little frogs on it.

  I looked up and Bella was smiling.

  Soon it was lunch time, which was perfect cos I had heaps of ideas for cool animal pictures. First I tried a

  giraffe and a kangaroo.

  A zebra and an elephant …

  A panda and a gorilla …

  But then I decided I wanted to try another drawing of Bella. I quickly drew her while she watched Henry

  pretending he was a sea lion.

  I was pretty happy with my drawing and knew Bella would like it much more than the last one.

  But as I went to hand it to her, the skinny duck waddled over and

  snatched it

  away from me!

  Before I knew it, Bella had jumped up and was chasing after the duck with my drawing in its bill!

  I might have mentioned that I’m not a very fast runner …

  And it turns out that duck was a very fast waddler!

  We chased that duck down past the gorilla enclosure,

  through the bat cave,

  along the penguin pool …

  But then we lost the duck around the meerkat bend.

  Not only had we lost the duck, but now we were lost too!

  We couldn’t find Granddad, Miss Franklin, or anyone from school …

  so we found the next BEST thing …

  ‘Hey,’ said Bella, ‘what are you going to wear to my party?’

  Huh? I thought to myself.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I replied. ‘Sure … I’m going to go as …’

  ‘So what was your drawing of, anyway?’ asked Bella.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I replied. ‘Just an—’

  ‘BELLA ALLEN!’ ‘the zoo loudspeaker suddenly boomed.

  ‘AND WEIRDO!’ the loudspeaker continued.

  Everyone at the zoo laughed.

  All the animals too.

  The monkeys …

  The penguins …

  Even the duck with the glasses!

  I wanted to run away and hide, but before I could make a move, Granddad appeared.

  The day at the zoo

  wasn’t a complete disaster.

  On my way out, I found the perfect birthday present for Bella in the gift shop …

  CHAPTER 5

  At school the next day, Miss Franklin told us that we all needed to draw a picture of someone else in the class.

  Here was my chance to draw Bella again!

  But then Bella asked Henry if he would be her partner!

  So I wound up with Clare instead …

  I thought I’d done a

  Henry’s drawing of Bella was even worse than mine from the bus!

  After school, Henry invited me over to his place to work on our costumes for Bella’s party.

  Henry was going as a computer. He put a box on his head and I helped him attach a keyboard to his chest. When we finished he looked like a human iPad.

  He had lots of green cardboard for me to use to make a frog hat.

  Perfect!

  When we were finished, Henry showed me his COLLECTION OF ROCKS that he’d made to look like things …

  … and then he introduced me to his sister.

  ‘WEIRDO?’ said Jane. ‘That’s not very nice.’

  ‘Oh no, that’s his name,’ said Henry.

  ‘Yeah, it’s actually my name,’ I said.

  Then I met Henry’s twin brothers. They looked exactly the same!

  ‘I can see that,’ I said.

  They even talked the same.

  I couldn’t tell them apart!

  HE LIKES TO EAT GREEN M&M’S AND I LIKE TO EAT BLUE M&M’S.

  YEAH. HE LIKES TO EAT BLUE M&M’S AND I LIKE TO EAT GREEN M&M’S.

  It was like looking at two robots.

  Then Henry’s mum and dad and their dog came out.

  So this is what a normal family looks like!

  ‘It’s dinner time, boys,’ said Mr O’Henry.

  ‘Come join us at the table.’

  My mum and dad’s dinners never

  look how they’re supposed to.

  … but they always taste delicious!

  But Mrs O’Henry’s roast looked just like the picture in the book!

  This is going to be SUPER yummy, I thought to myself.

  Shame it tasted like cardboard!

  CHAPTER 6

  Today is Bella’s birthday party!

  Bella’s present is wrapped …

  and my green clothes are ready …

  My frog hat is—

  ‘HEY,’ I said, ‘where’s my frog hat?’

  Then I heard a

  TERRIBLE

  SPLASH!

  coming from the bathroom.

  I ran to the bathroom but it was too late. My frog hat was already sinking bathwater … I fished it out, and it fell apart in my hands.

  I looked at Roger …

  ‘I can’t just wear green,’ I complained. ‘I’ll look like a BIG cucumber!’

  Great, I get invited to Bella’s party and now I can’t even go …

  Then Sally stepped into the bathroom with an ‘excellent idea’.

  She pointed to the piles and piles of toilet rolls in the corner.

  Sally is supposed to be the clever one, but this was the

  worst idea ever!

  ‘Sally, I’m not going as a toilet roll!’ I said.

  Sally groaned. ‘No, we can wrap you with it, like a mummy!’

  She picked up a roll and started spinning me around and around and around … and when I finally stopped whirling, I looked in the mirror and saw …

  a really COOL mummy!

  ‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘Thanks!’

  So we’re finally on our way to Bella’s place, when we start

  running out of petrol.

  But instead of stopping at the first petrol station we see, Dad wants to wait until we come across a cheaper one!

  Sometimes Dad can be just as cheap as Mum!

  Can you guess what happened next?

  We ran out of petrol!

  So Dad orders us all out, to help push the car, while Granddad runs off to get us a can of petrol.