Casper Candlewacks in the Attack of the Brainiacs! by Ivan Brett Page A

than Bash Brewster. “But that’s not going to happen, is it, Cuddles?”
    Cuddles was busy grazing the varnish off the kitchen table with her fangs.
    â€œOr is it ?” Casper’s eyes lit up and a planhatched inside his head like a sneaky newborn chick with a plan inside its head. “Mum?”
    â€œHmm?” Amanda was trying to light the bread on the scratchy bit of a matchbox.
    â€œIsn’t it time Cuddles started going to school?”
    â€œOh, is she old enough? What age is normal?”
    â€œAny age, really. She’s very bright.”
    Cuddles bashed her head against the table and grinned at Casper with cross-eyes and a penny stuck up her left nostril.

    â€œOh. Well, it would be marvellous to get a day off. I like them loads more than days on. Could you take her today? See if she likes it?”
    Underneath, Casper’s heart pumped manically, but he maintained his composure, not looking up from the plate. “Suppose I could, yeah.”
    â€œOh, thanks, Caspy.” Amanda skipped over and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re a gent.”
    This day was getting better more quickly than a jet-plane full of cheetahs in a hurry. With Cuddles, Casper had a first line of defence against the Brewsters. “Come on, girl, let’s get you to school.” It was tough not to bounce up from his chair and juggle Cuddles down the corridor, but Casper hid his glee, so Amanda wouldn’t catch wind of his plan.
    Back upstairs, Casper stuffed Cuddles into hisbackpack and zipped it closed. Next he searched his cluttered floor for everything else: a dog-eared pad of paper, a cracked biro, a spare yellow tie for Cuddles’s uniform and his TuneBrick™, a little music player he’d got last Christmas to drown out Lamp’s ramblings. Weighed down with necessaries, he returned to his backpack to find Cuddles standing on top of it, arms held aloft like a champion wrestler, with one foot still caught in the hole she’d gnawed through.
    â€œCuddles,” Casper groaned. “That was my favourite bag.” (By ‘favourite’ he meant ‘only’.) Luckily, he had a spare roll of gaffer tape. Unluckily, the bus left in fifteen minutes.
    Twelve minutes later, Casper tumbled down the stairs with something resembling a silvery beehive that squirmed and screeched like he’d snared a pairof weasels. “OY! Behave back there or you’re not coming,” He jiggled his backpack up and down to keep Cuddles quiet.
    â€œSee you tonight, Mum!” Casper shouted, slamming the door a bit too hard and taking the doorknob with him. He shrugged and stuffed it in his pocket.
    Casper sprinted so fast that all Mrs Trimble saw running past her window was a blur (but then she had lost her glasses). Casper careered down the street, through the park, into the square and on to the train carriage so fast he never noticed Betty Woons soaring about in her new rocket-powered wheelchair, or Mitch McMassive standing on an upturned bucket and reciting poetry to a small but captivated crowd, or Mayor Rattsbulge roaring with joy as he discovered the chemical symbolfor sausages. Neither did he notice Jean-Claude sneaking off towards Lamp’s garage or even the four new inventions sitting at the doorstep of Bistro D’Escargot .
    If he had noticed, he would’ve thought, How odd… but he didn’t, so he didn’t.

    Sweating like Mayor Rattsbulge at a pie museum, Casper squeezed down the aisle of the carriage, avoiding the flight paths of paperaeroplanes and Ted Treadington, and plonked down next to Lamp just as the tractor grumbled into motion, jerking the kids backwards in their seats.
    â€œHullo, Casper.” Lamp barely looked up, furiously scribbling on a piece of paper covered in dense pencil scrawls and a complicated diagram involving an eagle and a garlic crusher.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œIt pipes the choclit sauce into