The Girl Who Blew Up Her Brother and Other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls by Christopher Milne Page A

you.’
    â€˜Oh yeah?’ said Adam. ‘Watch this.’
    He strolled back into the lounge room and said, ‘Only a week to go to the year six dance and I still haven’t decided who to ask.’
    Just then Adam was suddenly caught short. Without warning, he desperately needed to go to the toilet. He didn’t know it, but Janet had put a very special mixture in the sandwich he’d had after school.
    Adam went red in the face, said, ‘Excuse me,’ and rushed out of the room.
    Yes! thought Janet.
    You see, Janet had been a very naughty girl. Secretly, she had hidden a bomb just under the lip of the toilet bowl. All that was needed to set it off was water.
    The girls argued and argued, and Janet waited. And waited.
    Adam flushed and BOOM!
    He shot off the toilet, flew through the door and landed in the lounge room. Right at the girls’ feet. With the toilet seat stuck to his bottom, the dunny brush melted into his hair and toilet paper around his neck. And his pants still down around his ankles.
    â€˜How embarrassing,’ said Adam’s two girlfriends. ‘What a loser.’
    At least Adam didn’t have to worry anymore about who to ask to the dance.

the brothers’
fantastic
flying machine

    There were lots of good things about living in Neerim West. In fact, Brett Porter and his brother Dave thought it was probably the best place to live in the whole world.
    They could easily ride their bikes to the lolly shop, there was a really excellent creek running right through their farm and best of all, the Neerim West Tip was right next door.
    Not only was the Neerim West Tip good for normal rubbish, but everybody dumped their old cars there as well. And sometimes, if the boy scouts didn’t get there first, there were full bags of bottles to smash.
    Dave and Brett liked the smell best. Somehow, the mixture of rotting food, old tyres and dead cats made a smell which said excitement . You never knew what you’d find. Maybe an old radio with lots of wires and stuff, or kids’ toys, or comics. Even a half-eaten toffee apple once. Dave had a lick but he reckoned it tasted a bit like fish guts.
    The best fun of all was checking out the old cars. Brett and Dave always started by smashing out the windows. Brett really liked front windscreens because sometimes he’d get two shots. First a small rock to make a hole. And then a brick to finish it off.
    Once inside the cars, they’d muck around for hours. Dad was always yelling at them for being late home for tea.
    One day, Brett was fooling around in the back seat of an old Ford when he got this really dreamy look on his face.
    â€˜Wouldn’t it be excellent,’ said Brett, ‘if we could get one of these cars going one day?’
    â€˜You serious?’ asked Dave. ‘Dad would kill us.’
    â€˜Not to drive, stupid, just to rev the guts out of it,’ said Brett. ‘And maybe make a pretend machine or something.’
    But Dave could tell Brett wasn’t thinking ‘pretend’ anything. You see, sometimes, Brett could be very, very naughty.
    And from that day on, Brett started to really check the cars out. And Dave helped him.
    Poor Dave. He knew Brett was planning something naughty, but what could he do? Brett was his brother! His older brother. The best brother a kid could ever have.
    Brett knew heaps about engines from helping his dad fix the tractor all the time. Well, sort of helping. His dad would have called it getting in the way. Brett reckoned that if some of the cars only had little things wrong with them, then maybe he could take the best bits from lots of cars and build a new one. A car that actually went.
    It made him excited just to think about it. So, for the next four weeks, every night after school, Dave and Brett went through every old car they could find. It wasn’t too hard getting the good bits out because they borrowed Dad’s best tools. They didn’t tell