My Sister's an Alien (4 page)

Then, before you could make whatever sound it is that a wise old bird could make, bwa bwa, bwa perhaps, The Wise Old Owl
flew in through the window with a flurry of feathers and smashed straight into the mirror. ‘Ow!' said Owl. ‘Those mirrors are horrid. Every time I look in one I think I've seen the most beautiful bird and break my beak trying to kiss it.'

‘Are you sure this is The
Wise
Old Owl?' whispered Zeke to Nosewhistle Jo.

But it
was
The Wise Old Owl and pretty soon he was setting up the computer to send Zeke's message and find out just who in the world knew where Eppie was. ‘This plug here, that button there, put this thingummyjig in that what-not,' said The Wise Old Owl as he ordered everybody in the room to assist with his important task. ‘Okay,' he said finally. ‘Now we're ready to type the message.'

‘Message typed,' replied Zeke with pride.

‘And now we shall send it off round the world,' bellowed The Wise Old Owl triumphantly. ‘Watch me press this little red power switch.' And the whole thing went
Kaboom.

In fact the message wasn't sent to computers all round the world, but printed instead on each of The Wise Old Owl's feathers, which had blown right off in the explosion and were now fluttering high into the sky to be
spread by the world's wandering winds.

‘Oh no, I'm naked!' said The Wise Old Owl. ‘But at least the message has been sent. Could someone hand me a dressing gown while we wait for our replies?'

Well Ralph Gorgeous lent Owl his leopard skin coat and then they waited.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.

‘Want a chocolate biscuit?' Zeke asked The Wise Old Owl.

‘No thanks. I'm on a diet,' he replied.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

And then with a hum and a whirr and a whiz, messages started flying in from every single corner of the globe … and some even came with photos. Yes, photos of what looked like a strawberry with something attached to its head. ‘I wonder how they took those photos of Eppie?' thought Zeke.' Cameras always break when I try to photograph her.'

Someone even sent in a video in which you could very clearly see that Eppie was singing that song that made Zeke want to vomit every time he heard it,
I'm a Barbie Girl in a Barbie World
!

She'd been seen over Botswana, Croatia, Canada, Tasmania and Scandinavia. Some cow even sent a
message to say she'd seen Eppie jumping over the moon.

But the most recent sighting had been by two astrologers who were visiting their mummies in Egypt.

They said they'd seen a girl dancing way out on Planet Sock who was singing a little song to herself called
My Brother Zeke is a Boy's Bra
.

‘That's her. That's her!' yelled happy Zeke. ‘That's my horrible, disgusting, worm head, pig's bottom, bosom brain sister. Yahoo! Let's go get her!'

‘Not us,' said Ralph Gorgeous. ‘We've got a party to go to and, besides, we've done all we can.'

‘Well if there's anything I can ever do for you,' said Zeke, ‘just plop down through that man-hole in the ceiling.'

‘Possum-hole,' corrected Nosewhistle Jo.

‘Actually, Zeke,' said Fluffybigbum, ‘could I borrow that pretty dress you're wearing?'

Zeke had forgotten he was wearing Eppie's nightie and was so embarrassed he shrieked, ‘Aeiou!', ran from the room and tumble, tumble, tumbled down the stairs like a tennis ball.

And that's where he lay like a spilt laundry basket and dreamt that he blew up a thousand balloons, tied all of their strings to his belt and floated up, right up into space where he found his sister Eppie and made her promise that she would pay him a fee of a thousand dollars a week for the rest of their lives for the privilege of being his sister.

But then Zeke woke up and unfortunately remembered all the trouble that he was in.

‘Oh no, oh no, a few hours to go before Mum wakes up and Eppie and my yoyo are still lost in space. How am I ever going to get up there?' he wondered as he lay on the floor rattling away, listening to his mother snore. ‘You can't get a bus to space, or catch a train, or a plane, or walk, or run, or roll or skateboard or … Hey, wait, I know! I could go to a circus, dress up as a clown and get
them to blow me out of the cannon … off the face of earth and into the starry skies … or if that didn't work and worse came to worst I could fall in a pothole, get run over by a truck that is towing a house, get shrunk to the size of a strawberry, attached to a yoyo and hurled into the sky like a rocket … Hey wait a minute!' said Zeke to himself. ‘That's it—a rocket!'

Well of course Zeke tried to make his own space rocket using old toilet paper rolls, egg cartons and silver foil but the glue wouldn't dry and there was no sister to sit on things to make them stick better (because she was selfishly dancing on Planet Sock) and no mum to help with the cutting out (because she was upstairs, begging Tom Cruise to marry her, in between snoring like a fart cushion) and so in the end he snuck out the door, got on his bike and rode to the nearest space centre.

‘Hello,' Zeke said, when the space centre's door was opened by a huge toothless purple-haired woman. ‘Excuse me for bothering you so late in the night but I'd like to go on your next trip into space.'

‘Oh that's nice,' said the toothless purple-haired woman. ‘But I'm very sorry you can't come because what we need is males who are strong,
brave and fearless; we have enough little girls with bows in their hair.'

‘What!'
gasped Zeke. Oh yes, the nightie, and off he rode home to quickly change into his Superboy suit
and once again knock on the space centre door.

‘I'm very sorry, Superboy,' said the toothless purple-haired woman, ‘but I'm afraid you're far too young. ‘

And with that Zeke said thank you and rode off into the night. Only to return ten minutes later wearing a false beard and a moustache.

‘I'm very sorry, Mister Super,' said the toothless purple-haired woman, ‘you're absolutely perfect except for one simple thing: you are far too thin.'

And off rode Zeke as fast as he could to find cotton wool to stick in his cheeks, and pillows to stuff down his suit so that every single part of his body seemed quite enormous and he looked like a balloon filled with marbles … and he could hardly move.