The Verruca Bazooka

“Because I couldn’t find any pebbles,” said Oscar, as if the answer was obvious. “Come on” he continued, “climb down the drainpipe and let’s get started.”

Jack leaned out of the window and cast a suspicious glance at the drainpipe. “Since when do I climb down drainpipes?” he asked.

“Got to be a first time for everything,” grinned Oscar. “I’d do it.”

Yes, thought Jack, but you’d stick your head in the oven to see if the gas was still on. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he promised, and closed the window.

Having taken the safer option – the stairs -he hurried through the kitchen and out into the garden, squeezed through the gap in the hedge that separated the two plots and climbed up the wooden ladder that was fixed to the trunk of the tree.

The tree house the boys shared was pretty impressive. Oscar’s dad had won it in a competition in the local paper. It was actually a small shed that had been lifted into place by a crane and secured safely to the tree. It had a little porch area at the front, a pair of windows and room for Jack’s workbench where most of his brilliant ideas took shape. It was, without doubt, the coolest tree house in town.

Jack found Oscar lying on a beanbag, clutching a skateboard to his chest. Oscar sighed loudly and theatrically as Jack, slightly breathless from the climb, came into the tree house.

“Good afternoon,” he sighed.

“Hilarious,” said Jack.

Oscar was always like this – everything had to happen right now. Jack felt that most things that were worth doing needed proper planning and preparation. But for Oscar if it wasn’t instant it wasn’t interesting.

“What’s the plan then?” asked Jack, sitting down in the other beanbag.

“Mum got me this,” said Oscar, holding up the skateboard. “But it doesn’t go fast enough.” He sat up with a wild look in his eyes. “So I thought…you could maybe fit it with some rockets. Or, you know, something…”

Jack stared. “You want me to put rockets on your skateboard? Why? So you can do an ollie into orbit?”

Oscar stopped to consider this – for half a second. “Could you?” he asked.

“No,” said Jack firmly. “Hurtling at high speed into brick walls might be your idea of fun, but I prefer to spend my time working on my gadgets.”

He got up and went over to his workbench, where a number of projects were underway. He picked up a dog-shaped rubber suit which had twin silver tubes running down its back. “See this,” he announced proudly, “it’s a scuba kit for a dog. Now man’s best friend doesn’t have to sit by and wait when you go for a scuba dive.”

“You don’t have a dog,” Oscar pointed out.

“Well, no,” agreed Jack, “but I’d like to.”

“And you don’t scuba dive,” continued Oscar.

“Er…no. But—”

“You’d like to?”

Jack shot Oscar a dirty look. “Not really,” he confessed. “It looks a bit dangerous.”

Oscar sighed again. If it wasn’t a bit dangerous then what was the point?

“What else have you got then? There must be something we can have fun with.”

“There’s the heli-frisbee,” offered Jack. “I was thinking that it’s really annoying that I can’t ever throw a Frisbee properly so I designed a Frisbee that even I can use.”

Jack showed his friend his prototype: it was a normal Frisbee, but attached to the middle of the disc was a pair of model helicopter blades.

“It’s remote-controlled,” he explained.

Oscar jumped to his feet. “Brilliant. Let’s go to the park. You can fix up my skateboard and then we can test drive your remote-control Frisbee. OK?”

Jack nodded and then looked concerned as Oscar started to climb out of the window.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Oscar turned and grinned. “You’re not the only one who can come up with brilliant ideas you know. I thought we should have an emergency exit, so I fixed up this zip line.” Now Oscar could see there was a cable running from the tree house to Oscar’s house. Jack watched in fascination as Oscar clipped a karabiner to the line, grabbed the rope running through it and slid off down the zip wire.

Jack looked at where the zip wire was connected and made a rapid mental calculation. He started to call out a warning but it was too late.

SPLAT! Oscar slammed into the side of his house and dropped into the muddy flowerbed below.

“Just a few technical hitches to iron out” Oscar croaked weakly, before falling back into the squelchy mud.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_ac4cac21-c2d4-5ce0-b0f7-222730446d42)

Jack made some final adjustments to the makeshift ramp and stood up, brushing his hands together with satisfaction. He’d found a couple of bits of wood and some bricks in a skip on the way and had put them together to form a jump at the bottom of the largest slope in the park.

Jack looked up at the top of the hill where Oscar was waiting. Oscar waved his hand, enthusiastically.

This isn’t going to go well, thought Jack.

He had insisted that Oscar put on some protective gear. Oscar, of course, didn’t have any. So Jack had produced some of his own design that he had been working on. Adapted from swimming floats, the knee and elbow protectors were inflatable and as Oscar stood at the top of the hill, wearing the gear and the foam-lined strap-on yellow hard-hat that Jack had also made, he looked like a badly-dressed superhero from an old TV programme.

At Oscar’s feet was the now-rocket-powered skateboard. Before they had left home Jack had found two old lemonade bottles in one of his ‘Useful Materials’ boxes and these were now firmly taped to the sides of the skateboard. Fixed to the centre of the board was an old foot pump with twin rubber pipes connecting it to both fuel tanks.

“Pump!” shouted Jack, after checking that the path at the bottom of the hill was clear of dog-walkers and other park users.

Oscar frantically pumped with his right foot, rapidly filling the bottles with air. The bottles began to swell, the plastic straining. Oscar kept pumping. Something would have to give. If Jack had made a mistake in his calculations the plastic would rupture and Oscar would end up – not for the first time -on his bottom. If Jack was right, the corks he had wedged into the bottle tops would be expelled like bullets from a gun, propelling the skateboard – and Oscar – forward at great speed.

POP! The two corks blew at exactly the same moment and Oscar’s jet-powered skateboard launched on its maiden voyage.

Oscar came hurtling down the hill with his arms outstretched to balance. The launch velocity had given him a much faster than usual start and now, as the board careered down the path, it picked up even more speed.

Oscar let out a cry that could have been excitement or fear (or possibly both). Moving at maximum speed, he hit the ramp.

Thrown violently into the air, he threw his arms back behind him, like the ski-jumpers he had seen on the Winter Olympics. Jack watched with a mixture of awe and pride as, for a long glorious moment, Oscar flew through the air. It worked! he thought.

But then he had another thought. What about landing?

At that moment, gravity woke up and remembered about Oscar. Jack had to cover his eyes as his friend returned rapidly to earth. Luckily, he landed in a bush, which absorbed the impact like one of the gym mats at school.

Unluckily, it was a rose bush.

“Ow!” said Oscar, picking thorns out of his bum. And then, more enthusiastically, “Wow! How cool was that?”