One Thousand Lollipops, Page 2

  “Sam? What’s wrong with you? You’re going loopy!”

  “I know,” said Sam. “Totally loopy. I’ve got a head full of lollipops.”

  But another plan was growing in his head. Maybe now he had the answer…

  *

  When he got home from school that day, the first thing he did was fill a carrier bag full of lollipops. Then he sneaked through the kitchen, where Dad was chopping onions. It was Mum’s day for working late.

  “What’s in the bag, Sam?” asked Dad.

  “Just rubbish,” said Sam. “I’m tidying up. I’ll take it out to the bin.”

  “Well, good for you!” said Dad, rather surprised.

  Sam sidled past him out of the back door, and ran down to the wheelie bin.

  The wheelie bin was full. Sam managed to hide eight lollipops amongst the dirty yoghurt pots. That was all he could fit in. The bin wouldn’t be emptied until next week.

  His bag was still three quarters full. He couldn’t put lollipops in any of the bins inside the house, in case Mum or Dad found them.

  “Throw them away, or bury them,” Sam muttered. “Let’s put Plan B in action!”

  He knelt down by Mum’s newly weeded flowerbed. Unwrapping a lollipop, he thrust it into the earth, pushing it right down until it disappeared.

  He unwrapped a second and carefully buried that too: and then another, and another – twelve lollipops in all, between the pansies and petunias.

  “What you doing, Sam?”

  It was Laura. She squatted down next to him. Sam tried to hide the bag of lollipops behind his back.

  “What’s that, Sam?”

  “Ssh!” he said. “It’s a secret experiment. I’m burying things to see if they’ll grow.”

  “What you burying, Sam?”

  “Just little sticks,” said Sam. “See! Little sticks, that’s all.” He pointed to the end of a lollipop stick, pointing up from the flowerbed.

  “Grow now,” said Laura. She reached out and pulled at the stick. A giant rainbow lollipop came up, covered with soil.

  “It growed! It growed!” cried Laura in delight. “It growed a lollipop!” She put her tongue to it.

  “No, don’t! It’s dirty!” exclaimed Sam.

  “Daddy wash it for me,” announced Laura, and she stood up.

  “No, no! It’s – um – it’s a magic lollipop. You mustn’t eat it in case it turns into a dragon and burns your tummy.”

  Laura’s face screwed up. She began to whimper.

  “Don’t tell Dad!” begged Sam. Laura threw down the lollipop and ran to the house. Sam grabbed his bag and ran after her.

  Luckily, Laura ran straight past Dad without mentioning lollipops and hurtled off to rummage in her toybox. Sam smuggled his bag carefully upstairs, and sat on his bed with a pencil and paper.

  He wrote down:

  “Eaten – 9

  Given away – 3

  Dustbin – 8

  Garden – 12”

  He drew a line under them, and gazed out of the window at the garden. Laura was out there again, burying a plastic pig.

  “Total – 32,” wrote Sam. He bit his pencil and did some careful working out. Thirty two seemed like a lot – but it wasn’t nearly enough.

  He still had nine hundred and sixty-eight lollipops inside his wardrobe. How was he ever going to get rid of them all by the end of the week? His stomach began to tie itself in knots.

  At tea-time, when Dad served up the shepherd’s pie, Sam could hardly eat.

  “Are you feeling all right, Sam?” asked Dad, concerned.

  “I’m fine. Just not very hungry,” mumbled Sam.

  “I’m going to grow piglets,” announced Laura.

  “That’s nice,” said Dad. “Sam, how about some jelly? It’s lime – your favourite. And it’s sugar-free, so it won’t hurt your teeth.”

  “Sam buried a secret in the garden,” said Laura.

  “That’s nice,” said Dad.

  Sam glowered at her with his most disapproving frown. Laura put her head on one side, looking innocent.

  “It was a secret,” she told Dad. “Do you want to know what it was?”

  Sam could think of only one thing to do. He knocked his bowl off the table. All his green jelly flopped out onto the floor like an alien’s accident.

  “Oh, Sam!” Dad was exasperated. “How clumsy. What a mess! Scoop it all up and put it in the sink.”

  “It was a dragon,” said Laura loudly. “It burnt my tummy. Ow.”

  Sam scooped his jelly back into his bowl with trembling fingers, and tipped it in the sink. He turned the hot tap on, and watched the jelly melt away. If only he could wash his troubles down the drain as easily!

  And then a brainwave hit him. This was the best idea he’d had so far. This one was foolproof!

  Wash his troubles down the drain? That was exactly what he’d do...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Dad!” said Sam urgently. “Can I have a bath early tonight?”

  “Don’t you mean a shower?”

  “No, a bath! I just feel like one. Can I have one now?”

  “If you want,” said Dad, surprised. “Shall I run it for you?”

  “No! I’ll do it.”

  “What about washing your hair?”

  “I can do that too! I don’t need any help.”

  Dad shrugged. “All right,” he said. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine! Never better!” Sam assured him, as he ran joyfully upstairs.

  When he’d turned the bath taps on, he went into his bedroom and pulled the topmost box out of the wardrobe. Piling lollipops onto his towel, he gathered the towel by the corners and hurried back to the bathroom.

  With the door firmly closed, he tore off wrappers and counted as he dropped the lollipops into the steaming water.

  One, two, three… twenty-four, twenty-five… fifty six, fifty-seven…

  Eighty-three lollipops plopped into the water. Sam was delighted. Nearly a hundred in one go!

  He crumpled all the wrappers up small and shoved them in the bin with some tissues on top of them.

  When he turned back to the bath, the lollipops were already dissolving. Swirls of orange and purple eddied across the water. The air was filled with a sickly prune and mango smell.

  Sam pulled off his clothes and jumped in.

  It wasn’t very comfortable, sharing a bath with eighty-three lollipops. They nudged at his legs and stuck to his sides. Sam swished his hands round to make them dissolve faster. Gradually the bright colours merged into a dark, murky brown, like paintbrush water that needed changing.

  At last all the lollipops had melted. Lollipop sticks bobbed on the surface like tiny white logs floating on a muddy river.

  Sam soaped himself, and the muddy surface turned to brown froth. He decided he had better get out before it stained him brown. But first, he ducked his head underwater and gave it a quick rinse, so that Dad would think he’d washed his hair.

  Then he pulled out the plug, and with great satisfaction watched the liquid lollipops gurgle down the plug-hole. He had never heard such a wonderful sound as eighty-three lollipops being sucked away.

  There was a brown line around the bath, but he wiped that off with his flannel.

  Then he gathered up all the little sticks that lay like driftwood in the bottom of the bath. He could hide those in his bedroom. They looked innocent enough – just like part of a craft kit.

  Sam grinned in relief. Eighty-three lollipops down the drain!

  There was a hammering on the door.

  “Sam? Are you all right in there?” called Dad. “You’ve been an awfully long time.”

  Hastily pulling on his pyjamas, Sam opened the door a crack.

  “Just finished!”

  “Good.” Dad sniffed. “What’s that funny smell?”

  “Must be the new shampoo,” said Sam.

  Dad pulled a face. “It smells like you used the whole bottle! Don’t f
orget to brush your hair.”

  “Ok, Dad. Then can I read in bed?”

  “No TV? Are you quite sure you’re feeling all right?”

  “I’m fit as a fiddle,” said Sam happily. He had decided he’d be safer in his bedroom. If he went downstairs, Laura might start asking him about secrets buried in the garden.

  So he waded across the pile of clothes on the bedroom floor, climbed into bed with some comics, and snuggled down.

  At least, he tried to snuggle down. His feet stuck to the sheets. Now matter how he wriggled, Sam just couldn’t get comfortable. He felt prickly and itchy.

  He began to read a comic, but he had to keep stopping to scratch. And something was starting to worry him.

  He’d got rid of thirty-two lollipops before his bath. With eighty-three down the drain, that was well over a hundred lollipops gone.

  But that meant he still had nearly nine hundred of them left. That was at least nine baths. And today was Tuesday. There were only four days to go before Mum checked his room.

  “This won’t work!” thought Sam. His joy was melting away as fast as the lollipops. “There isn’t enough time. I can’t have nine baths before Saturday! It’s impossible! What am I going to do?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sam woke up with a jolt.

  “What’s happened?” he thought. “I can’t move! I’m glued to the bed!”

  His pyjamas felt as stiff as armour. They were welded on to his skin. When he moved, he felt the cloth crackle. His head was stuck to the pillow.

  His fingers were glued together. He put them to his mouth, and tasted prune and mango.

  “I’ve been candied!” thought Sam, as he lay there helplessly. “I’ve been coated like a toffee apple. I’ve turned into a human lollipop!”

  With a mighty effort, he pulled his head away from the pillow, leaving a clump of hair behind. The rest stuck up from his head in sugary spikes.

  Tufty Toothbrush sneered at him from the end of the bed. Sam tried to hurl him away, and only succeeded in sticking Tufty to his hand.

  He managed to shake Tufty off. Then he tried to remove his pyjamas, and failed. They were attached to him as firmly as if they were sewn out of sticking plaster.

  “There’s nothing else for it,” he groaned. “I’ll just have to wash all over again!”

  Luckily, it was so early that nobody else was up. Sam tiptoed to the bathroom, stood under the shower in his pyjamas and turned on the water.

  As the pyjamas soaked through, they slowly and reluctantly unglued themselves from his skin and set him free.

  Once he had dried himself and dressed, Sam carried the sodden pyjamas downstairs and crept outside to hang them on the washing line. He’d have to tell Mum he’d tipped his breakfast over them, or something.

  “I can’t take much more of this,” he thought, as he pegged them on the line. “I can’t have nine more lollipop baths. I can’t fit any more in the bin, and I certainly can’t eat any more!”

  At least he could bury a few more lollipops now, before anybody else got up. There was plenty of room in Mum’s flowerbeds.

  Sam glanced at the patch where he’d planted twelve lollipops yesterday.

  He gasped. “Oh, no!” he breathed.

  It was like a scene out of a horror movie.

  Slugs. Huge, fat brown slugs. Sam had never seen so many slugs before. Evidently slugs loved prune and mango. They had left long, slimy trails all over the lollipops’ burial ground – and had eaten most of Mum’s flowers on the way.

  “I don’t think I’ll bury any more just now,” decided Sam with a shudder.

  Besides, it was too late. When he plodded back inside he could hear voices. Upstairs, Dad was complaining that someone had used all the hot water. Laura was telling Mum a complicated story about a baby pig that hatched out of the flowerbed and grew up to be a dragon.

  Sam got his cereal and forced himself to eat. The knots were back in his stomach again.

  Then he trudged down the road to school beneath heavy, gloomy clouds. They matched his mood.

  There was a shout behind him. “Sam! Wait for me!”

  Hanif ran up to him. “What’s the matter, Sam?” he panted. “You look like you’ve swallowed a spider!”

  “I feel like it, too,” said Sam glumly. “It’s those lollipops. The horrible prune and mango ones.”

  “What about them?”

  “I’ve got to get rid of them all by Saturday or my Mum’ll go crazy. Could you look after them for me, Hanif?”

  He asked without much hope, and Hanif shook his head. “You know what my room’s like. There’s only just enough space in there for Rafiq and me. Why don’t you take them to the school fair?”

  “I thought of that,” sighed Sam. “But how can I? Mum’s doing a stall there. Everyone knows she’s a dentist. I can’t turn up with five boxes of lollipops!”

  “Tell you what.” said Hanif. “We could pretend they were a donation from my Dad’s shop. He’s already donating some fizzy drinks, so nobody would think that was strange.”

  Hope began to grow in Sam’s heart. “But how would we get the lollipops there?”

  “Easy. My Dad can take them in his van,” said Hanif. “He could pick them up on Saturday morning and take them straight to school.”

  “Would he really do that?”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” said Hanif.

  Sam couldn’t believe it. Suddenly the clouds parted, and the sun shone down, warm and bright.

  He laughed with relief. “That’s brilliant! Hanif, you’re a genius. You’ve found the answer. I can get rid of all the lollipops – and Mum and Dad will never know a thing about it!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Saturday morning had come round again, and the doorbell was ringing.

  “I’ll get it!” shouted Sam. As he ran to the door, for a dreadful moment he feared that last Saturday was about to replay itself – and that the man from Twizzo Treats would be standing on the doorstep, grinning, with another thousand lollipops…

  But it was Hanif and his Dad. Sam hurried upstairs to fetch the five lollipop boxes down, one at a time. He had carefully stuck Tufty Toothbrush leaflets over the Twizzo labels on each box. Although Mum had already set off to school, he still needed to get the boxes past Dad.

  It was just as well Sam had disguised the boxes. As he was carrying the last one out, he collided with Dad and Laura in the hall.

  “What have you got in there?” asked Dad.

  “Present for me!” yelled Laura.

  “Oh, it’s just, er, some old toys and stuff that I’m taking to the school fair for the toy stall,” panted Sam. “Hanif’s Dad’s giving me a lift.”

  “Toys!” squealed Laura.

  “Old cars,” Sam said quickly. Laura didn’t like cars.

  “Want a present,” pleaded Laura. “Slugs ate all my baby pigs. Poor pigs.”

  “I’ll buy you one at the fair,” Sam promised, trying to edge out of the door with the last load of lollipops.

  “Hold on!” said Dad. “Can you open up that box?”

  Sam’s heart raced. “Wh – Why?”

  “Mum rang from school to say she needs more leaflets,” said Dad. “She says she’s got a great big table in the school hall and not enough to fill it. Oh, and she wants you to take Tufty Toothbrush along as well. Shall I pack those leaflets for you?”

  “No! It’s all right. I’ll get them!”

  Sam lugged the box over to the cupboard where Mum kept her leaflets. He stuffed three fat handfuls of them into the box on top of the lollipops.

  Then he galloped upstairs to fetch Tufty Toothbrush. He supposed Tufty might look nice on Mum’s stall.

  Well, not nice exactly – nobody could call Tufty nice – but at least he was eye-catching. She’d certainly need something to liven her stall up. Nobody was going to stop and read those boring leaflets otherwise.

  “Your room should be nice and tidy after that big clear-out,” said Dad when he
came back down.

  “Oh, it is!” Sam assured him. “I’ve got rid of hundreds of things I didn’t want.”

  “Good lad! You’ve been very helpful,” Dad said, smiling. “Here’s your pocket-money – and last week’s, too. Buy something nice at the fair.”

  As Sam took the money, he felt Tufty’s accusing stare burn into him.

  “Bury Tufty in the garden,” Laura said.

  “Good idea,” Sam muttered.

  “Slugs eat him up, instead of my poor piggies.”

  “If only,” said Sam.

  He carried the last box out. Hanif’s dad winked at him as he loaded it into his van. Sam climbed into the front seat next to Hanif, and they set off. When the van finally trundled away, he felt like bursting into song. He’d got past Dad without him suspecting a thing. It was the end of the lollipops at last!

  School was transformed. It was draped in red and yellow bunting, and erupting with children and noise. Kids charged excitedly around the playground, shouting.

  At one end of the games field, several Dads were building an assault course out of crates, while at the other, a bouncy castle slowly heaved itself into the air. From inside the school came awful honks and wails as the school band tuned up.

  Sam, Hanif and his Dad each carried a box of lollipops into school. They handed one box over for the bran tub and gave two to the sideshows. Sam’s heart was singing as he returned to the van.

  Hanif took the fourth box. Sam hefted up the last one, with the leaflets inside and Tufty Toothbrush balanced on the top. He was so happy that he began to run across the playground.

  As he ran, Tufty Toothbrush slid off the top of the box and dived to the ground. Sam tripped over Tufty and went sprawling across the tarmac.

  The cardboard box flew through the air. It came down with a mighty CRUNCH.

  “Ow!” said Sam, sitting up painfully. “Ouch!”

  He rolled up the legs of his jeans to inspect his knees. They were both badly grazed.

  But when he looked up, he realised that wasn’t the worst of it.

  There had been a lollipop explosion. The box had broken open, and two hundred lollipops had burst out. They lay scattered around him, along with all the Tufty Toothbrush leaflets.

  In the middle of the lollipop disaster was Tufty himself, upside down, eyeing Sam with an indignant glare.

  Children stopped running around to point and giggle.

  “Ooh, Sam! Have you got loads of lollipops again?” asked one.

  “There are thousands of them!” yelled another.

  “Sam, Sam, the lollipop man!” chanted a third.