Tao Read Free

liquid banana dripping down my face. I licked it as it passed my mouth. It tasted nice, but it wasn’t the time to say so.
    Well, we didn’t have to pay for any damage, but we did have to do the clean-up. Angela handed us each a roll of kitchen towel and we did our best … but in the end she did most of the work.
    When we were done, Angela used the rest of the fruit to make us a “proper” smoothie. With the top on the mixer this time.
    “Taa daa – delicious and nutritious!” she declared and poured me a glass. And it
was
delicious. Kalem had an orange moustache from the smoothie he was drinking, which looked really funny. I had one too.
    “Thank you,” we shouted to Angela as we rushed off to our match.
    “You’re welcome, men in moustaches,” she called after us.
    “Lose the moustaches,” said the Head Honcho, which is what we call our coach. His real name is Bert Cartwright but nobody calls him that – not even the adults. “We want the opposition to fear us – not jeer us. To shake in their shoes, to quake in our wake!” he roared at us.
    Honestly, I don’t understand half of what the Head Honcho says in his team talks but they always work and we go out “with fire in our bellies”, believing that we can win … even though we nearly always lose.
    But last week we did win and it was all thanks to me. The Head Honcho said that I was “the hero of the hour”! It was completely accidental, really. Kalem crossed the ball into the box and I tripped, and as I was falling the ball bounced off my head and flew into the top corner of the net. The Head Honcho said afterwards that it was a “textbook header”. We had won our first match in ten weeks.
    “All thanks to my smoothie!” laughed Angela as Kalem waved goodbye to me at his door.
    “And to my great skill!” I called back as I went out the gate.
    And ever since I told Willy all about our smoothie disaster, Willy has taken to calling Kalem “Mr Twit”.
    The Ninth Thing: “Brace yourself, Tao,” warned Dad when he picked me up outside The Happy Pear at two o’clock to take me to his new house. “The twins are very excited.”
    The twins are always excited, so that wasn’t going to be any different from usual.
    “Did she make you work on your birthday?” Dad asked then.
    I didn’t like the way he said “she” instead of Kate, so I answered a bit crossly.
    “No, she didn’t. I wanted to.”
    “OK. Down boy!” laughed Dad. “Are you happy with the pet mouse I got you? What have you called him?”
    I told him I was, of course, but I hadn’t named the mouse yet and was he sure that it was a he?
    “Well, that’s what the man in the pet shop said,” Dad answered, “but apparently it’s hard to tell.” And he grinned.
    Dad parked the car outside the house but I had hardly got out when Jo had opened the door and the twins had started charging down the drive, shouting, “TaoTaoTao” at the top of their voices.
    “They’ve been like excited puppies all day, waiting for the birthday boy,” Jo said as Roger tried to wriggle out from under her arm and Rachel pulled me by the hand to show me the cake.
    Well, we had to have some cake first because the twins couldn’t wait. They blew out the candles the minute Dad had lit them and he had to re-light them and tell them to let me do it … but, of course, they didn’t. Then everyone sang, “Happy birthday, dear Tao, Happy birthday to you” and Roger stuck his fist into the cake.
    “Time for presents,” announced Jo, pulling him away from the ruins of the cake.
    Rachel had got me her favourite Barbie doll and she promised to mind it for me when I wasn’t there.
    “That’s really nice of you,” I grinned as she took the doll out of my hands.
    Roger gave me a fire engine. He showed me how to push it and squirt the water to put out the fire, but he wouldn’t let me touch it.
    “They chose the presents themselves,” laughed Jo and handed me her present – a voucher for the sports