Pumpkins and Aliens

by Andrew Levins

  About the Book

  Nelson hates vegetables. He hates the smell of them, he hates the look of them.

  Most of all, he hates eating them.

  But what if they gave him superpowers? Superpowers he needs when an alien race he made up in class yesterday swoops into town and holds his school hostage, threatening to eat his teacher . . .

  ‘This book is gross, hilarious and totally captures my best side. I give it five pumpkins.’

  - Alien Princess Rachael

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Nelson 2: Broccoli and Spies

  Imprint

  Read more at Penguin Books Australia

  Nelson Hunter hated vegetables. He hated smelling them, he hated looking at them. But most of all, he hated eating them.

  Just the thought of eating a zucchini made his eyes water. One time he almost threw up because somebody said the word ‘broccoli’. But of all the gross, disgusting vegetables in this world, Nelson hated pumpkin the most.

  Nelson Hunter lived in the messiest room in an otherwise tidy house. He shared this mostly tidy house with his mum, his dad, his twin sisters – Emily and Kate – and their dog, who all kept much cleaner rooms than Nelson (even the dog). The house also had a spare room for whenever Nelson’s grandparents came to stay.

  Sometimes it would be months between visits, but lately his grandparents had been visiting for a few days every week. At least they had been staying at Nelson’s house instead of the other way round.

  Nelson didn’t like visiting his grandparents one bit!

  It wasn’t because of the long drive to get there, which involved being sandwiched between his two sisters singing the worst songs in the universe for the entire three-hour car trip.

  It wasn’t even because he forgot to pack something important every time – like his toothbrush, socks or, worst of all, his underwear.

  The reason Nelson hated visiting his grandparents was the fact that Nelson’s grandparents lived on a farm.

  I know what you’re thinking: farms are cool, right? Baby pigs to pat, horses to ride, hay to jump in. Here’s the thing: Nelson’s grandparents’ farm didn’t have any of that stuff. Nelson’s grandparents’ farm had just one thing, and lots of it: VEGETABLES.

  Remember when I told you that Nelson hated vegetables? Can you imagine anything worse to a kid like Nelson than 400 acres of nothing but bright green beans, shiny red tomatoes and pointy white asparagus? Usually when he found out that his grandparents were coming to stay instead of the other way round, he was stoked.

  Unfortunately for Nelson, it wasn’t just his grandma and grandpa who’d come to visit his family during their recent visits.

  His grandpa had also filled every inch of free space in his car with the year’s newly harvested, award-winning pumpkins.

  Nelson’s dad was a great cook. Or so everyone said. But Nelson secretly hated his cooking, and it was especially bad lately. Nelson knew that his dad wasn’t a bad cook, but Nelson hated his dad’s cooking for one very good reason: it always contained vegetables. As the main ingredient!

  Nelson’s dad took immense pride in his cooking. He’d never throw a steak on a plate with a side of random veggies. Nelson would always overhear him saying things like ‘Vegetables should be treated with the same amount of respect that meat gets’, which Nelson didn’t really understand but still passionately disagreed with.

  Over the last few weeks, Nelson’s dad had used the award-winning pumpkins in every single dinner he’d put on the table. First there was pumpkin risotto, then there was roast pumpkin salad,

  pumpkin pie,

  pumpkin ravioli and

  three different kinds of thick

  pumpkin soup!

  It was the worst month Nelson’s nostrils had ever had. Just smelling the constant orange stink of his dad’s pumpkin dishes was bad enough. He couldn’t imagine how much worse the food would taste!

  Nelson hated his dad’s cooking, but he would NEVER let his dad find that out. It would break his dad’s heart!

  Not even a minute after putting the plates on the table, Nelson’s dad would always ask everyone if they were enjoying their meal.

  Nelson’s mum wouldn’t even swallow the food in her mouth before exclaiming how much she loved it.

  Next, Nelson’s twin sisters would both scream ‘YUMMY!’ at the exact same time and give each other a high five.

  Nelson’s entire family loved vegetables! What was wrong with them?

  Nelson had got really good at hiding his plate from his dad’s prying eyes. He would set the table early and block his dad’s vision with every condiment on the table. All his dad could see was salt, pepper and a selection of sauces.

  When Nelson’s dad looked over at him, Nelson would force the biggest smile he could muster and say, ‘Dad, you’ve done it again. Another delicious dinner!’

  While his weirdo family was stuffing their faces with disgusting vegetables, Nelson would carefully sneak every last vegetable from his plate and into his pockets. Sometimes he had to be extra careful and ladle an entire bowl of soup, spoon by spoon, into his pockets.

  When there was no food left on his plate, he’d ask to use the bathroom, then make a sneaky detour to his bedroom, where he’d empty all the veggies from his pockets and chuck them under his bed.

  If you ever find yourself in the bedroom of Nelson Hunter, under no circumstances should you take a peek under his bed. No matter how strange the smell coming from under there is, don’t look.

  Trust me when I say that several years’ worth of hidden vegetables is the grossest thing you’ll ever see. Even Nelson would cover his eyes when he emptied his pockets under there. Sleeping on top of something that gross was pretty bad but, to Nelson, anything was better than actually eating those vegetables – especially pumpkin.

  After disposing of his dinner, Nelson would rush to the bathroom and flush the toilet so that his parents thought he’d been there all along. He’d always time it so that he’d be away from the table when his dad asked if anybody wanted seconds. By the time Nelson returned, his weirdo family would’ve polished off all those extra veggies.

  Another thing Nelson hated was school.

  Unfortunately, Nelson couldn’t sneak school into his pockets and stash his boring teacher, his dumb school books and blunt pencils under his bed.

  Mr Shue had been Nelson’s teacher at Greenmore West since Kindergarten. For four years, Nelson had to spend every day of the school year listening to Mr Shue’s super-weird voice, which was really deep and extra nasally at the same time.

  Four years of Mr Shue’s bright-orange ties, fuzzy moustache and photochromic glasses. Nelson only knew what the word ‘photochromic’ meant because Mr Shue was so proud of his glasses. The lenses were see-through when he was indoors, then magically turned into sunglasses when he went outside in the sunlight. Nelson thought that was a cool trick when he first saw it in Kindergarten, but four years later he thought photochromic glasses we
re the lamest things on the planet.

  Nelson knew kids at other schools who got a new teacher at the start of every year. Even every other grade at his own school got a new teacher at the start of every year! But for some reason, his class was stuck with Mr Shue.

  Here’s the worst thing: Mr Shue had never taken a sick day at any point during those four years. Not one! And if a student was off sick, he’d send home a week’s worth of homework for every day missed. So Nelson hadn’t missed a school day since Year One.

  Maths wasn’t Mr Shue’s strong point, so Nelson wasn’t even able to add up how many days of his life he’d spent with the same teacher. He did know how to spell ‘photochromic’, though.

  Nelson’s best friend since Kindergarten was Olive Sadana. She lived five doors up from Nelson’s house and LOVED vegetables. She was the only person who knew about Nelson’s secret. She thought his refusal to eat vegetables was the funniest thing in the universe and she teased him about it constantly.

  ‘You’re looking extra green today, Nelson,’ she said with a smile, as they waited for the school bus. She peered at him and grinned. ‘I think you might have scurvy.’

  He laughed, pretending he knew what scurvy was. Wasn’t that something pirates got after months of being at sea? He made a mental note to look up the symptoms of scurvy later that night, just in case he did actually have the pirate disease.

  ‘So, what have you got to swap with me today?’ Olive asked, opening her lunch box.

  Nelson took his out of his schoolbag, lifted the lid and gagged. ‘A bag of carrot sticks,’ he replied, then peeled back the top piece of bread off his sandwich and shuddered. ‘With a . . . mashed pumpkin sandwich.’

  ‘Amazing!’ Olive exclaimed, with a genuine enthusiasm that made Nelson question why he was her friend. ‘I’ll trade you for a packet of Burger Rings and a hot dog bun filled with peanut butter?’

  ‘You’ve got a deal!’ Nelson replied, with the same amount of genuine enthusiasm. He wished Olive’s family would invite him over for dinner.

  Olive replaced the lid on her now vegetable-filled lunch box and put an arm around Nelson. ‘Are you ready to give your presentation on the solar system to the class today?’ she asked, knowing what Nelson’s answer would be.

  ‘Our p-presentations are due today?!’ Nelson stammered, panicking. ‘I haven’t even started writing mine!’

  Olive shook her head at him and laughed. ‘The Shue is not going to be happy!’

  ‘Did you finish yours?’ Nelson asked, already knowing the answer.

  ‘Of course! Three minutes on the many vitamins and minerals found in – you guessed it – vegetables!’ Olive jumped to her feet as their bus pulled up. ‘Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two, scurvy boy.’

  Nelson gulped and scrambled after her.

  Mr Shue had given his class a pretty easy assignment: to deliver a three-minute presentation on a topic of their choosing in front of the class. Everybody chose to write their talk about the things they loved most. Olive had chosen vegetables. Dennis and Diana Kostopoulos, who were sitting in front of Nelson and Olive on the bus, had chosen caterpillars and kickboxing. Nelson, as usual, hadn’t been paying attention.

  If Nelson had the choice, he would have chosen to talk about dogs. Specifically, his six-year-old sausage dog, Pickles. But because he’d been looking out the window when Mr Shue had called his name last week, he didn’t get to choose his own topic.

  ‘If you love staring into space so much, Mr Hunter,’ Mr Shue had bellowed in his weird voice that was both deep and nasally, ‘then you’ll love writing me three minutes about the solar system.’

  Nelson wasn’t necessarily bad at school. He was just easily distracted.

  Every year at his parent–teacher meeting, Mr Shue would tell Nelson’s parents the same thing: ‘Nelson has the potential to be a good student, he just needs to apply himself more.’

  If Mr Shue wasn’t busy watching the other students give their presentations this morning, he would have noticed Nelson Hunter applying himself more than ever. In the fourth row, third from the left, Nelson was furiously writing every solar system fact he knew on a piece of paper he’d torn out of his English book.

  If Nelson wasn’t so busy applying himself more than ever, he would have noticed Olive giving the best three-minute presentation about vegetables that anyone at Greenmore West Primary School had ever heard. Specifically, he would have heard her mention that pumpkins can strengthen your heart, mind and body – a fact that would be of some use to Nelson at a later point in this story.

  After a full minute of thunderous applause and roaring cheers for Olive’s incredible presentation (seriously, it was very, very good), Mr Shue stood up from his desk and interrupted Nelson’s furious solar-system-fact-writing session.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready, Mr Hunter,’ he said with a nasty grin. ‘Why don’t you come and tell the class what is so fascinating about space that makes you stare into it for every minute of the school day?’

  Nelson glanced down at his notes. He’d written eight random facts about space, and each would take roughly ten seconds to say. He quickly did the maths in his head, amazed that he could manage it. Eighty seconds all up, and he needed to fill 180. He was going to have to wing it towards the end.

  Nelson took a deep breath and walked to the front of the classroom. He could do this.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Shue and everyone in 3B,’ he began very slowly. ‘My name is Nelson Hunter and today I’d like to tell you about the wonders of . . . SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!’

  Nelson put on his best dramatic newsreader voice for that last part and really stretched out his pronunciation of ‘space’ so it lasted as long as possible. This bold move bought him approximately six seconds.

  A few students laughed.

  Olive groaned.

  Mr Shue was not impressed, and gritted his teeth.

  ‘Get on with it, Mr Hunter,’ he said, waving the timer in his hand. ‘Stop wasting time.’

  Nelson began listing all the names of the planets in the solar system, stopping just before Pluto, which he introduced as a dwarf planet, even though he had no idea what a dwarf planet was. The class was clearly impressed, though, which made Nelson a little excited.

  Unfortunately, this caused him to speed up and rattle out the next seven space facts at a rapid speed. Nelson excitedly told his class about the low gravity on the moon, the colour of Mars, the bigness of Jupiter, the smallness of Mercury, the rings of Saturn, the brightness of Venus and the coldness of Neptune in less than a minute. After finally pausing to take a breath, Nelson looked over at Mr Shue.

  ‘How much longer to go, sir?’ he asked.

  Mr Shue shook his head. ‘You’ve still got ninety seconds, Mr Hunter.’

  Ninety seconds! Nelson was doomed.

  He desperately searched his memory for anything else he knew about space. Would Mr Shue notice if he just started telling everybody the plot to Star Wars? Would he get suspended if he made a Uranus joke? His memory wasn’t giving him anything useful. It was time to get creative.

  ‘On one of Neptune’s moons,’ Nelson began, ‘lives an ancient race of fat, purple aliens called the Despinites!’

  Nelson’s class erupted with laughter.

  Olive hid her face in her hands.

  Mr Shue threw the timer onto his desk.

  Nelson decided to keep going. He was already in trouble, why not finish the story he’d started? ‘The Despinites,’ he continued, ‘travel from planet to planet in a spaceship that’s shaped like a cucumber, searching for their favourite delicacy: teachers!’

  Everyone in the class lost it. Half of them started banging their fists on their desks, tears running down their cheeks. It was the dumbest thing they’d ever heard anyone say.

  Mr Shue, now red-faced with his eyebrows raised impossibly high, smashed his hands down on his desk so loudly that the local police station received three noise complaints. ‘That’s enough, Nelson!’ he shouted, sali
va spraying from his lips.

  Diana laughed from her desk in the second row. ‘What’s the matter, sir? You afraid that you’ll be eaten by a Despinite?’

  ‘No, Ms Kostopoulos,’ Mr Shue shouted, his voice trembling with anger. ‘I’m afraid that Nelson Hunter will have to write a new presentation for me. Three minutes about the importance of telling the truth. A presentation that he can spend the afternoon writing in detention!’

  ‘Detention? But I’ll miss my bus!’ Nelson protested.

  Mr Shue’s frown suddenly turned upside down and a deeply evil smile swept across his face. ‘Perfect,’ he said to Nelson. ‘You can practise your presentation on the walk home.’

  Detention was only introduced to Greenmore West at the start of the year, but Nelson had already been given it enough times that he was pretty used to the extra hour after school a few afternoons each week.

  He got on really well with Ms Blake, who was a PE teacher by day and a detention supervisor by afternoon. They’d never got on when she was teaching him PE (Nelson insisted the only sport he was good at was Mario Kart), but their friendship blossomed through Nelson’s commitment to detention.

  Nelson had actually become quite productive with his time in detention – far more productive than he was during regular school hours. He’d spent his last handful of detentions working out new ways to get rid of vegetables from his dinner plate – the smell coming from under his bed was starting to give him funny dreams, and the rest of his family were bound to start asking questions about what he was hiding in there soon.