by Gumball
‘This isn’t going to affect my chances, is it?’ Nicole asked breathlessly.
‘Um, what do you think?’ one of the bosses replied.
When Nicole got home, Gumball and Richard were already fighting over the helmet. Gumball wanted his luck back. Actually, after the day he’d had, he needed his luck back. But Nicole wasn’t going to let either one of them get it. That helmet was hers. She’d lost her job for it!
‘Stop it!’ Anais yelled. ‘Look at what you have become. This stupid hat is driving you crazy.’
‘Actually, it’s a helmet,’ Gumball corrected his sister.
‘It’s not a helmet or a hat!’ Anais insisted. ‘It’s a piece of tinfoil and it’s tearing this family apart. Look at you! You’re behaving like animals.’
‘Anais is right,’ Nicole sighed. ‘That helmet has a grip on us.’
‘Its magic takes control of whoever wears it,’ Richard said, shuddering.
‘Darwin and I have been talking,’ Anais continued, ‘and we’ve decided that it has to be destroyed.’
‘What?’ Gumball yelled. ‘You can’t destroy it. I’m nothing without it.’
‘I’m sorry, honey,’ Nicole told him softly, ‘but Anais is right.’
Gumball tried desperately to hold onto his good-luck hat, but Richard and Nicole held him back and Anais took it away. Gumball’s eyes filled with tears.
nais and Darwin headed for the town dump, determined to rid the Wattersons of the troublecausing hat.
‘Why can’t we just put it in the bin outside our house?’ Darwin asked as they trekked through heaps of rubbish.
‘Because they’ll just pull it out again,’ Anais answered.
‘Can’t we just rip it up into pieces?’ Darwin argued.
‘Have you ever tried ripping up tinfoil?’ Anais asked. ‘It sounds terrible. No, we must throw it in the garbage crusher.’
‘I don’t know what the big deal is with this lucky helmet, anyway. It looks pretty normal to me,’ Darwin said.
He put the hat on his head and continued to walk behind Anais.
‘Oh, look! A gold ring!’ Darwin announced. Seconds later, he shouted, ‘Oh, look, a pearly necklace!’ Then, ‘Wow, a diamond-encrusted chain! And it spells Darwin!’
He scooped up the treasures.
‘Come on! We’re nearly there!’
Anais yelled back to Darwin as they climbed a huge pile of junk to get to the garbage crusher.
‘I can’t do it, Anais,’ Darwin complained as he huffed and puffed behind her. By this time, he was wearing several kilograms of expensive jewels. Anais picked the exhausted Darwin up and carried him to the top of the rubbish mountain.
‘There,’ Anais said breathlessly as she dropped Darwin onto the pile. ‘I’ve done my part. Throw the stupid thing into the crusher.’
The giant machine’s jaws were chomping garbage and incinerating the debris.
Darwin was just about to throw the hat into the crusher when Gumball came running up behind him.
‘Darwin, watch out!’ Anais screamed as her brother ran past.
‘Give me my helmet!’ Gumball shouted. He grabbed the helmet from Darwin’s hands. ‘The helmet’s mine!’
‘Give it up, Gumball,’ Anais insisted. ‘There are two of us. You’ll never win.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Gumball answered. He quickly put on the tinfoil hat. ‘I can already feel its power,’ he said.
‘Well, not for long,’ Anais replied. She and Darwin began to throw rubbish at Gumball, but they kept missing.
‘Ha ha ha!’ Gumball laughed. ‘You’ll never hit me. I’m the luckiest man alive. And now, it’s my turn. Oh, look! A tennis ball machine.’
‘Ha!’ Anais snorted. ‘Good luck finding a power supply for that.’
‘Oh, look,’ Gumball answered, looking to his other side, ‘a generator.’
‘Okay, maybe the hat is magic after all. Run!’ Anais yelled to Darwin. Anais and Darwin fled down the hill and hid behind a pile of rubbish. The tennis balls were flying and Gumball was shooting them like a maniac.
‘He has us cornered,’ Anais admitted. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Pass me that stale baguette,’ Darwin suggested.
‘Why?’ Anais asked.
‘Don’t you worry about it,’ Darwin answered. ‘Just tell Mum and Dad that I love them.’ Darwin then charged into the action and began to bat the tennis balls with the baguette.
Finally, Darwin hit one of the balls back at Gumball and knocked the hat off his head.
‘Noooo!’ Gumball screamed. ‘My power!’ The helmet rolled towards the fiery garbage incinerator.
Gumball grabbed for the helmet and it stopped tumbling before it fell into the machine’s jaws. But now Gumball was dangling dangerously over the edge of the incinerator – with one hand holding onto a tree branch and the other reaching for the helmet.
‘Give me your hand!’ Anais yelled down to her brother.
‘No, I need the power,’ Gumball shouted in desperation.
‘For goodness sake, Gumball,’ Darwin called to him, ‘it’s only a piece of tinfoil.’
‘But think of what we could do with it,’ Gumball screeched as he stretched out his hand. ‘Got it!’ he yelled.
‘Listen, Gumball, that helmet is powerful, but it’s also evil,’ Anais told her big brother as he continued to dangle above the incinerator.
‘Look at what it’s done to you and to Mum and Dad,’ Darwin sighed.
‘But without it, I’m nothing!’ Gumball cried in despair.
‘Gumball, we’re nothing without you,’ Anais told him. ‘Now, give me your other hand.’
Gumball looked up at his sister and at Darwin and then looked down at the helmet. He released the helmet and clutched tightly to Anais’s hand. The three Wattersons then watched the garbage crusher’s mouth open and the tinfoil hat fall into the flames.
They headed home, relieved to be getting back to normal. Soon, however, they realised that the effects of the helmet would linger for a while.
The Watterson family shook their heads as Richard got ready to take his speedboat out for a spin – one hundred kilometres from any body of water.
Now THAT didn’t seem lucky at all.
The Curse and The Helmet
published in 2015
by Chirpy Bird, an imprint of Hardie Grant Egmont
Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street,
Richmond, VIC 3121, Australia
www.hardiegrantegmont.com.au
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eISBN 9781743583340
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