When Elizabella got home that afternoon her dad was in the garden, covered in dirt with a big grin on his face. “Look, Elizabella!” He beckoned her outside. “Mum’s waratah!”

Elizabella knew that her mum, Audrey, had grown up in a tiny apartment. When she moved in with Elizabella’s dad, it was the first time Audrey had ever lived somewhere with a garden. She loved the garden, but she was hopeless when it came to growing anything in it. Audrey had tried planting basil and parsley, daisies and poppies. But she was easily distracted from the task of nurturing the plants, and whatever she planted inevitably ended up shrivelled and brown – if it ever emerged from being seeds in the ground at all.

Once for her birthday, Martin had planted Audrey a waratah shrub. He’d said it was hers to look after because it was the type of plant that would thrive even if you might accidentally neglect it from time to time. Elizabella’s mum had loved that waratah and it did thrive, even though she forgot about it often. It thrived now, even though Audrey had passed away. Elizabella’s mum was up in the sky somewhere along with Gran, all the worms that had come and gone from Squiggly Manor and Elizabella’s cat Oldcarpetina (named so because when they got her she was already so old she had almost no fur left, and Elizabella thought she resembled a very wise, old carpet).

Elizabella went out into the garden where her dad was proudly pointing to the big red flower coming out of the shrub.

“Mum can still make it flower!” he said.

“Yeah,” said Elizabella. “Nice one, Mum.”

“Remember when she tried to grow tomatoes and instead she grew an ant colony?”

Elizabella laughed. Her mum had been so bad at growing things. Except for ants. And waratahs. And Elizabellas. She was excellent at growing those. Even her experiment at growing a Toddberry had something going for it, Elizabella supposed.

“Now I’ve worked up a thirst!” her dad said. “Chocolate milkshakes?”

“Sounds great, Dad.”

Elizabella followed her dad back inside the house. It was nice to see him so happy and Elizabella’s heart sank knowing she was about to really kill the mood by giving him the letter that was in her bag . . . Maybe she’d wait a bit longer.

She sat on a stool by the kitchen bench while her dad got to work on the milkshakes.

“Remember when Mum tore two pairs of jeans and then tried to take the good bits of each pair and staple them together to make a new pair of jeans?” Elizabella asked.

Martin laughed. “They were the worst pair of jeans I’d ever seen!”

“And then she insisted on wearing them to the Bilby Creek Good Time Supermarket just to prove that they worked.”

“I was so embarrassed!” said Martin. “I hid in the car while she went in!”

They drank their chocolate milkshakes.

“How was school?” Martin asked.

School was not something Elizabella wanted to talk about, because it would quickly lead to the letter in her bag.

She quickly changed the topic. “Let’s play snap! I really want to play snap!”

“Okay?” said Martin, a tad confused.

Elizabella didn’t even like snap. She ran out of the room, cursing herself silently in her head for not suggesting a game she actually enjoyed, like gin rummy.

After she returned with the cards, they played a few rounds.

“So, Elizabella, how was school?” her dad asked again.

“Have you done the crossword in the Bilby Creek Gazette? We have to do the crossword in the Bilby Creek Gazette!” she said, hurriedly.

“We do? I didn’t know you–”

Elizabella had already run out of the room in search of the paper.

After the crossword, Elizabella suggested sudoku. Then she made her dad read out all the items in the trade and personal sections of the paper, as well as the advice column. He drew the line at the real estate pages.

“Elizabella, I think we’ve had all the joy we can from the Bilby Creek Gazette today,” he said.

“Don’t you want to see what the median rental price of a two-bedroom unit in Bilby Creek is?” Elizabella asked.

“Ummm, no,” said Martin, closing the paper. “Elizabella, how was school?”

“Well, Dad . . .”

Her number was up.

A few minutes later, Elizabella was watching her dad’s eyes. They would widen, then narrow, as his brows arched and furrowed while he sat at the kitchen table reading the letter that had been sent home with her that day. He was trying to process what Elizabella had done. He was reading the words but he couldn’t make them stick together in a comprehensible order. Instead, they floated around his head like balloons randomly bobbing across the sky. Pool. Gobblefrump. Sandpit. Poppers.

The letter had been transcribed by Mr Biffington, who ran the Bilby Creek Primary School office with his partner Mr Crab. Mr Biffington and Mr Crab hyphenated their names when they got married on the Gold Coast, so technically they were both Mr Biffington–Crab. To avoid confusion they used their original names at school.

That afternoon, when Mr Gobblefrump had eventually come to see her in the Think Very Hard About What You’ve Done Corner, Elizabella couldn’t be too sure exactly what he had said. He had screamed so high, he sounded like an oboe. From outside the office in the playground, Huck, who was waiting for Elizabella, could have sworn he saw a crack appear in the glass of the office window.

After that, Elizabella was taken in to see Mr Biffington, where she had to explain what she had done in full detail. Elizabella loved this; it was like being interviewed for the Bilby Creek Gazette. And as Elizabella explained her inspiration, the resources and the sheer human effort involved in the creation of Pit Pool, Mr Biffington had to stifle a Real Human Response.

This was a thing Elizabella had noticed teachers doing all the time. When a kid did something really cool or funny that a teacher didn’t want to acknowledge, they would often try to hide their Real Human Response. Sometimes they would fake a coughing fit, make a series of garbled grunts or, in extreme cases, turn around and run away.

Mr Biffington’s strategy was to put a handkerchief to his mouth, hiding an involuntary expression of awe, and squint very deeply through his tortoiseshell glasses, masking a look of disbelief. Elizabella was confident that he and Mr Crab would be singing Pit Pool’s praises over dinner at home that night.

Now, at the kitchen table, Martin had finally finished the letter. He was starting to grasp what had happened.

“You made a pool . . . from juice . . .?”

“Yeah. I named her Pit Pool.”

Martin let out a big sigh.

“Dad, are you okay?” Elizabella asked, as she watched Martin drawing circles around his temples with his fingers.

Then he looked at his watch and sat bolt upright with a start.

“6.30!” he cried. “I have to go!” Elizabella was confused. Where could her dad possibly have to go in such a hurry?

“Where?”

“Ahh . . .” said Martin, already on his feet, “nowhere . . . somewhere . . .”

“What?” asked Elizabella, who had followed him into the bathroom where he was dabbing cologne on his neck. Martin pulled a fifty-dollar note out of his wallet and put it in Elizabella’s hands.

“Seeing an action film. Order pizza,” he said with a sense of finality. Clearly he had no desire to discuss the matter of his mysterious outing any further.

Why is Dad racing out to see an action film? He never goes to the cinema . . . But pressing the matter opened the door to more Pit Pool trouble. So, even though it was extremely hard, she swallowed all of her curiosity.

“Okay Dad,” she said. “Have fun!” And he promptly left the house. Elizabella went back into the kitchen.

“What about dinner?” said Toddberry, swishing the hair curtains out of his face to reveal a snarl.

He’d been sitting at the kitchen table this whole time, drawing a beast on his forearm. Elizabella looked at Toddberry’s inky creation. It was a snake with the head of a dog. Elizabella suspected he had chosen to make the body a snake because it was easier to draw than the body of the dog, but she thought the better of suggesting it.

Elizabella pondered the fifty-dollar note scrunched in her fist. I could order pizza, she thought, or I could make Toddberry a special dinner AND give Dad back his money. Win-win!

“I’ll cook dinner,” she said.

“What are you going to make? A picture of spaghetti bolognaise?” said Toddberry.

Elizabella went to the fridge and started pulling things out. A jar of chocolate spread, two carrots, three leftover spring rolls and anything else that looked vaguely within its use-by-date.

She had soon set up a veritable picnic on the table. She put a plate in front of Toddberry and one at her own place. Toddberry stared at dinner which, along with the aforementioned, included strawberry yoghurt, a jar of capers, a cup of cold pea soup and a lettuce leaf. As a final touch, Elizabella put the Sorry Haiku she’d finally settled on in front of him.

Picture was funny

But made Toddberry hungry

For this, I’m sorry

“Thanks,” he managed. “It’s not umm . . . good, no offence.”

“It’s a haiku.”

“Just because it has a fancy name, doesn’t mean it’s good,” said Toddberry.

“It’s a Japanese poem with three lines that have five syllables, then seven, then five,” she explained.

Toddberry thought for a moment. Then he swished his hair out of his face and started counting on his fingers as he said:

“E-LIZ-A-BEL-LA,

DO YOU CALL THIS MESS DIN-NER?

ME-GA DI-SAS-TER.”

Elizabella was impressed. “Wow, you’re a really good mean poet,” she said.

Toddberry’s hair curtains closed, and he mumbled, “I’m good at heaps of stuff but no one knows.” He turned his attention back to the feast. “This is literally just the inside of the fridge outside of the fridge.”

“Yes!” said Elizabella. “It’s Deconstructed Fridge! It’s a delicacy.”

Toddberry and Elizabella ate bits and pieces from Deconstructed Fridge. Well, Elizabella tried to eat a bit of everything in defence of the edibility of her creation, while Toddberry just ate the whole jar of chocolate spread with his finger.

After dinner, she took some of the leftovers outside to Squiggly Manor, the worm farm at the bottom of the garden. She lifted the lid and looked down at the ever-growing worm family. She started scooping in the capers and yoghurt and various other bits and pieces. The curious worms slithered up to the food.

“At least you guys have sophisticated palates,” she said to the worms. As she watched them begin to gorge on their glorious banquet, she thought about her day. It had been magnificent, of course, but she had ruffled some feathers. Toddberry was surly, even though she had written him a Sorry Haiku and also made him dinner. And on the way home from school Huck, who had waited for her, said that he noticed some of Mr Gobblefrump’s hair was falling out, which was quite something given his hair was actually a toupee. She thought he must be really, really stressed out to be losing his fake hair.

Elizabella decided to write Mr Gobblefrump a Sorry Poem. She thought it should sound a little grown-up. So she sat in the garden watching the worms and let her mind go to work.

In the heat of the moment I forget what’s what

I forget what’s right and I forget what’s not

And my actions do become my art

Forgive me for doing what’s in my heart