“And this here, you won’t believe what this is! It’s none other than the machine that squirts the toothpaste into the tube! Haven’t you always wondered how they do it? Well, this is how!” Mr Gobblefrump explained proudly, pressing the remote to flick to the next photo.

It was evening time at Mr Gobblefrump’s house and the toothpaste factory slide show had been going for an hour already. “And this one–” He squinted, trying to make it out what it was. “Ah yes, I see that one is a picture of my thumb.”

Suddenly he heard an audible snore. It was so loud it gave him a little scare.

“Eep!” he squealed, which woke up Miss Duck.

“Ahhh!” she screamed back, having been frightened awake. She sat upright on the sofa.

“My dear Petunia, did you fall asleep? I would gladly go back any number of slides so that you don’t miss a thing!”

“Ah, no!” she said. “No, no, no, no, I remember every moment. It’s just sometimes I close my eyes and make a snoring sound when I am particularly enjoying myself.”

“Splendid,” said Mr Gobblefrump, completely satisfied with this response. He clicked the remote again to move on. “And this is a picture of the machine that puts the toothpaste into the box. Can you believe it? There is a machine for everything now.”

That was it.

“‘Scuse me, Chester, nature calls!” Miss Duck promptly stood up, walked to the bathroom and sat on the toilet for five full minutes. And even though she didn’t actually go, she was very much relieved.

The next day Miss Duck tried to catch Elizabella’s attention before school and at both recess and lunch, but she couldn’t see her little ghostwriter anywhere. Elizabella had spent the day fixated on her Huck Crush – trying to work out what to say to him, and never quite managing to find the words. When the final bell rang for the end of the day, Miss Duck ran out of the canteen and finally spotted her.

“Elizabella! Elizabella!”

Elizabella and Huck were about to walk home when they heard a voice ringing through the playground. Elizabella spun around to see Miss Duck peeking out of the tuckshop and gesturing for her to come over. Elizabella suddenly remembered Miss Duck had just been on her date night.

“I’d better go see what that’s about,” she said, running off.

“I can wait for you if you . . .” Huck trailed off. She was out of earshot before he could say “like”, which he said quietly to himself instead.

When Elizabella got to the tuckshop, Miss Duck was a bit agitated.

“Elizabella, remember how I told you that sometimes you have to humour the people you like?”

“Yes?”

“Maybe I was wrong.”

“The toothpaste factory slide show?”

Miss Duck stared into the distance, with a look in her eyes like someone who had suffered an unspeakable horror.

“It was . . . brutal,” she said. Elizabella’s heart sank. If Miss Duck lost interest in Mr Gobblefrump, that would spell doom for everyone.

“Don’t you need to go out with him again to be sure how you feel?”

“Maybe, I don’t know . . .”

“Come on, Miss Duck, give him one more chance,” Elizabella encouraged.

“Well, he does want to take me out to L’Escargots Bilby, the new restaurant in town . . .”

“That sounds fun!” said Elizabella.

“They serve a fusion of traditional French and Bilby Creek cuisine!” said Miss Duck, getting a little bit excited.

“You gotta go. I’ll write you the lovey-est dovey-est poem you’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe you’re right. What would I do without you, Elizabella?”

Elizabella felt a twinge of guilt. Of course she cared about Miss Duck’s happiness, but that wasn’t really why she was trying to save the relationship.

Back in the playground, she looked around for her crush, but it seemed Huck had gone home. Minnie, however, was waiting for her. “What happened in there?”

“Bad news, seems like Miss Duck is going cold on Gobblefrump.”

“No! This is a disaster of epic proportions,” said Minnie.

“I know. They’re going out on one more date tomorrow night.”

“You’d better write a good poem to reignite their flame.”

“Oh, I know, I’m on it,” said Elizabella.

“Like Mèng Hàorán good,” continued Minnie.

“Who’s that?”

Minnie looked at Elizabella, shocked. “You don’t know Mèng Hàorán?”

“No, who is that?”

“He’s one of the most important poets from the Tang Dynasty . . .”

Elizabella had no idea what Minnie was talking about.

“Ummm . . . aka the Golden Age of Chinese poetry?” Minnie said.

Elizabella shrugged. “Nope, no idea.”

“I thought you were the poetry expert!” said Minnie. “Let me teach you one of his poems. It’s called ‘Spring Morning’.”

Minnie cleared her throat and began to recite:

“I wake up with the sun up high

Birds chirp everywhere in the sky

Last night a rainstorm passed by

Flowers must have fallen down.”

“Wow, what a beautiful poem!” said Elizabella.

“It sounds even better in Mandarin. I’ll lend you a book. If you want to be a poetry expert you need to expand your horizons.”

“Seems like I do,” agreed Elizabella. “But for now, I have to write one killer love poem.”

Later in the evening, Elizabella sat at the big old wooden writing table in her room. It was covered in loose paper and notepads and sticky notes. All her walls were, too. Where other kids had band and movie posters or photos of them and their friends, Elizabella’s walls were covered in half-finished stories and poems.

She sat with a pen out and a large, pretty sheet of handmade tangerine paper. Pristine. Not a drop of ink on it.

“Think!” Elizabella implored herself, “Thiiiiiiiiiiiink!” Her brain remained sitting there stubbornly with its arms folded (her brain had arms, made of brains).

“Please, brain!” she said out loud.

I don’t wannnnna! said Elizabella’s brain, sulkily in her head.

“Come on, can’t you think of some nice things to say about Mr Gobblefrump?”

No! I can’t do it any more!

“Well, what are we going to do?

If you want me to think of nice lovey-dovey things to say, you’re going to have to pretend we’re writing about someone else.

“Oh . . .”

And you know who I mean.

Elizabella knew exactly who her brain meant. And an image of a skinny little boy with a lovely smile and sandy hair and a hole in his slime-green shoe and glasses on his eyes and a tennis ball bouncing all over the place came into her head.

She picked up a pen, and started to write . . .

“As you know, electricity powers many of the devices you use every day – light globes, fridges, TVs . . .”

It was the following morning and Elizabella had given the new poem to a very grateful Miss Duck. Now, in class, Miss Carrol was teaching everyone about electricity, and it had given Elizabella an excellent idea.

“Metal is a very good conductor of electricity,” said Miss Carrol. She held up a power cord that had been opened up so you could see what was inside. “That’s why the metal wires in this cord are coated in this white plastic, and the bit you touch when you plug the metal prongs into the wall is plastic – otherwise you’d get a shock.”

Elizabella decided to share her idea with her new co-conspirator, Minnie. “Hey, Minnie.”

“Yes?”

“I have something pretty special planned for lunch. You wanna help me make it happen?”

“Sure!” said Minnie.

“Okay, meet me at the silver benches by the big oak tree in the playground.”

“See you there, comrade.”

Comrade. That’s an upgrade from soldier, thought Elizabella, smiling. Minnie and I can be comrades.

At lunchtime, Elizabella was standing next to a set of silver benches in the playground. On the ground in front of her was a single square of carpet. All the carpet in the school was made-up of individual squares, and sometimes they came loose. Elizabella had been eyeing off a piece of it in the library that had completely come away and sat there, unstuck near the History of Concrete section that nobody ever borrowed from. She knew it would come in handy someday. And that day was today.

Elizabella and her set-up were cordoned off by an elaborate tent-like barricade made from large twigs, rubbish bins, discarded school jumpers and painting smocks from the art room. Students were beginning to queue up to see what Elizabella was up to. Everything was going perfectly except that Comrade Minnie had never shown up. So instead, Elizabella had enlisted Sandy to help her. He was acting as her spruiker, standing just outside the barricade, gathering customers. Elizabella had given him some catchy rhymes to say, to lure in customers.

“Step right up! Over this way! The Electric Woman will make your day!”

Of course her gang were the first in the queue. Huck, Ava and Evie had been wondering why Elizabella wasn’t around to play handball – and they were keen to see what she had cooked up.

Huck was the first inside, where he saw Elizabella had tied a jumper around her head and was standing on the little square of carpet stomping and scuffing her feet on it over and over again.

“Are you ready to feel the power of The Electric Woman?” asked Elizabella, a little out of breath.

“Yes!” said Huck.

“Then sit yourself down on this magical silver bench,” she said, gesturing to the seat.

Huck sat down, and Elizabella upped her speed, really rubbing her shoes hard on the little square of carpet. Huck had no idea what was going on. Suddenly, Elizabella stopped and leaned down. She touched Huck on the shoulder and . . .

ZAAAP!

“Eeeek!” he squealed. When she touched him she had given him a giant shock of static electricity.

“She really is electric!” Huck said, running out of the tent.

Excellent, thought Elizabella, knowing that a positive testimonial from someone you know was the most powerful marketing tool of all – and basically everyone in the playground knew Huck.

The word spread and people began forming a long queue. Elizabella rubbed her feet on the little square of carpet and gave electric shocks to everyone who came in. But, after about ten minutes, the queue started to thin, and then disappeared altogether.

Eventually Sandy came in.

“What’s going on out there?” Elizabella asked.

“Ahhh, I don’t know. Everyone has gathered right down the other end of the playground,” said Sandy. He took his job seriously, and didn’t want to desert Elizabella. But, as he bounced from foot to foot, Elizabella could tell he was desperate to see what all the fuss was about. She sighed.

“You’d better go and check it out,” she said, forcing a smile.

“Thank you!” Sandy replied and, with the relief of someone who has just spotted a bubbler in the middle of the desert, he ran for it.

Elizabella peeked out of the tent. Everyone was laughing and cheering and looking at something big and round. Elizabella squinted to try to make it out. It was a giant exercise ball . . . wearing trousers?

Reluctantly, she walked over to inspect further. Minnie had made a life-size sculpture of Mr Gobblefrump. Elizabella gathered from the squeals of excitement that Minnie had gone to Mr Gobblefrump’s locker and taken a spare pair of his trousers, then dressed the exercise ball in them. Then she had cut out a big chunk of the bottom of her yellow school T-shirt, the one that had just been specially altered at the uniform shop no less, and she’d torn it into strips to make a moustache and toupee. Then she’d stuck on a set of googly eyes and put three bottles of orange juice next to him.

Elizabella was upset. If Minnie really was a good friend, wouldn’t she have come to help me with my plan, just like I did with Humungo Handball, instead of stealing my thunder?

Elizabella wondered how Mr Gobblefrump was going to take it. Probably not well, she thought. Minnie had stolen his trousers, after all. Then she heard that sound from yesterday coming through the thick crowd of kids. “Huh! Huh! Huh!”

Mr Gobblefrump emerged and stood next to his likeness, laughing. “Hee hee hee!” He cried out, “Minnie! You are a true artiste!”

“Minnie! Minnie! Minnie!” everybody chanted.

Well, thought Elizabella. This really takes the cake.