BELCHMAN!
CHAPTER 7
On the bus to school, Bella was still scribbling in her notepad.
‘Almost,’ said Bella.
‘I bet it’s great,’ I said. ‘I’m going to enter the competition too,’ I told Bella, and showed her a bunch of dinosaur jokes I’d written.
Whenever Bella says something nice to me, I blush. It’s a bit embarrassing.
Sometimes I wish I could wear clown make-up all the time and then no-one could tell when I was red in the face.
‘Hey, Weir, can you help me finish my song today?’ said Bella.
‘Of course!’
Bella and I spent all of recess working on her song. It was so much fun!
It turns out …
By the time we finished the song, it was 
Bella was in with a real shot!
We both were!
We handed in our entries and wished each other luck.
‘Good luck to you, too,’ I said. ‘That’s a great song, you know it’s true.’
‘Are you still rhyming?’ asked Bella.
‘I’d like to say I’ve given it the chop, but it’s really, really hard to stop.’
Quite a few kids had entered the comp and we were all really excited to find out who’d won!
Blake Green had written a poem about how lonely it is being the school bully. He read some to us at lunch.
Henry had written a story about a superhero who could fight crime by burping.
‘And the city was safe,’ said Henry, ‘thanks to Belchman.’
At the end of the day, we had a special assembly to announce the winner. The judges—Miss Franklin and Mr Bongo—were going to pick their favourite entry.
‘It was a very close competition,’ said Mr Bongo. ‘We had so many brilliant entries. But two REALLY stood out. They were both very clever and very funny!’
‘We can only have ONE winner … but Miss Franklin and I can’t decide! So if you hear your name,’ said Mr Bongo, ‘could you please come up on stage?’
We were the top two!
Bella and I turned and high-fived each other, then we walked up to the stage together.
I really wanted to win so that I could pay for Grandma’s flights … but I also wanted Bella to win so that she could replace her mum’s sewing machine. I didn’t know WHAT I wanted!
‘We’re going to need EVERYONE’S help to decide the winner!’ said Miss Franklin.
Bella and I had to read what we’d written, then whoever had the loudest cheers from the crowd would take out the top prize!
I was up first!
I held my collection of jokes and started reading them out.
My jokes were a hit! They were laughing so much—it felt great!
Once the laughter settled down, it was Bella’s turn. She smiled at me and I handed her the mic.
Then Bella began to sing her song.
The crowd was LOVING it! They were all laughing and clapping!
Bella grinned and kept going …
The crowd went nuts and it was clear there was a first prize winner …
