An entry from our Summer Reading competition.

I’M not sure if you heard, but something very tragic happened the other day. 

While I was walking along the bridge that goes across to Fremantle, I saw a bus lose control and go careening off the edge and into the water. 

On its way, it ran over quite a few people and even pushed a car into the water as it fell. 

It was all pretty sad. 

People were in the water screaming for help, but no one could help them all the way down there. 

The only thing anyone could do was watch from the top of the high bridge as the people squirmed and screamed for help like little eels wriggling in a bucket. 

All told, I think about 17 people died in the accident, and even I died as well. 

Now you might be wondering, how can she be telling me this story if she died in the accident? 

It’s actually quite simple: I made the whole thing up. 

There was no accident or bus that day, in fact I never even went near the bridge that goes across to Fremantle. 

Now I’ll tell you what did happen. 

I met one of my friends in a café and she had the most interesting story to tell. 

She told me she had seen a little man in the vegetable shop trying to buy one half of a zucchini. 

He kept on and on with the shop clerk about how he only needed this much for his zucchini soup, and even one hair more would spoil the lot. 

It really was becoming quite a riot, and other people were lined up behind him giving him dirty looks all the while, but he didn’t pay them any notice. 

He just kept arguing that it wasn’t fair the shop sold such big zucchinis, that they should have smaller ones for people who wanted to make zucchini soup. 

It was at this point a tall man tapped him on the shoulder and suggested he make two zucchini soups instead. 

This intrigued the little man, and he thought long and hard about it. 

Everyone in the shop was waiting for what he had to say, as the whole thing had become a rather big spectacle by then. 

At that point my friend decided to go out of the shop and get some coffee, and that’s where she met me. 

It was all well and good until she told me she had made the whole story up. 

I asked her if the shop really did sell half-zucchinis and she said she didn’t know. 

I told her it wasn’t very nice her making up stories without any ending. 

She replied that actually it was my fault, as I had made her up and the story as well.

I agreed she was probably right, and we went back to drinking our coffee.

by YORK DARROW