Hu-man Cannonball with us in the pool.

Thesmell of the powder and the cream mixed together was de-licious and sweet. Toby smeared butter on the handlesof taps, and mustard on the doorhandles. We sprayedthe lounge room with deodorant and flyspray, and thespooky mist settled on the furniture. We untuned theradio and lost the picture on the TV.

I ran down the stairs and across thegreen lawn, past pink concrete flamingos and white tyreswans, past coppery skinks sleeping on sunny rocks, pasthibiscus flowers scattered on the grass, and leaped overthe blue water, into my uncle’s arms

I felt like I wasfloating, like maybe I could fly. I wanted to be a HumanCannonball while I was still little enough to be thrownthrough the air

‘Good,’ I said stoutly. ‘I can’t wait.’And my mum answered me, ‘Don’t say that. You’reonly young once.’

‘Another baby tooth,’ Mum sighed. ‘Soon you’ll begrown up.’

‘Yes,’ said Mum, ‘I know.’‘Are we in trouble?’ I asked.Mum said, ‘Only if you do it again.’‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I never will.’‘I believe you,’ Mum replied.

Mum came to stand beside me. Samuel was asleepin her arms. She said, ‘Toby told me what you two didyesterday.’

couldn’t believe what I saw. Un-cle Bernie and Uncle Kelvin were in the swimming pool,flinging my brother into the air. Toby was laughing, hisscrawny limbs going mad. I watched Kelvin catch himand hoist him, sending him hurtling back to Bernie again.My uncles were grinning, calling out to each other, whis-tling and clapping their hands. I stared at them in won-der, my heart beating hard.

While I had been crying, I had also been wrigglingmy tooth. It slipped out of my gum with a taste of metaland blood. I held up the tooth and considered it. A losttooth meant fifty cents under my pillow, though I didn’tbelieve in the Tooth Fairy

Toby laughing and water splashing: it was the sound ofHuman Cannonball!

I suddenly saw something I had neverseen clearly before. I saw that I was just a kid, and that akid’s world is small and simple. But there is a world thatkids don’t see, and things are different there. That otherworld is big and complicated: nonetheless, I wanted to livethere, where everything was sensible, where there wereanswers to all the mysteries.

A proper person would look at the chaos andthink of burglars, and telephone the police. It seemed per-fectly obvious, as obvious as one plus one equalling two.But it hadn’t been obvious yesterday, when I was filling myuncles’ kitchen sink with green cordial

But if people discovered the truth, they wouldbe angry at me, and I could not bear being in trouble. Ihugged my knees and sucked my tooth and blinked awaytears. I felt furious with Samuel, whose crying had ledme to this. I was furious with my uncles and my mumand my grandparents and the motel manager and thepolice for not seeing that it was a prank and it was funny.

It was a PRACTICAL JOKE. Only DUMB people wouldn’t under-stand that! SMART people would LAUGH, not CALL THE POLICE!

made my stomach swirl like the sea.

I nearly swallowed my wobbly tooth, my tongue andboth my ears as well.

had broken into my uncles’ apartment, and made ashocking mess.

my teetering fang

I forgot aboutit all night, and even when I woke up the next morn-ing, I didn’t remember it straightaway. I was think-ing about one of my teeth, which was wobbling anddoomed to fall out that day

We opened the dresserdrawers and tossed our uncles’ clothes around the room.

everything thathappened was his fault

we stayed in the same motel every year. Themotel was called Santa Fe

But thesummer I was ten, all Toby and I wanted to do was lurkin the shadows of Uncle Bernie and Uncle Kelvin.

Their apartment was on the other sideof the motel, far from Samuel’s bellowing.

Tidying up would belike a game of hide-and-seek for them, they would nev-er know what they’d find next. They would marvel atour cleverness, and also at our mischievousness. Theywould try to be cross, but really they’d be chuckling andshaking their heads the way adults do when somethingmakes them mad but also makes them laugh

but the apartmentlooked like a doll’s house that had rolled down a street.Clothes flopped on the floor like exhausted ghosts, thedining chairs stood on their heads, the newspaper wastorn into a thousand pieces of confetti. The dresserdrawers hung out like tongues, the kitchen cupboardswere gasping mouths, the bathroom was completelyshell-shocked. Foamy faces grinned from the mirror; allthe pictures hung upside down

Toby opened a bedside drawer andfound money folded in a metal clip, and we argued aboutit in whispers. He wanted to sticky-tape the money to theceiling, but we didn’t have any sticky-tape; so we emptieda bottle of lemonade down the sink, put the money insidethe bottle and screwed the cap back on.

Nobody was watching us. Our un-cles had left their apartment key under the doormat. Ifished it out, and we slipped through the door like mice.Nobody saw.

So even though it was me whothought up the idea, what happened that day can, if youlook at it the right way, be blamed on Samuel

If Samuel hadn’t been crying, we could have watchedTV. If Mum hadn’t been stuck with the baby, she mighthave played table tennis with us. If Samuel’s shriekinghadn’t given my grandparents the irrits, they might havetaken us to the Splash ‘n’ Ride. But because His LittleHorrible Highness was sick, Toby and I couldn’t go any-where or do anything

For the first time allholiday, we had to amuse ourselves.

Everything was gooduntil the afternoon, when Bernie and Kelvin announcedthey were going into town and wouldn’t be home un-til late. No children were invited on this outing – andwhen they said children, they meant Toby and me. Wewatched, grief-stricken, as our uncles walked away

sometimes I need to hide myhead in a bucket

I don’t care to, eventhough my face will go Santa Fe pink

I used to wish I would never come down, that I couldstay in the sky forever. I wished the Christmas holidayswould not end, that we’d never make the long journeyback to the ordinary world. I wished that Santa Fe wasmy home, and that I could spend my life chasing skinksand picking frangipani and soaring through the air.

I remember my brother tumbling through the air, a tangleof arms and legs, the sky very blue behind him, the poolsparkling below

Toby and Itrailed them like ducklings

Because she wasn’t gettingany sleep, our mum was cranky. Our grandparents werecranky too, because they had the apartment next toours and they could hear the baby’s howls through thewall. They couldn’t sleep, and they couldn’t hear theirTV either. The only grown-ups who weren’t cranky wereour two uncles

Samuel was sick: he had colic, which makes ababy knot its fists, arch its back, turn purple as pudding,and SCREAM. Samuel shrieked from morning till night, andthen he shrieked all night.

we liked theglittering pool at Santa Fe. We liked floating about onthe li-los that Father Christmas gave us each year

our grandma and grandpa werethere, and so were our uncles, Bernie and Kelvin. Grand-ma and Grandpa were our mum’s mum and dad; Bernieand Kelvin were her younger brothers

PINK as sunburn, PINK as Barbie’s lips. Being at Santa Fe waslike living in a ball of fairy floss

Living in thegarden were tiny black-and-copper skinks. On the lawnwere flamingos made of concrete, and curvy swans madefrom car tyres. Everything that didn’t already have a brightcolour of its own was painted pink

whose flowers looked like dresses for dolls

holiday toa beach far away

namesare changed to protect the innocent.

the kind thatmakes you want to hide your head in a bucket wheneversomeone mentions it.

our brother Samuel, andalthough he wasn’t even one year old

Toby was eight,and I was ten

my brother Toby,

61 percent of kids ages 12–15 who had accounts before the ban still having access to at least one of them

Unfortunately for the Australian government (and fortunately for most kids), the implementation of a massive ban is going about as well as many critics predicted.

At the end of last year, the Australian government banned minors from having social media accounts.