Digger Field by Damian Davis Read Free Book Online

busy.’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘Stuff.’
    ‘Well, do you want to come down to the river tomorrow?’ I said.
    ‘What about Mr Black?’
    ‘Don’t worry about him. He’s just some dude who’s wagging work.’
    ‘You don’t know that,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t be a wuss, Wrigs,’ I said. ‘We can still get the world record.’
    ‘Can’t you find someone else with a video camera to go with you?’
    A video camera! Tearley. The double-crosser. She told Wriggler that I was only his friend because he had a camera. I let down my guard for a second and she set me up. I should never have trusted her.
    ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him, as innocently as I could.
    Wrigs hung up.
    I walked onto the front verandah and looked down at the stall. Squid had a customer. It was Mr Black.
    He gave Squid some money and took two biscuits. Mr Black looked up at me. We stared at each other for a moment, then he walked off down the road.
    Squid came running up holding a ten-dollar note.
    ‘That man gave me ten dollars. Ten dollars for two biscuits.’
    I was about to take it off him when he said, ‘I’m feeling sick.’
    A spout of puke came rushing out of his mouth and splashed all over him.
    He was completely covered, from head to toe. And so was the ten-dollar note.
    I couldn’t believe he’d had so much stuff in his stomach.
    ‘What did you put in those biscuits?’ I asked.
    ‘Vanilla.’
    He showed me the bottle.
    ‘That’s not vanilla,’ I said. ‘That’s oyster sauce.’

CHAPTER 14
DAY 13: Thursday
    My skims: 0
    Wriggler’s skims: 0
    Days to becoming World Champion: 26 for me. Never for Wrigs.
    Money made for tinnie: $0 ($725 to go.)
    No closer, no matter how hard we try.
    Mum woke me up to say Wriggler was on the phone.
    ‘W’sup?’ I said to him.
    ‘I’m so bored I’m looking forward to going back to school,’ he said.
    I wasn’t expecting to hear from him after yesterday, but I was pretty happy about it.
    ‘I’m so bored I painted a wall just so I could watch it dry,’ I said.
    ‘I’m so bored I cheer every time the grass grows.’
    The good news was it seemed Wriggler was so bored he’d forgotten we weren’t friends any more.
    ‘I’m so bored I caught a fly just so I’d have someone to talk to,’ I said.
    ‘I’m so bored I can’t be bothered finishing this sentence.’
    ‘Well, do you want to come over?’ I said.
    ‘I’m not going to the river. Mr Black might be there,’ he said.
    I agreed with him this time. I didn’t want to go, either. Seeing Mr Black outside my house yesterday had totally freaked me out. I couldn’t tell Wrigs about it. If I did, he’d lock himself inside his room and not come out until he heard Mr Black had died of old age.
    The world record attempt was on hold.
    ‘Let’s work out how to get the money together for the tinnie,’ I said.
    When Wrigs came over, we sat on the front verandah working out ways to make money. We still had seven hundred and twenty-five dollars to make before the end of the holidays.
    It wasn’t through lack of trying, but we hadn’t perfected Diggerade and we hadn’t managed to get anything up on YouTube. We lost money from being bike couriers and the only thing that we ended up with from clearing Ms Burke’s yard was sunstroke.
    ‘Mum said you’re not allowed over to our house again after the silkworms,’ said Wrigs.
    ‘I still reckon that was a great idea,’ I said. ‘We just need to get actual silkworms.’
    ‘We’re still finding moths in the cupboards. Mum says if they’ve laid eggs it’ll take years to get rid of them.’
    All I had to show for all my brilliant ideas was one vomit-soaked ten-dollar note.
    ‘I made ten dollars yesterday.’
    ‘How?’ said Wrigs.
    ‘I got Squid to bake some biscuits and sell them out the front of the house.’
    ‘That’s a great idea. We should do it again,’ said Wrigs.
    ‘Problem was, Squid put oyster sauce in the biscuits and made himself sick. The money is covered in