First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019

Published in this ebook edition in 2019

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

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Text copyright © David Baddiel 2019

Cover and interior illustrations copyright © Steven Lenton 2019

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

David Baddiel and Steven Lenton assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008334154

Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008334185

Version: 2019-09-26

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Bit Before the Beginning

Chapter 1: This story begins

Chapter 2: Not a car

Chapter 3: The Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503

Chapter 4: “Fun”!

Chapter 5: NEEEEEWOOOOOWWWW

Chapter 6: Easier than the Hulk

Chapter 7: Better than ALL my other inventions

Chapter 8: Upside-down fish tanks

Chapter 9: Do you want to go faster?

Chapter 10: Who taught you to do that?

Chapter 11: A dip in her stomach

Chapter 12: Dank meme

Chapter 13: Click!

Chapter 14: Quite a pill

Chapter 15: The photo

Chapter 16: Let me get this straight

Chapter 17: Oh. My. Days.

Chapter 18: So jokes

Chapter 19: Like someone torturing a hundred bats

Chapter 20: Trowch i’r chwith

Chapter 21: That’s nice

Chapter 22: Something you might see in a cartoon

Chapter 23: Road closed

Chapter 24: APB

Chapter 25: Like the cheese in a sandwich

Chapter 26: Strange-looking cow

Chapter 27: Not right at all

Chapter 28: Peter Pat

Chapter 29: Good meme

Chapter 30: SAVE ME!

Chapter 31: I’m not an idiot

Chapter 32: Waving goodbye

Chapter 33: Via Big Fart Moor

Chapter 34: I can feel it in my water

Chapter 35: Don’t get cross

Chapter 36: A secret plan

Chapter 37: As Simon Cowell says

Chapter 38: Chill out, sis

Chapter 39: Definitely sarcastically

Chapter 40: HOT ROD

Chapter 41: Like when you run at some sheep

Chapter 42: Calm as a cucumber

Chapter 43: The Eagle and the Squirrel

Chapter 44: Please, no

Chapter 45: Sorry, Mum!

Chapter 46: Does it still work if it gets wet?

Chapter 47: Exactly the opposite

Chapter 48: A nice-looking restaurant

Chapter 49: Mobilcon XR-207. Located

Chapter 50: The sort of thing they say in old films

Chapter 51: If possible, make a U-turn

Chapter 52: One hundred and ninety-two and a half miles

Chapter 53: And I’ll take the low road

Chapter 54: Not very nice

Chapter 55: Believe

Chapter 56: The ready, steady

Chapter 57: Sort of like a friend

Chapter 58: Like a proper big brother

Chapter 59: A strange decision

Chapter 60: Sitting wide

Chapter 61: Baked-bean-flavour crisps

Chapter 62: Until she absolutely has to

Chapter 63: A chance

Chapter 64: Ole’!

Chapter 65: WHAT’S HAPPENING?

Chapter 66: Always fine

Chapter 67: A dodgem car by the sea

Chapter 68: “Was that sarcastic?”

Chapter 69: You can’t say no

Chapter 70: I’ve got this

Chapter 71: The biggest present ever

Chapter 72: Where would you like to go today?

Thanks to

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Books by David Baddiel

About the Publisher

Amy Taylor loved cars. Here are her favourite ones:

1. The Aston Martin DB5. This is the one James Bond drives. Amy just loved the look of this one. Although as with all old cars (classic cars, as people in the know – like Amy – call them) if she had one she would get someone to remake it with an electric engine, so that it wasn’t bad for the planet. Maybe with the help of her friend Rahul, who was an inventor. Of sorts.

2. The Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing. This was another classic car. But it had doors that instead of opening normally came up like wings, making the whole car look like it could fly. It couldn’t.

3. The Jaguar E-Type, which was also an old car, but she liked the new one, called the Zero, which was actually electric. It was just as beautiful as the old car, and Amy thought it was very clever that the car had always been called the E-Type, even before there was an electric version.

4. The Ford Transit Van. Well, a Ford Transit van. Her mum’s white battered seven-year-old one.

Amy’s love for cars might seem unusual. Not because she was a girl – lots of girls like cars and lots of boys don’t – but because she had been in a really bad car accident when she was eight years old. Which also meant that since then – she was now eleven – she had needed to use a wheelchair.

Amy’s accident was also why the Ford Transit van was on her list of favourite cars. As a petrolhead – that’s slang for car fan – she knew it wasn’t up there with the Aston Martin and the Gullwing, but she also knew that her mum had spent a lot of time and money converting this old a-bit-like-Mater-from-Cars wagon into something that could transport Amy and her chair (and her very, very teenage-boy brother Jack – you’ll meet him in a bit). This made the van one of a million reasons why Amy loved her mum. She often felt an especially huge love for her mum as she easily wheeled her chair up the ramp that came out of the back of the van.

“Thanks, Mum!” she’d say, as she rolled up into the back of the Transit. “Look! I can do it one-handed …!”

Actually that isn’t true.

Or rather: it isn’t true any longer.

Amy used to be able to wheel her way easily up the ramp into the van, but not any more. The problem wasn’t with her, or the van: it was with her wheelchair. For some time now, the right wheel had not pointed in the same direction as the left wheel. Which meant that Amy sometimes felt like she was trying to get around in a supermarket trolley. And not just any trolley: one that’s been separated from all the others on the edge of the supermarket car park because, as soon as any shopper sees it, they know that its wheels will stick.

I’ve maybe gone a bit far with the trolley comparison. Although it was a comparison Amy herself would use a lot while complaining to her mum about her wheelchair. She was doing exactly that when this story begins, as they drove into Lodlil, the cheaper-than-most superstore near where they lived.

“That one,” said Amy, pointing out of the window. “Mum. The rusty one. With the soggy newspaper in it. And the wonky front wheel. That’s the kind of trolley my wheelchair is like.”

“Yes,” said Suzi, carefully backing into a space between two cars, into one of which a family was loading a huge amount of shopping. This was hard to do, as the van was large and high in the back, and Amy and her chair were in the way.

More in the way than usual, in fact, as Amy was pointing, with both arms, at the rusty trolley. “Can you see it?”

“No. But I know the one you mean.”

“You do?”

“Well. I know the kind of one you mean. Because you’ve pointed one like that out every time we’ve come to the supermarket this month.”

“Because, Mum,” said Amy, “my wheels have been that wonky for a month!”

Suzi sighed, and switched the van engine off. Life is as perfect as you want it to be, she thought to herself. Amy’s mum was very keen on “inspirational quotes”: positive things people have said about life that you can find all over the internet, normally backed by an image of a sunset. She repeated these to herself in times of stress. Often, though – like now, as she watched the man from the car next to her trying again and again to slam the boot down over a stuck bag containing mainly eggs – they didn’t seem to have much effect.

Suzi got out of the driving seat, went round the back of the van, opened the back doors (on which Amy had stuck an ironic “HOT ROD” sticker that she’d got from a car magazine called Fast Wheels) and pressed a button.

The ramp folded out for Amy to wheel down. Amy turned the chair round to face her mum. But then she carried on turning it, away from her, in a circle. And then another circle. And then another (when she wanted to, Amy could turn her chair very, very fast).

“I can’t stop it, Mum!” she called out. “The wheels are doing it by themselves. Help me! Help me! Help me!”

Suzi watched her, with an eyebrow raised. She wondered about just letting her daughter get very, very dizzy and sick. But eventually, after six turns, and no sign of either the pretend screaming stopping or the circling slowing down, she said:

“All right! OK! You win, Amy! I’ll talk to your dad. We’ll get you a new chair.”

Amy stopped and smiled. She reached into her pocket and took out a piece of paper, on which was printed a picture from the internet.

“Thanks, Mum!” she said excitedly. “Here’s the one I want!”

“It’s brilliant!” said Amy, going up the ramp into the van a few days later.

“I’m glad you like it,” said Suzi.

“I love it!” said Amy.

“Great. You can write a letter to your dad, thanking him maybe.”

“I already have! I sent him an email telling him how amazing it is. Look!” Amy turned the wheelchair all the way round, inside the van, and came back down the ramp. “It’s like a dodgem car!”

She came off the ramp and turned round again, twisting the control lever on her new, black, shiny and, most importantly, motorised wheelchair.

Her mum had parked the van in their drive and opened the back doors, so that Amy could practise going up and down the ramp. Which she had been doing for a while.

Quite a long while.

“It’s like a dodgem car …” echoed Jack, Amy’s fourteen-year-old brother, who was standing – or at least slouching, his back against the door – in their front garden, pretending not to be interested.

It was one of the things he did all the time now, repeating back anything that anyone said, in a bored, taking-the-mickey voice. Amy sometimes wondered if, when he was about twelve and a half, her brother had been secretly replaced in the night by a sarcastic echo chamber.

“Well, it is, a bit,” said Amy. “Remember when Dad took me on the dodgems, Mum?”

“Of course! He took both of you in one car. You both drove it.”

“Yes, but he let me do the steering wheel by myself after a bit. And I swerved through all the other cars. We didn’t even bump once!”

“Ha. Yes, that’s right! What age were you then?”

“Seven. And then he bought us candyfloss!”

Suzi nodded, and looked down. Amy’s dad, Peter, didn’t live with them any more. He lived a long way away, in Scotland.

“He said I was a natural driver, didn’t he, Mum? ‘You’re a natural, Amy,’ he said!”

“You’re a natural, Amy …” said Jack. In his bored, taking-the-mickey voice.

“Yes. Unlike his son, who always loses to me when we play Formula One: Grand Prix!”

Jack made a rude gesture at her. “Grand Prix,” he echoed sarcastically.

“Anyway, Amy …” Suzi said, coming out of her little trance, “is that enough practice now?”

“Not quite, Mum …” Amy said, turning round again. “I do love it, but I just want to see if I can do a bit more with it … just want to see how it corners … how it steers … what’s its top speed …”

“How it corners … how it steers … what’s its top speed …”

“Jack, stop doing that,” said Suzi. “It’s tiresome.”

“Well,” said Jack, finally speaking in his own voice, which sounded to Amy, as ever, like someone who was convinced he knew everything, even though he was only actually two and half years older than her. “Come on. It’s a wheelchair. It’s not like it’s fast or anything.”

“It’s a Mobilcon XR-207,” said Amy. “It uses technology from their go-karts. It has a five-horsepower engine!”

“OK, show me top speed, then,” said Jack.

Amy pushed the lever on the right-hand arm of the chair forward. The chair went down the drive.

Not, it must be said, very fast.

“See?” said Jack. “It’s not exactly an Aston Martin DB5, is it?”

This made Amy stop. She looked down.

“I know it’s not an Aston Martin DB5,” she said quietly.

Suzi frowned. “Oh shush, Jack. If Amy wants to have fun pretending her new wheelchair is like a car, let her.”

This did the trick – it shut Jack up. But actually – even though her mum didn’t mean it to – it also made Amy feel kind of worse. It made her feel that what she had been doing with her chair in the drive was maybe just that: a babyish game of pretend.

And, at the end of the day, Jack was right: it wasn’t a car. It was just a wheelchair.

But then Amy had an idea …

“Hmm …” said Rahul. “I don’t know.”

“Come on. You know you can. If anyone can, you can.”

Rahul scratched his head, and took his glasses off. This was something he did a lot when he wanted to look closely at something. It made Amy wonder what the point exactly of him having glasses was.

“What is the point of you having glasses?” she said (because when Amy had a thought, usually she couldn’t stop herself from saying it). “When you always take them off anyway to have look at—”

“Shhh,” said Rahul. “I’m thinking.”

He bent down and stared closely at Amy’s new wheelchair. It was, Rahul thought, stylish. It was black and shiny and the wheels were silver and looked like they came from quite a cool bike.

“What’s it called?” he said. “This wheelchair?”

“The Mobilcon XR-207.”

“Mobilcon!” said Rahul. “They make the coolest stuff. I wanted one of their amazing drones for my birthday, but my parents said it was too expensive. Your chair must have cost a fortune!”

“Yeah …” said Amy. “My dad helped pay for it.”

Rahul nodded. “It’s pretty slick,” he said. “XR-207, did you say?”

“Yes,” said Amy. “But I prefer to call it …”

Amy pulled the lever on the arm of the chair backwards, and the wheelchair went back, faster than you might think.

“… The Taylor TurboChaser!”

“Hey!” said Rahul, chasing after her. They were in the playground of their school, Bracket Wood. Amy and Rahul were in Year Six. Amy was the only kid in a wheelchair at the school. The teachers sometimes tried to make her feel OK about this. Which wasn’t necessary, as she felt OK about it already.

Her form teacher, Mr Barrington, had once said to her, with an awkward smile on his face, “The way to think about being in a wheelchair, Amy, is that it makes you very special.”

And she had told him to bog off. Which she didn’t get punished for. Probably because she was in a wheelchair. So in a way, Amy thought later, he was right.

Rahul caught up with her. She pulled the lever to the right – the chair moved smoothly off in that direction. Rahul went towards her, but with a smile she jerked the lever to the left, and the chair went left, dodging him. She stopped and looked up.

“You see? The steering’s already as sharp as a Ferrari.”

“Yes, OK,” he said, breathing heavily. “But there’s a long way between that, and me making it into an actual—”

“Rahul!”

He looked over. Their friend Janet was approaching, holding something that looked like a motorcycle helmet, with a toothbrush in the middle of it. Which is exactly what it was.

It was, in fact, an old motorcycle helmet, with a little battery-powered motor at the side, attached to a small metal rod. That rod was then glued to a toothbrush, positioned round about where the mouth of the helmet-wearer would be.

“Yeah?” said Rahul.

“This new invention of yours …”

“The Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503. Yes?”

“Is that what it’s called?” said Amy.

“Yep.”

“So are there … like … 502 other models?”

Rahul thought about this for a second. “No,” he said. “Are there 206 other versions of your wheelchair, the Mobilcon XR-207?”

“I don’t think so. Fair point.”

“Anyway,” said Janet, “it doesn’t work.”

Rahul frowned and took the Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503 out of Janet’s hands. He pressed a switch on the motor. The rod vibrated: as did the toothbrush.

“Yes, it does work,” he said, looking up.

“No,” said Janet, who had started looking at her phone. “You said it would clean my teeth. Without me having to do anything. But that’s wrong. Because I still have to a) put toothpaste on the brush, and b) move my mouth around so that the brush gets to different teeth.”

When Janet said these two points – a) and b) – she didn’t do what people normally do. She didn’t hold up two fingers, one at a time, or point to two fingers, or anything.

She just said it. This was because Janet was one of the laziest people who ever lived, and preferred, whenever possible, not to do anything except look at her phone.

Which, in fact, was why she had been very keen on the idea of the Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503.

“It doesn’t work!” said Janet.

“It does!” said Rahul.

“It’s meant to be an effort-saving device.”

“Yes. To save you some of the effort of cleaning your teeth. Not all of the effort!”

“I wanted to be able to clean my teeth and text at the same time!”

Rahul sighed.

“You’re just lazy,” said Janet, which was ironic.

“No, he’s not,” said Amy. “And he’s going to make this wheelchair into something incredible, aren’t you, Rahul?”

Rahul swallowed. “Well … I’ll try,” he said.

Which was good enough for Amy.

Amy was right: Rahul really was far from lazy.

The Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503 was only the latest of his inventions. It had been commissioned by Janet. By commissioned, I mean Janet had said, one day, “I hate cleaning my teeth every night, it’s so boring,” and Rahul had said, “I’ve got an idea,” and gone off, designed and made the machine, brought it back to school, and asked Janet to pay the costs of making it – eight pounds – which, so far, Janet had not paid.

He had also invented:

The Alarm Clock-to-Dreams Device 4446. (You may have noticed by now that all Rahul’s inventions have random numbers, to make them seem more like proper inventions. This was why he was so interested in the name of Amy’s wheelchair.) The Alarm Clock-to-Dreams Device 4446 was an alarm clock fitted with a recording microphone, so that when it woke you up, before it had a chance to vanish into your head, you could shout out what happened in last-night’s dream. Rahul was working on an upgrade of this invention, whereby the words would become animated pictures, immediately uploadable to YouTube.

The Toast-Butterer 678X. (Rahul realised while designing this that to sound really like a proper invention, he needed to add letters AND numbers.) This was a knife attached to a toaster, which, when the toast popped up, would automatically start buttering it. This did require quite a powerful spring, because if the toast was only halfway out of its slot, the buttering would only butter the top half. Which was not only not as nice, it could also mean the butter would drip down into the toaster and make it explode. As a result of this happening the first time Rahul tried it, the Toast-Butterer 678X had been banned from Rahul’s parents’ kitchen.

The All-Weather Brella 778Q. On the basis that the weather in Britain is quite changeable, and opening and shutting an umbrella over and over again can cause it to break, Rahul had created an umbrella into which he had built a sun roof (a polythene window with a zip, basically).

The Snowman Life-Extender XJ59P. “Have you built a snowman that you’re really proud of? That you’ve spent ages on, and looked out of the window at after a hard and freezing morning’s building? Only for it to melt really quickly and depressingly into sludge? Well, worry no more! Because with the Snowman Life-Extender (bespoke-designed to fit your snowman, cooled to -3 degrees) you can keep your favourite snow guy alive for as long as you like (electricity bill permitting). Maybe he might even come alive and fly with you at Christmas to the North Pole! (Disclaimer: no guarantee this will happen.)” This is a direct quote from the press release that Rahul had written for the Snowman Life-Extender XJ59P. To be honest, he had written the press release for this one before creating the invention itself. But the invention, he always insisted, was on the way.

The Coffee-Cube-Maker 7777T. This was a box with a funnel at the top, into which you poured instant coffee, and which would then – at the bottom – spit out the coffee as cubes. “What’s the point of that?” said Rahul’s father, Sanjay. This was generally not a question that Sanjay asked. Sanjay was 99 per cent convinced that his son was one day going to invent something incredible, and that the whole family would be rich. Thus, he funded Rahul’s inventions, and let him plunder the family business – a big retail warehouse called Agarwal Supplies, which stocked all kinds of stuff – for raw materials. But this one seemed to test him.

“To have coffee as cubes,” said Rahul.

“Yes, I see that,” said Sanjay. “But when you put them in hot water …?”

“They dissolve.”

Sanjay frowned. “Like instant coffee always does.”

“Yes,” said Rahul. “But they’ll look cool in the tin.”

Sanjay shrugged and nodded, and put this observation down as one of the many that meant his son was a genius he would never understand.

Bean Pants. This was the only invention that Rahul had made that didn’t have a number, because Rahul felt that it went against its brand, which was – and he often said this doing an inverted commas mime – “fun”. It was pants, the lining of which he’d filled with beans. Not baked beans: whatever the beans are that are in bean bags. Which meant that, wherever you sat, you could feel like you were sitting on a bean bag.

“Fun”!There were many other inventions on Rahul’s slate, by which I mean in his head, or doodles in his rough book.

But these were the biggies. Or at least they were until Amy’s wheelchair came along.

Rahul sighed, and handed the Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503 back to Janet.

“Eight pounds, please,” he said.

Janet shook her head, and opened her mouth to continue to protest.

But Amy cut her off.

“Hello? Never mind the Whiter-Tooth-Whiz!”

“503.”

“What?”

“The Whiter-Tooth-Whiz 503,” said Rahul.

“Whatevs.” Amy spread out her hands. “This is going to be your best invention ever!”

Janet frowned at her. “Rahul’s going to invent you?”

“Not me, idiot,” said Amy, pointing downwards. “This. The wheelchair.”

“Huh? But it’s invented already …” said Janet. “I can see it very clearly.”

“Amy thinks I can re-invent it …” said Rahul.

“What does that mean?”

“It means …” said Amy, “he’s going to make it into … well, I’ll show you.”

She turned and faced away from them, towards a free section of the playground, where no other kid was fighting, running or skipping.

“Taylor lines up her car, in pole position on the Indianapolis 500 track.”

“Who are you talking to?” said Janet. “And why has your voice gone so deep?”

“She’s being a motor racing commentator, Janet,” whispered Rahul.

“Oh,” said Janet.

Amy’s eyes went up. “She’s watching for the chequered flag. A lot of work has gone into this machine since the last race. Rahul, head of her team of mechanics, has turbo-charged its engines, and reworked the tyres, and streamlined the body, and now it’s a speed-machine.”

She mimed turning a key.

“Brrrrrrrmmmmmm. Brrrrrrrrrrmmmmm. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm! Listen to that! Even from the commentary box we can hear it. It sounds …” and here her voice went very deep, as she did an impression of one of the men on a TV show about cars that seemed to always be on some channel somewhere “… like the devil clearing his throat.”

“Right,” said Rahul. “I’m really not sure – even though I am, obviously, great at inventing – that I can make your wheelchair into the kind of vehicle you’re imagi—”

“NEEEEEWOOOOOWWWW!” Amy shouted, leaning over to the right, and miming holding a steering wheel (and doing a race-car-speeding-past noise, in case you were wondering).

“NEEEEEEWOOOOWWWWWW!” she shouted again, leaning to the left. “AWAY SHE FLIES!”

Then she sat up, pressed the lever forward, and the chair went off.

At about two miles an hour.

“What’s going on?” said Suzi.

“What?”

They had once again driven into Lodlil, and once again Suzi had parked with difficulty, opened up the back doors of the van and pressed the button to fold down the ramp.

But then she held up a hand to stop Amy wheeling her chair down it.

“What’s going on?” she said again.

“Huh?” said Amy.

“Don’t play the innocent with me, Ames. Where’s your new chair?”

Amy looked down as if surprised, as if somehow she’d not noticed that she’d come all the way to the supermarket in her old wheelchair. Which, to be fair, her mother hadn’t. But then again, Suzi was rushed and tired, and outside their house she had been on the phone arguing with Amy’s dad.

“Oh, come on, Amy. Where is it?”

“I’m … just getting used to it.”

“Pardon?”

“Yes. Um. Turns out that the new wheelchair is a bit … fast for me. When you push the lever forward, it moves forward really quick. So … I thought I’d leave it in my room for the minute. Until I’ve got used to it.”

Suzi narrowed her eyes at her daughter. “We spent ages on the internet checking out motorised wheelchairs. Specifically: fastest motorised wheelchairs. At your request.”

“I know but—”

“And your dad – who I’ve just been on the phone to – paid for most of it. And as Mr ‘I’m Not Made of Money’, he—”

“Is he still calling himself that?” said Amy.

“Yes, you know how he likes to … make himself very clear.”

“Wow,” said Jack. “You actually spoke to him? Is it Christmas?”

“No, Jack,” said Suzi wearily. “It’s not Christmas.”

“Oh no, that’s right. Because if it was Christmas, he’d have sent us a depressing card. The one with Santa Claus in an old car, instead of a sleigh. The same one he’s sent us for the last three years.”

Jack was speaking from the passenger seat, without looking up from his phone, or taking off his headphones.

“I love that card!” said Amy, wheeling herself down the ramp. “Shut up, Jack.”

“Well, good,” said Suzi. “But meanwhile, your new chair wasn’t cheap. And if he knows you’re not using it – well – he won’t be happy.”

“Really?”

“You know your dad, Amy. He’s not … an easy man.”

“Oh, I dunno,” said Jack. “He’s easier than, say, the Hulk. Just.”

“OK,” said Amy, who hated it when the family conversation began to get a bit anti-Dad, which it did quite a lot. “I’ll start using it soon, Mum, don’t worry!”

“She’s paid someone to pimp her ride, I reckon,” said Jack, finally stretching his long legs out of the car. He was at that teenage-boy age where he still looked young, but had grown very tall, a bit like a stretched-out toddler.

“Is that a joke? What does it even mean?” said Suzi.

“It means to make a car all flash and exciting with add-ons and lights and stereo systems and stuff,” said Amy. “And of course it’s a joke. Everything he says is a joke.”

“Everything he says is a joke,” Jack repeated.

“Well, it is!” said Amy. “Particularly in this case. I mean, it’s obvious – one ride you could never pimp is a wheelchair!”

And she wheeled off in her old chair as fast as she could go.

“Come on …” hissed Amy.

“Nearly done!” It was Rahul’s voice, calling from inside his workshop. By “workshop”, what I mean is his dad’s garage, which was at the back of their warehouse. Which they also lived above.

From behind the door came the sound of banging and hammering and scraping. From Amy’s point of view, more banging and hammering and scraping – she had been outside for nearly an hour.

“Can’t I just come in?”

“No!”

“I won’t look.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Hello, Amy!” said Rahul’s dad, Sanjay, coming out of the warehouse, a clipboard in hand. “What’s happening?”

“I’m making something, Dad!” shouted Rahul.

“Oh good,” said Sanjay. “Rahul is a very good inventor, you know, Amy.”

“Yes, I know,” said Amy.

“One day he’s going to invent something incredible. And it’s going to make us very rich. I’m one hundred per cent convinced of it.”

“Oh! You’ve gone up a per cent.”

“I have?”

“Yes. You normally say ninety-nine per cent.”

“Ha! You see, my confidence has gone up! What are you working on, Rahul? Is it the Learning-Toast XF514 …?”

“Is that like the Toast-Butterer 678X …?” said Amy.

“No!” shouted Rahul. “It’s a piece of toast that you get from the Toast-Butterer, already well buttered. Then you place it on the book or whatever it is you want to learn from. Then when all the words have soaked into the toast … you eat it!”

“What?”

“Yes! And then you learn the words!”

“Brilliant. Quite brilliant!” said Sanjay.

“Right …” said Amy.

“And anyway, I’m not working on it.”

“The Robotic Returning-Cup Z45?” said his dad. “I love that one.”

“Let me guess, Rahul,” said Amy. “A cup that flies back to the sink after you’ve finished your drink? So your mum doesn’t have to pick up lots of cups from your room?”

“Yes! Well, it doesn’t fly back, it walks back.”

“Walks …?”

“It’s got little legs that come out automatically when your cup’s empty. Well, it will, when I’ve finished it. But no, Dad!” he said, raising his voice again. “I’m not working on that either!”

“Oh. What are you working on?” said Sanjay. “Something better than all those?”

“Better than ALL my other inventions …”

And with that, Rahul pressed the button to open the garage door.

With a metallic groan, it began to rise.

Unfortunately, Rahul’s big reveal didn’t work that well, as the door creaked and stuttered and, halfway up, got stuck.

“Have you thought about inventing something to make the garage door open easily, Rahul?”

“No, Dad. You need to get that fixed by a grown-up.”

“OK. Try pressing the button again.”

Rahul did. The door creaked and stuttered again, but then jerked up, opening all the way –

– to reveal Rahul standing by something.

Actually, it wasn’t quite recognisable as anything at first.

Somewhere in there – definitely – was Amy’s wheelchair. But it was hard to see, as three more chairs had been fastened to it (not wheelchairs – ordinary chairs: one next to Amy’s chair, and two behind it).

There was a series of pipes and wires connecting all the bits of it together. And over the whole thing – to make a roof and glass windows – had been placed what looked like two enormous upside-down fish tanks.

“The Taylor TurboChaser …” said Rahul proudly, gesturing to it with a big arm movement. Amy and Rahul’s dad looked on, open-mouthed. “… ZX115,” Rahul added.

“You really must get on with the Robotic Returning-Cup,” said Sanjay eventually.

“Don’t you like it?” said Rahul. “I got all the stuff from the disused bits of the warehouse. I mean, it’s not finished. I want to add loads more things.”

“Um …” said Amy.

“That means no,” said Rahul, looking sad.

“No. I mean, it doesn’t,” said Amy, wheeling herself into the garage. “It’s amazing. But I thought you’d just be … making my wheelchair … more flash.”

“It is a bit more flash.”

“Yes, but I mean, I thought you’d do: some lights … maybe painting it silver … boost the engine a bit … a few accessories … I didn’t think you were actually gonna make it into a …”

“Car.”

“Yes …” said Amy. She wheeled slowly, all the way round it. Then she turned to her friend, shook her head and laughed. “Well … all I can say is thank you!”

“Don’t say that,” said Rahul.

“Why not?”

Rahul smiled. “Because you haven’t driven it yet …!”

It took a little while to get Amy into the driver’s seat of the Taylor TurboChaser – Rahul, with a lot of difficulty, had to hold up one of the fish tanks, and Amy had to crawl out of her old chair and lift herself into her new one – but her arms were strong from so much wheeling, and eventually she got there.

Rahul sat in the seat next to her – the passenger seat – and then brought the roof down again. They sat side by side, looking out through the garage door, where there was a tarmac drive leading up to Agarwal Supplies. On one side of the drive sat a full skip with a fridge standing next to it; on the other, six or seven dustbins.

Amy looked down at the direction lever – still there, still part of her original wheelchair.

“So … do I just press the lever forward as normal?” said Amy.

“Wait a minute …” said Rahul, who was rummaging around in a box underneath his seat. “I have a few add-ons yet.”

He sat up, holding a steering wheel. He leant across Amy and attached it to a metal bar in front of her.

“Wow … is that from …” she began.

“An Xbox, yes. But it’ll work. And here on the dashboard I’ve added some buttons …”

Amy looked down. There was a series of switches with pictures on them: one looked a bit like a motorbike, another like a teepee. She shook her head, assuming she would work out what they were when she needed them (which, to let you in on a secret, is also what all grown-ups do when they see buttons with strange designs on them in cars).

“Will the engine be powerful enough to drive it with all this extra weight on it?” Amy said.

Rahul smiled. “I souped up the engine.”

“You put soup into the engine? Chicken, veg or tomato?”

Rahul frowned. “No, it’s a … thing … that people say … when they mean made it more powerful …”

Now Amy smiled. “I know that, Rahul. I subscribe to three different motoring magazines.”

“Oh, sorry. It was a joke, wasn’t it? I’m not very good with jokes.”

Amy shook her head, and then gripped the lever.

“Just one more thing,” said Rahul, reaching across her and fitting her with the seat belt.

“You made these too?” said Amy, as he clicked himself in after her.

“Well, kind of. If you consider using my trusty screwdriver to get them out of my parents’ car to be ‘making’.”

“Er … won’t they, sort of, miss those?”

“Don’t worry. My parents hardly ever use the car,” said Rahul. “And anyway, I’ll put them back. At some point.”

Amy smiled to herself. She wanted to say: We won’t really need those, will we? I mean it’s not going to go that fast. And I’m never going to be driving it that far. But she thought that might upset her friend, and Amy was a good friend. So she just pushed the lever forward. The Taylor TurboChaser moved. Quite slowly. In fact, quite a lot more slowly than it had before. A minute later, they were still in the garage.

“Um …” said Amy.

“Oh,” said Rahul, “do you want to go faster?”

“A bit, yes.”

“Try pushing the lever forward a bit more. I’ve adjusted it so it works like an accelerator pedal now, so you can control the speed properly.”

Amy looked down at her hand on the lever.

“It’s pushed all the way forward,” she said.

Rahul looked at the position of the lever too. He nodded slowly.

“OK …” he said. He pulled open a little door in the dashboard.

“What’s that?” said Amy, looking inside. There was a small box in there with a red button in it.

“It’s the turbo part of the TurboChaser. This button pushes power to the engine, and speeds everything up ten times!”

“Oh great!” Amy said, pressing it. And immediately the vehicle shot forward like a rocket.

“AAAAARGGH!” screamed Amy.

“AAAAARGGH!” screamed Rahul. “Stop! Stop!”

“I don’t know where the brakes are!” screamed Amy.

“Press the—” began Rahul.

But it was too late!

They were heading directly for the corrugated-iron doors of Agarwal Supplies, and Amy didn’t have time to look down at her fingers. The only time she had was what you might call “reflex time” – that is, the split second when the body takes over and does something by instinct.

And the thing that Amy’s body suddenly found itself able to do, despite never having really done it before, was drive.

Amy gripped the steering wheel with both hands and jerked it all the way round to the left. The Taylor TurboChaser, with surprising smoothness, followed, curving away from the warehouse doors and out into the industrial estate.

But now they were heading right for the skip!

So again, instinct kicked in, and Amy lurched the wheel back to the right, just missing the fridge that had been dumped next to the skip.

Which would have meant they were through this sudden and unexpected obstacle race, had it not been for … the dustbins!

“AAARGH!”

The dustbins were arranged in a way that avoiding them completely was almost impossible. Turning away from one would have meant driving straight at another. Amy’s only choice was to slalom! Which, for those of you who have never seen someone skiing, means “zigzag”!

So she did, turning the wheel very quickly this way and that, making the vehicle rock on its sides as it twisted and turned past one dustbin, then another, then another, then all of them.

She brought the TurboChaser back round. It was still powering away from the dustbins.

“—blue button!” finished Rahul.

“What?”

“I’m finishing my sentence from about three minutes ago! Press the blue button! It’s a brake!”

“Oh!” said Amy, and she pressed it.

The Taylor TurboChaser came to an abrupt halt: a very abrupt halt – Amy and Rahul were thrown forward in their seats in a way that made Amy very thankful indeed for the seat belts.

“Wow!” said Rahul, as gravity settled him back into his seat. “Who taught you to do that?”

“No one,” said Amy. “I just did what came naturally!”

“Well, you can really drive!”

Amy looked at him. “I guess I can. And you, my friend, can really invent. Because what you’ve made here –” she said, holding her arms up and taking in the whole vehicle “– is a supercar!”

“Hi, Dad!”

“Amy … how are you?”

“I’m fine, Dad. How are you?”

“Oh, not bad. I’ve got a lot of work on. But you don’t want to know about that.”

Actually, Dad, Amy wanted to shout down the phone, I DO want to know about that. She was sitting in their hallway, speaking to her dad on the landline (she wasn’t allowed a phone yet, which was annoying, as Jack was on his ALL the time).

Peter Taylor, her dad, called about once a week, and Amy really looked forward to it, even if sometimes she looked back afterwards on their conversations as not being quite what she had hoped for. Jack wouldn’t speak to their dad at all.

But, yes, Amy did want to know about her dad’s job, because her dad’s job was … designing cars! Supercars – which are basically very fast cars – to be exact. Some of them even had his name – and therefore her name – on them!

“Are you working on the new GT 500, Dad, or is it—” she began.

“What? Oh yes. The meeting. Of course. Just give me two minutes.” Amy realised he was speaking to someone else on the other end. But then his voice became loud again. “What were you saying, Amy?” And then before she could answer he said, “How’s the new chair?”

“Oh yes, it’s great! Thank you so much!”

“No need to thank me. Although you could send me a photo of you in it. That would be nice.”

“Er … yes. At some point.”

“Pardon, Amy?” He spoke suddenly strictly, which he sometimes did.

“Sorry, Dad, yes. I will. Soon.”

“OK. Can I speak to your mum?”

Amy felt a dip in her stomach. So often when she talked to her dad, the conversation ended sooner than she would like.

“Sure, Dad. Mum!”

“And, Amy?” he said.

“Yes?”

“I’d really like to see you in that chair. Mobilcon’s prices are daylight robbery – I’d like to know it’s worth it.”

Amy nodded. Which was pointless, because he couldn’t see.

And gulped.

Which he couldn’t see either.

Later that day, the Taylors went out for a walk. This was always difficult. Not because Amy was in a wheelchair. But because of Jack.

“Come on, Jack!” shouted Suzi, as she and Amy waited at the door. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” came back from inside the house, in a stupid voice.

Suzi and Amy exchanged glances.

“Your sister can’t walk!” shouted Suzi. “And she’s coming out for a walk!”

“Yeet!” said Jack, shambling out of his room. “Walking is for Normies. It’s a dank meme.”

“Please speak English.”

“He doesn’t want to come,” said Amy.

“He doesn’t want to come.”

“That means you have to come now,” said Amy. “If you’re being sarcastic about not wanting to come, it means you want to come.”

Jack looked a bit confused. But then said, “OK!” and put his shoes on.

It turned out that there was an Amy-centred problem with the walk, though.

“Amy! Where is your new chair?” said Suzi. “I’m fed up with watching you struggling with that old one!”

“I told you, Mum. I’m still getting used to it. I just want to use it on small journeys.”

“This is a small journey. It’s a walk round the park. But it’s taking a long time. Because you’re going round and round in circles. Because that old wheelchair’s stuck wheel has got even worse.”

Amy – who was indeed completing a circle rather than going forward – stopped and sighed.

“Amy,” said her mum. “Please. I’ve been to your room. It’s not there. So … where is your new—”

“OK, OK. I’ll show you. This way!” said Amy, moving off. Or trying to, at least.

“Sorry, which way?” said Jack, after a few seconds of the wheelchair turning round and round.

“Yeah, yeah, point taken,” said Amy. “Can you help turn me round, please? And then just push me for a bit?”

“OK, Mum,” said Amy, as she sat in her old chair outside Rahul’s dad’s garage. “You remember that inspirational quote you like to tell me …”

“Which one?” said Suzi.

“The one about ‘Don’t dream dreams: make them come true’.”

“Oh yes, I like that one.”

“Well …” said Amy, “I … with Rahul’s help … have kind of done that.”

Suzi nodded. “OK. Well. Good!” But then frowned. “How do you mean?”

Amy looked towards the garage and then back at her mum.

“You promise you won’t get upset?” she said.

“Er … that’s never a good thing when anyone says that, Amy. How can I promise I won’t get upset, without knowing what I’m about to see?”

“No. I get that. But I’d like you to say it anyway.”

“What, meaninglessly?”

“Yes,” said Amy.

Suzi sighed. “Right. I promise I won’t get upset.”

Rahul, who was standing by the side of the garage with a new remote control, pressed the button. The door came up halfway towards Amy, Suzi and Jack. Then stopped.

“Rahul! I thought you said you were going to get a grown-up to fix the garage door?” said Amy.

“I was. But my dad wasn’t bothered.”

“I wasn’t bothered!” shouted Sanjay from somewhere in the warehouse.

“He said as long as it opens eventually, what’s the rush?”

“What’s the rush?” Sanjay shouted again.

“So you made that remote control?” said Amy.

“I did,” said Rahul, pressing the button again. The door shook, but didn’t move.

“Hmm. I’m starting to worry about your inventing capabilities.”

“NOT AS MUCH AS I AM!”

They looked round. It was Suzi who had shouted. It was definitely her, even though they could only see her bottom half, under the garage door. Which she’d crept under while they were talking.

“I think your mum might have found the Taylor TurboChaser …” said Rahul.

“Yes,” said Amy. “I think she might.”

“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”

“I think your brother might have found it too.”

Amy wheeled herself under the door, followed by Rahul. When they were both inside the garage, they waited, for about a minute, for Suzi to turn round.

Suzi, though, was just staring and staring at what had become of Amy’s new wheelchair. It seemed for so long that Amy began to hope that perhaps her mum had started to like it.

Eventually Amy said, hopefully: “It’s called the Taylor TurboChaser … ZX115.”

This, finally, made Suzi turn round.

Her face was looking very pale.

There was a long pause.

“WHAT ARE YOU THINKING OF AMY WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WHAT EVEN IS IT NOW IT DOESN’T EVEN LOOK LIKE A WHEELCHAIR IT JUST LOOKS MAD WHAT AM I GOING TO TELL YOUR FATHER OH MY LORD AMY YOU ARE THE END OF THE WORLD!”

“Mum,” said Amy, realising that, no, her mum hadn’t started to like it, “you promised you wouldn’t get upset.”

“MEANINGLESSLY!”

“It’s great, Mum! It goes really fast!”

“It does, Mrs Taylor!” said Rahul. “It’s like a wheelchair supercar!”

“Oh, fantastic. Thanks, Rahul. Really. Not only have you made Amy’s new wheelchair look like a mad thing from … from …”

“Mario Kart,” said Jack, very seriously (the only thing he didn’t joke about was video games).

“Mario Kart?” said Rahul. “I think it’s much more like something from Grand Theft Auto.”

“Mario Kart,” said Jack firmly. “Be glad I didn’t say Yoshi.”

“I think there is a bit of an element of Mater, the truck from Cars,” said Sanjay, who had bent himself under the door to see what all these people were doing in his garage.

“That’s what I think Mum’s van looks like,” said Amy.

“Anyway, that is actually a video game as well as a movie,” said Jack.

“HELLO?” said Suzi. “CAN WE STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT VIDEO-GAME CAR IT LOOKS LIKE?”

“Well, you were the one trying to think of something,” said Amy.

“YES! BECAUSE THERE’S NEVER BEEN ANY WHEELCHAIR THAT’S EVER LOOKED LIKE THAT! BUT NOW YOU TELL ME IT GOES REALLY FAST AS WELL? SO YOU’RE GOING TO KILL YOURSELF IN A CROSS BETWEEN A DUMP TRUCK, A SOFA AND AN AQUARIUM?”

Everyone looked at the Taylor TurboChaser.

“Good shout,” said Sanjay. “That pretty much sums it up.”

“It’s my dream, Mum …” said Amy, her voice wobbling ever so slightly. “I’m trying to make it come true.”

Suzi looked at her. Her face – and voice – softened.

“Oh, Amy. I understand that. But—”

Click!

“What was that?” said Amy. They all turned round. Jack was standing a little way away, having clearly just taken a photo of the vehicle with his phone. Which he was holding out. Then he looked down at his screen and started tapping.

“Jack!” said Amy. “Don’t put it on Instagram!”

“I’m not!” said Jack.

“Oh, OK.”

“I’ve put it on my Snapchat Stories.”

“Oh no!” said Amy.

“What’s the problem?”

“Dad checks your Snapchat!” she screamed.

“He does?” said Jack.