He wasn’t hurt though, what with being super strong. He bounced straight back up on to his feet. I zoomed down towards him. He started winding his hammer-hand up, whirling it round to get ready for a mighty blow. But I wasn’t having it. ‘I wish you were as weak as a kitten!’ I said. So he stood there, all helpless and tottering, not strong enough even to raise his power-tool arms. I landed beside him and gave him a little push in his workbench-chest and he fell on his back.

‘Do you surrender, Power-Tool Man?’

‘No, I’ll never surrender!’

‘I wish you would.’

‘Oh, all right, I surrender, then.’

‘Another awesome victory for Awesome Man!’ I said. But it didn’t feel all that awesome. I was fed up. ‘I wish you didn’t exist any more, Power-Tool Man.’

‘I don’t.’

And he was gone.

I wished my bedroom was all back to normal again. Then I went downstairs to watch telly for a bit, and amused myself by making the actors and presenters say stupid things and insult each other. So that was quite funny. It passed the time, anyway.

Things looked up a bit later when my family started coming home. Mum went to get Ben from school at three. He was in a super-good mood, full of his day.

‘Guess what happened at school, Sam?’ he shouted as soon as he got into the hall. Obviously I knew what had happened ’cause I’d wished for it, but I said, ‘What?’

‘I got put on top table for Literacy!’

‘Did you?’

‘He did,’ Mum said. ‘Miss Martinez said she’d never seen anything like it. She said he was reading aloud from Great Expectations!’

‘Where’d you get that from, then?’

‘Dunno, I just found it in my book bag. I dunno where it came from. But I can read it! I can read anything! I just look at the words and they all make sense, it’s like magic!’

‘Cool.’

‘They did a test,’ my mum said. ‘Miss Martinez says he’s got a reading age of fourteen!’

‘Yeah, and Fatima was really fed up!’ Ben added. He started dancing around the hall chanting, ‘In your face, Fatima!’ until Mum gave him a prod to make him shut up.

Ben went upstairs to play with his new remote-controlled helicopter. What he didn’t know was I’d wished for a miniature leopard to pilot it, and the leopard could talk and say things like ‘Altitude six hundred metres’ and ‘Just bringing her into land’, and wave its paw at him as it flew by. I listened outside his room and heard his squeaks of excitement.

‘Sam!’ he said. ‘Come and see this!’

I went in and saw the little leopard flying about. ‘Excellent weather conditions for flying today!’ it squeaked. ‘Hello Ben!’

‘This is the best helicopter ever!’ Ben said.