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Well, I came top of the class again. One hundred out of one hundred for Maths. And one hundred out of one hundred for English. I’m just a natural brain, the best there is. There isn’t one kid in the class who can come near me. Next to me they are all dumb.

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Even when I was a baby I was smart. The day that I was born my mother started tickling me. ‘Bub, bub, bub,’ she said.

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‘Cut it out, Mum,’ I told her. ‘That tickles.’ She nearly fell out of bed when I said that. I was very advanced for my age.

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Every year I win a lot of prizes: top of the class, top of the school, stuff like that. I won a prize for spelling when I was only three years old. I am a terrific speller. If you can say it, I can spell it. Nobody can trick me on spelling. I can spell every word there is.

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Some kids don’t like me; I know that for a fact. They say I’m a show-off. I don’t care. They are just jealous because they are not as clever as me. I’m good looking too. That’s another reason why they are jealous.

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Last week something bad happened. Another kid got one hundred out of one hundred for Maths too. That never happened before – no one has ever done as well as me. I am always first on my own. A kid called Jerome Dadian beat me. He must have cheated. I was sure he cheated. It had something to do with that ice-cream. I was sure of it. I decided to find out what was going on; I wasn’t going to let anyone pull a fast one on me.

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It all started with the ice-cream man, Mr Peppi. The old fool had a van which he parked outside the school. He sold ice-cream, all different types. He had every flavour there is, and some that I had never heard of before.

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He didn’t like me very much. He told me off once. ‘Go to the back of the queue,’ he said. ‘You pushed in.’

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‘Mind your own business, Pop,’ I told him. ‘Just hand over the ice-cream.’

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‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t serve you unless you go to the back.’

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I went round to the back of the van, but I didn’t get in the queue. I took out a nail and made a long scratch on his rotten old van. He had just had it painted. Peppi came and had a look. Tears came into his eyes. ‘You are a bad boy,’ he said. ‘One day you will get into trouble. You think you are smart. One day you will be too smart.’

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I just laughed and walked off. I knew he wouldn’t do anything. He was too soft-hearted. He was always giving free ice-creams to kids that had no money. He felt sorry for poor people. The silly fool.

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There were a lot of stories going round about that ice-cream. People said that it was good for you. Some kids said that it made you better when you were sick. One of the teachers called it ‘Happy Ice-Cream’. I didn’t believe it; it never made me happy.

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All the same, there was something strange about it. Take Pimples Peterson for example. That wasn’t his real name – I just called him that because he had a lot of pimples. Anyway, Peppi heard me calling Peterson ‘Pimples’. ‘You are a real mean boy,’ he said. ‘You are always picking on someone else, just because they are not like you.’

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‘Get lost, Peppi,’ I said. ‘Go and flog your ice-cream somewhere else.’

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Peppi didn’t answer me. Instead he spoke to Pimples. ‘Here, eat this,’ he told him. He handed Peterson an ice-cream. It was the biggest ice-cream I had ever seen. It was coloured purple. Peterson wasn’t too sure about it. He didn’t think he had enough money for such a big ice-cream.

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‘Go on,’ said Mr Peppi. ‘Eat it. I am giving it to you for nothing. It will get rid of your pimples.’

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I laughed and laughed. Ice-cream doesn’t get rid of pimples, it gives you pimples. Anyway, the next day when Peterson came to school he had no pimples. Not one. I couldn’t believe it. The ice-cream had cured his pimples.

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There were some other strange things that happened too. There was a kid at the school who had a long nose. Boy, was it long. He looked like Pinocchio. When he blew it you could hear it a mile away. I called him ‘Snozzle’. He didn’t like being called Snozzle. He used to go red in the face when I said it, and that was every time that I saw him. He didn’t say anything back – he was scared that I would punch him up.

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Peppi felt sorry for Snozzle too. He gave him a small green ice-cream every morning, for nothing. What a jerk. He never gave me a free ice-cream.

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You won’t believe what happened but I swear it’s true. Snozzle’s nose began to grow smaller. Every day it grew a bit smaller. In the end it was just a normal nose. When it was the right size Peppi stopped giving him the green ice-creams.

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I made up my mind to put a stop to this ice-cream business. Jerome Dadian had been eating ice-cream the day he got one hundred for Maths. It must have been the ice-cream making him smart. I wasn’t going to have anyone doing as well as me. I was the smartest kid in the school, and that’s the way I wanted it to stay. I wanted to get a look inside that ice-cream van to find out what was going on.

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I knew where Peppi kept his van at night – he left it in a small lane behind his house. I waited until about eleven o’clock at night. Then I crept out of the house and down to Peppi’s van. I took a crowbar, a bucket of sand, a torch and some bolt cutters with me.

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There was no one around when I reached the van. I sprang the door open with the crowbar and shone my torch around inside. I had never seen so many tubs of ice-cream before. There was every flavour you could think of: there was apple and banana, cherry and mango, blackberry and watermelon and about fifty other flavours. Right at the end of the van were four bins with locks on them. I went over and had a look. It was just as I thought – these were his special flavours. Each one had writing on the top. This is what they said:

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HAPPY ICE-CREAM for cheering people up.

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NOSE ICE-CREAM for long noses.

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PIMPLE ICE-CREAM for removing pimples.

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SMART ICE-CREAM for smart alecs.

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Now I knew his secret. That rat Dadian had been eating Smart Ice-cream; that’s how he got one hundred for Maths. I knew there couldn’t be anyone as clever as me. I decided to fix Peppi up once and for all. I took out the bolt cutters and cut the locks off the four bins; then I put sand into every bin in the van. Except for the Smart Ice-cream. I didn’t put any sand in that.

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I laughed to myself. Peppi wouldn’t sell much ice-cream now. Not unless he started a new flavour – Sand Ice-cream. I looked at the Smart Ice-cream. I decided to eat some; it couldn’t do any harm. Not that I needed it – I was already about as smart as you could get. Anyway, I gave it a try. I ate the lot. Once I started I couldn’t stop. It tasted good. It was delicious.

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I left the van and went home to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. To tell the truth, I didn’t feel too good. So I decided to write this. Then if any funny business has been going on you people will know what happened. I think I have made a mistake. I don’t think Dadian did get any Smart Ice-Cream.

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* * * * *

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It iz the nekst day now. Somefing iz hapening to me. I don’t feal quite az smart. I have bean trying to do a reel hard sum. It iz wun and wun. Wot duz wun and wun make? Iz it free or iz it for?