by Jim Smith
Darren was running off cackling, and seeing as I know Darren’s dad is a poster putter-upperer because he came into school one Friday afternoon to talk all about it, I suppose it was him that must have put it there.
‘Maybe you should just go back to being rubbish old Barry Loser again,’ said Bunky.
‘Thanks, Bunky, that makes me feel so much better,’ I said in the voice Future Ratboy uses when he hates Not Bird, and I stormed off home with my stilts making it really hard to storm.
‘How was your day, Snookyflumps?’ my mum said when I got home.
‘Rubbish,’ I said, handing her my stilts, and she gave me a massive hug, which I squirmed out of but secretly quite liked. ‘I’m gonna do my homework,’ I said and went upstairs.
Once I was in my room I threw my bag on the floor and went over to the Vending Machine Mum costume.
There was a Future Ratboy episode once where this massive robot came to town and everyone thought he was their new ruler. All I had to do was add a few robotty things to my outfit and I’d have everybody worshipping me too.
At seven o’clock, when me and Bunky usually phone Mrs Trumpet Face to ask if Poopoo is there, the phone rang.
‘Barrrrrrrr-ryyy, it’s Bunnnnnn-kyyy!’ my mum shouted up the stairs.
‘Tell him he’s a poo bum,’ I shouted down the stairs and carried on making my costume until it was time for bed, when I shut my eyes and tried to dream about being a giant robot.
Annoyingly, my dream was about Darren and his dad putting posters up all over town saying how much of a loser I was. So it was good when I arrived at school the next day in my Barry Massive Robot Barry costume and everyone thought an enormous robot had come to kill them.
‘I think it’s eaten Barry!’ Bunky was shouting, because I hadn’t walked to school with him because of our row. I threw my rucksack out of the mouth bit of the costume and did a massive fake burp and Bunky fell to his knees, holding the bag up to the sky crying ‘Barrrryyyyy nooooooooooo!’
‘It’s the endingtons!’ screamed Sharonella, pushing Tracy Pilchard and Donnatella over and running off with her hands waving.
‘EVERYBODY PANIC!’ crackled Mr Hodgepodge’s voice over the school speakers, and I saw him run over to his car and drive off at full speed, his tie caught in the door all waggling.
Just as I was beginning to worry that it was maybe getting a bit out of hand, Darren Darrenofski’s horrible little crocodile voice shouted over everything.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, the robot you are all doing blowoffs about is actually just Barry Loser inside a cardboard box. Stop being such Stuart Shmendrixes and go back to your normal rubbish lives.’
It was pretty boring having to be inside the cardboard box for the rest of the day, which was my punishment from Mr Hodgepodge once the police had found him hiding in his attic and explained everything.
‘You’re a naughty Loser,’ Darren burped into one of my airholes, and the word ‘Loser’ echoed around the box about seven-million times until I realised I was stuck with my name so I might as well stop trying to be someone else.
So when I woke up with my mum shouting ‘Breakfast, Snookyflumps!’ on Saturday morning I was back to being a Loser again.
Bunky was already sitting on the sofa in our living room when I came downstairs. I’m used to this because he spends more time at my house than at his.
‘Ah, Bunky, how keelnessly unkeel to see you,’ I said in full Future Ratboy mode.
‘Morning, Snookyflumps!’ he chuckled to himself while watching TV and eating breakfast like he was me. I gave my mum one of my evil stares that I’ve been practising in the mirror for Darren Darrenofski, and stormed out of the house with Bunky behind me.
‘I told her not to call me that any more,’ I said on the way to the hairdressers.
‘Call who what?’ Bunky said, looking at me like he didn’t know what I was talking about, which didn’t surprise me because he hardly ever remembers anything for more than two milliseconds.
It was my first ever trip to the hairdressers. My mum usually cuts my hair but last time she tried we had a row about how she wasn’t doing it right, so she’d booked me, Bunky and Granny Harumpadunk into Harry’s on the high street with one of her three-for-the-price-of-two coupons.
On the way to pick up Granny we walked past Mrs Trumpet Face’s flat. She was shouting at her kids about something and Bunky pressed his nose against the window until she saw him and screamed and we ran off giggling and blowing off.
‘Do we HAVE to go with Granny Harumpaloser? She’s so boring,’ Bunky said.
‘Shhh!’ I whispered because I didn’t want Granny to hear, even though we were about eight streets away and she’s completely deaf.
Granny lives in the most boring road in the whole wide world amen. I’ve never seen anyone down it, apart from this old grandad who stands outside number Twenty Seven all day feeding the birds mouldy bread.
Her house looks like everyone else’s and I’m never sure if I’ve got the right one until I press the doorbell and it plays a tune. Then you hear her humming as she walks from the living room at about one mile an hour.
‘Hellllooooo the Cool Boyz!’ said Granny through the letterbox.
‘Hi Granny, how’s your keelness level?’ I said, holding up my hand for her to give me a high five.
‘Ooh, not so bad. Now, I’ve just got to switch everything off and get my bits,’ she said, then started walking all the way back to the living room.
‘Unkeelness factor nine,’ said Bunky into his watch, which is what Future Ratboy does when he wants to be beamed out of somewhere.
We played all the songs on Granny’s doorbell while we were waiting, until the old grandad at Twenty Seven shouted for us to shut up.
The walk to the hairdressers took ages as well because we bumped into Granny’s friend Ethel on the way and they had to have a three hour natter about the state of the pavements on the high street.
Some other granny called Doreen had tripped over one last week and her false teeth had fallen down the drain. ‘She fished them out with her stick and popped them back in on the spot,’ said Ethel, whose feet were too fat for her sandals.
‘That’s our Doreen,’ said Granny, and I imagined Doreen walking down to the shops with bits of old leaves hanging out of her teeth.
We were late by the time we got to Harry’s and before I could say, ‘Don’t cut my ear lobes off,’ we were in our chairs.
Bunky and Harry started chatting straight away, even though it was MY hair Harry was cutting, and Granny had stuck her head in a perming machine so I felt a bit loserish, sitting there with no one to talk to.
‘Have you noticed how our names rhyme?’ I said to Harry, trying to make him like me, but he just did a fake laugh and carried on talking to Bunky.
‘Do you remember when we completely ruined Mrs Trumpet Face’s day!’ I said to Bunky, trying to stop him talking to Harry, but he just looked at me like I was a loser and carried on talking to Harry.
I gave up trying after that and stared at myself in the mirror with my back-to-front superhero cape that they’d put round my neck, imagining I was Future Ratboy.
There’s a bit in every Future Ratboy episode when he takes his mask off and shows his hair to a baddy. He always says ‘Operation Reveal the Keel’ before he does it and the baddies are so impressed by how shiny and bouncy his hair is that they forget what they’re doing and he lassoes them with his tail.
When I woke up, not that I’d been asleep, I realised Harry had turned me sideways to do the bits around my ears and I was facing out of the shop like I was a can of hairspray for sale in the window or something.
What was worse was that Darren Darrenofski was looking at me from the other side of the glass.
‘Nice haircut, Barry Loserhaircut!’ he shouted, his spit splattering the window. Then he started doing this thing with his hands, cupping the air behind the back of his head.
‘What are you talking about, Crocodile Fa
ce?’ I mouthed to him, doing my evil stare, but he probably only saw half of it because Harry was turning me round to face the mirror again.
‘Operation Reveal the Keel!’ I said as I twizzled round.
That was when I saw what Darren was talking about. In front of me sat me, except with a massively sticking-out-at-the-back-of-my-head haircut.
‘Your head’s sticking out miles at the back!’ said Bunky, and Harry chuckled, agreeing.
I’ve always had a big head due to my massive brain, but combined with the way Harry had been cutting my hair while completely ignoring me and chatting to Bunky it now looked ginormingtons.
‘It’s not that bad,’ said Bunky on the way home, the back of his head not sticking out at all.
‘It’s not great though, is it, Blinky,’ said Granny, whose hair was all frizzy and bright blue now by the way.
As if my weekend couldn’t get any more loserish and boring, after lunch my mum came into the living room and said, ‘We’re going to the wallpaper show,’ which I knew about because Darren’s stupid dad had wallpapered half the town with adverts for it.
So it was my mum and dad, Bunky because he thinks he’s one of the family like I’ve already said, Granny with her blue frizzy hair and me with my massively sticking-out head all walking around this stupid exhibition, when we bumped into Mr Hodgepodge.
‘Bunky and Barry!’ he said, pointing and looking at the wrong one of us for each name. ‘And this must be your sister!’ He was looking at my mum and pointing at my dad but I realised straight away he was talking about Granny.
‘Granny, meet Mr Hodgepodge,’ I said. ‘He’s the one who called me an anteater and laughed when Darren said I was Barry Annoyingnose, then made me stand outside like I was a tree.’
‘Very pleased to meet you, Mr Hedgehog,’ said Granny and she put her hand up for him to high five it.
Suddenly I sensed something annoying to my left. I looked out of the window and saw Darren Darrenofski standing there again with his can of Fronkle.
‘What is it with you standing behind windows I’m on the other side of?’ I mouthed, which is probably the world record for longest-ever mouthed sentence.
‘Is that your mum and dad?’ he spitmouthed back, because he hasn’t been at school long enough to spot Mr Hodgepodge from behind, which isn’t very hard due to his fat bum.
‘No!’ I screamed like a girl, not wanting Darren to think I had really old parents.
‘What are you, Barry Highvoice now?’ said Bunky in his rubbish Future Ratboy voice, and Mr Hodgepodge and Granny chuckled.
I don’t like it when people laugh at me so I said, ‘Bunky reckons you’ve got a fat bum,’ to Mr Hodgepodge, whose eyebrows went up about three and a half centimetres. He quickly said goodbye and wobbled away with his exhibition booklet covering his bum.
‘What a hunk!’ said Granny, looking at Mr Hodgepodge through her glasses, which I think must make everything blurry.
I looked out of the window and saw Darren walking off down the road, his stupid crocodile head working out how to ruin my life because he thinks I’ve got a granny-and-grandadish mum and dad, even though I don’t.
I spent the whole of Sunday trying to flatten down the back of my hair by just lying in bed doing nothing at all, but by Monday morning it was sticking out more than ever.
I was nervous as I entered the classroom, mostly because of my stupid haircut but also because of the whole grandparent-parents thing.
I could just imagine Darren Darrenofski telling the whole class about how he’d seen me with my really old mum and dad and that my hair was sticking out miles at the back. They were probably all waiting for me to come through the door so they could start laughing.
I needn’t have worried, though. Luckily Stuart Shmendrix’s little brother had thrown a boiling hot fish finger at his forehead on Saturday afternoon and it’d sizzled into his skin and now he had orange breadcrumbs where his eyebrows used to be.
Darren was too busy singing about Stuart’s eyebrows to the ‘Happy Birthday’ tune to notice me coming in with my family-size bottle of Fronkle.
I don’t usually drink much Fronkle because my mum says it makes your teeth go short like Granny’s, but I needed it to get my spit gloopy so I could gel my sticking-out back-of-hair down.
That’s what I was doing, licking my palm with gloopy Fronkle-spit and spreading it on to my hair, when Darren faded out his song about Stuart’s fish-finger eyebrows and looked round the sports hall for someone else’s life to ruin.
It’s Games on Mondays at that time so that was why we were in the sports hall. I was in my usual spot at the side with Bunky, trying not to get hit by the ball Mr Koops was throwing at us.
‘Dodge the Koopball’ is Mr Koops’s favourite game for when he can’t be bothered to do any teaching. It’s just all of us in the hall running for our lives while he throws a ball at us.
‘Watch out for Barry Loserhaircut, Mr Koops. His mum and dad are about ninety-seven each so he’s probably not as strong as the rest of us,’ shouted Darren. His wobbly little Fronkle belly made it look like he had the Koopball under his T-shirt.
‘That was my granny and Mr Hodgepodge, Crocoloser,’ I said, louder than I meant, and my girly screamvoice echoed all round the hall.
‘Ha ha! Barry Loser’s grandad is Mr Hodgepodge!’ Darren farted out of his mouth, and everybody stopped running for their lives and cracked up, including Mr Koops who doesn’t take teaching seriously enough if you ask me, especially right now at this exact moment in the history of the universe amen.
‘We’ll see whose grandad is Mr Hodgepodge outside the gates after school,’ I heard myself saying, even though I wasn’t moving my mouth. Then I realised it was Bunky speaking, but by then it was too late and I had a fight on my hands.
By lunch everyone in the whole school had heard about the fight, mostly because Art comes after Games and Darren had done a really rubbish poster saying ‘Darren Darrenofski V Barry Loserhaircut’ with the date and time on it, then photocopied it a million times and put them up everywhere, including sticking one to my bum for about two seconds.
‘Darren’s gonna eat you for breakfast, Barry Loserhaircuttingtons,’ said Tracy Pilchard, with Donnatella and Sharonella behind her.
‘Don’t you mean for tea?’ I said back, after a massive gap where I was trying to think of something clever to say. I took a sip from my Fronkle but my neck was shaking from being worried about the fight, so the bottle bashed against my face and Fronkle sloshed down my jumper.
‘Don’t wee yourself, Barry,’ said Donnatella, and Sharonella snarfled a little laugh, putting an ‘ingtons’ on the end of it.
Because I’d been drinking Fronkle all day I actually did need to go for a massive wee, but I’d been too scared to risk it in case Darren was in the toilets waiting to flush me down the loo like a smelly poo.
So I was jiggling my legs around and doing little dances and singing the theme tune to Future Ratboy to stop myself weeing my pants when the end of school bell rang. I usually like that noise, but this time it sounded like the worst alarm clock ever in the history of the world amen.
I was like one of those massive sharks you see on TV that have loads of little fish swimming around them as I jiggled towards the gates with Bunky and Stuart Shmendrix and all the other hangers on giggling and talking about the fight and how Darren was going to beat me easily.
‘I think the pressure’s really getting to him,’ said Bunky into the banana that Anton Mildew was holding up to his mouth like a microphone.
‘This is Anton Mildew reporting live from the big fight,’ said Anton to his invisible cameraman, then he peeled the banana and ate it in about a second flat and threw the skin on the floor in front of Fay Snoggles, who didn’t slip on it.
Darren was facing the other way when I got to the gates.
‘Ah, Mr Loserpants, so nice of you to join me,’ he said, twizzling round with a Fronkle in his hand and trying to sound like a film ba
ddy.
‘Oh yeah, I REALLY want to join you by the bit of wall you’re standing next to. Does it remind you of the zoo your crocodile mum lives in?’ I said. I didn’t really know what I was talking about.
Everybody was chanting ‘fight!’ by now, Bunky included, who was jumping around doing boxing moves.
‘Don’t talk about my mum,’ said Darren. He’d walked right up to me and I could smell the Fronkle on his breath.
‘Mmm, your breath is so Fronkley,’ I said in my Future Ratboy sarcastic voice that he uses when he’s making Not Bird look stupid.
‘Yuck, Barry likes smelling Darren’s breath!’ Stuart Shmendrix shouted from the crowd, with his orange fish-finger eyebrows waggling around.
I watched my hands come up shakily in front of me and started to feel quite excited about being in an actual fight, when suddenly I heard Donnatella’s horrible voice screaming behind us.
