by Katz, Danny
* * *
Because of something that started a couple of weeks back which has become the new school thing. You can be just walking outside minding your own biz and someone will pop out of nowhere and push you into a bush. It’s just this random act called Bushing which is a combo of ‘pushing’ and ‘bush’ and which is why everyone’s walking far away from bushes at the moment. Last week Marcus Rugless was going to the office to pay his excursion money and he got an Xtreme Bushing in the rosebush outside Admin Block. He was crying with his little girl-voice and had to go home early cos he got cut by thorns. Assistant Principal Bitchface Fruehling went on the PA and said bushings were banned but everyone’s still doing it. No one listens to Bitchface.
So when Cesar Hildago got all friendly with me and asked me back to smoke chuff, choofs, whatevs, that was just a way for him to get close enough to give me a bushing – and now I’m in a bush and he’s run out the back gate. Though as far as bushings go, this effort is very lame cos he didn’t even push me into a proper bush, it’s just a small plant thing growing beside the wall of the locker shed. And it’s also kind of good that I got bushed because I’m a bit hidden on the ground and something bad is going on near me, in the gap between C Block and D Block …
NO PLEEEEEEZ
Five zombies dressed in army-camo jackets are chasing some little wuss and have trapped him against the wall. They’re chucking eggs at him and the eggs are smashing all over him.
AHHHHHH NO NOOOO
Little wuss is screaming, getting blasted, covering his head with his hands but that just makes the Zombies in Army-Camo chuck the eggs even harder. Lawwwd it’s brutal: the wuss finally gets away from them, runs up the steps and into the door of C Block and the Zombies in Army-Camo run off in the opposite direction going haw haw haw. If I hadn’t got a bushing from Hildago, it might’ve been me getting blasted – this was a Bushing of Excellent Luck. Soon as they’re gone I get up off the ground, shake off the ground-dirt, and run like hell to the double doors of Admin.
Up the steps …
Through the doors …
And …
I’m inside …
You know those war-movie scenes where there’s an army hospital and all the dying soldiers are flopped round bleeding with their legs and heads hanging off? This is what the inside of Admin looks like. You got a girl standing near Bursar’s counter with blue water all over her uniform; must’ve been from the Smurfs with Guns. That stuff won’t come out easy in the washing machine, you’d have to use special stain-busting stuff they sell on TV. And there’s the girl with the green snot all in her hair and her two friends still laughing about it. The snotted girl is getting even madder about this.
You know what’s funny? / What? / Not you, so shut up!
A couple of Year 10s who I do not know are near the door to Assistant Principal Bitchface Fruehling’s office, looking pretty devastational with vommy stuff on their backs. Some kind of baked bean goop that someone’s chucked at their backs: just the look of it makes you wanna vom.
Next to the plastic potplant is the little flat-faced freckle-freak. He’s got yellow egg crap all over his flat face and hair and clothes and I realise he was the little wuss who got attacked by the Zombies in Army-Camo. The whole side of his face is egg-wounded and he’s got an eggy stink too. He gives me a sad face as if to say ‘I wish I didn’t stay in the Japanese garden’ and I go ‘Haha, dickweed, serves ya right for kicking me out, HAHAHAHAHA’ but of course I don’t say it out loud – I only think it in my head because he looks like he could beat my arse. But I think it really loud.
????????
Lawwwwwd, whassat?
From the far end of the corridor, something’s coming. Something: not an animal or a person. Sort of a bent-over something coming out of the shadows, with wet hair hanging over its face like a long-haired horror-ghost.
It’s waving at me like it wants to grab me and each time it steps closer I step backward because it has a smell that is very wrong.
‘Zurb …’
It stops and lifts its sloppy wet hair off its face and I see it is my best mate.
‘Ravo!!!! What happened to you?’
Ravo starts doing that suck-in crying thing that little babies do when they’re trying not to cry: ‘… well … hhhHHH … I got sprayed by … hhhHHH … two guys in hoodies …’
‘Gangstas in Hoodies?’
‘… hhhHHH … yeah I was just sitting on the bench … hhhHHH … beside the bin … hhhHHH … waiting for you all … hhhHHH … to show up … hhhHHH … and
…’ This could take some time but I must be a good mate and listen.
‘… and then they snuck up behind me … hhhHHH … with a massive spray-thing …’
‘A Weapon of Mass Spray-Destruction?’
‘Yeah … hhhHHH … and it was filled with … hhhHHH … with …’
But he doesn’t have to tell me what it was filled with, I worked it out from the stink. Abie’s my adopted sister from Vietnam and Mum wants her to feel at home so she cooks lots of Vietnamese food, and Vietnamese food uses lots of…
‘… hhhHHH … fish sauce …’
If you haven’t ever smelt Vietnamese fish sauce, it’s kind of what poo would smell like if it came out of a person who’d just eaten poo. It must be extra-bad for Ravo cos he has a huge nose: everyone calls him Nostrildamus because he can smell anything that steps into his smell-zone, and at the moment he is in the centre of his own smell-zone.
‘… hhhHHH … then they just kept spraying me … hhhHHH … and spraying me … hhhHHH …’
‘Didn’t you hear about the Quad Raid on Facebook?’
‘… hhhHHH … you know I’m not allowed on Facebook …’
True dat, his gran banned him cos she thought his profile pic was too suggestive. It was him with his huge nose and hairy legs, in a basketball singlet and shorts.
Ravo lives with his gran – his parents work overseas somewhere – and she’s pretty strict and old-fashioned. She wears a big scarf round her neck and calls everyone possum and has a gift and craft shop called Ravenscroft’s Gift & Craft Shoppe that sells windchimes and dreamcatchers and disgusting jams and pinecones with glued-on eyes. His gran’s pretty nice and all, but. Ravo reckons if someone stabbed her with a knife, she’d still say ‘Ta possum’ then bleed out orange and fig marmalade.
‘… hhhHHH … you should’ve texted me, Zurb, or called me … hhHHHH … I thought we’re s’posed to look out for each other …’
‘Yeah sorry, Ravo, forgot you aren’t on Facebook, but you know, think about the positives – maybe we can get some spring rolls for lunch and dip them into you for flavour.’
At least that cheers him up a bit, calms him down: ‘Yeah … maybe I’ll get sprayed later with coconut milk and lemongrass, then I can finish the day as a deliciously fragrant Thai curry,’ which is a better joke than my joke by far. Even when he’s fish-sauced, he’s still da joke-master.
‘STUDENTS!’ Bursar is poking her turtle neck over the office counter, ‘ANYONE REQUIRING A CHANGE OF CLOTHES, COME IN NOW AND WE’LL SEE WHAT WE CAN FIND IN LOST AND FOUND.’
Bursar lifts the counter bit that goes up like a door. Ravo looks at his rank clothes, goes ‘Awww Gran’s gonna kill me, she’s probably going to have to make me a new uniform.’ (Yep, his gran made his school uniform, sewed it herself. She also cuts up his food at dinner. And he also told me he sometimes gets up in the middle of the night to take a pee, and when he comes back, his bed is made.)
Ravo walks away all wet and fishy, joining a line with the blue-waterbombed girl and the vommy baked-beaned Year 10s and the mad green-snotted girl and the eggy little flat-faced freckle-freak. They all go behind the counter where the Lost and Found Box is, then Bursar closes the counter bit and they are inside the office.
Loud foot-stomps are coming down from the other end of Admin Block. Assistant Principal Bitchface Fruehling is coming down, looking savage, eyes popping out with anger. You can almost s
ee the eyestrings holding them in.
Whooten the P.E. teacher is with her and also Mr Greg Moss my English teacher who is an ex-footy star. There are also a couple of other man teachers who are strong. At the back is King Bozz the Yard Guy carrying his bucket and rag. We call him King Bozz because he is from Bosnia and he is king of the schoolyard. No one is sure if he has an actual proper name.
Bitchface Fruehling and the teachers stop in front of her office and they’re all soft-whispering in a circle. Can’t really hear what they’re saying but bits of it are …
‘… can’t get in …’
‘… need to ring the bell …’
‘… all over the handle …’
‘… it’s 9:10, I need to get in …’
‘… Vaseline on it …’
Assistant Principal Bitchface Fruehling points at the handle of her office door and King Bozz the Yard Guy gets a rag out of his bucket, gets down on his knees, and rubs the handle to get off whatever’s there. Must be Vaseline. He mumbles swear words in Bosnia-language when he cleans. All Bosnia-words sound like swears but you can tell these are actual swears cos of the way he says them, like ‘jebe GA … POS … kur-AC.’
Bitchface Fruehling and the teachers whisper more stuff as they wait for King Bozz to clean the handle, I can hear bits.
‘… not acceptable …’
‘… have you seen the schoolyard? …’
‘… a disgrace …’
‘… very disappointing …’
‘… not funny or clever …’
‘… there will be consequences …’
‘… bins on top of the footy posts …’
‘… how did they do that?? …’
Fruehling’s eyes get bigger and poppy-outty-er every second.
‘… make them pay for damages …’
‘… need to keep a normal schedule …’
‘… what is that reek? …’
‘… smells like fish sauce …’
King Bozz has got the handle clean and he stands and opens the door. Bitchface Fruehling kind of pushes past him to get inside and then
BRNNNNNNNG
I put my bag on the ground and lean against the wall next to the bulletin board, which is where you’re supposed to wait if you are on Yard Duty. You wait for King Bozz the Yard Guy to give you your Yard Duty cleaning equipment and tell you what to do.
The PA makes that fizzy noise when it turns on and now you can hear Bitchface’s voice on the PA, going out of all the speakers around the school.
‘Students and staff, I think we’re all aware that there has been a disgraceful incident on our schoolgrounds.’
Her voice is trying to sound calm but you know she’s not.
‘The staff of this school certainly have a sense of humour and we understand Year 12s want to let off a bit of steam, but we expect it to be done in a responsible and appropriate manner …’
While she blah-blahs on with her big important announcement I wait here and think about what happened to Ravo. Because I should’ve texted or rung him; I knew he wasn’t on Facebook. Why didn’t I warn him about the Quad Raid? Poor form, Zurb, he’s s’posed to be your best mate.
‘… very disappointing how a small minority spoil the day for everyone and we would like to acknowledge the vast number of Year 12 students who were not involved. Please rest assured, students, that the school is in lock-down and we are confident that this will prevent any more appalling behaviour from certain individuals who are spoiling it for …’
That’s what SCUM has always been about. We are the Students Combined Underground Movement, we are losers and lamers who have nowhere to hang out at school and no one else to hang out with. Our job is to stick together and look out for each other, me and Ravo and Brisley and Jack S and Jarrell.
‘… it is unfortunate that first period has been cut short by twenty minutes because of the late bell, but I am confident we can carry on with our normal school timetable as scheduled …’
But now everything’s gone wrong, SCUM is all stuffed up. Maybe that’s another reason I snawked into school this morning. Because I don’t want to bump into Jarrell. I’d be happy if I never saw her sucky face again.
‘… thank you for your attention, students and staff.’
9:22 a.m.
First period: Yard Duty
We’re walking behind King Bozz, going down Admin corridor. There are three of us on Yard Duty: Lorraine Harun is in front of me and Boniqa Newitt is behind me and she is snapping at my arse with her garden-grabber.
Snap snap
‘Getorrffff, Boniqa.’
The garden-grabber is the best thing to get on Yard Duty. It’s a long stick with little grabbers at the end that open and close when you squeeze the handle so it’s easy to pick things up from the ground with them. Boniqa Newitt got it cos she’s got small-legs that never grew normal and King Bozz the Yard Guy felt sorry for her probs. But now she’s really crapping me, snapping my arse with them. They hurt too, there’re pointy bits on the end that grab your skin.
Snap snap
‘Aighhht enough, Boniqa.’
Lorraine Harun got the second best bit of Yard Duty equipment: the scooper-sweeper. It’s a broom that comes with a scooper on a long stick so you can sweep things up without having to bend down, you can sweep standing up; it is an amazing invention. I am trying hard not to perv at her arse because she is wearing cazh clothes: nice jeans with a shirt and a Muslim scarf on her head. I probably shouldn’t perv because she is Muslim and it could be disrespectful.
I got the bin-liner which is the worst thing to get on Yard Duty. It is just a black plastic bag and you have to follow the other Yard-Duty-ers around with it and when they have garbage that needs to be got rid of you hold it open with your hands and let them drop their garbage in and if you’re not careful, bits of sloppy rubbish can get on your hands. It’s a very stressful job, holding the bin-liner.
Snap snap
Sometimes when people bug me too much, I lose it with them and Boniqa’s pushing me as far as my brain can go. I turn round: ‘Seriously, ENUFF, BONIQA!’ and I flick my bin-liner at her legs to make her go away and she gets all upset and yells ‘Idiot! I could’ve tripped and fallen over!!’
King Bozz stops, turns, points his big Yard Guy finger at me: ‘THIS IS NOT APPROP-RIATE TIME FOR BLUDDY GAMES! YOU OFFER AP-OLOGY TO GIRL!!!’
‘Sorry, Boniqa.’
King Bozz is scary so you do what he says: he was in some war in his old country and he saw people get killed in front of him so you don’t want to piss him off because he’s mental. After I say sorry to Boniqa we all start walking again: she probably hates me now but at least she’s stopped snapping at my arse. We go out the doors at the end of the corridor, down the steps into the quad.
Awwwwwwwwwcrap.
If God had eaten a bad pizza or something dodgy and did a massive vom all over earth, this is what the world would look like. Totally sick. Shaving-cream-crap is smooshed along all the asphalt and the basketball courts. Flour bombs have exploded all over the benches. Glass bottles are smashed into bits on the sides near Assembly Hall. Trees have all got wet toilet paper and silly string hanging from the branches. There couldn’t be a worse day for Yard Duty ever in history, like EVERRRRR. Not even in Pompeii High School when the volcano exploded on everyone and covered the whole town in burning hot lava. Yard Duty that day would be pretty bad I reckon, but still not as bad as this.
King Bozz the Yard Guy looks a bit sad because this is his schoolyard and he is in charge of it and it’s pretty much wasted.
He says ‘We have a big job of unpleasantness to do at present. Small girl is in charge and I want big effort around can-teen and benches, no? I will keep eye on schoolgrounds to discourage bluddy Year 12 riff-raff!’
King Bozz goes off toward the portables, probs so he can hide behind them and drink alchie (that’s what Ravo reckons he does all day).
Boniqa looks all proud because she’s been put in
charge, it makes her even more arsey than usual.
‘Okay gang, let’s split into two groups. I’ll take care of Station One which is from here to the assembly hall, and you two can do Station Two which is all around the canteen. Good with that?’
Lorraine goes yep and I go yep but we say it in a way like we’re not interested.
‘Also be aware of the school’s green initiative. We should use recycling bins wherever possible: general garbage in the garbage bin, and glass goes in the …?’
She’s actually expecting an answer. ‘Glass bin?’ says Lorraine, all sarcastic.
‘That’s right!’
I say ‘Boniqa, what if it’s a glass bottle with a paper label? Do I peel off the label and put the label in the paper bin and the bottle in the bottle bin?’
Boniqa goes ‘Not the slightest bit funny, Tom. Come on, let’s get to work, Team Unity’ (flarp, she’s given us a name). Then she walks off to the assembly hall – she’s wearing a yellow dress for her cazh clothes and it’s too long and tight on her, she has to do quick little footsteps because she’s got no leg-room to move.
Me and Lorraine stand round a bit then Lorraine says ‘S’pose we should get started’ and I go ‘Right.’
Don’t know much about Lorraine Harun: she is really nice and I have always liked her even though she is Muslim and I am half-Jewish and we are not supposed to get along. But I think Muslims and Jews should stop hating on each other: we’re both just human beings, we both come from the Middle East, we both like falafels.
Lorraine doesn’t seem to mind being with me though. She’s sweeping up a flour bomb off a bench and I stand behind her holding my bin-liner (don’t perv at her arse, respect, respect), then she turns and goes ‘Ready?’ So I open my bin-liner and she pours in the flour and none of it goes on my hands. We’re a good team, Muslim and half-Jew working together.
Religion is pretty dumbarse when you think about it, they’re just like these stupid little clubs and everyone in one club is supposed to hate everyone in another club. And everyone thinks their club is the best so they try to make other people join: in Year 7 there were these Christian education classes after school and every kid went along because they were giving away free Caramello Koalas to whoever came. So we all just sat there for half an hour every week eating Caramello Koalas while the teacher talked about Jesus and stuff. And after about a month or so the box of Caramellos ran out so we all stopped going. It didn’t make me believe in Jesus, it just made me believe in Caramello Koalas.
