by Katz, Danny
Lorraine is sweeping up silly string under a tree next to the canteen steps so I get my bin-liner ready and open, waiting for her to empty her scooper. She’s having trouble because the silly string keeps turning into crumbly powder. I should say something to her instead of just standing here but I don’t know what to say.
‘Osama Bin-Liner.’
‘Hmmm?’
‘That’s the name of my bin-liner, Osama Bin-Liner.’
She sorta-laughs and holds out her full scooper and I open my bin-liner and in goes the silly string and that’s the end of this great historical moment of world peace.
Behind the canteen, somebody’s chucked a balloon that was full of baked beans. It split open and the baked beans went everywhere. Pretty sick: somebody stepped in it and you can see baked bean footprints running away behind the canteen. I can also see the bench beside the bin where SCUM sits and where Ravo got attacked this morning in the Quad Raid. It is completely fish-sauced.
All over it. On the ground, on the bin, on the side of the bin. You can actually smell it from here.
Makes me sad to think of Ravo and how he’ll have to get through the day with that stink all over him. I know what it’s like to smell rank all day at school. Last summer Mum gave me this salami sandwich in my lunchbox and it started to stink in my bag because the day was so hot, and the stink went all over my books and P.E. gear and everyone was going EWWWWWW, YOU STINK, YOU STINK BAD, GET AWAY, ZURB, EWWWWWWWW, including Mr Whooten the P.E. teacher. It’s going to be wayyyy worse for poor Ravo, don’t know how he’s going to get through it.
Makes me sad to see our bench like this too: this is our spot where we always go and we have never had another spot. Guess we’ll have to find another spot today because there’s no way we can sit here. But you know, what’s the point of going to SCUM anymore anyway? It feels kind of finished forever. Because of Jarrell. She stuffed up everything and I hate her hate her hate her hate her HATE HER.
Why did she ask me to go to the school bush dance in the first place? Why did I say yes? I hate Jarrell, I’ve always hated Jarrell since the first day I met her. She thinks she’s so smart at school and so good at everything but she’s just up herself and says things that are mammothly douchey and makes these pffff-smirky noises about everything. Every morning before school I think ‘C’mon Zurb, she can’t be THAT bad, c’mon, just try and get along with her today’ but then I get to school and try talking to her and a minute later I want to stick her face into one of those Nicer Dicer multi-choppers you see on TV ads that slice up boiled eggs with no mess. SO WHY DID I SAY YES? WHY DID I GO TO THE SCHOOL BUSH DANCE WITH A BIG SMIRKY SUCKHEAD?
Guess I felt sorry for her or something. And I guess I thought it’d be better than going to the school bush dance without a girl. So the night that the dance was on, I showed up at the assembly hall in jeans and shirt, looking like a pretty arsey cowboy. And she showed up dressed like a cowgirl, in like boots and skirt ’n’ stuff, and she looked kind of nice I guess – she’d actually washed her hair so it was kind of nice and flowy and stuff …
But yeah, anyways, we went in together even though I was embarrassed to be with her, then I found Ravo and Jack S – they couldn’t get a girl to go with them and so they just showed up together – and I hung with them instead. Jarrell kept hanging round us, waiting for me to dance with her but I wouldn’t dance with her or talk to her no matter how much she tried until she got all crazy and started yelling ‘Why’d you even agree to come with me then, Tom? Why are you treating me like this, Tom? You are being hurtful and insensitive!’ like REALLY loud, in front of everyone. It was pretty embarrassing actually and I didn’t know what to do so I started laughing and Jack S told me I was being mean. But what was I s’posed to do? People were looking at me and her and thinking about what was going on between us.
The laughing made things worse. Jarrell said ‘Fiiiiine, if you don’t wanna dance with me, I’ll dance with someone else,’ and she asked Jack S to dance with her and he said ‘Aiiight’ because he’s got a bad case of superhorny disease and he’ll dance with anything that has boobies that jiggle.
She was doing it on purpose, dancing with Jack S to make me jealous, dancing right in front of me, sticking her unsexxy arse right in my face and wiggling it around. But it was making Jack S horny as balls and they kept dancing like that until I got sick of looking at them and just left the bush dance and went home.
So then, THEN, (you won’t believe this), then on Monday when I came to school and went to SCUM headquarters, everything was weird and different: Jarrell and Jack S were sitting with each other and they were like holding hands and I found out they’d hooked up at the bush dance. Bloody hilarical: the densest twit on earth and the smartest suckhead on earth, a couple. Haw haw, absurrrrd. Got no problem with those two being together, they can do whatever they want to do, go get married, have babies if they want – but it’s buggered up SCUM for the rest of us. Every recess and lunch, they just sit on the bench and don’t talk to anyone, don’t look at us, just vommy-hold hands and vommy-stare at each other like vommy-gimples. I know she’s just trying to make me jealous, f’sure. She’s not into Jack S, he’s a dense twit. No female of any species would ever want to hook up with him, not even invertebrates. Obviously she’s just using Jack S to get back at me. I know it. That’s why she shuts me out all the time, that’s why she whispers stuff to Jack S and kind of laughs all the time, just loud enough so I can hear it. If she wants to completely destroy the Students Combined Underground Movement, then she’s doing a bloody good job of—
‘Tom?’
Oh right, Lorraine’s got a scooper full of wet toilet paper. I don’t know how long she’s been waiting for me.
‘Sorry.’ I open my bin-liner for Lorraine and she puts in her wet toilet paper and none of it touches my hands.
Lorraine has the best mouth, like her teeth and everything, it just works. Kind of getting a bit of a zing when I look at her emptying her scooper. Though truth is, I get a zing with about ninety-seven per cent of the girls I look at. But I’m talking about that extra-zingy super-zing that I only get with about three per cent of that ninety-seven per cent, whatever that is; maths craps me.
This year I have had six proper extra-zingy super-zing-attacks:
1. Sarah Zitzlaff with the frizzy hair and perfect teeth. It didn’t work out. She wouldn’t go with me to the bush dance when I asked her – she said it was cos of her boyfriend but I think the fact is, she was intimidated by me cos I am too indie/hip for her.
2. Had a massive zing-thing for Nicole who comes from Sudan and has braids and is unbelievably super-smokin’ and also has perfect teeth. I even wrote a song for her (it was a song I originally wrote for Sarah Zitzlaff but changed the name Sarah to Nicole, easy, two syllables). But I never had the guts to ask her to the bush dance cos she has a twin sister named Nina and I thought it would hurt Nina’s feelings if I asked Nicole but not her: just me being really caring and sensitive. Also, I heard she does modelling and is dating a TV actor from New Zealand.
3. This girl Camille who I sat next to in Maths once last term and I started falling in love with her but she said the wart on my arm made her feel like throwing up and could I cover it up. I think it had a negative effect on our relationship.
4. The Valderamma, the hot-bodded super-spicy science teacher. Everybody gets an extra-zingy super-zing with the Valderamma, especially on Mondays when she wears her recessive jeans (that was an excellent science-joke that Ravo made up, he is the World Record Holder for Xtreme Hilarity).
5. I had a dream where I kissed the Brandpower lady from the TV ads. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about her for the next few months, wearing her purple shirt and holding her anti-bacterial wipes. I know, I don’t understand it myself.
6. And right now, here in the schoolyard, I am getting an extra-zingy super-zing with Lorraine Harun. How much would that make Jarrell jealous, hey, if I hooked up with Lorraine Harun? If me and Lorraine were sitting
together all the time on the bench, all vommy-holding hands and stuff, how vommy-excellent would that be? If Jarrell wants to play games with me, then I’ll play games with her yeah.
Me and Lorraine do some more cleaning. If I want to start something with her, I need to make my Zurb-move now. Talk to her properly, Zurb, say something interesting that she will like.
‘Hey Lorraine … uhhhh … you are very brave to wear that headscarf.’
‘Thanks, and you’re very brave to wear a T-shirt that says BOY.’
She is funny-HOT.
‘Y’know Lorraine, you and I are kind of the same, you know?’
‘Uhhh really?’
‘Yeah, Jews and Muzzies.’
‘Muslims.’
‘Yeah. We’re kind of the same, we look the same and we’re both from the Middle East and we’re both not supposed to eat pig and we both like falafels. Falafels are hot and crunchy and a satisfying snack for lunch on the go.’
Then she laughs. When she laughs, her face gets massively beautiful: her skin turns soft-dark, her eyes look huge. Y’know, this might work. Why couldn’t it work? It doesn’t matter if she is Muslim and I am half-Jewish: if we had babies, our babies would be half-Muslim/quarter-Jewish with beautiful mouths and they would be the start of a new world where there is peace between religions—
BRNNNNNNNNGGGGG goes the bell from far away.
—or they would wind up being hated by both sides. Kind of a risk we’d have to take I guess.
‘Good work, Team Unity!’ Boniqa’s come back from the assembly hall with her garden-grabber, snap-snapping it in the air. ‘Okay, let’s get our equipment back to the maintenance shed, chop chop!’
Lorraine hands Boniqa her scooper and broom and says ‘As team-leader, do you mind taking my scooper back? Thanks, Boniqa,’ then she walks off, just like that, very cool. Boniqa stands there with the scooper and broom, looking confused haha.
‘Yeah Boniqa,’ I say, giving her my full bin-liner, ‘this goes in the wheelie-bin. General garbage of course,’ then I walk off, following Lorraine and her nice arse until I catch up.
‘Hey, uhhhh, Lorraine, you going back to the office to get your bag?’
She looks over: ‘Yeah. And are you going to walk around all day with that hanging out of your pants?’ I freak out but when I look down, I notice it’s just my belt hanging out because the pants-loop is broken. My belt-wiener is flapping round while I walk. I quickly tuck the belt into the next loop along. Come on, Zurb, say something smooooth to her.
‘Did you hear about the footy posts? They put bins up there.’
‘How’d they do that?’
‘Don’t know, didn’t see them do it.’ Going well, Zurb, nice.
She walks fast; it’s hard to stay next to her. ‘Hey, I was thinking, uhhhhh, no pressure, but if you ever want to hang out sometime at recess or lunchtime, I’m the boss of the Students Combined Underground Movement and we hang out together on the bench beside the bin behind the canteen. Obviously we’ll be hanging out somewhere else today because our bench is covered in fish sauce but any time you want to just pop over and hang out with us, today or tomorrow or any day of the week – well, you’d be welcome. Not weekends obviously, but, yeah, you know.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind, Tom.’ She actually sounds kind of interested. I think she’s interested. Oh man, can’t wait to see the look on Jarrell’s face when Lorraine Harun shows up at SCUM and sits next to me and we start vommy-hanging-out with each other right in front of Jarrell’s face, that would get into Jarrell’s brain, that would be a great way to get back at her for what she’s doing to me.
I say ‘EGG-shell-ent,’ which is a funny way to say excellent, and Lorraine smiles at me in her perfect-teeth way then she pushes me into a bush.
9:44 a.m.
Second period: I.T.
‘I WILL NOT SAY IT AGAIN , GET INTO CLASS!!’
Haha, he keeps saying he will not say it again but he keeps saying it again. Poor Pooksy, all red-faced from yelling, but none of us are moving. Watch, he’s going to say he won’t say it again, again.
‘THAT’S ENOUGH, GET INTO CLASS, I WILL NOTTTTTTTT SAY IT AGGGGGGAIN!!!!!!’
Pooks can lose it as much as he likes but there’s no way any of us is going to go into class, this is too entertaining out here. It’s all going off outside I.T. Hub.
Two Year 12ers are down the end of E Block corridor and they are wearing sumo suits, like big fat sumo body-suits with big fat sumo-stomachs and big fat sumo-arms and big sumo-nappies on their bums and with black wig helmets over their heads so you can’t see who they are – they are dancing a stupid sumo dance for us and we are laughing our heads off.
But we are not just laughing at them, we are laughing more at the pig. They have brought a pig to school, a real pig, like the kind you find on a farm or somewhere. It’s a baby one and they have dressed it in a little sumo-nappy like the kind the sumo-guys are wearing, hahahahaha.
Classic, a real pig is in our school. They’ve let it go down the corridor and it has run toward us then stopped halfway and is now standing in the middle of the corridor all confused.
‘YOU TWO THERE, REMOVE THIS ANIMAL FROM THE CORRIDOR IMMMEEEED -I-ATELY !!!!!!!!’
But the sumo-guys are not scared of Mr Pooks, they are proud of what they’ve done, they’re bouncing off each other’s guts, doing a victory gutfat-bounce. Bloody pisser, we are cry-laughing. Richard Brincat is laughing so hard he is hurting, he is bent over trying to get his breath back.
One of the sumo-guys does a rude thing to Mr Pooks with his hand where he holds his fist down then pops it up like a stiffy popping up, then the stiffy kind of wobbles like it’s swollen. (Theo Chalkis showed me that once; he reckons it’s a rude hand signal in Turkey though from the look of it, I reckon it’d be rude pretty much anywhere on earth.)
Then both the sumo-guys laugh and run out the door, leaving the pig just standing there in the corridor by itself.
Pooks looks at the pig. The pig looks at Pooks. I don’t know what Pooks is thinking of doing. Is he going to catch the pig, pick up the pig?
‘Go on, Ezra, get the pig!’ Cody Carruthers yelled that out. That’s how disrespectful he is to Pooks, he calls him by his first name which is Ezra, but I wouldn’t have the guts to go that far.
‘ENOUGH , CODY , I WANT YOU ALL BACK IN CLASS !’
Nobody goes of course. Nobody’s scared of Pooks, he’s a feeble weako who can’t hurt anybody. We have seen him coach Year 7 cricket and he covers his head every time a cricket ball comes near. We have seen him at Year 8 camp, on the way to Phillip Island, when he sat up the front of the coach and talked to the driver because even other teachers find him too Pooksyish to talk to. We have seen him ride his lame bike that you lie on your back to ride, with the flag on the back because he is proud of what a sackless wonder he is.
Richard Brincat is pointing at the pig: ‘Oi Mandy … why don’t ya introduce us to your sister?’ and Mandy Karaniki goes ‘Fun-NYYYY, Richard’ in a fake-laughing way. Richard Brincat is always saying mean things to Mandy Karaniki. It is kind of funny because Mandy Karaniki looks like a pig in summer when her pink arms poke out of her sleeves.
Pooks takes a step closer to the pig and the pig turns and runs back down the corridor, slipping on the floor cos its skin is all slippery and wettish. They must’ve put Vaseline on it so you can’t grab it easily. It slides on the floor and bangs into a wall, right in its pigface. Now it’s looking at us because it doesn’t know where to go and its nappy is coming off and half hanging off the back.
Hahahahahahaha.
And just when you wouldn’t think any of this could get any funnier, lawwwwwwdy, the pig starts plopping itself. A bit of plop comes out the back where the nappy is hanging off. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, it’s funny and sad at the same time. Funnysad.
Pooksy’s gonna pop. His face is all red and weirdy: the only word I can think of to describe it is ‘Pooksyish’.
&n
bsp; ‘I’M NOT SURE WHAT YOU ARE ALL FIND ING SO AMUSING , THIS IS AN ANIMAL IN DISTRESS, GET INTO CLASSAND STOP GAWKING LIKE F-O-O-L-S!’
Pooks’ voice cracks and a coupla scaredy crawlers like Liz Green and Mandy Karaniki go into I.T. Hub but the rest of us don’t move.
Pooks takes little steps toward the pig. You can tell he is frightened because he is looking round all the time hoping another teacher will come along to help him catch it. As he gets closer, the pig takes off right to the end of the corridor then goes out the door where the sumo Year 12ers ran out.
‘Hey Ezra, get on your bike and catch the pig!’ goes Brincat, which gets big laughs.
‘Don’t step in the piggy poo, Ezra!’ says Cody Carruthers, which gets bigger laughs.
Poor Pooks, I'm actually starting to feel sorry for him. He’s stopped in the middle of the corridor beside the blob of piggyplop, staring out the door where the pig ran off. He finally turns round and I am shocked because I thought his face would be mad with anger but he has a normal face and his voice is low: ‘Okay, we’ve all had a laugh. Please go into class and continue with your video projects while I sort this out, thank you.’
Brincat: ‘Whyyyyy cer-tainly, Ezra, why didn’t you just say so before?’
Which is funny, because he did say it before, lots. Pooksy’s brain must’ve broken and he has no more yells in him, but it works: Brincat and Carruthers and Wiggy go into I.T. Hub now, which means the rest of us go in after them because whatever they do, we do.
