by Katz, Danny
…
Too harsh? Her mouth looks really sad. A sad, nice mouth.
…
I went wayyyy hard. Her eyes look really sad. Sad, nice eyes.
…
Say something, Jarrell.
…
Eventually she does: ‘Guess I’m wrong then and you really do hate me. Do you really hate me, Tom?’
‘Yep.’
‘Alright. Then we can’t go on like this anymore. I think maybe it’d be best if we never speak to each other ever again and I quit SCUM.’
‘That might be the smartest thought you’ve ever had, Jarrell.’
‘Okay, I quit.’
She just steps away from the wall and starts walking off down the corridor toward the end of E Block where there is a door out.
‘Hey … you’re not allowed to leave! Mrs Goonaratna said we had to wait here!’
Jarrell keeps walking with her goonchy arse going back ’n’ forth, doesn’t look back or anything.
‘You’ll get DE-TENNNNT-ION!’
She walks out the doors at the end, into the teachers’ carpark.
Doesn’t bother me none. It’d be good if she gets into more trouble and gets detention. She might get suspended for this, yeah, or expelled, that’d be even better. Then I’ll never have to see her stupid—
The PA crackles and a voice comes on. Not Fruehling’s but. Not even someone pretending to be Fruehling. A boy-voice, sounding nervous-ish.
‘… Students, this is an announcement … uhhhhh … just a warning to everyone … uhhhh … that if you survived the Quad Raid this morning, that was … nothing … uhhhh … because now … something … is …’
A girl’s voice in the background goes ‘You stuffed up, Kade, give it to me!’ Then a thump and the PA goes off.
Down the corridor you can hear voices of kids in classrooms.
Haha / Who was that? / Year 12s / They’ve taken over the school
The PA goes on again and now the girl is talking: she is much better at talking. ‘Students! Year 12 has taken over the school! Get out of your classes right now and run! Because we are coming to get you and it will be the biggest Muck-Up event of all time!!!! … Quad Raid 2!!!! … The Deathening!’
There’s laughing in the background on the PA then it goes off again.
Classroom doors open and teachers look out to see what is happening. You can hear chairs skreeking inside their classes. The teachers go back in and I can hear them trying to keep their students quiet, ‘Settle … back to your desks …’
The door of Food Tech opens and Mrs Goonaratna sticks her head out to see what’s going on. Carruthers is saying ‘Mrs Goonaratna, my baklava’s in the oven, miss, do I begin my honey syrup now?’
Mrs Goonaratna looks back in: ‘Yes Cody, continue with your honey syrup, all of you continue with your task.’
But Angus Smits and Dougy Mansour are taking off their aprons. ‘Not staying round here, miss, it’s Quad Raid 2: The Deathening.’
A lot of things happen very fast now: down the corridor, a boy runs out of a class and down to the end of E Block then out the doors at the end. More kids come out of his classroom and run off the same way. A teacher runs out of a different class and a bunch of students follow behind, legging it.
Dougy Mansour and Angus Smits walk out of Food Tech, right past Mrs Goonaratna. ‘I did not dismiss you! Back to your ovens!’ she says, but they keep going.
Just about everybody is taking off their aprons now and Mrs Goonaratna knows she can’t stop them: ‘Alright then! Ovens off! Everyone out!’ She holds the door open and the whole class goes, Jack S at the back of them. He sees me in the corridor but ignores me, just goes with everyone else out the door at the end of the block.
Only Carruthers is left, still at his oven. Mrs Goonaratna says ‘I know you love to cook, Cody, but it is time to abandon the kitchen.’
Carruthers whisper-swears to himself, takes off his apron, folds it up neat, takes out his baklava from the oven, leaves it on his benchtop, turns off the oven, goes to the door and holds it open for Mrs Goonaratna: ‘Teachers first.’
‘Thank you, my special helper.’ She thinks he is the most polite and wonderful student she has ever taught. She did not see him when he picked up Mr Ooi the maths teacher and put him in a bin because he didn’t want to do a revision test.
They walk past me like I’m not even there: ‘Excuse me, Mrs Goonaratna, can I leave?’
She stops, thinks for a second, shakes her head. Turns round and walks off fast with Cody.
Was that a yes-shake or a no-shake? Looked like a no but she’s very confusing.
The corridor’s all quiet. One last Year 7 kid runs out of a classroom, guns it round the corner too fast, falls over then gets up and then he’s gone.
Do I stay or go?
Stay? Go?
Guess I’ll have to stay like Mrs Goonaratna told me.
I think.
2:22 p.m.
E Block Corridor
A teacher is wet on the head with green.
Some kind of Coola-lime sticky green stuff. Not sure who the teacher is. Think it might be Mrs Nobes the Nobhead because she has come from round the corner of I.T. Hub, where Art Block is. Yep pretty sure it is the Nobhead: she is getting closer and I can see her hippy dippy trippy farmer-pants covered with green bits of blob.
Also that’s her big orange hippy dippy trippy bracelets banging against each other on her arms, clunk clunnkkkkk, as she runs down the corridor. When she goes past she looks at me for a sec, and even though she doesn’t say anything, her scaredy face talks to me in eye-language, going ‘Why are you standing there? Quad Raid 2: The Deathening is coming! Get out! RUN, YOU MORONIC MORON!!!!’
And I talk back to her in eye-language, saying ‘But Mrs Nobes the Nobhead, I’ve been told to stand here and I don’t want to get into trouble.’
Then she gives me a last little eye-look that says ‘You think I’M a Nobhead but I think we know who the real Nobhead is’ then the eye-chat is finished and she goes down the corridor.
Nobody knew Quad Raid 2: The Deathening was coming. Year 12s didn’t do a Facebook page for it or anything. And now I’m scared because if they could do this to an actual TEACHER, what are they going to do to ME???????
I shouldn’t be sticking around. Not even if Mrs Goonaratna told me to, if she told me to. …
…
Do it, Zurb. Step away from the wall.
See? Not hard.
What if Mrs Goonaratna comes back?
Do it, Zurb. Step back to the wall.
…
Whassat??????
Coming round the corner from Art Block.
Sumo-pig. It’s stopped on the other side under the fire extinguisher.
‘Hey Sumo-pig.’ I’m doing that thing where you bend down a bit and click your fingers to make animals come to you but it won’t come. ‘Had a bad day, hey, Sumo-pig?’
It stays against the wall under the fire extinguisher. Just stands there with its nappy still half hanging off.
‘Not fun to be running around and hiding all day. I know how you feel. It makes you tired and hungry. Bet you’re tired and hungry, hey?’
It might come over if I had some food to give it but where do I find food in the middle of the corridor outside Food Tech?
Oh. Right.
‘Stay there, Sumo-pig, don’t go, I’ll get you something to eat.’
Oven 1 is just inside the classroom near the door. On Carruthers’ benchtop is his golden profesh-looking baklava in a tray. It’s still a bit hot but I break off a bit for the pig, then another bit for me, then carry them out the door in my hands. Sumo-pig is still there so I put the pig’s piece on the floor in the middle of the corridor then go back to the wall with the other bit for me.
‘Cody Carruthers baked it so it’s top quality. Go on, eat it.’ But the pig won’t go over to the baklava, probably doesn’t believe that a cunjevoidal mass could make something that was top quality.
So I take a bite of my bit to show the pig how yum it is.
It really IS yum. Cody Carruthers IS a Masterbaker. In every way.
Sumo-piggy looks at the bit on the floor then it walks up to it, sniffs it, and starts to eat. Lawwwd, if Carruthers saw this right now. If he saw his perfect baklava being eaten by me and a pig, he’d sack-tap me AND the pig.
It finishes the baklava and looks up at me, reckon it’s saying thanks.
‘Want mine?’ I hold out the rest of my baklava, but it starts walking away.
‘Where ya going, pig?’
It looks back, stops. I think it’s waiting …
‘You want me to come WITH you?’
Probs just imagining it but Sumo-piggy moves its head up and down, just the tiniest bit. I’m starting to wonder something a bit mental now. All day long I’ve been feeling sorry for Sumo-pig … but actually maybe all day long, Sumo-pig has been feeling sorry … for me. That’s why it was watching me outside I.T. Hub this morning and that’s why it came into the toilets to find me. It’s been keeping an eye on me.
There’s a yell and running shoe-step noises outside, not far away. If I stay here …
‘Okay, I’m coming!’
Soon as I say that, Sumo-pig starts to run on its pig legs, not too fast so I can keep up. Swallow the last bit of my baklava and start running after it toward I.T. Hub.
Sumo-pig stops at the corner of I.T. Hub and peeks round into Art Block. I stop behind it: ‘Shouldn’t we go out the way everyone else went?’
The pig doesn’t answer because it is a pig. Though y’know, it wouldn’t surprise me if it did. It’s like me and the pig understand each other in some weird silent brain-wifi way.
It goes round the corner and so do I.
The door of the Ceramics studio is open and all empty inside. This must be where Mrs Nobes the Nobhead got slimed because there are green blobs over the teacher’s table and on the wall behind. The window next to the table is open so someone must’ve crept up to the window and squirted green lime-stuff in through there. Also there are green footsteps on the ground where she ran out, you can see them going out the door and down the corridor for a bit.
The Studio Art room is also empty. The chairs are pushed around and people’s pictures and brushes are still on their workbenches, just thrown around. Looks freaky, like aliens zapped the school and everybody was vaporised in the middle of some boring lesson.
Sumo-pig keeps going to the end of Art Block: ‘We can’t go down here, it’s a dead-end.’ But we turn a corner at the end and there is a door here. Didn’t know there was a door here.
We go through the door, down some steps. We are outside, at the back of Art Block near the school back-fence.
Don’t know this bit of the school at all but Sumo-pig knows where it’s going. Guess it’s been hiding for the whole day so it knows every block, every corridor, every secret door.
There is a long grassy bit along the back fence and we run all the way to the end then Sumo-pig takes a shortcut behind the back of the Japanese garden where I was this morning.
Past the tanbark path that I went down this morning, then up between D Block and C Block where the big water tank is.
… up some steps into a middle door …
???????
How’d we get into Block C? Been here three flarping years and never knew a door was here.
Block C is empty too: nobody in the corridor, kind of spooky. All the maths rooms are here and the first classroom just has books and crap on tables and chairs knocked around. But before the last kid left, they went to the blackboard and put nips on the graph, like this …
Maybe a teacher did it, who knows?
At the end of C Block, Sumo-pig takes me out a door that goes to a covered roof-bit outside. Lots of kids are around the locker shed trying to get in to get their bags and get out of the school. Everyone’s pushing and grabbing each other to get in.
Someone in the middle is trying to get in, someone in big pants with stuckdown hair and sauce stains on their shirt.
‘RAV-O!!!!’
He can’t hear me because it’s so crazy over there with everyone pushing, but I see him get in through the doors. Sweeeet, he’ll be able to get his bag and escape, he’ll be out of here soon. Onya Ravo, you made it to the end of Muck Up Day, the nightmare is over for you.
Not over for me yet, but. Sumo-pig’s looking up at me, it doesn’t like to be kept waiting.
‘Sorry.’
It takes off and I’m behind it, turning right and going along the squishy path between Admin and the library. Up some side-stairs. How did we get into B Block?
There are windows all the way along and I can see out to the quad where Quad Raid 2: The Deathening is happening. As I run down the corridor, each window is like a 55-inch 3D flatscreen in full 1080p with no lag. And a different movie is showing on each screen. All MA 15+, containing violence, coarse language, and adult themes.
Through one window I see the benches along the side: a bunch of Year 7s or maybe 8s, small kids anyway, are getting chased by Zombies in Army-Camo with waterbombs. The kids are jumping over the benches and one kid has tripped over a bench and is on the ground. It’s that little flat-faced freckle-freak from this morning in the Japanese garden. He’s getting waterbombed in the face by the Zombies in Army-Camo again, right up close while he lies there. Pretty savage, I feel sorry for him.
In the next window I see the handball courts where a bunch of Smurfs with Guns are walking round with supa-soakers and shooting people with blue water. Just shooting randomly, all chilled and cazh. Dougy Mansour gets it in the back of the head and he is holding his head like it hurt even though it’s just water. Haha, serves you right, Dougy, for all your lame jokes about my T-shirt.
Through the next window I can see the Superspicy-Girlz on Scooters, scootering round, throwing jizz-balloons. They are chasing after girls mostly, there goes Hannah and Steph, getting a jizzblasting because they’re slow runners. But Boniqa Newitt is taking off, running for the quad gates, her legs going like speedy little scissors under her long yellow dress.
GO BONIQA !
YOU’RE ALMOST THERE, BONIQA!!!
YEAH YOU MADE IT,
BONIQA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Respect has been earned.
In the next window I can see the back of the quad where Mexicans in Sombreros are chucking smokebombs into the wheelie bins. Orange smoke is coming out of the bins and blowing round the quad. Smoke is everywhere, like when you see battle-fights in war movies. One of the bins might be a bit on fire too. Yeah, it definitely looks like fire’s coming out of it. Way off through the smoke I can see kids jumping the school fence, trying to get out of school.
No more windows to look out of, which is a shame, these were all pretty entertaining movies. Sumo-pig has got me to the end of B Block now, where the gym is. A door goes out to the footy oval: the pig runs out the door but I won’t follow, nuh-uh. Not with Quad Raid 2: The Deathening happening so close.
Sumo-pig looks back: trust me.
Nuh-uh.
Sumo-pig runs off anyway toward the portables.
Flarping hell, I’m coming.
You can smell the smoke out here. Tons of it is blowing over so it’s hard to see the pig in front of me, just its tail flipping round. For some arsey reason, Sumo-pig takes me closer to the quad instead of away from it.
There are three small portable classrooms next to each other that are called Portable A, Portable B and Portable C and stuff is going on in front of Portable C where the Philosothon meetings happen. The Gorillas in Netball Skirts have trapped a bunch of people in the gap between the portables and they are egging them in a full-on way, like just chucking one egg after the other and the poor wusses are all going ahhhhh and covering their faces to stop egg getting on them.
In front of Portable B, three Harry Potters with supa-soakers are shooting green slime-stuff at everyone. The Harry Potters must’ve been the ones who supa-soaked Mrs Nobes through the Cer
amics studio window, the green looks kind of the same as what was on her head.
?????
Lorraine Harun????
Dah-yammm, she’s stolen a supa-soaker off one of the Harry Potters and is shooting back at them. She looks really fierce holding the supa-soaker down low and blasting them, like a proper sexxxy hero-chick. No, Sumo-pig, don’t go near them. I’ve got through the whole day without getting a single mark on me, don’t want to get any of that sticky Coola-lime stuff on me …
Sumo-pig goes right into the middle of the supa-soaker fight. The Harry Potters and Lorraine Harun keep shooting each other and don’t see me running through the middle, chasing a pig.
Ab-surrrd. It’s like we’re invisible. And I don’t even get a drop of green on me: we have a clear path all the way into the gap between Portable B and Portable A. Sumo-pig really IS magic.
Behind Portable A it is quiet, away from all the noise and fighting and war and stuff. But I see something here even more shocking and MA 15+ than anything I have seen so far today.
RICHARD BRINCAT AND MANDY KARANIKI ARE KISSING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The two of them are leaning against the wall where no one can see them, doing sicko tongue-biz and everything. Thought they hated each other, thought he was always dissing her and calling her fat. Thought she was always hating on him and thinking he was a massive d-bag. But I suppose sometimes when people are making like they hate each other, it can mean they actually like each other. Maybe it’s that defensive mechanism thing Jarrell was going on about. Brincat and Karaniki were always actually into each other but it took a Quad Raid for them to find that out.
They’re so busy with their sicko tongue-biz they don’t notice me and Sumo-pig run past, and now we’re heading along the side of the school fence toward the footy oval where I can see the footy posts with the bins on top. How the flarp DID they get them up there? Must’ve used a ladder. Or did they really hire a crane?
