Suck'd

by Susan Berran

  But naturally Crabby Abbey always has the most to say when it’s her turn in ‘The Circle of Feelings’ … bluUuR! She goes on and on and on about how she’s sooo much better than everyone else in Agnath because her Dad’s a doctor.

  But everyone knows he’s not a real doctor. He’s just one of those FOOT doctors! Me and Jared reckon it’s got to be the easiest, grossest job in the whole entire world. He trims other people’s UGLY, disgusting, cracked yellowing toenails and then digs out the rotting FUNGUS and mouldy GUNK or whatever else is growing between their toes and under their nails. We reckon he only does it because his patients are so big that they can’t reach their own toes anymore.

  Actually it’d be a pretty cool job. You’d get to take home whatever FUNGUS and toenails you like, stick them in a butter container, chuck it in the fridge and see what grows. Me and Jared reckon you could make some excellent AMMO from it.

  But Miss Forest just sits at the start of ‘The Circle’ with this weird little grin on her face every week … I’m not sure if she even really hears anyone. She looks like she’s actually singing something like ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ over and over in her head because she’s totally zoned out.

  But just to make sure that it never, EVER makes it to our turn, me and Jared always sit at the very end of the circle.

  Of course it’s never completely boring. You see, while everyone else is doing their garbage art in the morning, me and Jared just WHACK a couple of bits of trash together to get it out of the way really fast so we can spend most of our time collecting DEAD blowflies from the window sills and secretly shoving them into our pockets. Then when it’s circle time we each bring along our incredibly AWESOME, way cool Single Shot Bug Flungers.

  We’ve cut a ruler in half and each glued a tiny little cardboard ‘bowl’ to one end of our Bug Flunger. We keep them hidden under our shirts, behind our backs and slid into our butt-cracks. Then, during ‘circle time’ while everyone is sitting there sleeping, or being bored to death, we slip our Single Shot Bug Flungers out from their hiding spots – and here’s the tricky bit, because you have to keep it hidden behind your back – we have to feel around to place a blowie in the bowl. Then FLICK the ruler … up shoot the bugs, over our heads and hopefully land right in the face or the lap of one of the others.

  The guys don’t even flinch. They just let them pile up wherever they land. I guess they always have bugs walking all over their faces, in their ears and up their nostrils when they’re sweating out in the paddocks checking sheep butts. So they’re used to it. But luckily for us the girls always totally FREAK OUT. They start swatting at the air and whinging and sooking about the boys smelling so bad that they’re bringing heaps of BLOWFLIES in with them.

  We reckon they don’t really care; they’re just trying to look all girly and prissy in front of Crabby Abbey.

  It’s totally AWESOME when we manage to get a bunch of blowies on Crabby, though. She starts to FLAP about like some sort of loopy bird caught in a hurricane, making little puffy cheeks and all these girly noises … EEEEE EEWWW… it’s totally fake and lame. Then she suddenly whips her head around and glares at Jared and me, like she’s trying to shoot LASER BEAMS from her eyeballs or something.

  “What?” we mouth back, all innocent, as we’re shoving our BUG FLUNGERS back into their butt-crack hiding spots.

  Jared holds the record so far for landing the most blowies on Miss Forest’s head in one lesson. SEVEN! What a crack-up. She absolutely never has any idea they’re even up there. So she walks around for the rest of the day with all these DEAD blowflies sitting on her head. No one says a word, not even the other teachers. But they must be wondering where the blowflies have come from … and why they keep dying on her head?

  Maybe they just think she sits on the dunny for way too long. Or that she attracts heaps of blowflies with the smell of the ‘all natural’ gunk that she chucks all over her hair. And maybe they get their little fly feet stuck in the gunk until they’re overpowered by the incredibly gross stench, and just die right there on her head.

  But anyway, with Jared ‘sick’ at home, the morning Art class had completely SUCKED. The afternoon Social Skills class should have been pretty safe to lob a few blowies around with my incredible Bug Flungers, but nooo, naturally today Miss Forest decided to do something so sucktacular that it was almost as if she’d done it on purpose. Just to peeve ME off. She decided that we needed a lesson in trust.

  Great, I had a pocket full of DEAD blowflies ready to go and no target … yet.

  We shoved the desks against the wall and then had to choose a partner and stand in line in the centre of the classroom. Miss Forest knew that Jared wasn’t there, so I had no one to pair up with. Excellent! I could sit this one out! But no, Miss Forest decided that she would pair us up . . . GREAT. So then, just when I thought the day couldn’t get any worse … it did! Yep, the worst fate imaginable, WORSE than DEATH, worse than Booga’s butt bugle after a baked bean breakfast, worse than TofFeE tugging on his nostril taffy while we’re eating … Crabby Abbey! Miss Forest thought that we’d worked so well together in Art that we should pair up for this. Crabby stared at me through squinted eyes like she was trying to send me a secret message . . . like she was going to make the next couple of hours the most miserable in my whole entire life. But of course, whenever Miss Forest looked over, Crabby was all sucky smiles and rainbows to fool her. She was “so pleased” that Crabby Abbey was being “such a wonderful and gracious student!” Crabby’s such a SUCK-UP!

  I was ready to hurl BIG TIME! Boy, was Jared going to hear about this. And then Miss Forest told us what she had planned for us.

  Hmmm, maybe the afternoon wouldn’t be so painful after all … except for Crabby that is.

  Miss Forest explained that we each had to stand directly behind our partner.

  EEWWWWW, ‘partner’! Even the word

  sent a chill up my spine, and made me want find the nearest bucket to fill.

  She then went on to explain how the person in front had to stand perfectly still, and perfectly straight. Then, when she gave the word, the front person had to stay really stiff, not move their feet from the spot and fall straight back. They had to completely trust that their partner standing behind them would catch them and not let them smash PAINFULLY to the hard, solid floor below. Apparently it was to teach us “One of the most important social skills there is – trust” or some sort of TOTAL CRAP like that.

  Oh yeah, this was going to be sweet. I could feel the sweat oozing from every pore all over my body. My WET, sweaty hands were getting nice and slippery.

  It was payback time!

  Yep Crabby Abbey could definitely trust me to catch her … YEAH RIGHT!

  Miss Forest went through the whole thing about five different ways. She even drew diagrams on the board. WOW, some of these guys are thicker than a double brick wall in concrete.

  I was all set. I was even rehearsing my speech for afterwards over and over in my head. “I’m sooooo sorry, Abbey. My wrist muscles went into spasm a millisecond before you got to me.” Or maybe: “Ooooo sorry, my hands were just sooo sweaty that you slipped right through them.” Oh, I know: “Sorry Abbey. Are you OK? I reeeally want you to trust me … can we do it again?”

  We were all lined up … waiting … Miss Forest moved out of the way … waiting … she began to count back from five … “Four” … Crabby went as stiff as a steel rod … “three” … I put out my hands … “two” … this was gonna be sweet … “one … STOP!”

  WHAT THE!?

  “Everyone turn around on the spot!” Miss Forest suddenly bellowed. “The person who was falling is now the catcher!”

  She had to be kidding.

  “There’s more room this way. Just in case someone misses,” she added.

  Just in case! She’d ruined everything!

  “… one, fall back! ”

  “Arrhhh! ” Thud! “OowWw! ” I yelled, really peeved off as I lay on the hard, cold floor.
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br />   “Abbey let me fall on purpose, you saw her!” I spat at Miss Forest.

  “I’m sooo sorry,” Crabby dribbled. “My hands were all sweaty and you just slipped straight through them. But I reeeally want you to trust me … can we do it again?” she said with a sneering, fake grin.

  “Yeah right! What a load of bull!” Man that hurt and now the back of my head was THUMPING away like a JACKHAMMER.

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean it, Sam,” Miss Forest waffled.

  Crabby Abbey and the other girls were all smirking to each other. She was sooo gonna get it now.

  “OK, everyone turn around and take a step this way so you’ve got enough room. Now the catcher becomes the faller,” Miss Forest announced, which meant that now it was my turn to ‘catch’ (he he he) … Crabby. I made sure I was standing over a good clear space of REALLY HARD floor. I was going to make sure I ‘caught’ her alright. Yeah, as good as she ‘caught’ ME! I was going to make sure this hurt as much as it definitely should. I was going to …

  “Now I want the rear person to stay where they are and the front person to take one big step to the right … for your new partner,” Miss Forest declared.

  WHAT? This was so unfair!

  GREAT! Now I wasn’t going to get to drop Crabby Abbey … and I really wanted to drop her. But now I was going to be stuck with … with … oh no! Booga Boris … and it was my turn to do the catching.

  “Three…” She had to be kidding. A forklift with STRENGTHENED steel forks couldn’t catch Booga Boris. The guy is a gigantic, sloppy, concrete beach ball. There

  was absolutely, positively no way that I was going to be able to …“Two …” Hang on, I wasn’t ready yet. “… One, fall back!” Miss Forest squealed at the top of her voice.

  Suddenly all I saw was this MASSIVE black shadow falling across me, blocking out every bit of light from above. My entire life flashed before my eyes in a split second. I felt like an ant below the foot of a rampaging elephant.

  “AarRhhHh! ” THUD! “mMfFfllpp! ”

  I tried to yell but my voice was completely MUFFLED by the suffocating body lying on top of me like a MASSIVE blubber doona.

  I was going to be completely and utterly dead any second now! I could feel my eyeballs trying to pop right out of their sockets and it felt like my belly-button had been smooshed right through my body, out my back and was making a dent in the floor beneath me. In the total darkness, I lay there fighting for breath, sucking in Booga body sweat! I could see the headlines now .

  . . “INCREDIBLY BRILLIANT SAM SQUASHED TO DUST!” … “BRAVEST BOY IN SCHOOL MOOSHED TO DEATH!” But then just as I thought it was all over, air suddenly rushed into my lungs, the bright sunlight burst into my eyes once more and I was finally able to suck in a gut full of fresh air. I looked up at everyone standing around me with weirder looks on their faces than usual. Miss Forest and a bunch of the other kids were all panting away heavily and still hanging onto a couple of fistfuls of Booga as they HEAVED him off me.

  Later on they told me my eyes were sort of bouncing around in different directions like ping-pong balls, with each one doing its own thing. They figured I’d broken a few ribs, too, because I could hardly breathe and I looked flatter than snot under a BRICK.

  Miss Forest kept apologising and saying she felt sooo bad for not thinking about the height-weight difference between us. Everyone else was still staring down at me. Some of the girls thought I was dead and Dopey Sophie was running around with a phone in her hand yelling, “What’s the phone number for triple zero?!”

  But just behind them I could see Crabby Abbey standing there with a really big grin on her face … she was sooo DEAD MEAT – as soon as I could breathe properly again.

  MY SUCKY WEEK HAD BEGUN!

  TUESDAY: 7:30AM.

  “But how come I have to go to school today!?”

  “Because you do! ”

  “But you know I was almost fatally smooshed yesterday.”

  “You’re fine today. Now get ready! ”

  “But I think my lungs haven’t properly inflated yet and they’re going to explode if I take a deep breath.”

  “Hurry up! ”

  “But I feel reeeally sick.”

  “Get ready for school! ”

  “But Jared’s at home.”

  “He’s sick! ”

  “But what if …”

  “SCHOOL, MISTER! ”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  I’d WALKIE-TALKIED Jared the night before, so I knew he wasn’t going to be at school today either, the lucky bugga!

  Sure, he reckons he was up all night hugging the loo and throwing up food that he ate a week ago … and yeah, he reckons that he can’t eat or drink anything without spewing it back up five seconds later … and sure, he reckons he can barely walk or talk … but who needs to walk and talk at school! WHAT ABOUT ME!? I was the one stuck there with only the sheep huggers and cow cuddlers to talk to.

  He was sooo lucky. I was going to have to put up with Mr Haych for boring old Maths and English all day.

  Usually I could get a heap of sleep in during Maths, and Jared would give me a poke in the ribs whenever Mr Haych was coming our way. But of course, there was absolutely no way any of the other guys would ever warn me.

  There I was, taking my usual Maths class siesta as Mr Haych rambled on and on about something to do with tables and pieces of pie. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Maths or his lunch. The next thing I remember there was this HUGE DARK shadow looming over me.

  “Thank-you, Abbey,” I heard Mr Haych say as my eyelids flickered open.

  Yeah. Thanks a lot Miss Snotty Snitch Crabby Abbey! When Jared gets back there’s going to be some MASSIVE payback alright, Crabby was making my life TOTALLY MISERABLE.

  A couple of times I wasn’t even asleep … yet, and one of the little sucking-up dorks would dob me in.

  Mr Haych was right in the middle of ranting on about something to do with the cost of hamburgers and chips, as if we’d ever need to know that, when suddenly his eyes shot straight across to TOFFEE THOMAS. There was TOFFEE, mouth drooping wide open with a long, thin line of SALIVA running down his chin and just about to drop off the end of his poxy little face. His eyes were staring blankly towards the front of the classroom as if he’d been snap FROZEN in some sort of deep, dark trance. His elbows were balanced delicately on the edge of his desk and his chin sat comfortably in the palms of his hands … and the middle finger on each hand was pointing straight up; shoved like some thick, pink sausage right up both of his nostrils, making it impossible for him to breathe through his nose. So while he made the dumbest snorting sound I’ve ever heard, the SALIVA hanging from his chin did a sort of yo-yo bouncing thing. Going up and down with every breath that he snorted.

  Suddenly Itchy sneezed and TOFFEE snapped out of his sleep. In an instant he realised Mr Haych was heading right in his direction.

  He yanked both fingers out of their warm, cosy, SLIMY little nostrils in a millisecond and sucked up the string of SALIVA as his elbows slipped off the edge of the desk. His head dropped straight down and SMACKED his desk, landing in the pool of drool that had built up while he was asleep. Thoop tHoOp…THUD…SPLASH! Then he instantly sat bolt upright and immediately threw out one arm, pointing it right in my direction.

  “Sam’s asleep!” he squealed in his girly, sleepy voice.

  Which I definitely was NOT! I was just resting my eyes so they stayed sharp and I’d be able to concentrate. Anyway, he was the one that got caught sleeping first. Go mad at TOFFEE, I thought. But then just as I was about to defend myself and explain that my eyes were half closed because I was concentrating so hard and I was also about to point out the pool of drool on TOFFEE’S desk as evidence, when …

  “ Eeewwww!!” screamed Crabby.

  Every single pair of eyes in the classroom immediately shot straight past me and back to Crabby. They all instantly followed her gaze across the room to where she was now staring. There sat TOFFEE THOMAS with
his arm still outstretched and pointing directly at me. But why was Crabby SCREAMING? Because dangling from the end of TOFFEE’S pointing, bony finger was a nice BIG, green, SLIMY dollop of booga. It was just hanging there, bobbing about and ever so s l o w l y stretching down further and further towards his desk like some sort of ultra disgusting YO-YO in s l o w m o t i o n .

  Suddenly everyone else was joining in.

  “AAAW, YUK!”

  “YOU’RE SOOOO GROSS!”

  “THAT’S DISGUSTING, THOMAS!”

  Of course, then TOFFEE tried to convince everyone that, “My hand slipped when I pointed at Sam!”

  “Yeah right … NOT!” called DUFAS. “Bull!” said Itchy.

  “You were picking your nose again!” someone else chucked in.

  This was sooo cool. The heat was totally off me, for once. For the first time EVER TOFFEE THOMAS had actually managed to do something useful for me.

  AWESOME!

  For the rest of the morning every single eye in the classroom, even Mr Haych’s, stayed glued to TOFFEE THOMAS’S face. Well, his nose to be exact. As if they were waiting for him to slip up there again.

  Hey, maybe that was his problem … maybe he was sooo THICK because he’d shoved his fingers sooo far up his nose sooo many times that he’d poked and prodded his brain about sooo much that he’d turned it into a slushie.

  Anyway, he could see that everyone was staring at him so he tried to use me as a decoy.

  Every single time I even blinked he’d scream, “SAM’S ASLEEP!”

  “I am not!” I’d throw straight back at him. THE RAT! I reckon he was just trying to get everyone to look at me because he was hungry and wanted some more nostril nourishment.

  By lunchtime I was totally exhausted. I’d had absolutely no sleep whatsoever. It was so unfair. Yeah, and I was betting that Jared was getting plenty of sleep back at his place … NOT! He was probably out riding his bike somewhere or watching movies and pigging-out on lollies.