Suck'd

by Susan Berran

  Anyway after lunch we had English for the rest of the day. WoO hOo! I couldn’t wait.

  I don’t get it! What is the point of teaching English in Agnath? It’s a total waste of time because everyone around this WASTELAND of dirt and five-legged cows already understands everyone else. They have their very own unique little language … it’s all s l o w and slurred. Kinda how I reckon a sleepy snail would sound.

  When me and Jared first moved here we tried to talk to some of the guys at school. But we just figured they were either really RUDEor really STUPID, because whenever we spoke to one of them they’d just grunt or make some other weird noise. Well, it turned out that we were half-right, they weren’t being rude.

  It took us a while to realise they were actually talking to each other in their own FREAKY little language. They were having these full-on conversations in about five stupid sounds or less.

  I reckon NEANDERTHAL CAVEMAN had a bigger vocabulary than some of the Locals in Agnath!

  It didn’t take us more than a couple of days to break their lame code though.

  Yep! THE COMPLETE DICTIONARY FOR AGNATH is probably kept in a matchbox.

  For example:

  ‘Ay’ means ‘Hi, long time no see. Did you have a good weekend? Mine was great. How’s the family? Well I hope. The blowflies are causing problems at the moment. They’re nesting around the sheep’s butts. ’

  ‘UGH’ is short for ‘Yes. Thanks for asking, I had a terrific weekend and the family’s doing well. The sheep have all got butt-rot from the maggots, though. ’

  Another tricky one to figure out was:

  ‘muurr’ which means something like ‘Geez it’s been a dry summer this year. I like your singlet, is it new? ’

  This was usually followed by the well-used phrase:

  ‘UHH HA’ which is something like ‘Yes, the weather’s great, and no, it’s a different colour because I sweat a lot. ’

  But then we discovered they also speak in even shorter sentences, using only one or two-letter words like …

  “Ha, y r u 2 l8 4 t?” or

  “G, i pd b4 i 8 t. C u l8r ok?” or even

  “A b with 1 i pd on mi t. O g u 8 mi t + u 8

  the bp”

  Talk about suck! I mean, what is English? What are they actually trying to teach us? He talks, we understand. It’s not exactly alien rocket science, DERRR!

  Doesn’t that mean we understand English?

  Mum can’t figure it out, either. Every time she goes rambling on about something and I don’t hear her, I yell out “What?” and she instantly yells back “Pardon! ”

  Doesn’t she know they mean the same thing? Then she usually follows it up with something like, “Don’t they teach you English at school? ”

  When I answer, “Yes,” Mum’s reply is always the same, “Well use it then! ”

  What does she think I’m speaking? ANCIENT CHINESE EGYPTIAN DINOSAUR!?

  I reckon maybe Mum should be the one taking an English class.

  So anyway, me and Jared would usually spend the afternoon in English secretly working on some of our latest inventions in our Bulravian Secret Plans Folder. Or using our incredibly AWESOMEand WICKEDLY SICK pooper shooters, the BULRAVIAN DART GUN IN DISGUISE.

  EVERY kid should have one; the FOLDER is definitely a great way of keeping things that you don’t want a teacher or anyone else to see – NICE AND SECRET. Like cartoon pictures of sooky, nose-picking guys having a teddy bear tea party and suck-up, prissy, girls like Crabby. Or even eye-popping, bull-riding, hairy leg teachers.

  Whenever we’re supposed to be writing a story or something, that’s the perfect time to work on our INVENTIONS. We can sit there and look like we’re working away really hard and get huge suck points. Then, if Mr Haych wanders our way… FLICK … the folder instantly hides what we’re really working on and ‘hey presto’, there’s our schoolwork for the teacher to see.

  I really love my BBULRAVIAN SECRET PLANS FOLDER.

  But the best fun is when Mr Haych is up the front of the classroom and totally in the zone with his Super-Teacher-act. He gets so excited about showing us where dots and dashes and commas and hyphens, and all sorts of other painfully boring stuff belong in a sentence. He has absolutely no idea what else is going on in the classroom.

  That’s when me and Jared slip out our BULRAVIAN DART GUN IN DISGUISE. We’ve been working on them and slowly improving the design for a fair while now. We use the poop pellets from Jared’s pet guinea pigs, YING and YANG, for AMMUNITION. Really nice fresh ones if possible. Then we hide bags of them in secret hiding spots all around the school. That way, whenever we see an opportunity, we’re ready. But the best thing is that there’s no chance of getting caught with the ‘AMMO’ poop pellets in our pockets. The shooters look like ordinary pens until we need to use them … and we’ve got our time down to five seconds flat from pen to DART GUN IN DISGUISE, ready for action.

  It’s pretty simple to shoot, too. All you have to do is … load … take a deep breath … put it up to your mouth … aim … and blow. Although Jared did get pretty sick from all the guinea pig poop pellets he kept swallowing. He had a real problem with sucking instead of blowing. So we found a way to fit a little spring into the end of the tube and then flick it with our finger to fire the gun. It worked OK. But then after working away in English class for a while longer, we finally worked out the kinks and came up with the best ever design for our TOP SECRET ‘IN CLASS’ pooper shooters. Now they are quick, easy-loading, long range, stealth weapons with no chance of ‘swallowing’ the AMMUNITION and best of all – their outer casing means total and utter SECRECY! They’re totally excellent! Yep, they look like normal pens, write like normal pens, smell like … like … well, actually they smell like guinea pig poop. But they definitely look like a normal pen! And in mere seconds each one can be converted, loaded, fired and re-converted back into a ‘pen’. It was just what we’d always wanted … a totally TOP SECRET pooper shooters that we could use in or out of class, anywhere, anytime and no-one would ever know that it was us. And even if they think it’s us … there is no way they’d ever be able to PROVE IT.

  So now we no longer just have an incredibly AWESOME BULRAVIAN DART GUN IN DISGUISE; now we have the world’s very first, incredibly AWESOME SUPER-SECRET PHANTASMAGORICAL ULTIMATE DEAD-EYE DART GUN. It’s sooo wicked!

  There you have it – your SUPER-SECRET PHANTASMAGORICAL ULTIMATE DEAD-EYE DART GUN.

  Now comes the incredibly awesome, ultimate fun stuff … how to use your SSPUDEDG.

  When you have your target in sight, and the teacher’s not around of course. Whip out your DEAD-EYE.

  … take off the pen cap

  … pull out the nib

  … drop in your AMMO

  … slip your thumb and first finger through the elastic band attached to the end stopper

  … then hold the ‘pen’ in its normal writing position.

  Now you can take all the time you need to aim and wait for the exact, PERFECT moment. Simply wiggle your hand about a little to make it look like you’re working away and writing like everyone else. Of course if someone starts to get too close, either pop on the cap or quickly push in the nib so they can plainly see that it’s a real pen. You don’t even have to unload. The ammO should fit in the space left where the ink tube was cut out.

  OK, with the cap off, nib removed, fingers through the elastic band and holding the casing, slowly raise the front of the ‘pen’ and line it up with your target. Hold it really tight and steady.

  … with your free hand carefully pull-back the end stopper, which has the long piece of ink tube still attached to it. As you pull the end stopper back the elastic tightens.

  … don’t pull the ink tube all the way out of the pen. The elastic tightens more and more as you pull back on the stopper. Then …FIRE!

  … let go of the stopper! It flies back into the end of the pen making the ink tube BELT the AMMO and sends it SMACKING into your target! WoO hOo! It’s sooo Ph
antasmagorically awesome!

  So, while Mr Haych is totally zoned out and excitedly trying to explain to everyone why dots and dashes and commas belong in certain places – which, by the way, I think is totally dumb I usually just chuck one in whenever I’m reading and run out of breath – me and Jared slip off the cap, pull out the nib, line-up our shooters, wait for just the right second and then … twang WHACK!

  BULLSEYE! Right in the back of the head!

  One time we landed so many poop pellets in ITCHY MITCH’S great tangle of hair and hay, that looked more like a rat’s nest than hair, it looked like a miniature pyramid made of tiny, black bugs. It sat up on top of his head, camouflaged only by the mass of twisted and contorted wiry hair. Each poop pellet seemed to be delicately balancing on the others below. It was a poop pile masterpiece.

  No one had seen a thing. Our SUPER SECRET PHANTASMAGORICAL ULTIMATE DEAD-EYE DART GUN worked perfectly.

  When Itchy began to ScraTcH at his head shortly afterwards, no one really took any notice, after all we call him Itchy MiTCH for a reason. He’s always ScraTcHing at his arms, his legs, his butt, but mostly he ScraTcHEs at his head. Itchy’s kinda like a human weather station. In summer he’s always ScraTcHing his backside like he’s digging for gold or something.

  He sweats so much he gets these totally disgusting red rashes around his butt-crack. Me and Jared saw it once after a game of footy at school. We went into the loos to get changed and Itchy was standing right in front of me and Jared. Then just as Jared bent over to tie up his shoelaces, Itchy dropped his daks and bent over to pull them off. OH YUK … it was sooo GROSS! Itchy was less than a centimetre away from clamping his FIERY red butt-crack onto Jared’s thin freckly nose. Jared suddenly flew backwards and grabbed wildly at the air trying to stop himself from falling, which is when he got a great big handful of Itchy’s butt-cheek. ITCHY squealed like a girl … Jared had grabbed so HARD and so desperately that his fingernails dug deep into Itchy’s gross butt-flesh. Itchy instantly leapt up and forward with Jared still falling backwards and still trying desperately to hang onto his butt. With Itchy leaping forward and Jared falling backwards, his nails clawed through Itchy’s flesh like a finger through wet toilet paper. Leaving five deep, BLEEDING scratches right across Itchy’s butt. The pain was obviously too much for Itchy to take … he fainted.

  THUD! Itchy hit the floor face down.

  THUD! Jared hit the floor face up.

  Of course, Itchy’s SCREAMS brought absolutely everyone in school racing into the loos to see what was going on. And there was Itchy MITCH, lying on the floor with his butt in the air. It looked like he was about to be used as a golf tee or something … his butt was swelling up right there before our very eyes. Within seconds his butt was so SWOLLEN you could practically use it as a bike rack.

  So naturally, everyone there also got a MASSIVE eyeful of the FIERY red, splotchy rash that was taking over Itchy’s butt-crack.

  From then on everyone knew that when Itchy MiTCH was ScraTcHing away at his bum … it was summer.

  We know winter has begun when Itchy starts ScraTcHing at his arms. Yep, as soon as it gets cold enough his mum makes him wear these jumpers that she knits from wool off their very own crappy sheep. The jumpers look like they’ve been made out of dirty grey BARBED WIRE and hay, kind of like his hair. They’re all SPIKY and reeeally ugly.

  In autumn he continually SCRATCHES at his legs. He starts the moment that first leaf falls. It’s something to do with these tiny little microscopic bugs on the leaves. When the leaves fall to the ground and everyone’s running around all over the place, the bugs get all stirred up. Even though we can’t see them, they’re flittering about everywhere, leaping onto human skin to pig-out. Most people never even know they’re there, but Itchy MiTCH has this allergy to them. He’s so allergic to them that he just has to walk along the roadside during autumn and the little buggas attack. Within seconds he’s madly ScraTcHing away.

  Spring is the worst of all, though. That’s when everything is breeding, from the most HUMONGOUS animal to the teensiest little bug. And the moment Itchy MiTCH starts to ScraTcH at his head, everyone knows it’s spring. Yep, everyone stays an extra step away and shuffles their seat in class a little further away. We all know – it’s NIT SEASON! The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming and Itchy is iTchINg away at his scalp as the nits breed faster than a light flickering. Within a few days he’s got both hands up there going like CRAZY. He ScraTcHEs so hard and fast you can actually see the snowstorm of dandruff FLYING off his head. Me and Jared reckon he could stand in a shop window and be the world’s first human snow globe.

  Ratty harry always brings extra milk to school because he lives on a dairy farm. SKIDMARK MARK always brings extra bacon to school because he lives on a pig farm. And Itchy MiTCH always brings a gazillion nits because he lives on a farm that’s CRAP! It has a shed in the middle of a paddock. They don’t make squat!

  So anyway, the day we managed to stack a whole heap of guinea pig poop on Itchy’s head, no one took any notice when he started ScraTcHing at his head; it was normal. About the only thing different was that everyone was confused for the rest of the day. Everyone kept wandering outside without their jackets because with Itchy ScraTcHing at his head they figured it must be spring. Of course, the moment they got outside, the freezing cold air hit them. There was Itchy ScraTcHing away at his arms because it was winter and everyone had to DIVE back inside for their jackets.

  But because Jared was home, supposedly sick, I couldn’t risk getting caught using my SUPER SECRET PHANTASMAGORICAL ULTIMATE DEAD-EYE DART GUN. If it was taken away from me then what was I going to do during English?

  I was so peeved; I’d had absolutely no sleep during Maths and now I had to sit there during English and actually listen.

  Now I really do know where to put commas!

  THIS TOTALLY SUCKED!

  WEDNESDAY: 9:00am.

  Jared was so dead!

  Why couldn’t he be sick any other week. Nooo, he had to take off the one exact week that would PEEVE me off so much that I was definitely going to stay crappy with him for ages. Why couldn’t he have been sick last week, that would have been … well, actually last week wouldn’t have been too good … maybe the week before that was… ummm, no, that week was no good either … actually next week. Yeah, why didn’t he get sick next week when … oh maybe not, next week we’re doing this thing … why didn’t he have off the week after next because then it wouldn’t matter that I … hang on, nah that wouldn’t be a good one either; we’ve got other stuff that we’re going to do … ok, so why didn’t he get sick … well, NEVER ACTUALLY.

  Well now you know why I’m so peeved off with him!

  But today! WHY TODAY!?

  Me and Jared had been planning for this day for weeks.

  The whole school was heading into town for a swimming carnival. Booga Boris reckons it happens every year. Apparently all the tiny village schools within a couple of hundred kilometres of Agnath compete against each other. The best swimmers get to go to an even BIGGER meet in the city and then maybe even represent the state.

  Me and Jared reckon we’d have a really good chance against pretty much all of the kids from the schools around here. Most of them have never been real swimming before, because Agnath is sooo far from anywhere. Most of them probably only get wet because they happen to be outside when it rains. But me and Jared had grown up in the city, on the coast. We’ve been swimming in the surf and swimming pools since we were really little. We can do every stroke there is, and do them fantastically, well pretty good, good enough to BLOW the others from around Agnath out of the water anyway.

  We’d even figured out where we needed to stand in line to be certain that we were put in separate heats. That way, we wouldn’t be competing against each other and we’d both get FIRST PLACE RIBBONS for every single race we were in, and for every single swimming stroke we did.

  But even better than that was going to be the bus trip to th
e pool. We’d planned out the most incredibly AWESOME idea to keep ourselves totally amused. But now with Jared chucking a sicky, it just wasn’t the same … and it meant I didn’t have a lookout, so I couldn’t take the chance of putting our plan into action.

  OK, so don’t tell anyone, but our INCREDIBLY INGENIOUS master plan was that we were going to catch a RAT from one of the sheds in the back paddock of Jared’s place. Then we were going to STUFF the critter into an empty toilet roll and tape both ends closed. Of course we’d poke a few air holes in the tube. We needed a fast lively RAT, not a mouldy DEAD RAT. Five minutes after the bus left school, we just had to roll the ‘RAT TRAP’ underneath a seat on the bus. The tube would then roll away somewhere, anywhere away from us. Once the RAT finished chewing it’s way through the thin cardboard roll, it would be totally free to SCARE the absolute bejeezers out of everyone on the bus, especially the girls … and best of all, there was no way we could get the blame for it.

  It was going to be sooo WICKEDLY AWESOME. We’d already done a few test runs to figure out roughly how long it would take for a RAT to chew it’s way out of a taped up toilet roll. That way we knew how long we needed to get into position for our IRON-CLAD ALIBI, while it busily chewed its way to freedom.

  It was going to be BRILLIANT!

  Yep, the moment we sent the loo roll zipping across the bus floor and under the kids’ feet, we were going to high-tail it down to where the teachers were sitting. Then we just needed to ask them a couple of lame-o questions and keep them talking long enough for the RAT to be spotted. There was no way we could get the blame for it.

  And it wasn’t just brilliant … it was absolutely, POSITIVELY, ABSAMATIVALUTELY FOOLPROOF! It was going to be the bestest day at school ever!