Mucked Up (6 page)
‘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.
‘
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’.
‘I’M NOT SURE WHAT YOU ARE ALL FIND ING SO AMUSING , THIS IS AN
ANIMAL IN DISTRESS
,
GET INTO
CLASS
AND 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.
Inside I.T. Hub, everyone’s still laughing and talking about the pig.
‘Heee heee.’
‘So cuuuuuuuute.’
Everyone sits at their desks and turns on their computers.
DRANNNNG
is the noise the computers make when they start up,
DRANNNNG
.
‘It was in a nappy.’
‘Haw haw.’
Taleeesha Monk sits next to me at my double-desk and she turns on her computer,
DRANNNNNG
. So does Wiggy on the other double-desk beside me,
DRANNNNNG
.
And mine,
DRANNNNNNG
. Outside Pooksy is in the corridor, I can see him through the class windows, he is on his phone.
‘Dah-yam, that’s a sexxxy shirt.’ Wiggy is leaning over and looking at my shirt.
‘Yard Duty,' I say.
‘You like boys?’
‘Nah.’
Wiggy’s just joking, he’s pretty nice actually, but he says it a bit loud and Carruthers and Brincat hear what he says from over at the next double-desk.
‘Hey Zurb is looking for boys, he’s advertising on his shirt!’ (Brincat)
‘He’s wearing the traditional costume of Gay-land.’ (Carruthers)
‘Backs to the wall, lads HAHAHAHA.’ (Dougy Mansour way over near the window)
Pooksy sticks his head in through the door and goes ‘PLEASE WORK QUIETLY, UNDERSTAND???’
Poor Pooks, bet he wishes he lived in another time when teachers could be violent and hurt kids, like in ye olde days.
Seriously, teachers could do that back then: Dad said when he went to school they’d hit boys on the hand with a stick if they did bad stuff, till blood came out and everything. Even Mum said she’d get a wooden-ruler-slap to the back of the leg for chatterboxing in assembly. If a teacher did that to a kid now, they’d probs go to jail like Bartle the Pedo.
Still waiting for this old computer to boot up. Little ball thing is spinning.
I.T. is a massive bludddddddge. You just learn about computery-stuff that everyone already knows like how to turn on computers and also how to turn off computers. Also you learn about the history of computers, like how even cavemen had basic computers. Seriously, they’d stack rocks on top of each other to count how many giraffes and elephants they’d killed and the cavemen upgraded their rock piles every two or three years to get faster rocks with more memory haha.
And the ancient Chinese people had a wooden computer called an ‘abacus’ which is little sticks with wooden beads on them and the Chinese people used it for adding and subtracting and other maths stuff. Don’t know if they still use abacuses in China, they probably have iAbacuses which are hipper and have cool chopstick apps.