Mucked Up (2 page)

They are Smurfs with Guns. They have supa-soakers and one of them is filling her supa-soaker with water from a tap and another one is helping her put blue stuff in it.

Gotta get to the quad! / Yeah coming

Now they are running off with their supa-soakers toward the cricket nets behind the rosebushes and I can’t see them anymore.

It’s not safe here in Teachers’ Carpark, c’mon Zurb, get your bag on your back and run, run, run.

The tanbark path goes all the way down to the Japanese garden so I am running down it, and while I run, it might be a good time to tell you what’s going on this morning because you’re probably starting to wonder.

REASON ONE

Okay, here’s the reason why Tom Zurbo-Goldblatt has snawked into school this morning through the teachers’ carpark and is now running down the tanbark path like a scaredy little dickweed . . .

Because of something that happens at this time every year, and that thing is called
MUCK UP DAY
.

It is called this cos the Year 12s have finished all their lessons forever, they just have exams to go, so they celebrate how much love and respect they have for their school by dressing up in funny costumes and coming in and trashing the place.

The school tries to ban it every year but it just makes the Year 12s go harder: when I was in Year 7, Assistant Principal Bitchface Fruehling said Muck Up Day would be banned but the Year 12s ignored her and came to school dressed in pyjamas and chucked little balloons that were filled with white jizzy stuff. Mandy Karaniki said it was actual jizz but I think it was just flour and water mixed together. No one could get those kind of quantities of jizz just to chuck around, not even after a whole year of jizz-collecting.

The next year Bitchface Fruehling said Muck Up Day was definitely banned and anyone caught doing it would be suspended but the Year 12s came to school dressed as Twilight vampires and captured this Year 7 kid named Vegie who everyone called Vegie cos he’s a bit of a vegie. They gladwrapped him to the school flagpole and left him there all day, poor bloody Vegie.

His parents got so pissed about it they took Vegie out of school and now he goes to a special school where they make boats out of egg cartons with little eggshell sailors.

And this year it’s supposed to be banned for sure; Bitchface Fruehling said anyone caught doing it today would be suspended
AND
not sit exams – yeah yeah Bitchface, YOU KEEP SAYING THESE FLARPING THINGS
BUT YOU’RE NEVER GONNA DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, ARE YA?????

ARE YA????????

Today the Year 12s are planning to do the most epic Muck Up Day of all time: I know this because I read it on Facebook last night. They made a page called ‘Tomorrow We Take The School Down In A Quad Raid’ and they said they were gonna come to school in the morning and get everyone bigtime with supa-soakers and eggs and waterbombs and jizz-bombs. Which is why I’m not going anywhere near the quad today, which is why I came in through the carpark gate. I don’t want to wind up like Vegie at a special school where you have breakdancing classes on Fridays.

Here I am at the end of the tanbark path …

The Japanese garden is a special garden that was like some gift to the school from another school in Japan. There’s a metal sign that says ‘This garden was created to celebrate our friendship with our sister school in Fukuoka’ and under it someone has spraypainted ‘
WHO GIVES A FUKUOKA?
’ which is quite funny actu—

Jayce, in here!!!!!

A guy comes in through the back gate and another guy’s behind him. They are dressed as gangstas, wearing trakkies with big hoodies over their heads. The only place to hide is Japanese Garden but Japanese Garden is even more off-limits than Teachers’ Carpark. Got into trouble going in here last month when me and Ravo and Bris and Jarrell had a pretend ninja-fight. Bitchface Fruehling yelled at me. I probably shouldn’t go in, I probably shouldn’t—

Slow down, Brandon!

I’m crunch-crunching across the rolly Japanese pebbles and I’ve jumped the Japanese stone lantern and now I’m sitting down low behind the bamboo with my big bag on my back. Sit still, Zurb, look like bamboo so they don’t see you.

The Gangstas in Hoodies stop right in front of the Japanese garden, so close to where I am hiding. They’ve got scarves over their faces so you can’t see who they are and one of them is waving round some kind of massive weapon.

Don’t point it at me, Brandon / Haw haw haw

It’s one of those big garden-sprayers with a spray-pack that goes on your back and a long spraying bit that you hold, like King Bozz the School Yard Guy uses to spray the rosebushes with. It’s a Weapon of Mass Spray-Destruction, like beyond the superest of supa-soakers.

The first Gangsta in a Hoodie is pointing the long spraying bit at his mate like he’s gonna squirt him and the second Gangsta in a Hoodie is freaking out.

Seriously, Brandon, don’t muck round with it /
Awww harden up, Jayce / C’mon, let’s get to the
quad

The two of them run up the tanbark path that I just ran down. If I had run down there two minutes later I would now be wasted. Now I’ve gotta get to the Chem labs so I stand up and a voice beside me says ‘You’re not gonna hurt me are ya?’

It’s a little flat-faced freckle-freak, Year 7 probs, sitting beside me behind the bamboo. Flarp, he was hiding here the whole time and I didn’t notice. He’s looking up at me all scared-like with his little freckle-lips wobbling around.

‘No I’m not gonna hurt you, why would I hurt you?’

‘You’re in Year 12, right?’

‘No, I’m Year 9!’

For some reason this is hard for his little freckle-brain to understand. He points at my clothes: ‘Then why’d you come to school dressed in a funny costume?’

REASON TWO

Okay, here’s another reason why Tom Zurbo-Goldblatt has snawked into school this morning like a scaredy little dickweed and is now hiding in the Japanese Garden with a flat-faced freckle-freak . . .

Because there’s something at our school that every kid has to do once a year and that thing is called Yard Duty, where you help clean up the schoolyard in first period. I know it sounds like a good thing because you get to miss first period but it’s actually a bad thing because 1. Today is Muck Up Day and the schoolyard is going to be trashed. And 2. On Yard Duty day you don’t wear school uniform – you wear whatever cazh clothes you like. Problem: I do not have any good cazh clothes to wear. Mum and Dad are kind of poor at the moment cos Dad’s got no work and Mum works part-time in a lightbulb shop, so all I have is secondhand clothes that Mum buys from the op-shop. That’s why I am in a pair of brown cargoes with a broken belt loop so my belt hangs out the front like a belt-wiener. And a T-shirt that says ‘BOY’ on the front. Mum bought it because she thought it was for boys but I don’t think it is.

So this little flat-faced freckle-freak thinks I’ve come in Muck Up Day costume and I go ‘It’s not a bloody costume, I’m on Yard Duty’ and he starts to go ‘Nice threads hahaha!’ and I say ‘Piss orrrf’ because it is very disrespectful for a Year 7 to talk to a Year
9 like this. But he goes
‘YOU piss orrrf, get out of here, I was hiding here first!’ He looks pretty fierce with his freckle-forehead squished up so I go ‘Fair ’nuff’ and get out of the Japanese garden.