Читать книгу Splinterz - Susan Berran - Страница 7

. . . wait until midnight, go into the closet and close the door behind you . . . make sure all the lights are off of course. Then pretend you’re a giraffe and stick your head up your butt!!

Yep, it’s that dark; and obviously I’m an idiot! Otherwise why the HELL would I want to go poking around some dark tunnel that’s been made by . . . I don’t know who or what?

But one thing I do know for sure; there is something down there. I’ve heard them, I’ve seen the destruction and I’ve seen my mate Jared bleed.

My nightmare began with seven little words . . .

“You’re having a baby brother or sister,”; soon followed by . . .

“It’s a girl! ”

Oooh great . . . yippee . . . I’m sooo thrilled . . . not!!

And with that, my world fell apart; life was about to change forever. Overnight, the bedtime piggyback rides were replaced with . . .

“Get to bed Sam !! ” Story time was replaced with the constant screaming from my always whinging, new sister, little Miss Smelly Melly Prissy Pants.

I even had to bath with her.

Could she get any more attention?

She was like some weird, wrinkled, pink parent-magnet.

“Sorry Sam, she’s just a baby.”

“Sorry Sam, you used to have accidents in the bath too.”

And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Mum announced . . .

“We’re moving to the country!”

So, here we are, in our tiny little crap shack in the country. Actually I wouldn’t mind the country so much, but this was the ‘sticks’. We’re at least forty minute’s drive from any decent sized town. Even the dirt here seems crappier than in the city.

There’s a general store here. Well, at least that’s what the sign above it says. But I think it’s actually a community centre for retired possums, dying rats and a gazillion spiders.

It smells like sweaty armpits and cow pats in there. The lollies are in huge dust-covered glass jars and they’re all stuck together in great big sticky globs. The walls are lined with dust-covered shelves and all but two are empty.

Mum bought some baked beans the first night we got here. I don’t know what happened but we ended up having a jam sandwich that night. She said something about “1942” and “ARMY WAR SUPPLIES”.

There’s also a pub, or as I like to call it, ‘a bigger crap shack than ours’. All the big decisions in town are made there, you know like; is cow dung or sheep dung best for the garden, and is it better to barbecue cow’s tongue or grill it?

And the school, how can I put it into words? I was used to a thousand kids in the school, not thirty two. But it’s not just the empty spaces where the computers should be, it’s the empty looks on some kids’ faces. Dad reckons . . .

“Cavemen didn’t have computers and they did just fine.”

Yeah Dad sure, but even cavemen figured out that if you went out in the rain you’d get wet. It seemed like some kids around here might not be quite that clever.

The principal, Mr Penniless, is a weedy little man who looks like he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The only other teacher, Miss Croonarc, is about eighteen and straight out of Teachers’ College. I heard her talking to Mum about ‘special kids’ and ‘the challenge of a lifetime’. ‘Special’; most of these kids are cousins.

Apparently a couple of hundred years ago, this place was a mining town, so there’s tunnels and deep shafts everywhere. They must have been mining for dirt and rocks because I can’t see anything else around here worth squat.

But I have found these strange piles of dark-red, sandy dirt in a few places. It looks like someone is trying to keep them hidden behind old car bodies and underneath fallen trees. I asked a few kids about them and they went all weird on me. The next day, this one kid’s dad practically blew a fuse telling me to keep away from them and made me swear not to tell anyone else about them.

So this is it, Agnath. Who would be crazy enough to live here willingly?

Why, why here?!

Mum and Dad even managed to talk me into it by saying we could look at getting cows, horses and geese.

Well, I’ve seen plenty of geese around here; trouble is they don’t have any feathers and they’re all wearing clothes and heading for the pub.

I should have known better. It was all a ploy so I wouldn’t complain. Well, not as much anyway. But just as I expected, things changed.

It wasn’t that bad, until one day when Dad went out to the shed behind the house and never came back. He just disappeared off the face of the planet. He’d told me about loud scratching noises, things being moved about and other weird stuff in the shed. But I never saw or heard anything. I just reckoned it was Dad being weird as usual.

It’s been a year and a bit since then. Mum reckons he’ll be back any day now. I’m not so sure. It’s just a pity it wasn’t little Miss Smelly Melly Prissy Pants who disappeared!

Anyway, I figured that it was about time I could have that pet we’d always talked about. I figured she would have to give in now Dad had mysteriously disappeared off the radar. So, I bugged Mum like crazy . . .

“Can I have a rat?”

“NO!!”

“A snake?”

“NO!!”

“Scorpions, lizards, anything at all?”

“NO, NO, NO!!”

Yeah, great, thanks a lot Mum . . . for nothing!

But oh yeah, sure, my snotty nose little sister, Miss ‘I’m sooo good’ Smelly Melly Prissy Pants gets to have her very own puppy that slobbers all over anyone who comes within reach of its extremely long tongue. It looks like a white ball of fluff having a permanent hair explosion.

Of course long hairy dog means long hairy butt. It’s not my dog so why should I have to clean and wipe its backside every time it comes in? Sometimes I even have to comb out the poop because there’s so much of it.

One time I used Mum’s leg razor to shave the dog’s butt totally. You should have seen her from behind. She looked like a dartboard . . . round, bald, with a big red bullseye in the middle. Mum went ballistic and Yelly Melly sooked until it grew back.

Actually, I don’t know what the hassle was. It’s not as if I vacuumed the damn dog . . . oooh . . . there’s an idea.

Well, I’m getting a pet. I figure that what Mum doesn’t know, can’t hurt me. I just have to make sure that little pest doesn’t find out and dob on me. But if she can have a pet of her very own, then why can’t I? I guess I’ll just have to make sure it’s kept secret between Jared and me.

But I can tell you one thing for sure. It won’t be anything pink, ‘cutesy’ or need butt-cleaning duty.