Читать книгу Splinterz - Susan Berran - Страница 8

My best mate Jared had told me all about the tunnels that he’d explored in Agnath. At first I thought he was just trying to suck me in. But then one day, he showed me something that made me instantly believe him.

Jared’s taller and skinnier than me, with red curly hair and about a zillion freckles on his face. We’d been friends for a couple of months, since his family had moved here from the city. So, he was pretty much like me. Dragged out here to the middle of nowhere by his mum. At least no one in his family had vanished into thin air, yet! There’s only his mum and five brothers but they all look the same as him. Mum reckoned that it looked like a carrot patch had moved in. You should see Jared with his shirt off. He’s so skinny that he looks like a ladder with the measles, wearing a clown wig on top. I swear you could actually climb him.

Mum reckons he’s . . .

“A bad influence,” and that she’d prefer I found a friend who didn’t seem to be always getting into trouble. Yeah, yeah, and if I wanted to make something of myself, blah, blah, blah, take responsibility for my own actions, something, something.

Yep, sure Mum.

Just because one time Jared and me shot a frog each with the school fire extinguisher. Jared got the one that was sitting on the classroom roof; he fired from directly below. BULLSEYE! You should have seen its eyes POP. The first frog sent into outer space by jet-propelled buttocks.

Mine was the best though, it was sitting on the bonnet of the principal’s car. Man, what a shot, right in the mouth. You should have seen how far that frog flew with a gob full of foam. It had to be at least sixty metres . . . it was awesome.

That frog flew off the car bonnet at warp speed ten, skidded along the path on its backside, leaving a green snail trail for ages, until it bounced upward and smacked into the classroom window like a soggy snotty tissue . . . splat!!

Me and Jared reckon the principal thought it was awesome too, he just couldn’t admit to it, but we could tell.

Oh yeah, another time we found a half-eaten old fish and hid it in the girls’ toilets at school. There were blowflies, mozzies and ants everywhere. It took two weeks for the stink to go and geez, did the girls sook, especially Crabby Abbey who found it.

“Oooh, I’ll never be able to use those toilets again, or eat fish and chips.”

What a load of bull!

She’s always trying to get us into trouble.

Just because Jared told her that her nose looks like it’s permanently pressed up against a window, and that her ears wave at everyone when it’s windy. And it’s not my fault if I have a cold and accidentally sneeze boogas into her hair.

Anyway, even though Jared hadn’t been here long, it seems his family had moved into the one house in town that had a whole system of tunnels right beneath it! The lucky bugga!

He reckons their house is something like a hundred-years-old.

One day, when Jared and me were out the back of his place kicking around the footy, the ball landed in the bush garden by their back door. While we were searching for the ball, suddenly my foot broke through something and into a huge hole. Jared ran to get a torch and we poked around . . . wow!! We’d found a cellar under the house that no one else knew about.

We made sure no one else was about, then sneaked in and explored. It was pretty much empty except for an old trunk in the far corner.

We quickly found the door that would lead into the house. It looked in great nick. We figured out that the pantry in the kitchen had been built over the doorway, sealing the room away forever. Why would anyone want to do that?

We got out of there before anyone came home and set to work making a secret trapdoor. That way, we could use the garden to keep the room hidden from everyone else. Especially Jared’s poxy brothers. Now we’re setting it up as our headquarters and have sworn an oath of secrecy to each other . . .

Anyway, because Mum isn’t exactly thrilled about us hanging out together, I haven’t been over to his place for ages. So when he told me at school that he’d discovered these tunnel entrances down there, I had a feeling, a really BAD feeling.

He spent the next few days exploring them and now Jared knew the tunnels like the back of his hand. He’d seen some really scary stuff in them

. . . the tunnels that is, not his hands. He told me what to watch out for and was going to give me some really cool weapons I could use to protect myself.

So just because Mum didn’t want us hanging out together, I was supposed to say, “Gee, no thanks Jared. I’ll just head into the tunnels and possibly the jaws of gruesome death, without any weapons for protection. I don’t mind bleeding all over the place and having the flesh ripped from my bones.” Yeah, thanks Mum.