Читать книгу Toe Jamm'd - Susan Berran - Страница 8

Toe-jam … yum …

Damn, I can’t reach it!

Don’t you just hate that?

You’re sitting on the edge of your bed in nothing but your undies. And all you want to do is use your finger to dig between your toes and drag out the FLUFF, sweat and SLUG-SLIME that’s all chunked together like a huge blob of festering, mouldy, smelly mud. Be careful though; remove it from its home and it just might not be too happy about the move …

Don’t believe me?

Fine, don’t read another page . . . go on, nick off!

Changed your mind?!

Then read on!

Me and my best mate, Jared, had been hanging out all summer. We did everything together, we always had, right from the time he’d moved here with his family. We’d both come from the city where there was always heaps to do. So it took a lot of getting used to, doing a whole lot of nothing, being stuck way out here in the sticks.

For ages Mum had tried to tell me how great the countryside would be.

“You can go on picnics, hikes,” blah blah blah … “All that clean fresh air.” Yeah right! It was all she ever talked about.

‘Oh yes please Mummy,’ I thought. ‘Oh do give us a cheese and vegemite sandwich wrapped in a pretty pink chequered napkin. And we shall skip along the road holding hands and singing Twinkle Twinkle as we blow kisses to each other.’

I think I’m now going to throw up from just thinking about it!

If Jared hadn’t turned up when he did, I think I would have gone completely and utterly CRAZY.

The only other kids around here have lived in this dust bowl all their lives. So they’re always out cow riding, shearing horses and milking sheep or whatever it is they do around here. But me and Jared do our own thing. We usually go skateboarding or work on our totally awesome and cool gadgets. And all last summer we did just that.

We made this wicked skateboard park that had everything. It started at the old hay shed out in the back paddock of Jared’s place. There were old tractors and machines from the days of cavemen. I reckon they’re even older than my Gran; and she’s really old, almost turning to dust old. If she took off her clothes with a fan on, she’d almost certainly just disappear into thin air.

Oh great, I wish I hadn’t thought of that. Now I can’t get that picture of Gran out of my head … oohh, yuk!

Anyway, the shed had all this old stuff in it when a huge storm hit a couple of years ago. The walls stayed standing but just about all the roof collapsed onto the junk. Luckily one edge of the roof was still attached along the top of a wall. So now we had this massively awesome skate ramp. It was brilliant,

… it was incredible,

… it was AWESOME,

… it was REALLY DANGEROUS!

So of course we just had to do it!

We tossed one end of a rope up and over the top beam where the wall met the roof. When it dropped back down, we tied a plank to it to sit on; easy. Then we just had to pull the rope and we’d be able to haul ourselves up. Once that was sorted, we got a few twisted roof sheets that had blown off and a couple of hay bales to form another smaller ramp at the bottom.

It looked totally awesome.

After a couple of weeks sweating our butts off, it was ready to go. The most incredibly wicked skate ramp in the known universe.

Better than the council one in town … better than the city one for state competitions that I went to last year … and waayyy better than the one at the back of Toffee Thomas’ place. It’s just a pile of dirt that his dad shoved there.

We chose a day for me to go over to Jared’s place when his mum would be in town. That was about forty minutes away, perfect. Then we waited until his brothers were busy playing some lame TV game. As soon as they started playing, we snuck off across the creek and out to the back paddock, just out of sight of the house.

It was harder than we thought, hauling ourselves up to the top of the shed. Jared went first. He thinks he’s stronger than me but I could whip his butt anytime. Next, he sent the plank back down for me to tie our boards to, and up they went. When Jared finally sent the plank down for me, I didn’t even get to sit on it before he started yelling at me to hurry up and get up there. I didn’t want him to know that I was actually a bit nervous about heights so I just shut up and kept going. By the time I was halfway up, my arms were aching like crazy, so I had to stop for a second.

“Get up here, ya girl!” Jared suddenly yelled, poking his head over the side.

“Yeah yeah, keep ya bra on!” I spat back.

Finally, with my arms about to drop off, I reached the top. And as my face rose above the top edge of the wall, where Jared was already sitting, the wind hit me. It hit me like a CHARGING elephant with diarrhoea heading for the loos and almost knocked me right off the plank. I looked out across the horizon and then down to where the other end of the roof was touching the ground …

‘oh … crap!!’

Talk about sweat! I was a raging waterfall under my T-shirt.

We sat on the top for what seemed like hours, not saying a word, just staring off into the distance. Suddenly Jared leapt up as if he’d been stung by a bee on the butt.

“Well … I’m off,” he said.

And that was that!

Without another word, he hooked the back wheels of his skateboard over the edge of the wall, stood up and placed one foot on the front of the board. Then as he raised his back foot, the rear of the skateboard lifted … WHOOOSHHH!!!

He flew down the roof like someone had just lit a rocket that he’d been hiding up his backside.

Down the roof … building speed, FASTER and FASTER. The hair on his head was barely hanging on. Each curl stretched out into a long, red streamer. His clothes began to tear away from his body, forming great billowing sails along his back. The wind filled his cheeks, puffing them out like a couple of beach balls. His lips looked like slimy-red Play-Doh, flapping about and slapping him all over the face.

This was going to be great!

He was going to fly off the bottom of the ramp at warp speed ten,

… shoot across the ground,

… race up the hay-pile ramp,

… sail through the air, and land gently and safely on … on … oh oh, I knew we forgot something.

Jared! STOP!!

It was like watching some great world catastrophic event unfolding in front of my very eyes, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

Jared ZOOMED down the roof,

… sailed across the ground,

… raced up the pile,

… soared through the air,

and slammed straight into the most massive tree I’ve ever seen in my entire life. WHAMM!!

Then he crumbled to the ground like a cheap soggy tissue soaked by the snottiest nose on earth …

SPLATT!!

We were both grounded until camels grow a third hump.

But worst of all, Jared’s mum got one of the farmers to bulldoze our shed while he was still in hospital.

Eighty-three stitches, two steel pins and a couple of false teeth later, Jared came home with some of the most awesome, wicked Scars ever … the lucky bugga!

I spent the rest of that summer doing any crappy job that Mum could dream up for me; pulling weeds, cleaning the gutters, washing my little sister’s nappies …

… and any other dirty sweaty job that Mum could think of.

Jared’s punishment was sitting around in bed all day eating ice-cream and having his pillows fluffed. Every time his mum started on about how he could’ve died, blah blah blah, he just moaned a little louder and faked another tear-drop. Straight away his mum would be running to get more ice-cream for him.

What an actor … he’s brilliant.

But while he enjoyed his PUNISHMENT, I sweated so much that I reckon I could’ve filled a pool and swam in it.

‘Mmmmm, salty.’