An Upside-down Boy and Other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls Read online

  Well, it wasn’t even a contest. Me, seven. Clare nothing. Money for jam. Claire tried the same with the other kids and lost again! What a dork. What a loser!

  It was a funny feeling, suddenly having that extra dollar for free. Sure, a buck isn’t that much, I suppose, but there was something special about it. Something magic. As if the world was being nice to me. As if I deserved it.

  So, when Claire asked the following day if I’d like to play again, I quickly said yes. You won’t be surprised to learn that I won again. Thank you very much.

  None of us felt that bad about taking Claire’s money. She deserved it, didn’t she? Driving us mad all the time with, ‘I’ll bet you this. I’ll bet you that.’ Who knew, it might even make her stop.

  It was about a week later when Claire said she was sick of losing all the time, and that it was only fair if we played something else.

  ‘How about cards?’ she asked. ‘We both flip a card and the highest wins.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. Even if I lost this one time, I was still going to be in front.

  I lost.

  ‘Another,’ said Claire.

  ‘Can’t,’ I said. ‘A dollar’s all I have.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Claire.

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied.

  Of course, ‘maybe’ became ‘yes’. I wanted that feeling of winning again.

  I lost.

  By the end of the week, Claire had most of the school flipping cards, and, slowly but surely, every last dollar of Claire’s lost netball money returned to her.

  But I was smarter than Claire because I knew that winning at gambling was really just luck. I was lucky at netball. Claire was lucky at cards. Now it was my turn again, and it made me excited.

  The trouble was, every other kid in school, it seemed, was thinking exactly the same thing. It wasn’t long before Claire had us betting on anything that moved. Snails crawling up a wall, whether or not Mr Trainor would crack a wobbly that day, who would be the first to scream ‘stop!’ if Carla Zotti scratched her fingernails down the blackboard, who could chew silver paper for the longest, who had the most freckles, who could crack their knuckles the loudest, who had the worst breath and who did that smell during religious instruction.

  Gambling fever, it was. Some of us could think of nothing else. Which meant two things. Claire — who was usually cheating by suggesting we bet on things to which she already knew the answers — was getting very rich. And others, like me, were getting into very big trouble. Borrowing money, owing money to Claire and, eventually, having to sell stuff to her. If we didn’t pay her back, she threatened to give Gail ‘Gorilla’ Golan ten bucks to bash us up.

  Yet although Claire was making heaps, it wasn’t making her happy.

  There’s really no such thing as winning at gambling, she secretly thought to herself. As soon as you do win, you just want to gamble again. No win is ever big enough.

  Which made Claire angry. She felt cheated. Who could she blame? Us, of course.

  So Claire started to punish us by making us look like fools. Humiliating us. Which, of course, made us hate Claire, which, in turn, made her worse.

  Then it happened. Poor little Amy Than owed Claire twenty dollars and she had nothing left to sell.

  ‘OK,’ said Claire. ‘I bet you twenty dollars you haven’t got the guts to climb onto the roof and bust a piece off the school TV antenna.’

  ‘All right,’ said Amy, with Gorilla Golan leering at her in the background. ‘I will.’

  Poor Amy didn’t even get to the antenna. It had been raining and Amy slipped on the roof, shot over the guttering and fell screaming towards the concrete.

  She would surely have been badly hurt or even killed, except for one very good piece of luck — she landed on something soft. Claire’s face.

  Claire spent the rest of her life with a nose like a squashed mango. I’d bet that didn’t make her happy.

  Little Kenny was a lonely boy. A very lonely boy. He had no friends at all. Unless you counted Boof, his dog. No-one could say Boof hadn’t been the best dog-friend a kid had ever had. But Boof was getting old. And his days of playing with Kenny for hours on end were over.

  Poor old Boof — he’d see Kenny playing by himself and he knew he should be dropping a stick for Kenny to throw. But his legs just wouldn’t take him very far anymore. If Kenny turned around, Boof’s eyes would say ‘stick’ and his tail would wag, but that was as far as it went. Sometimes it made Kenny cry.

  One cold, windy day, Kenny was outside mucking around in the dirt making secret tunnels for some old toy soldiers. And much as he tried not to, he started — for what seemed like the thousandth time — to think about why he was such a loser. That’s what Derek ‘Fierce’ Pierce called him, anyway.

  He knew that part of the reason was his mum and dad not being together anymore, but he didn’t want to think about that too much because it made him even sadder.

  You see, Kenny and his mum had shifted to the country with his grandma, leaving Dad in the city. Dad, who he loved so much and now hardly ever saw.

  At least in the city he’d had one good mate. Stinky Anderson. Stinky had had an accident on the first day of school and the name had stuck ever since.

  But the biggest reason for Kenny’s loneliness was a feeling that somehow, he never fitted in anywhere. And once you feel that, then other kids feel it too. And pretty soon you don’t fit in. And then you say, ‘See, I was right.’ It was partly because Kenny secretly blamed himself for his parents splitting up. It wasn’t his fault, of course. It never is. But it made Kenny feel bad about himself and that’s when everything seemed to go so wrong.

  There was something else, too — the sort of games Kenny used to like. ‘Wussy games,’ some kids would call them. Stuff where you have to think and pretend. Like building dirt castles and having make-believe wars where the bad guys get their heads blown off and guts spurt out of their necks. And collecting lizards and seeing if they die or not.

  The other kids in this country town weren’t into dopey stuff like that. They were into grown-up things like cricket and hanging around the milk bar.

  Kenny’s mum used to ask kids home to play, but somehow they always had excuses for not coming over. Kenny said it didn’t matter because he was really happy being with his mum.

  And if his mum tried to arrange for Kenny to go to other kids’ places, Kenny would say he felt sick. Secretly, he couldn’t stand the thought of getting there and not fitting in.

  So, Kenny played by himself. Before school, after school, on weekends and on holidays. With sad, smelly Boof looking on. And the wind blew and Kenny’s face grew sadder.

  His beautiful little face was freckled, with crooked teeth and the loneliest eyes in the world.

  Fierce Pierce was the first one to notice that something was going on.

  ‘What do you reckon that loser Kenny’s doing in his backyard?’ he asked his mate Fridge. ‘Every morning when I go past on the way to school, there’s more dirt. In a pile. Heaps of it.’

  ‘A swimming pool?’ wondered Fridge.

  Fierce thought not. Surely they’d get a bulldozer or something for that.

  ‘Perhaps he’s burying food?’ suggested Fridge. From a stupid suggestion like that, you can probably guess how Fridge got his name. Fierce didn’t even bother to answer.

  So, the very next morning Fierce went straight up to Kenny and said, ‘Hey loser, what’s with all the dirt?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said little Kenny.

  Kenny would have gladly told Fierce, but he thought Fierce might laugh. You see, Kenny was building the most excellent underground cubby house the world had ever seen — for himself and some pretend friends. But how do you admit you’re so lonely you have to have pretend friends?

  ‘What do you mean, nothing?’ said Fierce.

  Kenny could tell Fierce was going to punch him out if he didn’t give a good answer. So he lied. ‘Mum’s making me do it. For pocket money. She’s going to
plant some trees.’

  Fierce looked hard at Kenny. Fierce knew how cruel parents could be — making you work for pocket money — but he wasn’t sure if he believed Kenny or not. But the bell went, so Kenny got away with it. For the time being.

  You should have seen the cubby. It started with a secret entrance hidden behind some bushes and then went straight down into a big dark room. Kenny had candles burning in the corners.

  Kenny’s dad had shown him how to build safe cubbies, and somehow every spadeful of dirt, every heavy bucketful tipped on the pile, was for his dad. Maybe one day Dad would come to visit again and Kenny could show him what a good job he’d done.

  From the main dark room, two tunnels headed off in different directions. If you weren’t a member of the cubby club, you wouldn’t know which was the right one and that was something that definitely needed to be known. One went to the secret chamber, and the other to a hole full of the worst, slimiest, stinkiest, pooiest water you could ever imagine.

  ‘Boof’s hole,’ Kenny called it. ‘Boof’s bones and business hole’ would have been a better description. Kenny didn’t just put Boof’s bones there, though. He swapped them for big bits of spare steak from the fridge. The business came free of charge.

  From the secret chamber, there were two more tunnels. One led to the food and drinks cave, and the other to a fantastic underground maze.

  If you could find your way through the maze — and only cubby members would know how — you finally reached the most secret of secret places. The star chamber.

  Kenny would never tell what was in the star chamber, but to have built such an excellent maze it must have been something good. Really good.

  So, the days passed, and then weeks, and finally, Fierce couldn’t help but ask again. ‘Hey, misery guts. What’s happened to those trees your mum was putting in?’

  ‘She hasn’t got them yet,’ lied Kenny. ‘I made the holes a bit big so she’s got to wait for them to grow.’

  This time Fierce got angry. ‘Bull,’ he said. And he pushed Kenny in the chest. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Kenny.

  By this time kids were starting to gather around. They loved to watch a fight. Especially if they weren’t in it.

  ‘Tell me the truth or I’ll smash your face in,’ said Fierce.

  Given the choice, thought Kenny, I’d rather not have my face smashed in. So he took a deep breath and got himself as ready as possible to be laughed at.

  ‘It’s a secret cubby house,’ said Kenny. ‘For me and my friends.’

  ‘What friends?’ asked Fierce.

  ‘Pretend ones,’ said Kenny.

  ‘Pretend ones!’ said Fierce. ‘What a dork! What a loser!’

  And sure enough, the kids all laughed their heads off. Cacked themselves. But not for nearly as long as Kenny expected. And, in a strange way, although the kids did laugh a fair bit, Kenny didn’t care. At least now it was all over.

  But that’s where Kenny was wrong. It wasn’t all over. Not at all. You see, kids started talking. It was the word ‘secret’ that got them going. As Kenny’s mum said, there’s nothing country people like better than discovering a good secret.

  And then the rumours started. One rumour said that Kenny was building a huge grave for Boof — what with Boof looking like he was going to cark it any day now.

  Another said Kenny was working as a spy and it was really an underground nuclear reactor. Whatever it was, almost every kid in school decided he just had to know.

  So, one night after school, Fierce and twenty-six of his mates knocked on Kenny’s door and said if he didn’t show them his cubby, they’d bash his brains out. Luckily, Kenny’s mum was listening, so she went to the door and said, ‘You must be Fierce.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Fierce. ‘So what?’

  ‘So why don’t you all come inside?’ said Kenny’s mum. ‘I’ve got loads of boxes of chocolate left over from Easter and plenty of lemonade in the fridge. No point in bashing Kenny’s brains out on an empty stomach.’

  Fierce was so surprised by this that suddenly all his toughness seemed to leave him. ‘OK,’ said Fierce. ‘Thanks.’

  So, including Kenny, twenty-eight kids sat down and gutsed themselves sick. After that, no-one felt like bashing anyone’s brains out. And slowly and strangely, Kenny started to feel good. It mightn’t have been for the best of reasons, but for the first time in so long he didn’t feel lonely.

  And then the suggestions started. ‘Hey, Kenny,’ said one kid. ‘How ’bout we have a muck around in your cubby?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Kenny, ‘But parts of it are dangerous — very dangerous — so I’d better show you a map first. And to be allowed in at all, you have to be a member. Do you all want to join?’

  ‘Yeah!’ the kids all shouted.

  So, quietly and carefully, Kenny showed the kids how to pick the right tunnels, how not to fall into Boof’s hole and how to get through the maze to the most secret of secret places. The star chamber.

  And everyone loved it.

  Somehow, because Kenny had been lonely for so long and because he’d had to use his imagination so much, Kenny had a knack for making things sound exciting. Really exciting. It wasn’t so much what he said, but the way he said it. Even Fierce secretly thought that he could just sit there and listen to Kenny forever.

  There was this look in Kenny’s eyes which made it seem as though he knew things the other kids could never know — as though he’d been to a place they didn’t even know existed. And when Kenny said, ‘OK, is everyone ready?’ kids just sat there and waited for him to say something else. Never in their lives had they realised that telling stories and stuff could be so much fun. Almost as good as mud fights.

  Fierce and his mates thought the cubby was so excellent. ‘Radical,’ they said.

  From that day on, Kenny just knew he would never be without friends again. Because the kids had come to him. He wasn’t fitting in, exactly — it was just that everything felt OK. And if you feel OK, making friends is easy.

  Now, what was or wasn’t in the star chamber will never be known because only members were allowed in. And one of the rules of membership was that you had to keep things secret. At one time a rumour went around that Kenny had discovered gold down there and was waiting till he was older so the government didn’t take it. Who knows, could be true.

  As little Kenny watched his new friends playing in the cubby one day, he walked over to the spot where he used to play with toy soldiers. He smiled, and thought to himself that he’d never felt happier in his life. He was even going down to see his dad every second weekend.

  Poor old Boof eventually passed away. Kenny and his mum had a little funeral for him and buried Boof with his favourite stick and the blanket he slept on as a puppy.

  Kenny cried during the funeral, but it wasn’t so much because of Boof. It was because twenty-seven members of the cubby club turned up to support him.

  Tony Boyd had woken up in a sooky-baby mood and it was only a matter of time before he made a jerk of himself. Before he said something he would later regret.

  Tony knew he was headed for trouble, but it didn’t stop him. He punched his little brother Gary on the arm, kicked yesterday’s jocks under the bed, refused to eat breakfast, left toothpaste spray on the mirror, swore at the dog and said there was no way he would be eating the fish-paste sandwiches his mum had made for lunch.

  ‘They smell like an armpit,’ he said loudly.

  And that’s where the trouble began. Tony’s father had just walked into the kitchen and said that if Tony didn’t say sorry to his mother for that last remark, he would pull down his pants and smack his butt.

  Tony knew that when his father threatened a whack it hardly ever happened, but it definitely did mean something bad was on the cards. Like being grounded for a week. Or no fast food for a month.

  So, in the very sulkiest of voices, Tony said, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Too spoilt is your problem,’ said
his father. ‘Nothing’s ever good enough.’

  ‘That’s bull,’ Tony said under his breath.

  ‘What?’ yelled his father.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Tony.

  ‘Do you know what, young man?’ said his father. ‘We’re getting sick of your sulky moods. Sick to death of them.’

  ‘Perhaps I should live somewhere else, then,’ said Tony.

  ‘Perhaps you should!’ said his father. ‘Until you wake up to yourself, you can live in the old dunny for all I care.’

  ‘All right, I will,’ said Tony.

  ‘Fine,’ said his father. ‘Good luck.’

  Why had Tony said that? How had the argument become so bad so quickly?

  Tony knew his mood was much too sooky, much too stubborn, to ever back down, but the dunny? Poo!

  For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of owning a dunny, it’s a toilet that sits in the backyard in a shed. Which is just as well because they usually smell a bit ordinary. They stink is another way of putting it.

  Most dunnies were built years ago and some are very old indeed. Sometimes there’d be a flush system with water, but other times they were just a tin can. And now and then, just a big, dark hole. You could never see the bottom of the hole, which is just as well, I guess, as my dad said at the bottom of every hole lived a monster. Still, that never worried me too much — anyone who could live down there was welcome to it.

  Luckily for Tony, their dunny (or ‘thunderbox’, as his dad called it) wasn’t in use anymore. But Tony could still think of better places to live.

  So, that night after school, Tony shifted out of home and into the dunny.

  He could hear his mother in the kitchen saying, ‘You can’t let him sleep out there. He’ll catch his death of cold.’

  ‘Do him good,’ said Tony’s father. ‘Anyway, he’ll be back soon enough, with his tail between his legs.’

  Oh no, I won’t! thought Tony.

  Fortunately, it was rather a large old dunny. Maybe they made them big to spread the smell, thought Tony.