by Susan Berran
“I’m going to take these candles back to the shop and they are going to get a mouthful! Relaxing! They are making me feel … bllluuurrr. Argh.@#%&!”
Seems like just as Mom was getting out of the bath and her foot hit the floor, her guts exploded. Half her vomit spewed across the room, while the other half landed back in the bathwater. Her heel then slipped in the puddle of puke, making her fall backwards into the now vomit-filled bath, splash! The massive splash sent vomit and veggie bits slamming into the ceiling and bouncing off the walls, followed by a tidal wave that washed all of her own vomit right back over her face. Her spewy footprints from where she’d slipped, slid, and skated from the bath to the shower were all over the floor. And there was also a heap of chunky veggies and other gross stuff in the plughole that Mom would have to push through with her fingers to make it go down the drain. Oh yeah, and then there was vomit all over the walls, the ceiling, the mirror, the ornaments, and the towel racks. So, just a minor disaster.
Wow, the candle shop people were probably going to think Mom was totally crazy when she barged in there and complained about the smell of their candles! Of course, if they actually lit the candles and smelled them they’d be running around like headless chickens trying to figure out what went wrong with that batch of candles. They might even need a bucket to throw up in too! Awesome!
Of course, I could tell Mom what really happened …
What! Are you crazy?
So Jared and I kind of figured that the candles idea was a bust … obviously girls don’t smell things properly, because we thought the candles had an amazing smell.
I rubbed and rolled a blob of Jared’s earwax between my fingers and thought about how much Mom had loved the smell—not! And then I had yet another brilliant idea …
Crabby Abbey was the snottiest girl in school and her birthday was coming up soon. Abbey is incredibly painful. She’s like the biggest suck-up to the teachers of all time. They all think she’s such a goodie goodie and believe absolutely everything she says.
Crabby could tell a teacher that pink alien cows had just landed in the playground and they’d believe her because “she would never lie”—yeah, right! Any chance she gets, she turns me or Jared in to a teacher for absolutely anything … even if she knows we didn’t do it. Even if the “thing” hasn’t actually happened yet! Even if it never was going to happen! “Mrs. Duckson, Sam and Jared stepped on some ants.”
“Mrs. Duckson, half of Sam’s foot touched the grass.”
“Mrs. Duckson, Sam and Jared are breathing too loudly.”
We thought that her birthday was the perfect time for some long overdue payback.
We’d noticed for a while that Crabby and her friends would go to the school bathroom about a hundred times a day. Every chance they got they strutted to the bathroom and came out five minutes later. Most times we didn’t even hear a flush. Naturally, we figured there must be some sort of secret “Crabby Club.” It was time to find out.
We spent days using our incredibly awesome spy-listening device behind the toilet block. It didn’t take long to find out that it wasn’t a club at all. Just some totally stupid “girly” thing where they check themselves in the mirror and put face cream on—about twenty times a day! Every time they went, we could hear Crabby droning on and on and on …
“My face cream is sooo expensive. It comes from Antarctica.”
“My face cream is made from the kisses of dolphins.”
“My face cream is way better than the cream movie stars use.”
She’s such an exaggerator. She thinks that her face cream will help keep her looking beautiful and years younger when everyone else is in their seventies and she still looks twenty-one! Yeah, probably like a twenty-one-year-old warthog!
We were sitting around trying to come up with a new idea for how to make a million dollars from our earwax when Crabby wandered past, heading for the toilets with her nose in the air, face cream in her hand, and all of her little followers trotting along right behind her.
Face cream! We could use earwax to make face cream. We were going to be rich. Everyone would love it! It’s natural—because it comes out of peoples’ ears. It’s good for you—unless you eat it. And it’s cheap—because hey, it’s earwax. And we could even try cat and dog earwax as well.
So Jared and I started experimenting to make it smell better, look better, and feel better! We added vinegar and salt and Mom’s favorite, really expensive perfume, as well as garlic, baked beans, lemons, brussel sprouts, and every other gross, disgusting thing we could think of. We thought if we put enough gross stuff together they’d cancel each other out and eventually make something awesome. Make sense!? We had our new formula, so all we needed to do now was try it out. And there was no way, no how that either one of us was going to put it anywhere near our own faces. Seemed like the perfect birthday present for Crabby Abbey.
Jared stole one of his mother’s face creams, emptied it all out and replaced it with our batch. Then we carefully wrapped it up, ready for delivery.
We knew that Crabby was about to have some totally lame birthday party—she’d been going on and on about it for weeks. We heard about it every day at school. She kept boasting about how super amazing her party was going to be. She kept telling all of her dorky friends that she wasn’t sure who she was going to invite so they’d all suck up to her in the hope of getting an invitation.
She said there was going to be a clown and a magician and horse rides and cotton candy and carnival rides and blah, blah, blah. Every time she walked past Jared and I, she’d look at us with an evil grin. We definitely knew that we weren’t going to be invited and that was just fine by us! But of couse we would be sooo nice and give her a little present anyway. We just had to make sure that she didn’t know who it was from, otherwise we’d be dead meat for sure. We had to find out the party details so that we could sneak in and slip her “present” in with all the others.
A few days later, we saw Crabby skipping around school and handing out fancy envelopes with her party invitations inside. We thought she put them in envelopes so that Jared and I wouldn’t see them. Ha! Like that would stop us!
We waited until everyone was in class and then Jared asked if he could go to the toilet. I kept watch as he calmly walked out the door and slipped one of Crabby’s invitations out of her bag as he walked by. As soon as he got the bathroom, Jared took out his cell phone, held the envelope up to the light, and took a picture. A copy of Crabby’s invite—check! And with the details secure in Jared’s phone, he simply returned the envelope to her bag on his way back to class. We were set to go.
That afternoon we confirmed the details of Crabby’s party. All we had to do now was wait for Sunday.
We spent Saturday checking and double checking that everything was organized to execute our plan. There was only one thing left to do: Wrap the present so Crabby wouldn’t be suspicious! If the wrapping paper wasn’t just right, Crabby might realize something was up and start asking who the present was from. We sweated and swore, folded and refolded, making sure we had nice sharp creases and even sides. We must have wrapped it at least a hundred times! The worst part was trying to tie a stupid pink ribbon around it. Now that was painful! But when it was finally done it looked perfect. It was a perfectly wrapped gift with a perfectly tied big pink bow on top.
First thing Sunday morning, I leaped out of bed, had breakfast, and headed over to Jared’s place and triple checked our plan. “Let’s go!” I yelled.
We jumped onto our bikes and rode over to Crabby’s place making sure we would arrive about an hour before the party was due to start. We dropped our bikes in a ditch just down the road from her place and covered them over with branches and bushes. We snuck from house to house with our gear carefully stored in our backpacks. Any time we thought someone might spring on us, we would dive over fences and hide in the bushes.
Crabby’s house was just ahead. We snuck into her neighbor’s yard and began dashing and creepi
ng from spot to spot, getting closer and closer to Crabby’s fence. By the time we’d finally reached our little hiding spot between the bushes and fence right next to Crabby’s front room window, it was almost time for people to start arriving. We had to work fast. We carefully drilled a little spy hole in the fence to keep watch and waited. It wasn’t long before everyone began to arrive and we started checking them off the list. We definitely didn’t want someone turning up while we were “working.”
As Crabby greeted each guest and they headed inside, we used our spy periscope to peek through the window to see where everyone was putting their presents.
It was so hard not to barf every time Crabby answered the door with her creepy, weird smile. She was being so sickly sweet—she does this thing where she pretends to be nice but she’s actually being really mean. She was all like, “Oh it’s sooo lovely to see you. Now don’t worry that you’ve put on weight.” “Wow, that’s a pretty dress. Amazing that you can get such nice stuff from a second-hand store.” “Thanks for the present. I’m glad you didn’t get me much.”
We watched as the presents were all placed on a big table in the living room across from the window that we were spying through—perfect! The presents were right next to a smaller table decorated with ribbons and glitter. That table held a huge, three-tiered, brightly colored birthday cake. It had a little ballet dancer on the top with her arms in the air and she was spinning on one toe. It was really fancy. But definitely lame! And of course, smack bang in the middle of the room was a big fancy camera on a tripod set up to capture the “fun.”
Once everyone had turned up, they all headed out to the backyard for the party. As her parents closed the back door, Jared and I sprang into action. We were really getting into this spy stuff.
I took out my awesome, one-of-a-kind, way-cool, super sling-shot and took aim. Twang! I fired the special hook with a fishing line attached towards the window. Whzzzzz! It flew like a rocket, right on target … smack! Then we heard a crack! Oops! The window was closed and now it had a great big crack in it.
Jared dashed over and slid the window open. I fired again. Twang! It sailed through the window. Whzzzzz! It caught the edge of a big canvas with a baby picture of Crabby Abbey in a pink ballet dress that was hanging right above the table with the presents. Thwack! Perfect! I attached our winder to the line while Jared popped our “present” into its special little holder and clipped it to the line. We had to move fast.
I began winding away to pull Crabby’s special present along the line, as Jared kept watch through the periscope. If anyone walked in now we were dead for sure. I kept winding furiously. The package was swaying from side to side and moving faster and faster. In through the window it flew, winding and swaying. Across the hall, into the living room, winding and swaying. We were nearly there. A little bit more and … drop! I pulled the release pin and the package dropped right into the middle of the other presents just like we’d practiced.
“Crabby’s mom is coming!” Jared whispered urgently.
I gave the rod a quick flick to release the catch-hook from the picture above the table but—uh oh. The hook was embedded in the canvas picture and the more I yanked the more stuck it became.
“She’s at the backdoor!”
Ummm … I could … maybe …
“She’s coming up the hallway!”
I yanked the hook like I had a whale on the end of my line and it worked! Sort of. Rrrrrrrrip! The hook tore right down the center of Crabby’s ballet picture, so it now looked like she’d been attacked by a ferocious, man-eating sabre-toothed tiger. I kept winding as fast as I could.
“Stop winding! She’s at the living room door!” I stopped dead. The line was still laying on the floor across the middle of the room. We held our breath as Crabby’s mother dashed across the room and stepped over my line without noticing. She grabbed something from a drawer and headed straight back outside. Phewww!
“Go!” Jared whispered loudly. Once again, I wound like a madman and a few seconds later I just about had the line back through the window, when I hit a snag. Not again! Tug tug tug! Tug tug tug! Twang whzzzzz! Suddenly the line and hook came zooming back straight towards the center of my head at warp speed! I ducked. Jared didn’t. Eeeeeeee! As I turned around Jared started whining. Hmmm maybe he was complaining about all the blood pouring out of his ear. Or the huge hook hanging from his earlobe. He actually looked pretty good with a fish hook hanging from his ear. It made him look kind of cool and tough. And I reckon the hook would be pretty handy too. You’d have somewhere to hang your keys.
I decided to have just one last look through the periscope before we took off. I probably shouldn’t have.
I saw the torn picture drop and brush some of the flowers sitting in a vase at the back of the present table. Some petals gently floated towards Crabby’s Xbox, past the sensor switch that turned on and popped open the disc tray. The disc tray smacked into one of the camera tripod legs, which sent the tripod and camera toppling over, straight into the middle of Crabby’s birthday cake. Splooshhh! Click, flash! Whzzzzz! The camera snapped a picture. The stupid spinning ballerina on the top of the cake was sent rocketing through the air like a little ballet bullet until—wack!—she was embedded head first into the wall on the other side of the room. Her butt and legs were left sticking out of the wall—and were still spinning! It was time to run!
We shoved our gear into our backpacks and sprinted out of there as fast as we could —with blood still pumping out of Jared’s ear and his nice big fish hook earring dangling in the wind. When Jared got home he got into heaps of trouble for getting his ear pierced without his mom’s permission. He spent an hour trying to explain to her that it was a fishing accident, but for some reason she didn’t believe him!
For the first time ever, Jared and I couldn’t wait to go to school the next day. We left nice and early so we could get there before Crabby Abbey. As soon as we got to school we threw our bikes and headed for the front gate. Toffee Thomas, Booger Boris, and all the other kids started to arrive. Finally, we saw her. Crabby was coming up the road. From a distance she looked pretty normal—for a crybaby suck-up. It was hard to tell if she’d used our cream or not. She was coming closer and closer.
When she reached the gates, she wandered through, pretending not to see us, as usual. We still couldn’t tell if she’d used the cream. Although, she did appear to have a bunch of zits, and that was new.
We stayed out of sight and watched as Crabby’s little band of followers started their daily suck-up routine of hovering, serving, and copying her. And then right on time—within the first five minutes of arriving at school—there she was off to the toilet to fix her face and reapply her face cream. Awesome!
We zipped behind the girls’ bathroom and listened as Crabby started bragging about the wonderful new face cream she got for her birthday that she was about to try! She was telling everyone that it was a mystery birthday present and she was sure it was from one of her rich aunties because it was so well wrapped! Jared and I high-fived.
On and on she blabbed, like she was a world expert on face cream. She was telling everyone that crushed diamonds were mixed through the cream and that the ingredients included teardrops from polar bear cubs, sieved through the wings of a very rare butterfly. (Okay, so I might be exaggerating a little). Then she added that she thought maybe the cream had been given to her by a secret admirer.
Secret admirer, what crap! I just about threw up on the spot. But we didn’t care, as long as she kept rubbing plenty of our cream all over her face. It was the best day at school ever! Every time Crabby came out of the toilets she was so happy and her face was shining from the cream she’d just put on. But back in the classroom, Jared and I started to notice that Crabby’s face was starting to tighten up and little cracks were showing, and getting wider every time she spoke. Of course, the tighter her face got, the quicker she ran off to the bathroom to put on more cream.
She was starting to look grey too. T
he worse things got, the faster she ran back to the bathroom to apply more cream. Around and around she went. It was hilarious to watch. By the end of the day, Crabby’s face was the color of old moldy cheese and looked like smashed-up concrete. And the best part was she was still slathering on more and more cream to try and fix it!
Yep, try some of our “earwax face cream” today … it’s great. Just ask Crabby Abbey!
“Aarrrrhhhhhh, Melly look out!” I screamed as I shoved my little sister out of its deadly path.
Without any warning whatsoever, it appeared again. Every swimmer in the world would recognize the dark, evil shadow that sends a dagger of fear straight through your heart.
There was no time to think about whether putting myself in danger was the right thing to do or not, I just did it. But suddenly, without warning, it turned. “Help!” I yelled again, desperately hoping someone, anyone would hear my cries.
It was coming right at us!
Splash splash splash, splash splash splash
“Help!”
Splash splash splash, splash splash splash
We were in serious trouble! Why didn’t we just stay out of the water!? I hated the water and everything in the water! Nothing good ever comes out of the water! Think about it. There are some of the most deadly, creepy animals in the world living in the water—most of them with rows of razor-like teeth just waiting to rip you apart. Crocodiles, sharks, killer whales, piranhas, and heaps of other vicious, weird creatures. Then there’s all of those freaky looking jellyfish and sea snails and about a buzzillion other poisonous things that can kill you in minutes. And the ocean’s full of other totally gross stuff that people eat. Like mussels, snails, seaweed, and, eewwwww, oysters! Everyone knows what oysters really are! They’re actually dolphin snot! Yes, really! Dolphins are really really smart so to get back at us for catching them and putting them in “marine parks” and making them do all of those embarrassing, lame little tricks like jumping through hoops, and waving and walking on their tails, they hide their boogers in empty seashells for us to find and eat. Gross! That’s why dolphins are always making those weird “giggling” noises. They’re laughing at us for eating their “booger oysters.”