Freddy Tangles

by Jack Brand

  Then he said, ‘It looks quite clean, Mrs Tangles. Freddy is almost due for his vaccination shot so I’ll give it to him now. Better to be careful, don’t you think?’

  I thought, NO, but Mum nodded so needle it was.

  ‘Okay, young man, drop your pants, this won’t hurt a bit.’

  There, he said it. Now I knew it was going to hurt a lot!

  And I had to drop my pants. He was going to give me the needle in my bottom.

  I don’t know why Doctor Malvoy gives me some of my needles in my bottom. What’s wrong with my arm? It’s like some days he decides that he doesn’t like bottoms and wants to stick needles in them.

  And I think it’s wrong!

  I think bottoms get a really bad deal, like who would ever want to be one?

  First of all, poo comes out of them, so that’s pretty gross, not to mention farts and needles, and then they get sat on, whacked and kicked.

  Most of the time it’s not even their fault!

  On top of all that, bottoms are really ugly, particularly my dad’s. It is so hairy. My dad always makes the same joke: he comes into the room and pulls his pants down so we see his bum and he says, ‘Oh no, I broke my bum! Look, it’s got a big crack in it.’

  Anyway, the doctor gave me the needle and it definitely hurt more than a bit, even though he said it wouldn’t.

  Mum bought me some ice cream after that. She was talking about sending me back to school for the rest of the day so I pretended my bitten finger was hurting and my bum was hurting too. I started limping as well and even pretended the ice cream gave me a stomach-ache.

  It worked! Mum let me stay home.

  I spent most of the day thinking about one thing: getting called Fartboy at school.

  The next morning I told Mum my finger was still really sore but she made me go to school.

  She said, ‘Don’t worry about being called Fartboy. It’s just a silly name and they will all forget very quickly.’

  I asked her how fast quickly was because I remember dad once saying, ‘This summer has gone by so quickly.’ And like, I’m pretty sure summer lasted for three months!

  I also remember my great-granddad being nearly a hundred years old and saying his life seemed to have passed by so quickly.

  A hundred years!

  So even saying they will forget very quickly doesn’t mean I won’t be called Fartboy for the next hundred years!

  Mum said, ‘I’m sure quickly won’t be that long.’

  I said, ‘Oh yeah, well, how long is long?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Mum, no one knows how long long is.’

  She just pushed me out the door saying, ‘Everything will be fine,’ but I wasn’t so sure.

  I remember Mr Brody once asked our class how long a piece of string was. Like, he didn’t have the piece of string, he just wanted to know how long string was. No one put up their hand. It was a stupid question so I put up my hand and said, ‘Well, sir, it depends on how long the string is.’

  Which was a stupid answer because that was the question in the first place.

  Mr Brody said, ‘Exactly right, Freddy.’

  I was a little bit proud of getting the answer right, even though I didn’t have any clue at all what I was talking about or what Mr Brody was talking about either.

  But, the thing is, nobody can say how long long actually is.

  So anyway, I walked into school and passed some kids I knew and one of them looked up and said, ‘Hi Freddy.’

  He called me Freddy!

  It was like music to my ears. Quickly hadn’t been very long at all. They had already forgotten about Fartboy.

  I was Freddy again!

  I went down to the playground and Toby Mason called out, ‘Hi Freddy.’

  Yes!

  Mum was right!

  Then one kid yelled out, ‘Hey, there’s Fartboy!’ He didn’t say it mean or anything, it was like he just saw me and remembered and it burst out of his mouth.

  ‘Oh yeah!’ cried out Toby, who just a moment before had called me Freddy. ‘Hi Fartboy,’ he corrected. ‘Freddy Fartboy.’

  Before long it was through the playground and everyone thought it was funny all over again because jokes about farts are always funny.

  So as it turned out, Mum was wrong. I did have something to worry about.

  Kids were walking past holding their noses and whoofing at the air to get that farty smell to go away. Some pretended to run off as if a tiger or something really scary was chasing them. They were all having a great old time.

  At least my friends didn’t do anything like that. I sat among them with my head down so no-one could see me. It was nice to be hidden away.

  Cooper came running in and said, kind of excited, ‘You should see what Gilly and Matt are doing. They’re making face masks out of paper and sticky tape and selling them so people won’t be able to smell Fartboy. Like, heaps of people are lining up to buy them. We should make some too and sell them!’

  Everyone was quiet and Cooper saw me for the first time. ‘Oh … but, it’s not like you really do smell … Just to make some money…’

  Tabby asked all of a sudden, ‘What would

  you rather be, innocent of a crime but sent to jail for life anyway, or guilty of a crime and sent to jail for life?’

  I wondered why Tabby was asking such a stupid question when I realised that she was talking about me, that I was innocent of being smelly.

  But life?

  Did she think I was going to be Fartboy for life?

  Three kids walked past wearing the face masks. They looked right at me, waiting until I saw them, and when I did they laughed.

  In class, everyone except my friends stayed as far away from me as they could get.

  Mr Brody called me over and whispered, ‘Sorry Freddy, I never would have let Scarlett mark the roll if I’d known this would happen.’

  I told him it was okay and was about to go back to my chair when he said, ‘You know, I once saw a seagull crash into a tree and break its wing.’

  Well, I didn’t know that. I started back to my seat again, only faster this time, when he started up again. ‘You see, when one of us, you know, a human, is injured, we take them to the hospital to get fixed up, but not seagulls.’

  I could have told him that, because I’ve never seen a seagull hospital.

  Then he asked, ‘Do you know what the other seagulls did when they saw that their friend had a broken wing?’

  I shrugged and said, ‘Took him back to his nest?’

  ‘No, they attacked him. Here he was, injured and hurting, and the other gulls pecked him to death.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, looking at my chair and wishing I was in it.

  ‘Anyway, seeing the kids treat you so poorly, Freddy, reminds me of that seagull.’

  ‘I’m not a seagull, sir,’ I said, a little surprised he was talking about me.

  ‘But the way they pick on you all together. It’s terrible, terrible.’

  Mr Brody shook his head and looked at me. ‘You know, I think of that poor seagull quite often.’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I patted him on the shoulder and tried once again to get back to my chair, only to be stopped again!

  He gave me a job to do. I had to go to every class to pass a note to the teachers about the gala day that was coming up. I think Mr Brody gave me the job to help me get away from my class for a while.

  Only I wish he hadn’t.

  It was worse in the other classrooms. Every room I went in, the kids all whispered, ‘There’s Fartboy.’

  I could hear them.

  They all started lifting their feet off the ground so they wouldn’t get my germs.

  I know they were doing that because I used to do it to one girl. Her name was Penny Henderson.

  It seemed like fun when I was doing it to her; we were all doing it together and it was like a big joke. I can’t remember why we were doing it to Penny, something about her bei
ng dirty or something. We were lifting our feet off the ground so we didn’t catch Penny Hendy Fever, and now they were lifting their feet so they didn’t catch Freddy Fartboy Fever.

  Now that it was happening to me, I realised just how mean we had been to Penny Henderson and if she was still at our school, I would tell her how sorry I was. But she left and I think I know why. I wanted to leave this school too and I didn’t think anyone would care if I did. At least they wouldn’t have to catch Freddy Fartboy Fever if I wasn’t there.

  It was like everyone together was saying,

  GO AWAY!

  YOU SMELL AND WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE!

  Maybe they didn’t mean that, but that was what it felt like. They were being cruel and smiling their heads off at the same time.

  Every room I went into was the same. I was starting to feel a bit like Mr Brody’s seagull.

  At lunch it didn’t matter where I went. Kids would back away from me as if they might catch some deadly disease.

  Scarlett Magnusson, who started it all in the first place, led pretend Fartboy tour parties through the school. I saw her stop in front of a patch of dead grass and say to them, ‘This is where Fartboy first farted and killed all the grass.’

  Then she pointed to a wall with some paint peeling off it and said, ‘And you can see here how strong his farts are, they can even make paint fall off.’

  She had like twenty kids following her around and they were all laughing. She even brought them over to my hang and said, ‘And here we see Fartboy in his natural habitat, farting away and smelling really bad. And look, he’s eating food to make more farts! Won’t that be exciting…’

  Tabby told her to go away, which was really nice of her, but Scarlett just said, ‘And these are

  Fartboy’s friends. They like to be near Fartboy because they like his smell.’

  They all laughed again and one of them, Angus Pillick, walked up to me with one hand over his nose and poked me and said, ‘Oh no, now I’ve got Freddy Fartboy Fever!’

  He touched someone else and yelled, ‘Now you have it!’

  That started a big game of chasing through the whole playground. Whoever was touched last had the fever.

  Angus Pillick was a year older than me so I didn’t really know him very well. He came over again and said he needed some more of my fever to secretly infect a teacher.

  I wasn’t really sure what to do because he was bigger than me, and his friends were there too, so I just sat there.

  Blocker and Cooper stood up.

  Blocker told him to go away but Angus said, ‘Make me.’

  They just sort of stood in front of each other until Angus tried to push past, but Blocker pushed him back.

  Some kids started yelling, ‘Fight!’

  I jumped up. I don’t know what I was thinking but I ran past Block and jumped on Angus. We fell to the ground. I had my arms around him in a big bear hug and was holding on as hard as I could.

  He couldn’t get free, and I was yelling,

  ‘Now you’ve got the fever all over you! You can’t ever get rid of it. Ever. Ever!’

  Someone pulled me off him and someone else kicked me, or maybe a few people did, because it was crazy. There were kids everywhere. Angus punched me in the stomach and that hurt and then Mr Brody pulled me up and I was dangling in the air.

  ‘Settle down, boys!’

  ‘He started it!’ Angus yelled. ‘He jumped on me!’

  ‘Is that true, Freddy?’

  I was almost breathless as I blurted out, ‘He wanted Fartboy Fever, so I gave it to him!’

  I think I saw Mr Brody smile a little bit when he said quietly, ‘So the seagull fights back.’

  Then he raised his voice for everyone to hear.

  ‘Right. You’re all on notice. If I hear of anyone teasing Freddy anymore they will be on detention for a week. And just so it’s clear, Freddy doesn’t smell any different to anyone else. Understood?’

  Everyone was quiet.

  ‘Well, is it?’

  He was looking straight at Angus, who eventually said, ‘Yes sir.’

  It was really nice of Mr Brody to say that, but as soon as he was gone it didn’t make any difference.

  When I passed by kids in the hall they squeezed over to the far side to get past. If I met someone in a doorway they backed away as if I was holding a gun or something.

  When school was over I was so relieved, until I saw that Angus was waiting for me.

  He watched me walk away from school, out of the teachers’ sight, before running up.

  ‘You’re done for, Fartboy,’ he said, and pushed me backwards.

  I suddenly felt really angry, like,

  WOULD THIS NEVER END?

  Angus pushed me again, hard, and I fell over. He kicked my leg. ‘Get up, come on, get up.’

  I got up and he came at me again. I stuck out my hands like I was going to box him even though I didn’t know how.

  Angus backed away and suddenly went pale. I thought for a moment it must have been my boxing hands but it wasn’t, it was … my little sister!

  Jessica came barrelling past me and told Angus to go away. It seemed weird that he was so afraid of my little sister, he doesn’t even sleep in the same room as her.

  But then it all made sense when he kept looking behind me and not at Jessica at all.

  ‘What have we got here then?’

  It was a sound that sent chills of fear down my spine: the voice of Sid!

  ‘I’m the only one around here that does the bashing,’ he said.

  Great, I thought. Getting bashed by Angus Pillick was bad enough, but Sid Malone!

  Angus called out nervously, ‘Just finishing something he started, Sid.’

  Which I think was totally unfair. I started it because they called me Fartboy and he wanted to poke me AND he followed me after school.

  ‘He started it, eh?’ Sid moved closer. ‘I heard he was a fighter.’

  He’d heard that because I told him, but that was all lies.

  Sid grabbed my shirt in a fist and lifted me off the ground. I was dangling in front of him.

  He growled into my face, ‘You might have started the fight but I’m gonna finish it.’

  That was it, my life was over.

  Sid went on, ‘Nobody beats up a member of my gang.’

  I didn’t even know that Angus was a member of his gang!

  He let go of me and went over to Angus. ‘You’ve picked on a member of my gang, which means you’ve picked on me.’

  Angus looked from Sid to me in shock.

  ‘I didn’t know!’ he cried. ‘You didn’t tell me!’ he wailed at me. ‘Sid, he never told me!’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you.’

  Sid pushed him over as easy as a piece of cardboard.

  ‘Now you’ve been told.’

  I was struggling to keep up. First I was going to get beaten up by Angus, then it was Sid and now Sid was fighting for me! I needed Blocker to put his finger in my mouth right now because it was open wide enough for ten flies to get in.

  Sid’s gang came up and stood around me. Angus scrambled back to his feet and ran away.

  ‘Run away!’

  I yelled.

  ‘CHICKEN!’

  ‘Malone!’

  It was Mr Brody. He told Sid to go away but Sid didn’t. He said it was a public street and he didn’t have to do what a teacher told him to do.

  Mr Brody grabbed me and took me back into the school.

  ‘See ya! Thanks!’ I yelled back at Sid and he nodded darkly.

  Mr Brody pulled me into the school office. ‘What do you think you’re doing with that boy, Tangles?’

  ‘He saved me from Angus, sir. Angus followed me out of school and wanted to fight me but Sid stopped him.’

  Mr Brody gave a sharp nod. ‘Right, I’ll deal with Mr Pillick tomorrow. As for Sid, he is nothing but trouble and you have to stay away from him.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, a bit confused because Sid did j
ust save me. ‘But maybe he’s getting better, sir.’

  Mr Brody let out a noise like what I said was too stupid for words. ‘Did he want you in his gang?’

  ‘Um, yeah, he sort of got Angus because I was in his gang.’

  ‘You’re in his gang?!’

  ‘No! No way! He asked me but I never said I wanted to.’

  ‘Good! Whatever you do, Freddy, don’t join.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, sir.’

  ‘Good boy.’ Mr Brody seemed pleased.

  ‘Sir, do you know why Sid is so mean?’