Nathalia Buttface and the Embarrassing Camp Catastrophe

by Nigel Smith

  Darius grinned at her and she grinned back. Then she remembered she was still cross with him.

  She marched up to him, ready for pinching. He backed away.

  “It’s so not fair you get a nice chalet, even if you do have to share with that stuck-up Rufus.”

  “Not any more,” said Darius. “He left. Said he prefers a yurt.”

  “Why don’t you say that too, and I can have your chalet?” said Nat. “It’s only cos of me that we’re here.”

  “Get lost,” said Darius. “I don’t prefer a yurt.”

  Nat was about to pinch him when she saw Miss Hunny watching. She patted Darius like a dog.

  “Nice Darius, good Darius,” she said, remembering she was supposed to be looking after him.

  “I’m confused now,” said Darius, who’d been expecting pinching.

  He ran off anyway, to be on the safe side.

  Mr Bungee was shouting again.

  “The team leaders have five minutes to choose their dunny champion,” he said, “so get a move on.”

  Nat spent the next five minutes arguing with Penny about how stupid ley lines were, and so she hardly noticed Dad having a long conversation with Darius. She probably should have paid more attention because what happened next took her completely by surprise.

  “Nathalia is our dunny champion,” said Miss Hunny. “And it was a fair vote, so don’t start arguing.”

  “How did this happen? No one even mentioned me. Have YOU done this, Dad?” she said angrily.

  He took her to one side.

  “Shush,” he said. “I don’t want Mr Dewdrop from the Nice ’N’ Neat Alliance to think I’m pulling strings for you. It’s not very professional.”

  “You haven’t pulled strings. You’ve DROPPED ME IN IT! There’s a massive difference. Why have you done this?” she complained.

  “I know you’re always worried about making friends and being popular,” said idiot Dad kindly, “so what better way than by being the class champion?”

  “Class DUNNY champion.”

  “A winner’s a winner.”

  “What if I lose?” she said. “It’ll be my fault my classmates are digging the dunny.”

  “Don’t be so negative,” said Dad with his lopsided smile. “Honestly, sometimes I think I’ve got more confidence in you than you do.”

  Nat was told to get changed into something “she didn’t mind getting a bit muddy”, which alarmed her. She stomped back to the half-dark yurt and rummaged around in her rucksack in the gloom until she found an old T-shirt and a pair of tracky bottoms.

  On her way back down the hill, she began to think. Maybe … just maybe Dad had done her a favour. Perhaps this was her chance to get one over on St Scrofula’s stuck-up school. If she could win … well, maybe her school wouldn’t seem so bad after all.

  IF she could win.

  “Can we have the competitors?” said Mr Bungee. “Get a move on. No one wants to be digging a dunny in the dark.”

  Nat trudged over to the enthusiastic Kiwi.

  Her opponent was Plum, who had actually volunteered herself for the challenge.

  “I’m not being big-headed,” said large-bonced Plum, “I just know I’m smart and fast and super able.”

  “There you go,” said Dad, “that’s what I call confidence. What a school!”

  “Shuddup, Dad,” said Nat.

  “There are three rounds,” said Mr Bungee, “so the first girl to win two rounds is the winner.”

  “Get on with it,” snapped Nat.

  “The first round is a general-knowledge quiz,” said Mr Bungee. “So, what’s the capital of New Zealand?”

  “Italy,” guessed Nat, who was pants at geography.

  “Wellington,” said Plum.

  “Wellington it is,” said Mr Bungee. “And a bloomin’ lovely place it is too, eh?”

  The St Scrofula’s kids cheered.

  “Next question. Cuddly little koala bears are native to Australia – and they’re the only good thing about the place, if you ask me. Now, what do they eat?”

  “Bugs. Or grass or toast,” guessed Nat.

  “Wrong.”

  “Or milk, fish, bread, eggs, cheese …”

  “Way off.”

  “Pies. Peanuts. Ready-salted crisps. Sweet popcorn. Chicken nuggets.”

  “Stop guessing.”

  “Eucalyptus leaves,” said Plum smugly.

  “Correct,” said Mr Bungee. “Next question. Who’s the queen of New Zealand?”

  “This isn’t general knowledge,” complained Nat.

  “It’s general knowledge to me,” said Mr Bungee.

  “Is it Kylie?” said Nat.

  “NO. Firstly, Kylie’s a pop princess. Secondly, she’s another Aussie. You’re worse than your father.”

  “It’s actually a really clever question,” said Plum, with a smarmy smile. “You haven’t really got a queen, but because you’re in the Commonwealth, you share ours.”

  “How do you KNOW this stuff?” said Nat, who wanted to throttle her rival.

  “It’s called an education,” said Plum.

  Nat scowled.

  She looked at Dad. He looked impressed.

  “You have to admit it: they’re making us look like idiots, love,” he said.

  “St Scrofula’s wins the first round,” said Mr Bungee, to cheers from one lot of kids and boos from the other.

  “The second round is an eating challenge. First rule of camp survival: you gotta eat.”

  He dangled two fat chilli peppers in front of the girls.

  “We call these the Auckland Bum-burners. They are hot. Hot enough to boil a kiwi’s behind. The first one to eat a whole chilli wins.”

  With relief, Nat saw that Plum looked nervous.

  Nat took a pepper. It almost glowed red in her hand, like an ember from a fire.

  She looked at her classmates. They were all urging her on. If Nat lost this, they would lose the contest. She had no choice. She rammed the thing in her mouth and started chewing.

  It wasn’t too bad for about half a nanosecond.

  Then it was bad. Very bad indeed.

  Nat thought the roof of her mouth was going to erupt through the top of her head. Her tongue felt like a firework and even her teeth rattled.

  “I’M GOING TO DIE AND I’M NOT EVEN JOKING!” she yelled, running around in circles, mouth open, desperately trying to suck in cooling air.

  “WATER, WATER, GIMME WATER!!!!”

  She snatched Penny’s water bottle and took huge gulps.

  “Water makes it worse,” said Mr Bungee, with a nasty grin.

  “AAAAGH, YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME EARLIER!” Nat screamed, running around some more, tongue hanging out like a thirsty dog.

  It took about five minutes for the throbbing pain to die down, and about ten minutes for everyone to stop laughing at her.

  “Did I win?” Nat said finally. Her eyes streamed with tears and she could hardly speak.

  “Course you won,” said Plum in a superior kind of way. “I didn’t do it.”

  “Why not?” asked Nat.

  “Didn’t need to – I was already one up. I’ll wait for the third challenge.”

  “Tiebreaker,” said Mr Bungee. “Winner takes all. Loser takes … a couple of dunny shovels.”

  “Ooooh,” said the watching kids from both schools, who were now all willing their champion to victory. And wishing poo-shaped defeat on their rivals.

  “We think you’re awesome, Plum,” shouted her best friend, a tall girl called Thursday Wonton. “Absolutely amazeballs.”

  “Yay!” cheered the Scrofulas.

  “You’d better win, Buttface,” said Darius helpfully. “You’re unpopular enough as it is.”

  “Yay,” agreed Nat’s class.

  Nat scowled at them.

  Mr Bungee, who was milking the suspense for all it was worth, finally made the announcement they were waiting for.

  “The last challenge is a straightforward race
,” he said.

  It was straightforward. Straight and forward through an assault course.

  The huge assault course was already set up in the woods. There were ropes to swing along, a net to crawl under, a pipe to squeeze through, tyres to hop in and out of, and then, finally, a big wooden wall.

  “Best thing is, all the mud will break your fall,” said Mr Bungee, “so you can really go for it. Are you ready?”

  “No. Not really,” said Nat unhappily.

  But Mr Bungee had already raised a whistle to his lips.

  “There’s a bell on a tree at the end of the course,” he said. “The first one to ring it wins.”

  All the kids yelled as he blew for the start of the race.

  Plum was off like a rocket, squishing through the mud.

  The first obstacle was a big net, close to the ground. Nat watched as her rival slid under it with practised ease.

  “You’ve done this before,” said Nat, as she got to the net.

  “Yah, we’ve got our own assault course at school,” said Plum, who was halfway through. “It’s so fun.”

  So fun, yah. The only assault course we’ve got is running past the Year Eleven boys smoking behind the science block, thought Nat grimly, as she dived under the net after her opponent.

  The mud was cold and sticky and soon she was plastered in it. But before Nat could wiggle out the other side, Plum was already whizzing along the monkey bars like, well, like a monkey.

  “You’re losing!” shouted Penny from the sidelines.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” said Nat, reaching the monkey bars.

  “Your tracky bottoms are coming loose,” said Penny, telling her something she didn’t know.

  “EEEK!”

  Automatically, Nat put her hands down to pull up her trousers. Forgetting she was holding on to the monkey bars.

  Splat! Down she went, into the mud.

  “You fall off, you gotta start again,” shouted Mr Bungee.

  Nat squelched desperately back to the start of the course and began again.

  Halfway across, going hand-to-hand on the bars, she became aware of her problem tracky bottoms. Why were they so loose? She kept crossing her skinny legs to hold them up, but they kept slipping down!

  “I think I mixed up our tracky bottoms and I packed mine in your rucksack by mistake,” shouted Dad. “They might be a bit big for you.” He fidgeted on the spot. “Also, it might explain why I’ve got a bit of chafing. I thought these were tight.”

  “We can see your pa-ants!” chanted the boys from St Scrofula’s. “We can see your pa-ants!”

  Dangling there in mid-air, covered in mud and with Dad’s oversized tracky bottoms sliding down, Nat heard a horrible wail of fury. She wondered where it was coming from. Then she realised: it was coming from her!

  She saw Dad – rubbish, tracky-bottoms-swapping, pants-revealing Dad – standing at the end of the assault course. He waved.

  A red mist descended in front of her eyes.

  This time she WAS GOING TO STRANGLE HIM.

  With a yell, she raced through the monkey bars, hurled herself into the pipe, hopped furiously across the tyres and reached the big wall just as Plum was disappearing over it.

  “Come ’ere, you,” she shouted, and grabbed Plum’s leg.

  “Aaaargh!” yelled the girl, as Nat yanked her off the wall and used her as a stepping stone.

  Nat was over the wall and in the lead! She was way ahead. Nothing could stop her now.

  “You’ve won, now ring the bell,” yelled Dad.

  But then he saw that Nat DID NOT CARE ABOUT THE BELL.

  She was completely ignoring the bell.

  Instead, she was heading straight for him, outstretched hands full of gooey mud.

  “I’ll just … just go and, er … look for something in these trees,” said Dad, ducking behind a handy oak.

  “You’ve embarrassed me for the last time,” shouted Nat, chasing him in circles.

  She had just got him cornered against a big tree and was about to plaster him in mud when she heard a bell ring.

  It was Plum, ringing in victory.

  “Oops,” said Nat.

  In the end, Dad dug the dunny.

  Nat said he had to because it was his fault she’d lost the race. If she hadn’t been so cross with him, she’d have made it to the bell on time.

  While the camp cooks were boiling up sludge for supper, Nat and Penny and Darius went to the field to see how Dad was getting on.

  Nat was planning to offer words of encouragement like: “Hurry up, baldy,” or “Dig it a bit deeper. We don’t want spiders or splashback.”

  Darius just wanted to go so he could use it first.

  When they got there, they could just see Dad’s bald spot peeking above ground. There was a mound of freshly-dug earth near the hole. Great shovelfuls of earth were being chucked up … and over Mr Dewdrop, who was standing next to the hole.

  “Are you sure you’re setting a good example to the children?” Nat heard Mr Dewdrop ask, brushing earth off his clipboard. “I mean, you should get your girl Nathalia to do it. After all, it’s usually ‘losers, weepers’, everyone knows that.”

  “Thanks. You could have said that two hours ago,” grumbled Dad, climbing out, covered in mud and dirt and worms. “I’ve finished it now.”

  Darius whipped out some loo roll. “Out of my way,” he said with an evil grin.

  Dad just smiled. “We need to put the little loo hut over it first,” he said. “Here, you can give me a hand.”

  After a few minutes of heaving and dragging (Darius and Dad) and groaning and complaining (Nat), they had manoeuvred the little loo hut over the big hole.

  Mr Dewdrop wandered off without helping and Nat had a horrible feeling Dad wasn’t making a good impression on him.

  Darius dashed straight inside the dunny.

  Dad brushed himself down and looked at the pile of earth he’d dug up. “I was hoping to find a bit of T. rex in the ground,” he said. “There’s tons of fossils round here.”

  Nat, who didn’t care about fossils, just grunted.

  Dad pointed to the pile of earth. “But all I found were three tin cans, something you don’t need to know about, and this rock.”

  He showed Nat and Penny his lump of rock.

  Nat was even less interested in rock than fossils, but Penny said, “Ooh, pretty.”

  She held it in her hand. Mostly it was grey and sharp and knobbly. But bits of it sparkled gold.

  “Don’t get too excited, it’s only pyrite,” said Dad.

  “That’s nice,” said Penny.

  “So bored,” said Nat.

  “It’s called fool’s gold,” said Dad, “because lots of fools think it’s gold. Apparently the ground here is full of it.”

  “Whatevs,” said Nat. “Do you know you can’t get a phone signal round here? All week, Dad, with no phone signal. Not even no Wi-Fi, but NO SIGNAL.”

  But Dad was still more interested in his glittery rock. “Can you imagine, spending all that time and effort digging for this, only to be told, when it’s finally in your hand, it’s worthless?” he chuckled. “There’s a life lesson in that somewhere but I can’t remember what it is.”

  “There’s no life lesson. It’s totally pointless, a bit like you,” snapped Nat.

  She snatched the rock from Penny and hurled it over a hedge.

  A cow mooed.

  “Oops, sorry,” she said.

  “What’s the matter with you?” said Penny, as Dad went to check on the well-being of the unfortunate cow.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ve just been humiliated in my pants, my dad’s had to dig a poo-hole, we’re surrounded by the snooty kids from snooty-land, somehow I’ve gotta prove that our rubbish school is better than St flipping Scrofula’s, we’re going to be sleeping in a damp yurt in a damp field and, worst of all, Darius flipping Bagley is in a luxury chalet living like the Sultan of China.”

  “China doesn
’t have sultans,” corrected Darius from inside the hut.

  “Whatevs,” grumbled Nat. “And then Dad starts burbling about a pointless rock that only looks like gold.”

  In the distance, a dinner bell clanged.

  “Oh, bum-wads,” swore Darius, who was still busy.

  “Can I have your chalet?” said Nat for the zillionth time.

  “Get lost and save me some slop,” he demanded.

  “Have fun in your new chalet,” Nat yelled.

  Grabbing a big branch from the ground, she wedged it tight against the dunny door, locking her little monster mate inside.

  “Yeah, this one suits you better,” she chortled.

  Dinner was a kind of stew; actually, it was more of an unkind of stew because it bubbled and gurgled in Nat’s tummy before she’d finished it. It was served in rough wooden bowls.

  “Apparently the kids who were here last week made the bowls,” said Penny, picking a splinter out of her tongue.

  “Could this place get any worse?” said Nat, five minutes before IT GOT WORSE.

  She budged up on her bench to make way for Darius, arriving late. He scowled at her.

  “I had to climb out of the top,” he said.

  “Tee-hee,” said Nat, handing him her leftover stew, “you should let me have the cabin, shouldn’t you?”

  When dinner was cleared away, Mr Dewdrop got up on a little wooden stage at the end of the hall. He looked a mixture of really self-important and terrified.

  Nat noticed Dad was sitting right in front of Mr Dewdrop, with that stupid expression that reminded her of their dog, begging for scraps. ‘I’m a good boy,’ he was basically saying. Dad just needed a flipping tail.

  Mr Dewdrop clapped his hands together.

  The well-behaved posh kids immediately paid attention; 8H carried on chatting/chucking bits of bread around/hunting for splinters.

  Finally, they were brought to order.

  “I’d like to welcome the best young geographers in the county,” he said.

  Everyone in 8H looked around to see who was walking in, but Nat realised he meant THEM.

  “Congratulations to both schools on making it this far in the competition,” Mr Dewdrop continued.

  THIS FAR? thought Nat. Competition? I thought the essay-writing was the competition.

  “As you know, as the winners of our essay prize, we’ve organised this lovely week in Totley for you, thanks to Mrs Ferret and Mr Bungee and their great eco camp.”