So Sick! (12 page)

The war cry dies.

Why’s Hamish stopped? wonders Luke.

The air rumbles, the sky darkens and he looks up. Racing pigeons are coming in to land.

Luke notices that Hamish has started up again, but this time the war cry is different. Hamish is yelling and prancing about, making gargling noises and swiping at his mouth. Luke peers closer. What’s happening? He looks at Hamish’s face. It is smeared with brown and white!

‘Aaaagh!’ says Hamish, wiping at his face — swipe, swipe, swipe.

Is this a new version of the Warrior War Cry? wonders Luke. He decides that maybe it is. In the
old one Hamish never did back flips! Or windmill arms. And he never spat.

Luke looks at Mrs Sully. There’s something different about her. She is doubled up with laughter. He looks back at Hamish. Hamish is on his hands and knees, now. He is dry retching on the ground, moaning and shaking and putting on such a show that people passing by start to throw money.

What’s going on? Luke can’t work it out. He looks at Hamish going ballistic. He looks at Mrs Sully, holding her sides she’s laughing so much.

Then he looks … into the yellow eyes of Pretty

Boy!

Pretty Boy — The Racing Pigeon Who Brought One Home. Who dropped his load …

Right in Hamish’s mouth!

Mr Epeler is speaking. He’s our teacher.

‘By the end of this term we’ll all have worked like such busy little bees on our spelling … ’

Spelling! That word. It’s a hot-needles-under-your-fingernails sort of word.

‘… that we’ll all be able to spell Amorphophallus … ’ Amor, what? I think we did amour in Italian in Grade 3. Or was amour in French in Grade 4? Whatever.

‘Amorphophallus titanum!’ Mr Epeler beams around the room like a wayward asteroid. ‘It’s a flower, by the way.’

Oh, a flower, I think to myself. Of course! ‘Amorphophallus titanum. I want you to learn that word.’

Amor … A morph … I give up. I can’t even remember the word, let alone spell it. Something to do with phallus. Or was that tit?

‘Please copy this into your spelling books,’ says Mr Epeler. To show how clever he is, he starts to write it on the board. All I can think of while he is writing is, thank God I’m tall!

Tall means I get to sit up the back of the class. Tall puts as much distance between Mr Epeler’s armpits and me as is humanly possible. Let me explain, Mr Epeler is the sort of person who blanks out when the deodorant commercials come on TV. The sort of person who has a force shield around him that even flies won’t step into. The sort of … nah! You’ve got the picture.

Mr Epeler is still writing. One, two, three, four … I start counting letters. And give up at nine. Spelling should be banned. Don’t you agree? I’m thinking of starting up a petition. I mean, who needs it? It’s not like we haven’t invented spell check.

‘I’ve sorted you into groups,’ says Mr Epeler holding up colour-coded sheets of paper.

Don’t tell me, red is for the dummies (‘r’, ‘e’, ‘d’ — three letters) and aquamarine is for the brains (can’t tell you how many letters), and yellow is somewhere in between.

We start with aquamarine. ‘Angus, Madeline, Francesca … ’

Then yellow. ‘Kobi, Verity, Levon

Red. ‘Jake

Red! Knew it.

‘Kieran … ’

Hah! Kieran’s with me. At least
I
learnt to spell my name in kindy.

‘Adam.’

Someone else who’s brain’s gone walkabout. Jake. Kieran and Adam. It’s always the same. Red for reading, Red for maths and Red for spelling.

Osheen and Jung Sian are in Red for spelling, too. At least they have an excuse. They’ve only been speaking English for a few months. Osheen speaks four languages. I, on the other hand, only speak one. How’d I get to be so dumb? Grandad says I must’ve been at the back of the line when the spelling brains were handed out. He says he was, too. Only in his day, if you couldn’t spell at school they’d have given you the strap! I would’ve nicked off. They probably would’ve belted you for that, too. Grandad says he once got six cuts with the cane because he got his b’s and d’s mixed up. When
I mix them up I pretend I’ve done it on purpose — mirror writing.

‘Everyone look at your list.’ It’s Mr Epeler, again. ‘There’s twenty words that are compulsory … ’

Twenty! A kick in the goolies would be more kind.

‘… and five that are optional.’

Optional? Let me tell you about optional. Optional is only for kids whose names
aren’t
Madeline, or Francesca, or Angus. It’s hard to believe, but with a double serving of brains those kids still haven’t worked out
optional
.

I look at my list:
because . .
. Yes! Betty eats cake and uncle sells eggs! My sister taught me that.
their
. They always throw in a
their
. But is it a
there
there or a
their
their. And where’s my favourite? Ah, second from the bottom,
which
. Which
which
is that? It’s meant to help but it only confuses me more. Mum says to look for the ‘t’. The ‘t’ is meant to look like a cross, which is meant to remind me of a cemetery, which is meant to remind me of a witch. Witch. ‘t’. Cross. Get it? But I keep forgetting what everything’s meant to remind me of. I mean, it’s not like I hang out in cemeteries. Come to think of it, it’s not like witches do, either.

‘You are to learn your list for Friday,’ says Mr ‘Sadist’ Epeler. ‘On Friday, we will have a spelling bee.’

‘Great,’ says Angus.

‘Goodie, goodie …’ says Madeline.

‘Gumdrops,’ Francesca finishes for her.

Where does she get off?

Mr Epeler stands there with a grin that reminds me of Smirk the Berk. ‘We will start the spelling bee with each child spelling Amorphophallus titanum.’

Luckily, the bell cuts him off. Torture session Number 1175 is finally over. Funny, I might not be good at maths but I can tell you that we go to school about 39 weeks a year, give or take a few days for public holidays and pupil-free days. So, that’s 39 lots of 5 days. Times that by 6 years, plus 5 days — ‘cause it’s Monday of Week 2 in Grade 6 — gives 1175.

I start to walk home, thinking that Friday is going to be a major burner. I pass Madeline and Francesca and Angus going into the library. Bet they’re going to read their dictionaries.

‘Hey, Jake,’ calls Angus. ‘Wonder who’s going to be the first kid in the spelling bee to get out?’

I pull my escaped loony face. ‘Don’t know,’ I answer. ‘Don’t care.’

But I do care. On Friday the what’s-between-Jake’s-ears? jokes will be flying. Just as I get to the front gate I see Ivy Tan. I begin to feel better. Ivy Tan is the only person I know who spells worse than I do. When spelling brains were handed out she wasn’t at the back of the line, she
was missing from it altogether. Ivy’s sitting at the bus stop pretending to read. I say pretending because although she’s sitting there with this great fat book on her lap, she rarely turns a page, and when she does, she turns them in chunks!

No one teases Ivy. In fact, no one speaks to Ivy much. I think that’s worse than being given a rollicking. It’s as though she doesn’t exist.

Kieran’s waiting for me out the front.

‘What’s the long face for?’ he asks. ‘You look like you’ve scored a detention.’

I shake my head and say, ‘Nah. It’s nothing like that.’ I let out this long sigh, big enough to blow out a hundred candles.