The Bare Bum Gang and the Football Face-Off (2 page)

‘Does it involve spiders?'

‘No.'

‘Does it involve any creepy crawlies?'

‘No, not really.'

She leaped on that, like a lion attacking a zebra.

‘What do you mean “not really”? Do you mean it does
a bit
involve creepy crawlies? Or don't you even know?'

She could be quite logical sometimes, which you don't really expect from girls, or at least from girls with volcanoes coming out of the tops of their heads.

‘I'm not answering any more questions until we reach HQ.'

HQ stands for Head Quarters, which is another way of saying our den. We'd built about six dens in the woods, because the kids from the old estate kept smashing them up or burning them or doing wees in them so they smelled.

Our latest den was quite well disguised with grass on its roof, and it was half dug into the side of a little hilly thing, and there was a weeping willow tree draped over it. The grass roof was over a sort of extension made of old planks sticking out from the side of the hill. I sometimes used to wish that our enemies were looking for us from a helicopter gunship, because from a helicopter gunship it would be impossible to see us.

The door was a plastic sack that once contained cement powder, and it usually managed to sprinkle a bit of the grey stuff on your head when you pushed through on the way in.

‘OK, we're here now,' announced Jennifer, as if she was already in the Gang and the den belonged to her.

‘Excuse me,' I said, ‘but it's
my
job to say when we're here.'

Jennifer looked at me like I was mad for a while. Her looking-at-me-as-if-I-was-mad look was a lot like her normal grumpy look, except her eyes were wider, and her mouth made the shape of a chicken's bottom.

I think it might have been the chicken's bottom that gave me the idea, although the idea itself didn't arrive for a few minutes as it had to sit and stew in my brain for a while before it was ready.

There was an embarrassing silence for about three minutes, although I didn't have a watch so it might have been four minutes
or maybe just two. Then I said:

‘Let's go and sit in the den until the others get here.'

Jennifer looked a lot happier when I said that. She'd never been allowed in the den before. I realized straight away that I'd made a big mistake. I should have done the test outside. I imagined how hard it would be to get her out of the den again once she was in. If she created a rumpus, she might do quite a lot of damage. We had valuable things inside, like some bendy bamboo, some other less bendy sticks, a cricket bat, two cricket stumps, a bicycle inner tube, some string and some more string less tangled up than the first lot of string. And we had some matches.

Even if she didn't mess up our sticks or our string, Jennifer might kick a hole in the wall – the wall at the front, I mean. The other walls were made out of the hill, so it would be hard to destroy those without a bulldozer.

‘It smells in here,' she said, which really annoyed me.

‘What of?' I was a bit worried that our enemies might have found this den too, and done some wees in it.

‘Earth. I like it.'

I groaned. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. If only she had said, ‘It smells of wee in here, and I'm never coming in again,' then all our troubles would have ended.

There was another embarrassing pause and then I heard the rest of the Gang arrive, and Phillip pushed his head through the door and gave a loud groan when he saw his sister.

‘Why don't you just get lost?' he said.

He was always the rudest one to Jennifer, because she was his sister. I sometimes thought he went a bit too far. But he was also slightly afraid of her because she was the same height as him, even though she was a year younger.

Jennifer stuck out her arm with her palm two centimetres away from Phillip's face.

‘Say it to the hand,' she said.

Noah, who had come in behind Phillip, said, ‘That's a sign of yob culture. If that's how you're going to behave, you might as well go and join the old estate gang.'

Jennifer hung her head and said, ‘I don't want to join them. I only want to be in your gang.'

I felt a bit sad then. But I'd already had my idea, which was now nicely cooked and ready to be served. Once Jamie was in the den – and, yes, it was a bit of a tight squeeze, if that's what you're thinking – I began.

‘As you all know, Jennifer wants to be in our gang.' The Moan moaned and Jamie groaned, and even nice Noah made a little tut. ‘Well, as you also know, before anyone gets to be in our gang, they have to do The Test.'

I checked the boys. Yes, they were all in on the trick – Noah had warned them, although they didn't know
exactly
what to expect.

‘It's what is called an Initiation Ritual.'

There was a gasp. I'd seen a programme on the telly once where a man went to live with a tribe in Africa or somewhere, and before he was allowed to join in with the hunters he had to have a wooden spike shoved through his cheeks. I think he might have had another spike stuck somewhere under his trousers, but the camera didn't show that bit. It was horrid, and he nearly cried, even though he was a grown-up. I wasn't intending to do
that
to Jennifer, but I did remember that it was called the Initiation Ritual, which made it sound very important.

Jennifer now began to look slightly afraid, although she couldn't have known about the spikes as the programme was past her bedtime. Jennifer looking afraid was mostly like the normal Jennifer, except more afraid.'

‘Do you still want to go through with this?' I asked, trying to make my voice go all deep and scary.

‘Yes,' said Jennifer, but there was a quiver in her voice.

‘Right. The only way anyone gets to join the Gang is if they show us their bare bum. So
that's
what you've got to do.'

A fair bit of pandemonium broke out then. Noah exploded into a spluttering laugh; Jamie went, ‘
Yeeeuuoughghghghgh
,' and I thought he was actually going to be sick; Phillip lived up to his name with what was probably the biggest moan ever heard in the history of the world up till then, although I suppose someone in India or China or somewhere might have done a
bigger moan that wasn't recorded.

Anyway, all that fuss wasn't quite what I'd wanted, because it might make Jennifer realize that this wasn't our usual Initiation Ritual. In fact up till now our Initiation Ritual had been me saying to people, ‘Do you want to be in my gang?' and that was it.

So I tried to cover it up by doing some more talking.

‘Well, there you have it. The Test. The Initiation Ritual. No bare bum, no in gang. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Rules are rules.'

Jennifer stared at me with the sort of look you'd use if you opened your presents on Christmas morning, and instead of a PSP or a new mountain bike, you found a My Little Pony, complete with a pink grooming comb. I mean, it was a look that blended together shock and horror.

That was all fine, exactly what I'd planned, confirming me as a genius.
It was then that Jennifer should have shouted at us for a while, and then crawled off, never to bother us again. And the first part of that seemed to be working. Jennifer turned round and began to shuffle towards the door. But then she stopped and turned round again to face us.

‘OK then,' she said, a look of grim determination on her face.

There was a sort of wail of dismay from the others.

‘W-what?' I said.

‘If that's what I have to do, then I'll do it.'

And before anyone could stop her, Jennifer Eccles pulled down her frilly pink knickers and showed us her horrible white bottom. It looked like a jellyfish, one of the dead ones you see on the sand at the seaside. And just like with a dead jellyfish, even though you know it can't really hurt you, it was still pretty scary.

If the very mention of Jennifer's bum earlier on had set off a riot, what happened now was ten times worse. At school we did the Blitz, when German bombers completely blew up London, and it was exactly like that in our den. We all dived for cover, trying to hide from the killer-jellyfish bum, but it was like the eyes in that painting that seem to follow you all around the room, and we just couldn't escape from it.

Finally Phillip managed to scream, ‘Get out, get out, and take your disgusting bum-cheeks with you.'

‘No way,' said Jennifer. ‘I'm in the Gang now, and there's nothing you can do about it.'

I had to get this sorted out, and quickly.

‘Look, Jennifer,' I said in my most grown-up voice, ‘I'm sorry, but you can't be in the Gang. The Gang is boys only, and that's the way it has to stay. Please go now. But let's shake hands first, so everything's nice and, um, civilized.'

I stuck my hand out towards her. But then my hand began to tremble like a leaf in the wind. Because, you see, I was looking at Jennifer's face, and it wasn't pretty. I mean, even more unpretty than usual. She'd begun to change colour. First she went white, and then there were red spots on her cheeks, and then the spots joined up and her whole face turned a bluey-purple colour, a bit like when there's about to be a massive
thunderstorm. And suddenly Jennifer began to look larger. She was quite big to begin with – like I said, she was as tall as Phillip, and Phillip was taller than me. But now she seemed to be expanding in all directions. If she'd been a cartoon, then steam would have come out of her ears, but as this was Real Life, it didn't.