The Bare Bum Gang and the Football Face-Off (3 page)

‘I think she's gonna blow,' said Noah.

I tried to push some of our sticks and string out of her way towards the back of the den with my foot.

And then I saw a glistening in her eyes. Oh no, this was the worst thing that could happen – she was going to cry. I'd almost have preferred it if she had smashed up our best bits of bamboo, or even the whole den, than this. I didn't like making people cry, especially girls. If I liked making girls cry, I'd have spent more time hitting them, or calling them Fatty and Five-Belly-Nelly, or the other things they don't like. I knew I'd played a rotten trick on Jennifer, and when
you do something rotten, you feel rotten.

‘It's OK,' I said, ‘there's no need to cry. I'm sure there are lots of other gangs you could join. They're probably just as good as our gang.' I didn't mean that bit, but everyone knows it's OK to tell lies when you're trying to stop girls from crying. ‘Some of them probably allow girls in already. They'd probably let you make their sandwiches. Maybe a bit of dusting around their dens. Too much dust can give you asthma . . .'

Then I sort of trailed off, because something even weirder was happening to Jennifer. Weirder, I mean, than the changing-colour thing she was doing. She was beginning to shake. At first I thought this was part of the crying, which meant it was going to be a massive sobbing fit, and I felt like a really bad person for causing so much misery.

But then I realized that she wasn't crying at all.

She was laughing.

To begin with she laughed so hard she couldn't speak, but then she calmed down a bit, so she could get it out.

‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! To be in your gang you have to show your bare bum! You're the Bare Bum Gang,
that's
who you are. The Bare Bum Gang. And nobody knows. Well, they'll all know now, because I'm going to tell them!
Bare Bum Gang, Bare Bum Gang, Bare Bum Gang
.'

And with that she turned herself round yet again, and crawled out through the door.

But that wasn't quite the end of it. Before we'd even had time to take it all in, we heard a muffled banging sound, and then the extension part of the den fell in, and we saw Jennifer outside, still laughing, but not so hard that it had stopped her from kicking the living daylights out of our HQ.

‘That was rubbish,' said The Moan. ‘I can't believe we let you be Gang Leader. If it was up to me you'd be Gang Toilet Cleaner. In fact I wouldn't even let you do that because you'd be rubbish at it.'

Luckily my best friend, Noah, came to the rescue.

‘That's not true. He'd be a really good Gang Toilet Cleaner, if we had a toilet. It's not Ludo's fault that Jennifer wanted to be in the Gang. It's your fault for having such an annoying sister.'

‘That's not fair!' The Moan replied. ‘It's not like you get to choose. No one ever said to me, “What would you like, a really cool older brother, who can teach you how to make a brilliant bow and arrow and lend you his pen knife, or a stupid sister, who'll ruin your gang and kick your den in?”'

‘OK, everyone calm down,' I said. I knew it was now that we needed a true leader, and it had to be me. It was my great chance to shine. ‘Let's take a good look at the problem.'

‘We all know what the problem is,' said Jamie. ‘The problem is that when we go to school on Monday, every single kid is going to know that we are in a gang called the Bare Bum Gang, and that you have to show your bare bum to be in it. They're all going to laugh so much they'll puke up their Turkey Twizzlers.'

‘We don't have those any more,' said Noah.

‘Well, their vegetable pasta bake then.'

‘But that's only if Jennifer tells them,' I said.

‘And how are we going to stop her?' Noah asked reasonably.

‘Yeah,' said The Moan, ‘she's already told us she's going to blab. And I don't blame her. Why did you have to say all that bare bum stuff?'

‘I just thought she'd say no, and that would be it. But that's all in the past now. I have an idea.'

‘Oh no,' said The Moan. ‘Any more of your ideas and the Gang will be finished.'

I ignored him. ‘I think there's a way we can stop her from talking.'

‘How?' asked Noah.

‘We let her into the Gang.'

‘Are you mad?' said Jamie. ‘She'll never join us, not now we're the Bare Bum Gang. Who would? Only some loony who liked showing his bare bum.'

‘Or
her
bare bum,' added Noah.

‘Don't call us the Bare Bum Gang!' I said
sharply. I really didn't want the name to take hold, even in our heads. ‘I think she'll jump at the chance. It's what she's always wanted.'

‘No way!' said Phillip, shaking his head. ‘If she's in, I'm out. It's bad enough having to see her at home. And anyway, what would she be? It was hard enough thinking up a decent job for me to do.'

‘I thought, perhaps, she could become Gang Doctor,' I said quietly.

There was a stunned silence. I sneaked a quick glance at Noah. He looked like he'd been stabbed in the back, which was true, sort of. But being a Great Leader means you have to make tough decisions.

‘B-b-but
I'm
Gang Doctor,' he said, and I thought he might blub, which would have been embarrassing for all of us.

‘Look,' I said, in a kind sort of way, ‘there are lots of lady doctors, but there aren't any lady admirals or generals. We'll think of a new job for you.'

‘I like being Doctor,' said Noah, getting angry. No one had ever heard him shout before. ‘And you can't have a girl as Gang Doctor. Everyone knows that girls can't wee in a straight line. They wee all over the place. Jennifer would be useless at fixing grass cuts. We'd all die of gangrene before she managed to wee on the right spot.'

‘What's gangrene?' asked Jamie.

‘It's when you get a grass cut, or even some other kind of cut, and first your finger turns green, and then your hand, and then your whole arm. Then, if they don't amputate your arm, which means chopping it off, the rest of you turns green and you die in terrible pain.'

There was a hushed silence as the awful reality of having a girl Gang Doctor sank in. This wasn't going well.

‘But she could carry the dock leaves OK, that's not so hard,' I said. I was clutching at straws, or rather dock leaves.

‘That's only half the job,' said Noah,
growing in confidence. ‘And you have to know where to find them, and even if you do find some, they quite often grow right next to nettles, so you have to be brave to pick them. If you ask me, it would make more sense to have Jennifer as Gang Leader than Gang Doctor.'

The Moan moaned, and Jamie said: ‘Now you've gone too far. We don't want her in at any price and that's that.'

So that was the decision. We'd just wait to see what happened on Monday. We weren't little kids any more. We'd tough it out, we'd see it through.

‘So, you've got a stomach ache
and
a headache?'

I nodded.

‘And you feel sick?'

‘Mmmmm.'

‘And you think you've got a temperature?'

This time I was too ill to do anything except close my eyes, the way you would probably do if you were about to die from malaria or the plague, or when gangrene spreads to your whole body.

‘And your arm hurts?'

‘And my leg too.'

‘Which one?'

‘Both of them.'

I opened my eyes again and saw that Mum was smiling, which was bad news.

‘Up you get.'

I got to school late and so did Noah, Jamie and The Moan. They'd all tried pretending they had terrible diseases too. The Moan still had some faint red marks where he'd used his mum's lipstick to draw measles on his face. Jennifer wasn't with him. She must have come to school early.

We met up just outside the school gates.

‘Maybe it'll be OK,' I said hopefully.

‘We're all doomed,' said Jamie.

I looked at The Moan, who should have known best, as he had to live with Jennifer. He didn't say anything. Just shook his head sadly. That was enough to tell us what would be waiting for us later on.

The morning turned out to be fine.
No one mentioned anything about bare bums, although I did think some of the girls looked at us in a funny way. The worst moment came when Miss Bridges asked me a question and I made a silly reply and then she told me off for being cheeky. Delilah Jones giggled behind her hand, and I thought it might be because, you know, bums have cheeks. But then Delilah just went back to her work, so I thought I was probably imagining it. It looked like the full story hadn't got out yet.

But then came morning break. As soon as we left our classroom and walked into the playground, we knew our lives were going to get much worse. The whole of Jennifer's Year Four class were lined up in a row. Their faces were shining with a nasty sort of joy. As soon as we appeared, they all pointed at us, their fingers jabbing like daggers, and they started singing a stupid song. It went like this:

The words weren't very clever, and the tune was rubbish, just a sort of a droning noise, but that didn't matter to the crowd that gathered. Jennifer was in charge, and she danced around in front of the others, conducting the choir and sometimes leaning forward with a nasty expression to sing the words extra loud.

As if things weren't bad enough, that's when Dockery arrived. Dockery is massive. His neck is thicker than my waist and when he makes a fist, his hand is as big as a cannonball. He looks about three years older than anyone else in the school. One funny thing about him is that although he has a gigantic head, his face – I mean, his eyes, nose and mouth – are all tiny and squished up together in the middle of it.