Googol Boy and the peculiar incident of the Great Quiz Trophy by John Michael (classic books for 13 year olds txt) 📕

“I am going to pulverise you two loathsome miscreants!” she screamed.

The matron could certainly move fast for her size. Before we knew it, she was upon us and within reach of the gate.

“Let’s get out of here Howie!”

“I’m with you on that one!”

Barney and I sprinted out of there as quickly as we could.

“Come back here you dastardly cowards!” she hollered.

The matron shook the gates with all her strength. They rattled and clattered and sounded like they would come off the hinges.

“You will pay for this! You will pay for your depravity you wicked louts!”

As we ran away, we could hear her desperately fumbling through her set of keys in order to open the gate but her fingers must have been numb from the cold water and we heard the keys drop to the ground.

“I will find you! I shall have my revenge!” the matron howled like some wounded beast.

“You can But you can’t ”

Barney and I ran away as fast as our legs could carry us, all the while the matron’s bellowing screams still ringing in our ears like the screeching of some demented she-devil.

Chapter twelve

pancakes

Iopened my eyes and it took me a moment or two to realise that I was in my own bed and that it was morning. The dappled sunlight was filtering in through the window and every now and then some boisterous squawking from the birds outside interrupted the lazy silence. I was feeling quite comfortable and snug, like a big toasty muffin sitting in a warm oven. I rubbed my eyes, stretched my limbs, and yawned like a hippopotamus* and then accidently made a pffffrrrrrrt sound which sounded like it should have come out of a hippopotamus. My gut reaction was to quickly look around the room to see if anybody had heard me toot, even though it was obvious that no one was around.

I guess this reaction was a normal response as the fart was seen as the ugly cousin of other bodily functions. You cough, you get a lozenger. You sneeze, you get a ‘God bless you.’ You hiccup, you get a glass of water. You burp, you get a giggle. But heaven forbid that you should cut the cheese, or the world comes to an end. Well it certainly does when my sister is within earshot of a raspberry. You see, Deborah has a fear of farts and she has even been diagnosed with flatuphobia, and I’m not even making it up − it’s a thing! A phobia of farts! She goes crazy if she hears or smells a fart. So, at home, when it comes to letting one rip, I’m always treading on eggshells. There were times when I had to hold it in for so long that I felt like I was going to black out. My imprisoned gas would become angry and turn on me, stabbing pains would radiate through my intestines like knitting needles, gurgling sounds brewed within me like percolating coffee, my stomach would get so bloated that I looked ten months pregnant. If someone had stuck a pin in me, I would have exploded and bits of me would have splattered all over the floor, walls and ceiling − and it would have served my family right! Making me suffer like this! Barney was free to fart throughout his entire house and the only proviso was that he had to finish each toot with a customary “excuse me.”

Whenever T-Bone had to go do a doo-doo, we would let him into the garden to do his business. And that’s what my life had become as well. When I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I would rush out into the garden like a gassy bat out of hell and let rip like the trumpet section of the brass ensemble. And let me tell you, if our neighbour, old Mrs Garfunkel, was doing her gardening at the same time, she’d be thinking that the seven trumpets of the apocalypse were signalling the end of days.

If the weather was terrible, I had to find a secluded area of the house and use some cushions to stifle my toots. When it came to farts, school was a dream compared to my nightmare at home. Of course, out in public there were certain rules and procedures which had to be followed as you couldn’t just drop your guts like some brabbensack running through the savanna with the wind in its hair (and out of its butt).

Firstly, the proper etiquette demanded that there be a certain degree of deflection if you were the one doing the butt cheek sneak when in the midst of polite company. This level of stealth and cunning was especially necessary if you were in Miss Fremskey’s class as she could sniff out a fart at forty feet, or even worse, during Mr Perriman’s lesson where he would make you do ten push-ups for each toot – although, he always did get the maths wrong.

Of course, when deflecting blame, you needed to have at least three people in the vicinity, unlike Barney who pointed the finger at me for one hellacious stinker he gave birth to while we were playing checkers in his room. To this day he has never owned up to it. Additionally, if you were going to blame others you needed to make sure that your fart maintained a level of silence − Lazy Lenny once let out a rumbler in Science which sounded like a thunder storm over the Grand Canyon and then attempted the ol’ “Oh, who farted?” line while all eyes were fixated on him.

Of course, there were rare carefree moments when such pretence and deflection went out the window and you could just be your natural self − as close to being that brabbensack running through the savanna as humanly possible. And the closest you could get to that primeval state was the boys’ locker room. And it was in