Splinterz. Susan Berran

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      I should have known better. It was all a ploy so I wouldn’t complain. Well, not as much anyway. But just as I expected, things changed.

      It wasn’t that bad, until one day when Dad went out to the shed behind the house and never came back. He just disappeared off the face of the planet. He’d told me about loud scratching noises, things being moved about and other weird stuff in the shed. But I never saw or heard anything. I just reckoned it was Dad being weird as usual.

      It’s been a year and a bit since then. Mum reckons he’ll be back any day now. I’m not so sure. It’s just a pity it wasn’t little Miss Smelly Melly Prissy Pants who disappeared!

      Anyway, I figured that it was about time I could have that pet we’d always talked about. I figured she would have to give in now Dad had mysteriously disappeared off the radar. So, I bugged Mum like crazy . . .

      “Can I have a rat?”

      “NO!!”

      “A snake?”

      “NO!!”

      “Scorpions, lizards, anything at all?”

      “NO, NO, NO!!”

      Yeah, great, thanks a lot Mum . . . for nothing!

      But oh yeah, sure, my snotty nose little sister, Miss ‘I’m sooo good’ Smelly Melly Prissy Pants gets to have her very own puppy that slobbers all over anyone who comes within reach of its extremely long tongue. It looks like a white ball of fluff having a permanent hair explosion.

      Of course long hairy dog means long hairy butt. It’s not my dog so why should I have to clean and wipe its backside every time it comes in? Sometimes I even have to comb out the poop because there’s so much of it.

      One time I used Mum’s leg razor to shave the dog’s butt totally. You should have seen her from behind. She looked like a dartboard . . . round, bald, with a big red bullseye in the middle. Mum went ballistic and Yelly Melly sooked until it grew back.

      Actually, I don’t know what the hassle was. It’s not as if I vacuumed the damn dog . . . oooh . . . there’s an idea.

      Well, I’m getting a pet. I figure that what Mum doesn’t know, can’t hurt me. I just have to make sure that little pest doesn’t find out and dob on me. But if she can have a pet of her very own, then why can’t I? I guess I’ll just have to make sure it’s kept secret between Jared and me.

      But I can tell you one thing for sure. It won’t be anything pink, ‘cutesy’ or need butt-cleaning duty.

      

      My best mate Jared had told me all about the tunnels that he’d explored in Agnath. At first I thought he was just trying to suck me in. But then one day, he showed me something that made me instantly believe him.

      Jared’s taller and skinnier than me, with red curly hair and about a zillion freckles on his face. We’d been friends for a couple of months, since his family had moved here from the city. So, he was pretty much like me. Dragged out here to the middle of nowhere by his mum. At least no one in his family had vanished into thin air, yet! There’s only his mum and five brothers but they all look the same as him. Mum reckoned that it looked like a carrot patch had moved in. You should see Jared with his shirt off. He’s so skinny that he looks like a ladder with the measles, wearing a clown wig on top. I swear you could actually climb him.

      Mum reckons he’s . . .

      “A bad influence,” and that she’d prefer I found a friend who didn’t seem to be always getting into trouble. Yeah, yeah, and if I wanted to make something of myself, blah, blah, blah, take responsibility for my own actions, something, something.

      Yep, sure Mum.

      Just because one time Jared and me shot a frog each with the school fire extinguisher. Jared got the one that was sitting on the classroom roof; he fired from directly below. BULLSEYE! You should have seen its eyes POP. The first frog sent into outer space by jet-propelled buttocks.

      Mine was the best though, it was sitting on the bonnet of the principal’s car. Man, what a shot, right in the mouth. You should have seen how far that frog flew with a gob full of foam. It had to be at least sixty metres . . . it was awesome.

      That frog flew off the car bonnet at warp speed ten, skidded along the path on its backside, leaving a green snail trail for ages, until it bounced upward and smacked into the classroom window like a soggy snotty tissue . . . splat!!

      Me and Jared reckon the principal thought it was awesome too, he just couldn’t admit to it, but we could tell.

      Oh yeah, another time we found a half-eaten old fish and hid it in the girls’ toilets at school. There were blowflies, mozzies and ants everywhere. It took two weeks for the stink to go and geez, did the girls sook, especially Crabby Abbey who found it.

      “Oooh, I’ll never be able to use those toilets again, or eat fish and chips.”

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