Barry Loser and the trouble with pets. Jim Smith

hand

       out to Nancy.

      I peered down at Nancy’s tapping foot, then up to her smiling face.

      ‘Oh why the keelness not!’ she said, grabbing Anton’s hand and swooshing on to the dance floor.

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      ‘Nancy!’ I cried, not that there was time for that - Fay was too busy zig-zagging up to my other best friend.

      ‘Bunky!’ I shouted. ‘Watch out, Snoggles is coming to get you!’

      But Bunky just ignored me and started dancing with her.

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      You know how in TV shows they just cut to a few days later?

      That’s what happened next - suddenly it was Monday morning and I was walking into my classroom at school.

      ‘Oh my days, how brillz was that disco, Fay?’ squawked Sharonella’s voice, and I looked over to where her and Fay Snoggles usually sit next to each other.

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      The only thing was, Fay wasn’t sitting next to Sharonella at this exact millisecond in the history of the universe - she was sitting next to . . .

      BUNKY!

      ‘Erm, there seems to have been some kind of terrible mix up here,’ I said, walking over to my seat, which if you haven’t worked it out yet is where Fay had plonked her bum.

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      ‘Hi Barry,’ grinned Fay. ‘Nigel said

       I could sit next to him today.’

      Nigel Zuckerberg is Bunky’s real-life name, in case you didn’t know.

      I looked at Bunky and he smiled up at me, the way a naughty doggy does

       to its owner.

      ‘Hmm, yes, well,’ I said all carefully,

       trying not to get too annoyed. After

       all, it was just a silly old chair. ‘If you

       don’t mind, could you pop back over

       to your own seat please?’

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      ‘This area’s reserved for the Shazzonofskis,’ snapped Sharonella, plomping her handbag down in the chair next to her. ‘That’s me and Darren’s names squidged together,’ she said, fluttering her eyelashes at me. ‘Me and you coulda been the Losernellas if you’d played your cards right, Baz.’

      I breathed in through my nostrils all slowly, the way my mum does when I’m badgering her about buying me a sausage dog. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ll sit next to Nancy.’

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      ‘SEAT. TAKEN.’ bleeped a familikeels voice, and I spotted Anton Mildew perched next to my other best friend.

      ‘So wait a millisecond,’ I said, trying to work out where I was going to

      sit. Then I realised it was where Anton usually sits, which is right at the front of the classroom, next to his invisible friend, Invis.

      ‘Oh well that’s just blooming brilliant,’ I mumbled, plonking my bum down and getting ready for the worst week ever.

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      The whole rest of the week was just like Monday morning, except dotted around in different bits of school.

      Like lunch on Tuesday in the canteen when Bunky & Fay and Nancy & Anton and the Shazzonofskis all

      sat together on a six man table (even though none of them are men).

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      ‘Come dine with us, Barold,’ said

      Gordon, who was sitting next to

      Stuart. So I squidged in with them,

      feeling like even more of a loser than

      my surname.

      And in the boys’ changing rooms on Wednesday when we were getting ready for P.E. and Bunky, Darren and Anton spent the whole time shouting over the wall to Nancy, Sharonella and Fay.

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      ‘Can you keep the noise down please,’ I grumbled, sounding like an old granny. ‘I’m trying to get changed.’

      ‘Keep your pants on, Loser!’ snarfled Darren, blowing Sharonella a kiss which rebounded off the wall and fell into one of his stinking shoes.

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      Then on Thursday at break time when I headed over to the corner of the playground to peer through the fence into the back garden of the old lady me and Bunky spy on while she talks to her plants.

      ‘What in the name of unkeelness is SHE doing here?’ I gasped, spotting Fay Snoggles’s bum next to my best friend’s. Both of them were bent in half, looking through the fence and sniggling.

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      Fay turned round and grinned her annoying grin. ‘Hi Barry,’ she said. ‘Afraid there’s only room for two.’

      ‘Yeah I know,’ I said, walking off. ‘Me and Bunky.’

      And don’t even get me started about Friday, when we were walking home from school and I pointed out a ginormous dog poo on the pavement right in front of Bunky’s foot.

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      ‘Hey Bunky, why don’t you tread in that great big stinking old pile of dog poo!’ I giggled.

      Me and Bunky are always telling each

      other to tread in dog poos like that on our walks home - it’s part of what makes us so hilarikeel.

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      Bunky zig-zagged round the poo and was just about to do a sniggle about what I’d said when Fay walk-leaned against him. ‘Yuck, I hate treading in dog poos,’ she said. ‘They stink.’

      Bunky nodded all seriously. ‘Yeah, they are pretty disgusting,’ he agreed, and because of the way

       I was staring at him in disbelief while gasping at the same time, I almost trod in the dog poo myself.

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      ‘Oh yeah, because I was really being

      serious about Bunky treading in it,’

      I said, hearing a squelching noise

      behind me. I twizzled round and

      spotted Anton’s foot, squidged right

      in the middle of the poo I was just

      talking about.

      ‘Well that’s blinking brilliant isn’t it,’

      said Anton in his non-robot voice.

      He hobbled over to the kerb and

      scraped his shoe against it. ‘Just

      my flipping luck.’

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      Nancy chuckled, the way she used to when I trod in dog poos back in the good old days. ‘You’re funny, Mr Mildew,’ she smiled, which is what she’d started calling him.

      ‘Thank you, Mrs V,’ he said. ‘But that’s not going to stop my blooming trainer from smelling of poo, is it.’

      We carried on walking and I noticed a gooseberry bush sticking its branches through a fence, trying

       to grab passers-by.

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      I picked one of its prickly green fruits. ‘A gooseberry for a gooseBarry,’ I mumbled to myself, because ‘gooseberries’ are what people call other people who haven’t been paired up with someone else.

      A lamp post was standing next to me and I spotted a sign stuck to it, telling people not to