Jim Smith - Barry Loser and the Holiday of Doom

‘Huh?’ said Bunky, gazing through the window at a pair of sunglasses the same shape as Nancy’s specs.

I looked at my half-dog, half-bestfriend and imagined him bounding through a field of fake plastic sunflowers, his dog lead being held by Nancy Verkenwerken instead of me. All of a sudden I felt a bit queasy.

‘I’M GOING TO BE SICK,’ I shouted, even though the plane had completely flown off.

When I got home my mum and dad were standing in the kitchen, smiling like it was Christmas morning.

‘What is it?’ I said, hoping they’d finally bought me a puppy. I’d been asking for a real-life pet dog for nine trillion years now, and I STILL didn’t have one.

‘Barry, you know how we’re going on our caravan holiday to Plonkton this weekend?’ said my mum.

She had a tea towel on her shoulder, and my dad was standing right behind her, leaning his head on it like a cabbage.

‘Ye-ah?’ I said, splitting my yeah into two bits because of how keel Plonkton is.

‘Well your mum and me were thinking maybe you’d like to invite a couple of your little pals along?’ said my dad’s cabbage head.

The words swam down my earholes and into my legs, making them go wobbly.

I leaned against the washing machine, which had been busy washing our best clothes for Plonkton all week.

‘What, like Bunky and Nancy?’ I said all shakily, probably because the washing machine was wobbling around like some kind of giant metal jelly cube.

‘Yes, like Bunky and Nancy!’ chuckled my mum, and I gave her a cuddle, imagining how disgusting it’d be if she was Sharonella from my class.

I picked up the phone to tell Bunky and Nancy, then changed my mind, deciding it’d be keeler to see their excited little dog and cat faces face-to-face. After that I played nineteen games of Future Ratboyon my Feeko’s Gamoid to celebrate.

Then I brushed my teeth with my Future Ratboytoothbrush, got into my Future Ratboypyjamas and snuggled up underneath my Future Ratboyduvet to go to sleep.

‘Wait till Bunky and Nancy hear!’ I whispered to my cuddly Future Ratboy, and I squeezed his fat little belly and waited for him to speak.

‘WHAT IN THE NAME OF UNKEELNESS?!’ he screeched, and I remembered me saying the exact same words to Bunky outside Feeko’s that afternoon.

‘What if Bunky DOES fancy Nancy?’ I yawned, and I squeezed his belly again.

‘PUKESVILLE-O-RAMA!’ he screeched, as I nodded off to sleepypoos.

It was the next morning and I was sitting on my own in our classroom at school. I usually meet Bunky at the end of my road and skateboard to school with him, but for some reason today I’d com-per-lee-ter-ly missed him.

‘Morning, Barold!’ said Darren Darrenofski, wobbling through the door slurping on a can of Fronkle. He took his jacket off and hung it on my nose.

‘Be a loser and look after that,’ he burped, just as I spotted a sticker of a kangaroo doing a thumbs up stuck on to his jumper.

Our teacher, Miss Spivak, had started giving out scratch-and-sniff stickers to people for being well behaved, and even though I’d been a good little Barry for about nine trillion days in a row, I still didn’t have one.

‘How in the name of loserness did you get that?’ I said, because Darren’s the baddest-behaved person in the whole class.

‘I peeled it off Gordon Smugly’s jumper when he wasn’t looking!’ grinned Darren, giving the sticker a scratch, and I breathed in through my nostrils to see if it really did smell of kangaroo, not that I could smell anything apart from the inside of Darren’s jacket, which actually did stink a bit like a kangaroo I’d smelled at Mogden Zoo once.

‘That’s not fair!’ I said, standing up and waggling my nose, and Darren’s jacket flew off my nose into Miss Spivak’s bin.

‘Ooh, what a luvverly strong nose you have, Bazza!’ said an annoying voice, and I spotted Sharonella sitting down at the table next to me, stinking of perfume.

All of a non-sudden Miss Spivak walked into the classroom with Honk the class parrot on her shoulder. ‘I saw that,’ she squawked. ‘I’m watching you, Loser.’

‘But . . .’ I said, starting to explain how it was all Darren’s fault for hanging his kangaroo jacket on my nose, but Miss Spivak wasn’t listening.

‘I’ll never get a scratch-and-sniff sticker now!’ I whisper-shouted to Darren, and Sharonella reached over and scratched my earlobe.

‘You smell nice enough already, Bazza!’ she smiled, sniffing her finger, and I was just about to tell her how much she stank, when Bunky and Nancy walked through the door.