Jim Smith - I am sort of a Loser

‘Yeah, Superloser, you’ve got to come up with one of your brilliant and amazekeel ideas!’ said another mini Barry, and I nodded my head, imagining the mini Barrys falling off their brain sofa because of all the nodding I was doing.

‘Listening to your mini Barrys, are you?’ said Nancy Verkenwerken’s voice all of a sudden.

I was just about to tell her to get out of my head, when I realised she’d pulled Darren and Bunky’s fingers out of my earholes and was speaking into my actual ear with her real-life mouth.

‘Looks like you’ve got some competition, doesn’t it?’ she smiled, pointing over at Fay, who was blowing her nose again, this time like a warthog.

That’s the annoying thing about Nancy, she can always tell what I’m thinking.

‘Oh yeah, like I’m really bothered!’ I said, leaning back in my chair just enough to fall over. ‘ARRRGGGHHH!’ I screamed, waggling my arms around like the loserkeelest superloser ever.

But nobody noticed, because they were all too busy laughing at Fay.

Verbunkenloser Ltd is me, Bunky and Nancy’s new company. It only sells one thing at the moment, but in the future it’s gonna be bigger than Feeko’s Supermarkets.

‘Roll up, roll up, get your Verbunkenloser Whatever Boxes here! Only a few left!’ shouted Nancy from behind the table-tennis table in the playground, which is where we set up our pyramid of Whatever Boxes every lunchtime.

When I first came up with the idea of selling old cereal boxes filled with whatever rubbish we had lying around, I wasn’t sure anyone would buy them. But it’s turned out to be a big hit, mainly thank *to Nancy.

* only one thank, though

‘Ooh, me! Me!’ squeaked Jocelyn Twiggs, handing Nancy the dirtiest, bent-in- halfest coin ever and taking a box off the top of the pyramid.

It was a Feeko’s cereal packet painted light blue, with the word ‘Whatever’ scribbled on it in black felt-tip pen.

He ripped the lid off, stuck his hand inside and pulled out a worm. ‘A real- life worm! Just what I’ve always wanted!’ he grinned.

‘And it doubles up nicely as a bracelet,’ said Nancy, curling it round Jocelyn’s wrist.

Jocelyn did a face like he didn’t know what was more funny, having a worm curled round your wrist or wearing a bracelet. Then he shrugged and bounced off, and I wondered if the worm was thinking it was all a bit funny too.

Gordon Smugly glided over and picked up a box, and the pyramid swayed.

‘Hmmm . . . good weight, interesting rattle . . . I’ll take it,’ he said, putting a coin into my hand, and I popped it into the plastic Feeko’s ice cream tub, which is where we keep all our money.

‘Is that the one?’ whispered Bunky, and I snortle-nodded, even though I wasn’t really in a snortle-nodding sort of mood what with Fay COM-PER-LEET-ER-LY copying my loserkeelness and everything.

Gordon slid his finger along the top of the box and opened the flap. ‘Raisins!’ he smiled, grabbing a handful of tiny, brownish, dried-up, bobbly balls and opening his disgusting mouth.

‘Yeah, my NOSTRIL raisins!’ Bunky laughed.

‘EUUURRGGGHHHYYUCK!’ screamed Gordon, throwing the bogies into the air, and they swirled off in the wind like tiny planets. ‘Ha ha, nice one Bunky,’ he said, not wanting to look stupid, and he walked away with his box of bogie raisins still rattling.

Nancy turned round and gave us one of her looks. ‘If we’re going to make a success of Verbunkenloser Ltd, we cannot afford to annoy our customers,’ she said, tidying up the pyramid.

Another poster saying ‘YOU COULD BE CLASS CAPTAIN!’ blew in front of my eyes like a magician’s cape. Sharonella and Fay appeared from behind it and I did a little blowoff out of shock and annoyedness.

‘WHA-EH-VA,’ said Sharonella, reading the box she’d picked up. ‘What’s inside? Not that I’m bothered . . .’

‘You never know with a Verbunkenloser Whatever Box!’ smiled Nancy like she was on TV. ‘But every one’s a winner!’

‘Ooh, random! Go on Fay, you can’t lose!’ said Sharonella, nudging Fay forwards, and I looked at the pyramid of Whatever Boxes swaying in the wind and came up with one of my brilliant and amazekeel ideas right there and then on the spot.

Fay pulled her pen out and plopped the lid off. ‘ONE PLEASE,’ she wrote, sliding a coin towards Bunky and picking up a box. She opened the lid and peered inside.

‘Ru-ub-bish!’ moaned Sharonella, as Fay’s hand pulled out a smelly old hair clip with a faded plastic goldfish perched on it that I’d found down a drain.

I stepped forwards and got ready to play it loserkeel.