Free 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous Book 1 20th Anniversary Edition by Graeme Aitken Page A

All over his forehead, he had what Arch Sampson described as ‘a crop of pimples’, with additional plantations threatening to sprout down the planes of his face. It was also rumoured that his penis was as big and as hairy as anything our fathers possessed. Arch claimed to have seen it after rugby practice the previous week. He’d offered Roy a look at his
Penthouse
if he’d show him, but Roy had told him to go away and that he had nothing special to display.
    I had a particular aversion to being paired with Roy. I didn’t want to get too close to his pimples. They looked contagious. Unfortunately, I had to do as I was told.
    The licorice game was always over in a flash. Each couple had to stand facing one another with a licorice strap connecting their mouths. When Aunt Evelyn shouted ‘go’, the idea was to chomp through as much licorice strap as possible until you couldn’t go any further, unless you were game to stick your tongue into your opponent’s mouth to retrieve what they’d already claimed.
    Roy Schluter and I faced one another. I was something of a champion at the licorice game but on this occasion when Aunt Evelyn shouted ‘go’, I nibbled forward tentatively. I’d only claimed about an inch when Roy’s face seemed to loom horribly close. I bit through the licorice, surrendering the game. I loved licorice but those things on Roy’s face were enough to make you lose your appetite. I waited for Roy to suck the strap up into his mouth triumphantly. He didn’t. He just stood there with it dangling, like he didn’t understand what to do next. He looked up at me quizzically. ‘You won,’ I said, wishing he’d just eat it and stop staring at me.
    But he didn’t eat it. Instead, he tore the licorice strap in two and held out half to me, his eyes wide, watching me, waiting. The way Roy stared made me uneasy. I snatched the licorice and stuffed it in my mouth all at once. As I chewed, a slow satisfied smile spread across Roy’s face. There was something about that smile that made me stop chewing for a moment. It seemed to intimate something. I had the sinking feeling that he thought we were friends now.
    There was no way I wanted to be friends with Roy. He was already the most mocked kid at school. To even be associated with him would mean inviting ridicule upon oneself. Luckily for me, no one noticed Roy’s overture of friendship. Everyone was watching Lou and Susan. The game was over but Lou and Susan’s mouths were still locked together furiously. ‘Susan and Lou are kissing,’ squealed someone.
    ‘No, they’re not,’ said Aunt Evelyn coldly. ‘They’re merely being overly competitive.’
    Aunt Evelyn quickly announced that it was time for the treasure hunt. Lou abruptly broke away from Susan. She’d spied on her mother as she’d laid out the clues. Aunt Evelyn gave Lou a handkerchief. She had licorice all over her chin. The treasure hunt wasn’t a success. Lou and Susan Scott disappeared at the start of the hunt and weren’t seen again until fifteen clues later, sitting where the treasure was supposed to be, but wasn’t.
    Aunt Evelyn banned Lou and Susan from the next game. The chocolate game. This was a particular favourite of mine as it involved my two favourite things. Dressing up and eating. The object of the game was to roll a six on the dice, once that was achieved you earned the right to throw on some silly dress-up clothes and then eat as much chocolate with a knife and fork as possible, before someone else threw a six on the dice and foisted you out of the clothes and away from the chocolate.
    Luck was on my side. I threw five sixes, though only actually got the knife and the fork to the chocolate three times. Resplendent in Uncle Arthur’s gumboots, an old church hat of Aunt Evelyn’s and a pair of Lou’s witches britches, I lopped off a whole row of chocolate, speared it with the fork and got it into my mouth, two seconds before Gina Turner threw a six. It was