Free The Bare Bum Gang and the Football Face-Off by Anthony McGowan Page B

didn’t arrive for a few minutes as it had to sit and stew in my brain for a while before it was ready.
    There was an embarrassing silence for about three minutes, although I didn’t have a watch so it might have been four minutesor maybe just two. Then I said:
    â€˜Let’s go and sit in the den until the others get here.’
    Jennifer looked a lot happier when I said that. She’d never been allowed in the den before. I realized straight away that I’d made a big mistake. I should have done the test outside. I imagined how hard it would be to get her out of the den again once she was in. If she created a rumpus, she might do quite a lot of damage. We had valuable things inside, like some bendy bamboo, some other less bendy sticks, a cricket bat, two cricket stumps, a bicycle inner tube, some string and some more string less tangled up than the first lot of string. And we had some matches.
    Even if she didn’t mess up our sticks or our string, Jennifer might kick a hole in the wall – the wall at the front, I mean. The other walls were made out of the hill, so it would be hard to destroy those without a bulldozer.
    â€˜It smells in here,’ she said, which really annoyed me.
    â€˜What of?’ I was a bit worried that our enemies might have found this den too, and done some wees in it.
    â€˜Earth. I like it.’
    I groaned. That was the last thing I wanted to hear. If only she had said, ‘It smells of wee in here, and I’m never coming in again,’ then all our troubles would have ended.
    There was another embarrassing pause and then I heard the rest of the Gang arrive, and Phillip pushed his head through the door and gave a loud groan when he saw his sister.
    â€˜Why don’t you just get lost?’ he said.
    He was always the rudest one to Jennifer, because she was his sister. I sometimes thought he went a bit too far. But he was also slightly afraid of her because she was the same height as him, even though she was a year younger.
    Jennifer stuck out her arm with her palm two centimetres away from Phillip’s face.
    â€˜Say it to the hand,’ she said.
    Noah, who had come in behind Phillip, said, ‘That’s a sign of yob culture. If that’s how you’re going to behave, you might as well go and join the old estate gang.’
    Jennifer hung her head and said, ‘I don’t want to join them. I only want to be in your gang.’
    I felt a bit sad then. But I’d already had my idea, which was now nicely cooked and ready to be served. Once Jamie was in the den – and, yes, it was a bit of a tight squeeze, if that’s what you’re thinking – I began.
    â€˜As you all know, Jennifer wants to be in our gang.’ The Moan moaned and Jamie groaned, and even nice Noah made a little tut. ‘Well, as you also know, before anyone gets to be in our gang, they have to do The Test.’
    I checked the boys. Yes, they were all in on the trick – Noah had warned them, although they didn’t know
exactly
what to expect.
    â€˜It’s what is called an Initiation Ritual.’

Chapter Three
THE TEST
    There was a gasp. I’d seen a programme on the telly once where a man went to live with a tribe in Africa or somewhere, and before he was allowed to join in with the hunters he had to have a wooden spike shoved through his cheeks. I think he might have had another spike stuck somewhere under his trousers, but the camera didn’t show that bit. It was horrid, and he nearly cried, even though he was a grown-up. I wasn’t intending to do
that
to Jennifer, but I did remember that it was called the Initiation Ritual, which made it sound very important.
    Jennifer now began to look slightly afraid, although she couldn’t have known about the spikes as the programme was past her bedtime. Jennifer looking afraid was mostly like the normal Jennifer, except more afraid.’
    â€˜Do you still want to go through with