Free So Sick! by J A Mawter

about 39 weeks a year, give or take a few days for public holidays and pupil-free days. So, that’s 39 lots of 5 days. Times that by 6 years, plus 5 days — ‘cause it’s Monday of Week 2 in Grade 6 — gives 1175.
    I start to walk home, thinking that Friday is going to be a major burner. I pass Madeline and Francesca and Angus going into the library. Bet they’re going to read their dictionaries.
    ‘Hey, Jake,’ calls Angus. ‘Wonder who’s going to be the first kid in the spelling bee to get out?’
    I pull my escaped loony face. ‘Don’t know,’ I answer. ‘Don’t care.’
    But I do care. On Friday the what’s-between-Jake’s-ears? jokes will be flying. Just as I get to the front gate I see Ivy Tan. I begin to feel better. Ivy Tan is the only person I know who spells worse than I do. When spelling brains were handed out she wasn’t at the back of the line, shewas missing from it altogether. Ivy’s sitting at the bus stop pretending to read. I say pretending because although she’s sitting there with this great fat book on her lap, she rarely turns a page, and when she does, she turns them in chunks!
    No one teases Ivy. In fact, no one speaks to Ivy much. I think that’s worse than being given a rollicking. It’s as though she doesn’t exist.
    Kieran’s waiting for me out the front.
    ‘What’s the long face for?’ he asks. ‘You look like you’ve scored a detention.’
    I shake my head and say, ‘Nah. It’s nothing like that.’ I let out this long sigh, big enough to blow out a hundred candles.

    ‘Tell us,’ says Kieran, giving me a nudge — a nudge so gentle I almost ram into Mr Epeler who’s on bus-line duty.
    It’s not Mr Epeler’s angry face that helps me to find my feet and back off, it’s the arm he puts out to catch me. Steady … Enough with the arm … That armpit’s ripe for nuclear fusion.
    ‘Watch where you’re going!’ exclaims Mr Epeler.
    ‘Sorry, Mr Epeler,’ I mutter. With the spelling bee looming the last thing I need is to get on his bad side.

Chapter Two
    Getting on Mr Epeler’s bad side is exactly what I do the next morning when I collide into him coming out of the classroom as I am going in. But, it’s a different sort of bad side. I manage to find myself wedged under his pecs. Far too close to the dreaded armpits. The smell’s so bad I can taste it. ‘‘Sguse be,’ I manage to say as I wrench myself free and stagger to my seat.
    ‘Don’t forget that Epeler loves classroom etiquette?’ whispers Kieran. ‘Pull that stunt again and you’ll be dead meat.’

    Dead meat. That’s it! That’s exactly what his armpits remind meof. Dead meat and Tinkerbell. Tink was my mouse. She’s dead now. We found her wedged under the toaster ten days after she went missing. I tell you, toasters aren’t good for mice. For days we teased Mum that her cooking was so bad she could even kill toast.
    My mind wanders. I am thinking mouse. A tiny little mouse that would like to build its nest in Mr Epeler’s warm underarm hair. It could snuggle down, all cosy like, in its burrow. It could eat the bacteria that bred there and drink the moisture. Did I say moisture? I mean sweat. Uggh!
    Which reminds me … Have you ever drank sweat? I have. Once. Not intentionally. It was last year in Mrs Weston’s class. She wouldn’t let me get a drink, even though it was hot enough to make your teeth blister. Anyway, Adam says he wants to go to the can and Mrs Weston says, ‘Yes’. So Adam leaves but winks when he comes back. As he goes past my desk he drops this wet hanky in my lap. Straight away I pounce. You see, wet means water. I squeeze the hanky into the palm of my hand and take a big slurp.
    Instant projectile.
    Salt and BO. The moron must’ve wiped himself with the hanky! I have never drunk water again, unless it’s out of a bottle.
    I think of Mr Epeler whose armpits remind me of a mouse. But what if it died like Tinkerbell? I have visions of this poor little mouse,