Game On boys
Written and Illustrated by Kate Cullen
Copyright 2014 Kate Cullen
Smash words edition licence notes
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OTHER BOOKS BY KATE CULLEN
Available as eBooks or print books
Game on Boys can be read separately or part of a series
Free ebook Game on Boys 1:The PlayStation Playoffs(8-12)
Game on Boys 2 : Minecraft Madness (8-12)
Game on Boys 3 : NO Girls Allowed
Game on Boys 4 : Minecraft Superhero
Diary Of a Wickedly Cool Witch : Bullies and Baddies (10-13)
Lucy goes to the Halloween Party (Early readers)
Lucy the Easter Dog (Early readers)
And if you want to be notified when further Game on Boys books are released, send an email to
[email protected] (copy and paste) or follow Kate on twitter at Kate Cullen at katekate5555
Contents
Chapter 1. Bottoms at School
Chapter 2. Paper, Chocolate & Buckets
Chapter 3. The Great Computer Room
Chapter 4. A Pee in a cup
Chapter 5. Where was my name?
Chapter 6. Reality Checks in
Chapter 7. The case of the Missing Homework
Chapter 8. The Big Game
Chapter 9. And heat one is??.
Chapter 10. And the Winners are?..
Chapter 11. The Pink Monster
Chapter 12. Stalking Gremlins
Chapter 13. Heat 2
Chapter 14. The Big day Looms
Chapter 15. Big Bad Dreams
Chapter 16. Movie World vs The Playoffs
Chapter 17. Cool Riders
Chapter 18. Heaven in a Box
Chapter 19. The Luckiest Boy in the World
Chapter 20. Unbelievable
Chapter 21. Good Things can come out of Bad Things
Game on Boys 2 : Minecraft Madness (excerpt)
Dedication
This is for all the kids who can't get enough of their computer games and for all the parents who can't get their kids to read enough books because of computer games, and for all the teachers out there who do an amazing job getting kids to read
Chapter 1: Bottoms at school
I'm going to tell you something really weird. I mean super weird. You're going to think I'm really stupid. In fact you'll probably think I'm a real dork. My sister does. I know because she's always telling me. The truth is I love going to school. No I'm not kidding, if that's what you just thought to yourself.
My name is Ryan and I go to the greatest school in the whole world and I have the best teacher in the whole school. Mr Higginbottom is his name. That's right Higgin BOTTOM. Can you believe it? When he walked into the classroom on the first day of term, he wrote it on the blackboard and said,
"Ok everyone, that's right, my name is Bottom, Higginbottom to be precise. Let's all get it over with, say it out loud and then we can have a big laugh. BOTTOM, BOTTOM, BOTTOM. Come on everybody lets shout it out."
We all burst into laughter and from that day on he has been the coolest teacher ever. It's a pity about his name though, but he lets us call him Mr H so it's not so embarrassing.
My big sister thinks I'm weird because I love going to school so much. She doesn't understand though, because she's just a stinky girl who's always glued to her phone and making things with rubber bands. I call them Doom bands. What do girls know anyway? All they ever think about is cutesy, pukey makeup and revoltingly bizarre dolls that go to monster schools. Batz dolls I call them, with their oversized heads, puffy lips and only half a leg. Lisa is twelve going on eighteen, well she thinks she is anyway, the way she dresses. I guess she is kind of pretty in a fake sort of way. Just ask her she'll tell you how gooooorgeous she is.
My Mom thinks it's wonderful that I love school and she's forever skiting (that means bragging) to her friends how well I do. She says she can't believe the change in me because I used to hate school in first grade. I still remember screaming like a fire engine with tears rolling down my face and snot pouring out of my nose clinging onto her chubby legs as she tried to leave. Yuk! I can't believe I used to be such a baby. How embarrassing is that?
But now that I'm in fifth grade, there's no way I would miss a day of school. Uh uh, NO WAY! And there's no way I would let snot pour out of my nose either. To miss a day at school would put at risk going to one of the best places on Earth. Well? maybe it's not the best place. Zone Ten might be a little bit better. And this one time when we went on holidays to visit my Pop, I went to another place called Football Hero world. All the games were interactive and linked up to gigantic computer screens. You even got to see yourself being a TV presenter on a footy show on TV. It was awesome. Dad said I did a better job than Al Michaels and Emmet Smith put together, and Mom said I was better looking than Tom Brady. I don't even know what they were going on about, but it was a pretty cool place.
Actually, it could even be better than Zone Ten. But I probably won't get to go again as Pop died and went to this other cool place called heaven where our dog lives.
Our dog Pugsley went to heaven because he got bitten by a green ant and died. Mom said he just got old and sick but Dad reckons he was riddled with green ant bites from rolling on the front lawn and they sucked the life out of him. Now he's always telling me not to wrestle my neighbour Fletch on the grass in case we get bitten by green ants as well. I think he's probably telling one of those white lies that only adults are allowed to tell to stop me doing karate on the front lawn with Fletch. Sometimes we do get a bit rough I guess.
The other day I accidently kicked him in the nuts and he went home squealing like a girl. It was just an accident. In case Dad is telling the truth about Pugsley and the green ants, I always wear shoes now when I wrestle Fletch on the grass. That's probably why it hurt him so much. Better than being bitten by a green ant though.
Now I have this obsession with green ants. The other day when I was eating my tea I had a weird thought about them. I asked Mom what it would be like if a green ant went into the bread roll that I was eating. We were having homemade Macca's hamburgers which Mom says are exactly the same as Macca's burgers except Mom makes them at home. They're much yummier though 'cos they don't have the green thing in the middle. I've never worked out why the people at McDonalds put the green thing in because everyone always throws it out. Even my Dad takes it out of his, and he has three burgers!
Mom never eats takeaway food because she's always starting a diet. Plus she says it's not good for you and doesn't taste very nice. What would she know anyway? She thinks cauliflower and broccoli taste nice. But I know she always manages to sneak a few bites of every-ones else's when she thinks we're not watching. Dad rolls his eyes and says 'Why don't you get your own?"
"Because it teaches everyone how to share", Mom always replies. Mom works at the hospital as a food technician in the kitchen three days a week which I think just means making the food. It makes her a bit obsessed about food though I think. The other four days she says she works as a shopping technician but she doesn't get any money for that. Dad reckons on those days she just spends all the money she makes on the other three days.
So, as I was munching on a bit of cris
py, green lettuce the other day, I had this really interesting thought at the dinner table about green ants.
"Mom, what would happen if the green ant crawled into the roll and got lost in the forest of lettuce and then I ate it and it travelled all the way down to my heart and bit it? Would it really hurt?"
She paused with a blank look on her face. "No probably not, because I don't think the heart would feel it."
"Would I die?"
"No I don't think so."
"Would it cause me to have a heart attack?"
"No I don't think so." Why do adults sometimes pretend they know the answer when they really don't, but they disguise the fact by saying, "I think so or I don't think so?"
Mr Higginbottom would have known the answer to that. He knows just about everything because he's the best teacher in the whole wide world. This brings me to the reason of why I go to the very best school around and why I love school so much. I know you'll probably think I'm really weird but believe me, I'm not. If you got to do what I do at my school you'd be on ya skateboard and coming to my school before you could say "Higginbottom rules!"
Chapter 2: Paper, Chocolate and Buckets
It's because of Mr H and this really exciting thing that he lets us do that makes me love going to school so much. Every afternoon at a quarter to three, Mr Higginbottom gets out his big, black book and looks at all the names of the kids in my class and checks who has been really good and who has completed all the work for the day. Then he always makes a big announcement in a really silly voice.
"Ok kiddie widdies, grade fivey wiveys." And then he quickly changes his tone to a commander in the army style. "The Criteria for the day is as follows. ??
Number 1. You must have completed page 33 in your Maths book.
Number 2. You must have copied down all of the work from the whiteboard.
Number 3. You must have received twenty out of twenty for your spelling this morning, and last, but certainly not least, the final criteria for the day is, you must not have been spoken to by me, or any of the other wonderful human beings that inhabit this Earth, better known as teachers, for getting into trouble at all anytime today."
He would always make sure there was one thing on the list that we didn't know whether we'd achieved or not just to be tricky. Then he would take a big breath at the end as though he were gasping for life. It was always so exciting to wait and hear whether your name would be called out or not.
"And so," he would continue, "the students who have achieved all the criteria for today are as follows????."
Sometimes there were lots of kids on the list and sometimes there were only a few. I was always on the list. There was no way I would ever risk not getting on the list so I always made sure I did all my work on time. Sometimes my friend Matthew would try and make me shoot spit balls at the girl's heads, but I try my hardest to ignore him. Gee it's hard though, because it's really funny when the spit balls whack them on their ear or neck and they think it's a mosi biting them. They start flapping their arms around their head at nothing, looking like retards, not realising we are cacking ourselves laughing behind their backs.
I don't dare do it now though. If Mr Higginbottom saw me, it would be instant disqualification because he always has the same criteria that no-one is allowed to get into trouble or be told off during the day.
Everybody that meets the criteria gets their name called out and gets to choose from his big green bucket. You can either choose a chocolate bar or a raffle ticket. A chockie bar is yummy, but a raffle ticket is boss. If you choose a raffle ticket it goes into the red bucket for the big draw before lunch on Friday.
The eight kids with the most raffle tickets on Friday get to do something really awesome during Friday lunch time and all afternoon during class time in the computer room. It's so unreal. Sometimes I can't believe how cool it is. I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming.
Chapter 3: The Great Computer Room
The computer room is between our classroom and Miss Egbutt's classroom and no-one is allowed to enter without permission or without a teacher. It's full of computers, televisions, DVD's, cd players and all sorts of other high tech electronics. In the far corner of the room, there's a huge book shelf that has a lot of DVD's and computer games all arranged in alphabetical order. There's nothing very exciting though, mostly just boring games that you can learn stuff from like 'The Maths Magician' and 'The Spelling Sorcerer'. I once had a sneaky look in the B section for Batman, under S for Spiderman and under T for the Teenage Ninjas but there was nothing. Zilch. Zip. Zippo. They didn't even have any Avatar stuff and that's the first letter of the alphabet.
Mom says it's probably because they're rated M and are full of violence with no educational value. What would she know? All the boys I know in Fifth grade have been to see Avatar at the movies and they haven't suffered mentally from the experience or turned into raging criminals jailed at ten.
The coolest part though is when Mr Higginbottom gets out his big black brief case and pulls out, not one, not two, but three Play station 3 consoles. It's so exciting. My Mom says I'm obsessed with Play station but what would she know? She doesn't even know what a memory card is. She probably thinks a memory card is something you slot into your brain to help you remember things.
Inside his big black case is every PS3 game you can imagine; Fifa, Star Wars, Need for Speed, NBA, Ratchet and Clank. Of course he's not allowed to bring any that are above a pg rating. He says we have to respect our parents and the rules of the school. Once we begged and begged him to bring Grand Theft Auto but he said that it would jeopardise the chance to play PS3 at school. I didn't really know what that meant. Sometimes he uses really big words just to confuse us I think. So I asked Mom what jeopardised meant and she said "Look it up in the dictionary". She always does that to me.
"But Mom, can't you just tell me so it's quicker?"
"Well why don't I just sit down and do all your homework for you too?"
"Ok," I replied. "That's a good idea." I thought Mom was being nice for a change but she was just being sarcastic. In the end she helped me look it up, and it meant that if you jeopardise something, you put it in a position where you might lose it or it might be in danger. Well we definitely didn't want to jeopardise our chance to play PS at school by bugging Mr H to bring in Grand Theft Auto.
Chapter 4: A Pee in a Cup
Every Friday the eight of us that make the cut go into the computer room at lunchtime and it's so exciting. We get to choose what game we want to play and who we want to verse. Sometimes even Mr H plays with us. It's so cool if you get to verse him 'cos he's an awesome player. He reckons he's even got a play station 4 and an X box at home and that one day he might bring them in. Wow! That would be so boss man.
Last Friday morning he played a really funny trick on me. I thought for a moment that I wasn't going to make it into the club that day by not getting all my spelling words right. At the time I couldn't see the humor in it, but now I think about it, I guess it was sort of funny.
"Right grade fivey wivies, the last lesson before lunch is a super spelling bee. Everyone gets one word and they need to get it right," he said. Yuk!
I hate spelling. Mom always makes me do these sight words before I'm allowed to go outside and wrestle Fletch, my next door neighbor
When it came to my turn in the super spelling bee everyone had already been given really easy words. "Ryan," Mr H said "I want you to spell the word icup."
"Icup?" I thought. I clammed up and my face went all warm and prickly, that feeling you get when you know you're going to get the answer wrong. It's a bit like the feeling you get when you walk up on stage to collect an award and you trip going up the stairs in front of everyone, or worse still, your pants fall down. It's called embarrassment and I was feeling it big time. Actually it was worse than big time. It was humongous, mammoth, big time. All those long, boring afternoons sitting with Mom on the couch spelling word
after word meant nothing anymore. I'd never heard of the word 'icup'. "Oh no," I thought. If I got this wrong I might not make the necessary criteria to get a raffle ticket before the big draw. Panic stations set in. This was going to be disastrous.
Mom always said if you get nervous or frightened; just imagine everyone around you is only in their underwear. It will make you laugh and you'll forget your nerves. So I did, but it wasn't a pretty sight.
"Ok get a grip of yourself Rino," I said in my head. "Think about it and just sound the word out." I could hear my Mom's words bleating in my head as she so often did when I got stuck on a word. I began slowly, deep in thought and not willing to put one foot wrong sounding out each letter,
"I ? c.. u .. pee." There was silence and then the whole class erupted into hysterics, laughing their heads off, followed by Mr Higginbottom. Then I realised what I had just said when I sounded out the word; "I see you pee," and I burst out into an embarrassed sort of laughter too.
Mr Higginbottom came over and gave me a friendly pat on my head and ruffled my hair. It didn't worry me that I'd combed it just the right way and put jell in it that morning. It was ok for Mr H to mess it up but if my sister ever did it, she'd be dead meat.
"Well done," he said. "I knew you would be cool enough to take a harmless joke. It's a bit of a silly joke," he told the rest of the class. "But silly jokes are ok if you just don't let them go too far. You can have a free raffle ticket for your trouble."
"I know another one like that," said Mitch who was the class clown. "Spell pig backwards," he shouted out before Mr H got a chance to say anything. Mr H scratched his head and looked down. "Ok, ok what have I started here?" he mumbled. "I think we'll finish up with the silly jokes now Mitch and get down to serious business and do the proper spelling test.