The Bare Bum Gang and the Football Face-Off Read Free

to be expanding in all directions. If she’d been a cartoon, then steam would have come out of her ears, but as this was Real Life, it didn’t.
    â€˜I think she’s gonna blow,’ said Noah.
    I tried to push some of our sticks and string out of her way towards the back of the den with my foot.
    And then I saw a glistening in her eyes. Oh no, this was the worst thing that could happen – she was going to cry. I’d almost have preferred it if she had smashed up our best bits of bamboo, or even the whole den, than this. I didn’t like making people cry, especially girls. If I liked making girls cry, I’d have spent more time hitting them, or calling them Fatty and Five-Belly-Nelly, or the other things they don’t like. I knew I’d played a rotten trick on Jennifer, and whenyou do something rotten, you feel rotten.
    â€˜It’s OK,’ I said, ‘there’s no need to cry. I’m sure there are lots of other gangs you could join. They’re probably just as good as our gang.’ I didn’t mean that bit, but everyone knows it’s OK to tell lies when you’re trying to stop girls from crying. ‘Some of them probably allow girls in already. They’d probably let you make their sandwiches. Maybe a bit of dusting around their dens. Too much dust can give you asthma . . .’
    Then I sort of trailed off, because something even weirder was happening to Jennifer. Weirder, I mean, than the changing-colour thing she was doing. She was beginning to shake. At first I thought this was part of the crying, which meant it was going to be a massive sobbing fit, and I felt like a really bad person for causing so much misery.
    But then I realized that she wasn’t crying at all.
    She was laughing.
    To begin with she laughed so hard she couldn’t speak, but then she calmed down a bit, so she could get it out.
    â€˜Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! To be in your gang you have to show your bare bum! You’re the Bare Bum Gang,
that’s
who you are. The Bare Bum Gang. And nobody knows. Well, they’ll all know now, because I’m going to tell them!
Bare Bum Gang, Bare Bum Gang, Bare Bum Gang
.’
    And with that she turned herself round yet again, and crawled out through the door.
    But that wasn’t quite the end of it. Before we’d even had time to take it all in, we heard a muffled banging sound, and then the extension part of the den fell in, and we saw Jennifer outside, still laughing, but not so hard that it had stopped her from kicking the living daylights out of our HQ.

Chapter Four
THE BAD NEWS SINKS IN
    â€˜That was rubbish,’ said The Moan. ‘I can’t believe we let you be Gang Leader. If it was up to me you’d be Gang Toilet Cleaner. In fact I wouldn’t even let you do that because you’d be rubbish at it.’
    Luckily my best friend, Noah, came to the rescue.
    â€˜That’s not true. He’d be a really good Gang Toilet Cleaner, if we had a toilet. It’s not Ludo’s fault that Jennifer wanted to be in the Gang. It’s your fault for having such an annoying sister.’
    â€˜That’s not fair!’ The Moan replied. ‘It’s not like you get to choose. No one ever said to me, “What would you like, a really cool older brother, who can teach you how to make a brilliant bow and arrow and lend you his pen knife, or a stupid sister, who’ll ruin your gang and kick your den in?”’
    â€˜OK, everyone calm down,’ I said. I knew it was now that we needed a true leader, and it had to be me. It was my great chance to shine. ‘Let’s take a good look at the problem.’
    â€˜We all know what the problem is,’ said Jamie. ‘The problem is that when we go to school on Monday, every single kid is going to know that we are in a gang called the Bare Bum Gang, and that you have to show your bare bum to be in it. They’re all going to laugh so much