So Gross! Read Online Free

see Willy thrashing his legs about.
    I don’t know how to describe the next bit.
    If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t believe it.
    Tom got Willy and carefully shoved him up his nose.
    Yes, you read that right. Up his nose.
    Willy took off, back legs kicking. I waited for Tom to sneeze or something, but he’d gone into that trance-like state of his. We all waited. And waited. My nose started to itch.
    ‘It’s dead,’ yelled out Alexander Poll. He hadn’t missed a show. He was addicted to this stuff. Tom barely, just barely, shook his head. We waited some more.
    I noticed my heart thumping and hoped Tom didn’t have cockroach on the brain.
    The seconds ticked past. They felt like minutes, or even hours.
    Just when everyone was about to get up and leave, Tom gulped, like he was about to dry retch, and opened his mouth.
    Out crawled Willy, a bit soggy looking, moving a lot slower, but definitely Willy. Waving his feelers at the crowd.
    Samantha Saunders ran out and threw up in the flowerbed.
    Everyone else cheered.
    Willy the Magnificent.
    I saw dollar signs in my head. This boy had talent. He was destined to go far.
    Or so I thought at the time.
    But destiny does funny things …
    We did this show another couple of times. By now I was on the bludge. Kids were coming without any effort from me.
    Bertha learnt to detour along Tom’s eyebrow, down his nose, stopping to take a bow at the tip, before scuttling home to base. What an act.
    And Willy?
    Willy got quicker at finding his way. I was thinking of timing him and taking bets, but my idea never got off the ground.
    Thanks to Mrs Sher.
    Remember I told you how she felt about worms? Doesn’t come within cooee to how she feels about cockroaches.

Chapter Seven
    It was a Friday and I reckon everyone was feeling a bit whacked, end of the week and all. Especially Tom.
    By now he was giving two performances, back to back. With no let up.
    It was the last performance of the week that did him in.
    He’d just got to the bit where Willy dives up his hooter when Mrs Sher walked in. ‘What’s going on?’
    Tom tried to bung on the innocent by shrugging his shoulders. I could tell he’d lost concentration. His eyes were crossed and he’d developed a bit of a lean.
    ‘N-n-nothing,’ I tried to say, being his trusty assistant.
    Mrs Sher’s eyes narrowed as she glanced around the room, giving a pretty good impersonation of a ferret. ‘I repeat. What’s going on?’
    I gather at this point in the performance that speech, for Tom, was pretty impossible. He shook his head.
    But Mrs Sher was on to something and wasn’t going to budge. ‘Tom Oach. I demand to know this instant what all these children are doing in my classroom.’
    Tom had gone quite red. He stood with his lips pursed and his head bowed. Still saying nothing.
    ‘Speak up,’ said Mrs Sher, taking a step closer. She must have decided he was choking. She walloped him on the back.
    She should never have done that.
    Tom’s mouth popped open.
    Willy lay there exhausted, one single feeler giving the occasional wave.
    Mrs Sher shrieked like a demented duck. She whacked Tom on his back again but instead of making him spit Willy out, it did the opposite.
    Tom coughed. Then spluttered.
    Then swallowed.
    It was the first time I’d ever seen him lose control.
    Mrs Sher was chucking a mental while Tom stood there mortified.
    He an’ Willy had been through a lot together and to have it end like this …

Chapter Eight
    ‘Aaaghh!’
    Mrs Sher was flailing about so much she accidentally knocked over the Vegemite jar with Bertha in it.
    Bertha did what any self-respecting cockroach would do.
    She did a runner.
    Right up Mrs Sher’s leg.
    ‘Aaaghh! Eeeeee!’
    Mrs Sher started flapping at her legs, lifting her skirt up so we could see the top of her stockings overflowing with soft, white bulgy flesh. She was slapping at her clothes and stamping her feet, like she was doing a highland fling.
    Tom tried to