The Detachable Boy Read online

  Other books by Scot Gardner

  One Dead Seagull

  White Ute Dreaming

  Burning Eddy

  The Other Madonna

  Kite Dude

  The Legend of Kevin the Plumber

  Gravity

  One Wheel Drive

  First published in 2008

  Copyright © text Scot Gardner 2008

  Copyright © illustrations Heath McKenzie 2008

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander St

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Gardner, Scot.

  The detachable boy / author, Scot Gardner.

  ISBN: 9781741753455 (pbk.).

  For children.

  A823.4

  Cover and text design by Josh Durham

  Set in Baskerville 11.5/14.8pt by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group, Australia

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  SCOT GARDNER fell into writing by accident, starting when he was a full-time home dad, and ending up as a well-known and respected author of young adult fiction. The Detachable Boy is his first silly book for younger readers.

  Scot’s hobbies include mountain bikes and power kites, kayaking and taking photos of the world around him. He is licensed to handle explosives and venomous snakes and got an 8 out of 10 from Red Symons on Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday’s ‘Red Faces’. He lives with his wife and three children, two dogs and some chooks in the bush in eastern Victoria, and spends half the year writing and half the year on the road talking to mostly young people about his books and the craft of writing.

  www.scotgardner.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  CHAPTER 1

  A CAR HIT ME, and that’s when things really started falling apart. Literally.

  Here’s how it happened. I was walking home from school with my best mates, Ravi and Crystal. Crystal’s the tall, thin one with the gleaming skin. She’s a day older than me and she eats like a hippo. Ravi’s the little Indian boy with the shiniest, whitest teeth on the planet.

  ‘Okay,’ said Crystal, ‘whose turn is it to piggyback me?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a bad case of Piggybacker’s Knee from the last time I tried to cart you up this hill.’

  Crystal put on her sad puppy face. We both looked at Ravi.

  He shook his head. ‘Hey, I’m already vertically challenged. The last thing I need is a great lump of Crystal on my back retarding my growth.’

  Crystal huffed. ‘Great friends you guys turned out to be. Okay, race you to the lights.’

  She hooked her thumbs into her backpack straps and took off like a stampeding giraffe. ‘Yeehaa!’

  Ravi rolled his eyes and slapped his thigh. ‘Hi ho, Ravi, away!’ he cried as he galloped to catch her.

  I was winding up to dash after them when a black Saab came out of nowhere and thumped into me. Thumped me so hard my legs dropped off, my arms detached and my head bounced across the garden and rolled beneath a camellia bush.

  I blinked.

  The thing is, I wasn’t dead. Dismembered, yes. Dead, no. I wasn’t dead but I was in grave danger of dying from embarrassment. How could I put myself back together without Ravi and Crystal realising that I was a (let’s face it) weirdo detachable person? The secret my family has kept since I was a little tiny bundle of baby bits in a bassinet.

  Quick as thought, I pulled my body back together and strolled out from under the camellia. ‘It’s okay! I’m okay,’ I said, but Ravi and Crystal were way ahead and hadn’t seen a thing. I sighed with relief.

  There was a movement behind me.

  Two men dressed in shiny black suits had stepped out of the car. They both carried large green bags. They could have been travelling salesmen but their smiles were all wrong. They had the narrow-eyed smirk of bad guys about to do a heist. They were jewel thieves who knew the combo to the safe. They were bank robbers with the loot in sight.

  I realised, ten seconds too late, that I was the loot they were after.

  The whole world went very dark as a bag was pulled over my head.

  CHAPTER 2

  AS IT HAPPENED, being in a bag wasn’t a new experience. When I was little, Mum used to tuck me into a sleeping bag to stop me from losing bits in the night. It didn’t always work.

  ‘Mum, I can’t find my foot.’

  ‘Did you look under your bed?’

  ‘Yes, It’s not there.’

  ‘Did you look in your cupboard?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, don’t worry, I found it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the fish tank.’

  Mind you, my body parts sometimes had help getting lost. Big brother Nick would wait until I was asleep and hide my bits all over the house. I would wake up with my head in the sock drawer, my feet in the shoe rack and my legs wedged in the broom cupboard. At the time it annoyed the orange juice out of me, but now, bundled in the back of a moving car with the two men in suits, I was almost grateful. After twelve years of Nick stashing my parts all around the house, I’d taught myself how to be the world’s number one escape artist.

  My hands are smart, like ultra-well-trained miniature poodles. I can send them on missions to collect things or tickle Nick’s feet or tie his shoelaces together under the dinner table, and they can undo knots too. So it was easy to poke my right hand through the little airhole in the top of the green bag and in a few minutes good old Righty had undone the knot and I was free. Well, free of the bag. I was still locked in the boot of the moving car in the stifling dark. Eventually my fingers found a lever and sprang the lid. When the Saab slowed for a corner, I threw myself out, and for the second time that day, found myself scattered over the pavement like roadkill.

  I had myself back together in no time and when I looked around there weren’t any witnesses. I was right beside Tinterwill Park, not far from home. Aside from being abducted, ferried in a bag and having to get out while the car was moving, it had been a fun trip. I dusted myself off and started a loose-limbed – not too loose-limbed – jog home.

  Mum was putting dinner on the table as I thundered through the front door.

&n
bsp; ‘Here he is,’ she said. ‘He might be late home but he’s never late for dinner.’ She kissed my forehead. ‘Ooh, you’re all sweaty. What have you been up to?’

  Excuses. A few options presented themselves to me.

  A – There was a rogue hippopotamus with a taste for schoolbags in Tinterwill Park.

  B – I accidentally became a pop star at lunchtime and I had to run home to avoid seething crowds of fans.

  C – I was kidnapped by large men in shiny suits and locked in the boot of their car but I managed to escape.

  The hippo story was probably the most believable, but I stuck with the traditional response.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, a little too quickly.

  Mum looked at me.

  Dad frowned over the top of his newspaper. ‘How many times do we have to have this conversation?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry just isn’t good enough,’ Dad said. ‘If you change your plans after school, you must call. Where on earth have you been?’

  ‘Nowhere. I was just knocking about with Ravi and Crystal.’ Literally.

  The phone rang. Mum answered and handed it to me.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Oh you are home. I couldn’t work out where you’d gone.’ It was Crystal. She sounded desperate.

  ‘What is it? Are you okay?’

  ‘No! I’m not okay. I’m trapped. I’m in a bag.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Men in suits caught me and put me in a bag. I’m in a car. I’m ringing on my mobile. Where could they be taking me, John? I’m really scared. What do I do?’

  I swallowed. Send one of your hands out to untie the knot? ‘Just stay calm.’

  ‘STAY CALM? I’m being kidnapped! How am I su . . . crackle . . . to stay . . .’

  The phone’s signal died. I hung up and rang back.

  ‘The mobile telephone you are calling is not in a service area. Please leave a message after the tone or try again later.’

  ‘Everything okay?’ Mum asked over dinner. ‘Crystal seemed a little . . . agitated.’

  ‘Fine,’ I lied.

  After dinner, I took the portable phone into the bedroom and phoned the police. The woman kept asking me to calm down and speak more slowly. She wanted to know Crystal’s name and address and her phone number and my name and address and phone number and everything I could remember about the car and . . .

  ‘I’ve had one of the officers calling the mobile number for Crystal Pennywhistle while we’ve been talking and he can’t get through at this point in time. There’s no answer at the home phone, either. This isn’t a prank call, is it? There are severe penalties for wasting our time.’

  ‘No, it’s true! It’s all true.’ I only left out the bit about my kidnap. There are some things you just shouldn’t tell the police.

  ‘All right, I will post a missing person alert. But if you hear from Crystal again please let us know immediately.’

  I phoned Ravi.

  ‘Kidnapped? But I saw her racing down her street a few hours ago. Are you certain?’

  ‘Yes! She called but she was cut off.’

  ‘Why would anyone kidnap Crystal? Her parents are not rich and famous. She’d cost far too much to feed if you kept her as a pet.’

  ‘Are you mad ? This is serious! Call me if you hear from her, okay?’

  I went to bed, and had just dozed off when the phone rang. I sat up instantly, my heart hammering.

  ‘John?’ my mother whispered. ‘It’s Crystal’s mother on the phone. Crystal didn’t come home today. She’s terribly worried. Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Crystal’s mother?’

  ‘No, Crystal!’

  ‘Not exactly. She’s not in my schoolbag or anything. I would have noticed.’

  Mum went back to the phone. ‘Sorry, Wendy. He’s half dazed and not making much sense. I don’t think he’s seen her since they walked home. Of course we’ll let you know if we see her.’

  After two minutes forty-five seconds worrying about her, I fell asleep but I didn’t abandon her. I dreamed I rescued her, James Bond style, with Mission Impossible music in the background. I wore a suit and a tie and I didn’t fall apart once. That’s how I knew it was a dream.

  CHAPTER 3

  NEXT MORNING, Ravi was waiting for me at the school gates.

  ‘My dear best buddy,’ he said. ‘It is good to see you, even though you look like something dragged in by a very muscular cat. It’s okay, I know where Crystal is.’

  ‘You do?’

  He took his mobile phone from his pocket. ‘A message arrived this morning. It’s from Crystal. It says, “Help! Kidnapped! The Lost Head Diner, 1500 Penny Sylvania Avenue, Carcass Springs, Arizona, USA. Help!”.’

  ‘America?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ve taken her to America?’

  ‘Yesssss. I said that already.’

  ‘Now what do we do?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ll wrap you up in brown paper and put a postage stamp on your forehead. You’ll be there in three days, guaranteed by Australia Post. And you can rescue Crystal like a true hero.’

  He’d said it as a joke, but, like a lot of Ravi’s jokes, it was more clever than funny. I grabbed his shoulders and looked straight into his caramel eyes. ‘That, my friend, is sheer brilliance.’

  ‘No, I was joking, John Johnson. I was pulling your leg. I was making a funny. Ha ha ha. Get it? A joke. It was a joke. John?’

  ‘You’re a genius.’

  I led him down the back of the footy oval and, for the first time in my life, prepared to expose myself to somebody who wasn’t part of my family. Not expose myself in a disgusting ‘Go directly to jail’ sort of way, but in a way that would show Ravi how brilliant his joke actually was.

  ‘That postage stamp thing was a gag, best buddy,’ he said. ‘Just a little jocularity between friends. How come you never get my jokes?’

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  I found a spot behind a tree where I could see the games of kick-to-kick that were happening around the goals at either end, made sure I wouldn’t be seen and handed Ravi my detached hand.

  He squealed and threw it into the air in fright. Then he put his hands on his head and ran in little circles, squealing some more.

  ‘Eeeeek!’

  My mitt landed on the grass and I collected it. ‘Shhh. It’s okay. Ravi? I’m okay, honestly. Shhh!’

  He stopped squealing, but he didn’t stop running. He covered his eyes, ran another tight loop and slammed into me. He bounced off and finished up on his back in the grass.

  I stood over him as he peeled his fingers off his eyes.

  I waved with both hands. ‘Hi. I’m fine, really, I am.’

  ‘You’re fine?’ he screeched. ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘I . . . I mean, it doesn’t hurt. I’m sorry, Ravi.’ I held out my hand but he struggled to his feet by himself.

  ‘You could have warned me you were a freaky pullapart person.’

  ‘Warned you? How could I warn you?’

  ‘I don’t know. You could have written me a note or sent me a text message.’

  ‘What, like “Hi Ravi. It’s John. I’m detachable. LOL”.’

  ‘Yes! No, that’s ridiculous.’

  I put my hand on his shoulder. I tried to do one of Crystal’s puppy faces. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘You need help, John Johnson, there’s no question about that, but I’m just a kid with an over-functional brain. How am I supposed to help?’

  ‘I want you to post me to America.’

  ‘John, I was joking. J-O-K-I-N-G, get it?’

  ‘No, I want you to post me. Wrap me up in brown—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I understand what you are saying. I was just trying to buy some time to think of a plan to get you to America in one piece. One piece? Of course! Not one piece, several pieces! How long can you be . . . you know . . . a
part from yourself ?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never really tried. Sometimes I take my feet off during the night. Sometimes my head stays up to watch TV after my body has gone to bed. I can hold my breath for twelve hours or so.’

  ‘Twelve hours? Impressive, but not long enough. Could you last longer?’

  ‘I . . . I honestly don’t know. I lost one of my feet down the back of the couch for two days in the last school holidays. I guess so.’

  ‘It’s very risky.’ He frowned, considering. ‘We’d have to buy you a ticket on an aircraft.’

  ‘I’m broke and I’ve never had a passport.’

  ‘We could get you one.’

  ‘We don’t have time. Crystal’s in trouble now. What’s risky?’

  Ravi looked deep into my eyes then begged me closer. ‘Let me bounce a little idea off you, best buddy . . .’

  CHAPTER 4

  THAT AFTERNOON, Ravi convinced our teacher Mr Bomba that it would be of untold benefit to his education if he were allowed to conduct an experiment on his best buddy – me.

  ‘What does this experiment entail?’ Mr Bomba asked.

  Very good question, I thought. Any mention of ‘alien probes’ or ‘tissue samples’ and I was out of there.

  ‘Well,’ Ravi began. ‘I’ll begin by taking detailed measurements of John Johnson’s person and I’ll be attempting to find proportional similarities.’

  ‘Find what ?’

  ‘Proportional similarities, you know, that the circumference of John’s head is twice the length of his foot or perhaps the distance between his outstretched fingertips will be the same as his height. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Wonderful idea, Ravi. Perhaps you could test any similarities you find on other members of the class,’ Mr Bomba said.

  ‘Why yes, that would be a great extension to the experiment.’

  Mr Bomba gave his nod of approval and Ravi buzzed around me with a tape measure like a suitmaker.

  ‘My goodness! One of your feet is fifty-seven millimetres smaller than the other.’

  ‘I had noticed,’ I said. ‘Around twelve years ago.’