Going Bush Page 10

  “Hit it!” I said. Leo crashed out a mighty power chord as Lorek Bearsson threw back his head and let out a roar that shook the ground. Flames shot from the neck of Leo’s guitar and we zoomed through the hospital window and up into the powder-blue sky.

  “To Hills Village!” I shouted.

  We zoomed into the outback, found Bigbottom Creek, and swooped Brushes McGarrity, sending him diving into a handily placed pile of horse manure. Lorek Bearsson turned on the afterburners and soared vertically into the stratosphere, leaving behind a sonic boom that rippled out across the desert and sent kangaroos leaping for cover.

  “Now THAT’S what I call an ending!” I yelled.

  WHAT ARE YOU—NUTS?

  That flying polar bear ending isn’t the ending! You should know me better than that by now.

  Things didn’t get tied up neatly, though. That bit I was right about, which doesn’t mean nothing else happened …

  A week after I got back home, I was lying on my bed in the middle of the night, looking at the moonlit ceiling, chewing gum, and trying not to think about the itch on my leg that was keeping me awake.

  The ceiling seemed smooth at first, but then I started seeing all the little flaws in the paint: a crack here, a scrap of a spider’s web there. The longer I looked, the more cracks I saw until it seemed that pretty much most of the bedroom ceiling was about to fall in. But it wasn’t—it was still the same old ceiling, just with a bit more wear and tear.

  Like me.

  I was a different Rafe Khatchadorian from the one who’d left Hills Village four weeks ago. Bigbottom Creek had left its marks.

  Some of them—like the broken leg, and the scrapes on my elbows I’d gotten from squeezing into the caves at Crocodile Rocks—were easy to see. The rest weren’t visible, but they were still there. Take running into Brushes McGarrity’s gallery, yelling “CROC!” at the top of my voice, for example—that was right at the top of my list of embarrassing moments and had left a little scar.

  Some of the other marks you can’t see were to do with Ellie, and some of them were because another Khatchadorian adventure had come to an end.

  And one of them was because I was back home.

  That felt wrong. Me feeling bad about being home, I mean. I felt guilty I wasn’t more excited about seeing Mom and Georgia and Grandma Dotty and Junior. Don’t get me wrong—it was great seeing them again (especially Junior) and they were making a big fuss about my leg and all … It just didn’t match up to the things I’d been doing in Australia.

  I shrugged. Shrugging is difficult when you’re lying down, but since Leo only existed in my head it didn’t matter.

  I was going to say something when I heard a noise at my bedroom window. It was a tiny noise—the kind of noise a branch of a tree might make when it brushed the windowsill.

  Except we didn’t have any trees next to the house.

  I HOPPED ACROSS to the window as best I could, keeping my head down. The noise I’d heard was a ladder being put in place very quietly and very carefully. Through the open window I could hear someone beginning to climb the ladder. Whoever it was was moving real slow and quiet.

  Burglars!

  I was just about to start yelling when I saw something move out by the edge of our yard. It was a figure dressed all in black, standing in the shadows of the house next door. I couldn’t see much but right then the guy turned and caught a patch of light. That was when I saw it—poking out from under the brim of his cap was a bushy beard that, even from this distance, could only belong to one guy: Brushes McGarrity.

  I glanced across to the piece of cave rock I’d swapped with Vloot and everything fell into place—all of it, all at once, every last detail.

  Time stopped.

  I had seconds to decide what to do before Vern—who else could it be on the ladder?—reached my room. I thought about Mom and Georgia and Grandma Dotty and how desperate and dangerous McGarrity had to be to come all this way and break into our house. So instead of yelling out or calling the cops, I did something else before hopping back to bed and closing my eyes.

  If I’d got this wrong I was dead meat.

  YOU NEVER REALLY notice how weird your breathing is until a giant smuggler breaks into your room in the dead of night. I was trying so hard to convince Vern I was fast asleep I started snoring like my life depended on it—which it probably did. I sounded like a dying rhino with asthma and I was afraid I’d wake up Junior (btw, what a lousy guard dog), so I toned it way down until I only sounded like a rhino who’d been out jogging. It seemed to do the trick.

  I have to admit Vern made a pretty good burglar.

  I mean, I don’t have that much—or any—experience with burglars, but for such a massive guy, he hardly made a sound. Even so, I still knew exactly where he was.

  One time I was at my desk in school drawing a picture of Mrs. Stricker when, somehow, I knew she’d materialized behind me and I turned the page just before she could see. A few seconds later and she’d have bitten my head clean off.

  That was what it was like now. The exact same super-spidey safety sense took over and I could feel Vern moving around my room like a great big Australian burglar gorilla.

  Right then it felt like I’d made a major Khatchadorian boo-boo by not calling the cops. Maybe I’d tried to be too clever. What did I think I was—some kind of mastermind? Vern could finish me off at any moment.

  I risked a peek and, through my one half-open eye, watched Vern find The Blue Budgie and slip it in his pocket. As he turned to look at me, my eyelid slammed shut with a loud CLANG! Okay, it didn’t, but it sure felt like that.

  For a long—like, really long—moment, there was total silence, which made me imagine all kinds of horrible stuff. Then I heard the best sound I’ve ever heard: the sound of Vern grunting as he heaved himself out of the window and down the ladder.

  It was over.

  I WAITED UNTIL the morning before I said anything so that Brushes and Vern could get as far away as possible from Hills Village. The last thing I wanted was those two coming back any time soon. At seven o’clock I pulled The Blue Budgie out from the top of my leg cast and …

  I know what you’re thinking: The Blue Budgie? Didn’t you just tell us you saw Vern take that from your bedroom?

  Well, yes. Okay, I did say that. What I totally forgot to mention was that, in the time it took for me to get from the window back into bed, I had substituted my lucky pebble for The Blue Budgie, fixing it in place with my chewing gum. I figured that in the dark, one rock was going to feel exactly like any other rock to Vern, and that Brushes would be too keen on making a getaway to check too closely.

  Neat, huh?

  Of course, I had to tell Mom all about it and get the police involved and that would mean about a year of explaining and blah-blah-blah, so instead I’ll just fast forward—FRRRRRPP!—right past all that and flat-out tell you what happened.

  The cops caught up with Brushes and Vern at Atlanta Airport, where they were changing planes for—you guessed it—Amsterdam.

  The fake Blue Budgie (aka my lucky pebble) was hidden in their luggage. I heard later that they didn’t know there’d even been a switch until the cops told them. I’d like to have seen that. I still hadn’t forgiven Brushes for setting his pet croc on me.

  I emailed Denny about everything and he told Barry the rock monster. Barry and some of his activist buddies got a freeze on any more digging activity out at Crocodile Rocks, and the McGarrity Caves are probably going to be renamed real soon.

  Because of all the publicity about The Blue Budgie, the art show by all of us became kind of a smash hit. We got famous for a while.

  This is the best one: I got invited back to Australia once my leg’s all fixed. They want to give me an award or something. I’m not kidding. I think they want to make me Lord High Chief Khatchadorian or Governor Khatchadorian or King of Tasmania or something super-cool like that. It’d be great. Australia’s starting to feel like a second home … and I’d get
to see more of Ellie. (We made up.)

  All I have to do now is convince Mom …

  Wish me luck.

  James Patterson is the internationally bestselling author of the highly praised Middle School books, Homeroom Diaries, House of Robots, Kenny Wright: Superhero and the I Funny, Treasure Hunters, Confessions, Maximum Ride, Witch & Wizard and Daniel X series. James Patterson has been the most borrowed author in UK libraries for the past eight years in a row and his books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, making him one of the biggest-selling authors of all time. He lives in Florida.

  Martin Chatterton was born in Liverpool, England and has been successfully writing and illustrating books for almost thirty years. He has written dozens of children’s books and illustrated many more for other writers, including several British Children’s Laureates. His work has been published in fourteen languages and has won and been shortlisted in numerous awards in the UK, US, and Australia. Alongside writing for children, Martin writes crime fiction (as Ed Chatterton), continues to work as a graphic designer, and is currently working on his PhD. After time spent in the US, Martin now divides his time between Australia and the UK.

  Also by James Patterson

  Middle School novels

  Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (with Chris Tebbetts)

  Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (with Chris Tebbetts)

  Middle School: My Brother Is a Big Fat Liar (with Lisa Papademetriou)

  Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill (with Chris Tebbetts)

  Middle School: Ultimate Showdown (with Julia Bergen)

  Middle School: Save Rafe! (with Chris Tebbetts)

  Middle School: Rafe’s Aussie Adventure (with Martin Chatterton)

  Middle School: Just My Rotten Luck (with Chris Tebbetts)

  I Funny series

  I Funny (with Chris Grabenstein)

  I Even Funnier (with Chris Grabenstein)

  I Totally Funniest (with Chris Grabenstein)

  Treasure Hunters series

  Treasure Hunters (with Chris Grabenstein)

  Danger Down the Nile (with Chris Grabenstein)

  Secrets of Forbidden City (with Chris Grabenstein)

  House of Robots series

  House of Robots (with Chris Grabenstein)

  House of Robots: Robots Go Wild! (with Chris Grabenstein)

  Kenny Wright: Superhero (with Chris Tebbetts)

  Daniel X series

  The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)

  Demons and Druids (with Adam Sadler)

  Game Over (with Ned Rust)

  Armageddon (with Chris Grabenstein)

  Lights Out (with Chris Grabenstein)

  For more information about James Patterson’s novels, visit

  www.jamespatterson.co.uk

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Penguin Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Middle School: Going Bush

  9780143781226

  First published by Random House Australia in 2016

  Copyright © James Patterson, 2016

  Illustrations by Martin Chatterton, 2016

  The moral right of the author and the illustrator has been asserted.

  A Random House book

  Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Creator: Patterson, James, 1947—

  Title: Middle School: Going Bush/James Patterson, Martin Chatterton.

  ISBN: 9780143781226 (ebook)

  Series: Middle School; 9

  Target Audience: For primary school age.

  Subjects: Middle schools—Juvenile fiction.

  Adventure travel—Juvenile fiction.

  Adventure stories, Australian.

  Other Creators/Contributors: Chatterton, Martin, author.

  Dewey Number: 813.54

  Cover illustration by Martin Chatterton

  Cover design by Christabella Designs

  The publisher would like to thank Rachel Bin Salleh from Magabala Books.

  * Fictional character.

  ** Does not exist.

  * I have never actually been to East Texas and apologize to any East Texans reading this book. For all I know, East Texas is crammed with all kinds of exciting stuff.

  * To be honest, I had no idea what kind of tree it was. “Coolabah” just sounded right. So sue me.