Charlie and the Rocket Boy and Charlie and the Great Escape

by Hilary McKay

  ‘Don’t they laugh at yours?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘They say stuff like, “Charlie, that is not the sort of thing anyone wants to hear about at the dinner table”. And they hate my mouth-organ playing. My dad shouts, “Somewhere else, please Charlie!” the second I begin.’

  ‘My mum asks me to play my recorder,’ remarked Henry smugly.

  ‘My mum,’ said Charlie, ‘groans when I come into a room. And says, “Shoes off, Charlie, before you take another step!” And she goes on and on about interrupting people talking. How can I not interrupt when she talks all the time? I have to yell to make her take any notice of me.’

  ‘I’ve heard you,’ agreed Henry. ‘If your front door’s open we can hear you right down the road.’

  ‘And the fuss she makes if I come home in the wrong clothes if I’ve accidentally put on someone else’s after PE! Or about lost socks! My mum’s got a thing about socks. Every time I come home without them she goes mad!’

  ‘What does it matter about losing socks?’ asked Henry in astonishment. ‘Everyone has socks! I have thousands!’

  ‘I have three,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Borrow Max’s.’

  ‘Oh ha ha ha,’ said Charlie bitterly. ‘As if that could ever happen! None of my family share anything with me.’

  ‘I share with you,’ said Henry. ‘At least you’ve got me.’

  ‘S’pose,’ said Charlie ungratefully. ‘And when you’re grown up you can run away from your terrible family!’

  ‘I could run away now,’ said Charlie. ‘That would show them! Then they’d be sorry!’

  ‘They might be pleased,’ remarked Henry. ‘Then what?’

  Instead of answering that unsympathetic question, Charlie rugby-tackled Henry’s knees. They fell together in a scuffling heap on top of Henry’s mother’s washing basket, which was full of clean wet washing waiting for a space on the line. Henry grabbed a T-shirt and washed Charlie’s face with it. Charlie stuffed a pair of damp pants down Henry’s neck. For the next few minutes they whacked each other with bunches of wet socks. After that Charlie got Henry flat on his back and very cleverly managed to force Henry’s mother’s nightdress over his head, proving he had won. Henry pulled it off and it ripped, and then both their mothers rushed out into the garden and caught them.

  Henry’s mother said it did not matter a bit.

  Charlie’s mother said it mattered very much indeed and she marched Charlie home straight away, instead of letting him stay for tea-and-The-Simpsons as she had previously agreed he could do.

  ‘This is the sort of thing,’ called Charlie over his shoulder to Henry as he was led away, ‘that happens to me all the time!’

  2

  Going

  That was on Wednesday. On Thursday morning Charlie’s sad hard life got suddenly sadder and harder. Max was out in the park with a football, his ancient dad was messing about at work with his friends, his ancient mother was messing about at home with the cat, but Charlie was jailed in his bedroom.

  The day had hardly begun. Charlie had padded downstairs to the empty kitchen, loaded the toaster and been sent back to his room again. Before his toast had even popped up. Simply because, while waiting for his toast, he had prized the free CD off the front of the cereal packet and tried it out in the new computer that his father had just brought home from work.

  The computer made grating sounds and flashed a hundred exciting screens and Charlie’s mother came in and yelled, ‘Back upstairs you go before I completely lose my temper!’

  As if she had not completely lost it already.

  ‘What about my toast?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Bother your toast!’ shouted Charlie’s mother, who grabbed it out of the toaster, flung it into the bin and started trying to get the cereal box disc out of the computer.

  ‘Use a spoon,’ advised Charlie.

  ‘WHAT?’

  ‘I used a spoon to get it in.’

  ‘Charlie,’ said Charlie’s mother in an awful voice. ‘Vanish!’

  At first (except for missing his toast) Charlie did not mind too much. His PlayStation was in his bedroom, and so was Max’s new racing-car game. But it was not long before his mother heard the roaring of car engines and the screech of brakes and stamped upstairs and switched it all off. She seemed to think that Charlie should not be having fun.

  For a little while Charlie thought he would leave it all unplugged for ever and that would show how sad and hard his life was.

  Then he thought he would plug it all back in again, and that would show his mum.

  And then he remembered the conversation in Henry’s garden the day before, and he thought he would run away, and that would show everyone.

  This seemed the best idea of all, and so he began to pack.

  In Max’s rucksack he packed his bear, his money box, his photograph album of pictures of himself, and a large bag of stones that he had collected on the beach in case they were valuable. Also he took a trick fly-in-an-ice-cube, a squirting calculator, some plastic dog poo, a half-used packet of itching powder, his last two remaining foaming blood sugar lumps, two socks and one glow-in-the-dark skeleton T-shirt. As a souvenir of his ancient father he took his torch, and as a souvenir of Max he took his stick of seaside rock, but he did not bother taking a souvenir of his mother because she did not own any good stuff.

  When he had filled the rucksack he crept on to the landing and collected two big holdalls from the little cupboard there. In one of them he put his PlayStation, and in the other he put the portable TV that went with it. In the past Charlie had moaned about this TV, since it was, as Max once remarked, the smallest and cheapest that money could buy. Now he was thankful that it was not any bigger. Even as it was, with the rucksack on his back, the PlayStation holdall across one shoulder, and the TV across the other, he could hardly stand up.

  Still, he managed, and after a bit of practice walking up and down his bedroom it got easier. Everything was fastened to him, so he could not actually drop anything, as long as he stayed upright.

  Then Charlie, holding tight to the banister, went very slowly down the stairs, very slowly through the kitchen, and very slowly out of the door.

  Outside the door he stood on the path and thought. It seemed all wrong that he was running away without anyone noticing. So very slowly he went back into the house again.

  ‘I’m running away!’ he shouted, and then he slammed the door so hard that the last sound he heard from his home was the crack of breaking glass.

  Charlie did not look back. He stumped up the garden path and turned on to the street. There he found that a sunny morning in the school holidays was the worst time possible to run away. There were people everywhere. The first two he met were Lulu, the girl next door, and her best friend Mellie. They were whizzing about on Rollerblades.

  ‘Get out of the way quick, Charlie!’ they shouted, rushing towards him at a hundred miles an hour.

  Charlie could not do anything quick, but his bags saved him from being knocked flat. The heaviness of them rooted him to the ground like a tree stump and the girls bounced off, rubbing their elbows and exclaiming at the hardness of Charlie’s corners.

  ‘Where are you going?’ they asked. ‘Aren’t you hot, carrying all that? You need a wheelbarrow! You need a lorry! You’ve gone all red! What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m running away,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Running!’ they repeated.

  ‘Yes, running,’ said Charlie solidly, and he put his head down and continued his tortoise-like progress for about another ten seconds when he collided with Henry’s mother.

  ‘Ouch!’ she said. ‘Charlie! Where are you going with all those bags?’

  ‘I’m run –’ began Charlie, and then caught sight of the girls, listening and clutching each other and giggling. ‘I’m walking … I’m just walking … you know …’

  ‘Yes?’ asked Henry’s mother.

  ‘I’m just walking away,’ said Charlie and he walked
away to show her what he meant and with every step he felt her staring eyes on his breaking back.

  It is totally-end-of-the-world Not Fair! grumbled Charlie to himself. I can’t even run away in peace!

  ‘Morning, Max!’ said the postman, right in front of him.

  ‘I’m not Max,’ growled Charlie crossly, and he thought, What unbelievable bad luck! The postman now!

  ‘You’re not Max?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, swaying under his bags.

  ‘Well, let’s get this right,’ said the postman, as if Charlie had all the time in the world to chat. ‘There’s that Henry, number sixty? Right?’

  ‘I s’pose,’ groaned Charlie, shrugging his aching shoulders.

  ‘That big dog at number sixty-two, which I don’t stop at because he’ll have the door down one of these days.’

  Charlie sighed.

  ‘Madam on wheels over there at number sixty-four?’

  Charlie’s bags seemed to grow heavier every moment. He shuffled and swayed and longed for the postman to shut up. When he could bear the strain no longer he went and leaned on number sixty-two’s fence. The fence leaned too, further and further backwards under his weight. Inside the house a dog went mad.

  ‘… and so I thought you must be Max,’ continued the postman, taking no notice of any of this. ‘Max who gets postcards from America at number sixty-six …’

  Charlie and the fence were now in a perilous position, halfway between upright and flat on the ground.

  ‘Unless,’ continued the postman, ‘you also live at number sixty-six but you don’t get post. Could that be you?’

  Charlie nodded, which was a big mistake. The fence collapsed and Charlie buckled at the knees and went down with it. Inside the house the dog ripped down a curtain. Then the front door flew open, the dog charged out and the postman and the lady at number sixty-two started shouting at each other.

  Charlie crawled hurriedly away, dragged himself upright at the nearby lamp post and looked around. He felt he needed somewhere to hide, and the only place he could think of was back at his own house, the secret wild patch between the shed and the hedge where he had hidden from trouble all his life.

  Two minutes later that was where he was. It felt wonderful. It felt like the far side of the world. It felt like, if you had to run away, then this was the perfect place to go.

  This is where I am going to stay, thought Charlie happily.

  3

  Gone

  For a long time Charlie did nothing but lie on his back and suck Max’s stick of rock and listen to the faraway sounds of cars and doors and Lulu and Mellie falling over. And then he heard someone come into the garden and knock on the back door. It was Henry’s knock, Charlie knew it at once, so when the door opened he listened very hard indeed.

  ‘Did you know your door glass was cracked?’ he heard Henry ask.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Henry,’ said Charlie’s mother, perfectly calmly. ‘Charlie did it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Henry. ‘Is he grounded then? Or is he playing?’

  ‘I am sorry, Henry,’ said Charlie’s mother, ‘but he isn’t grounded or playing. He has run away.’

  ‘He said he might,’ said Henry, sounding not a bit surprised. ‘Where’s he gone to, then?’

  ‘Goodness knows,’ said Charlie’s mother. ‘To sea, perhaps. Or to look for treasure. Somewhere like that, I suppose. I am afraid I shall have to go now, Henry. I am trying to fix the computer that he wrecked this morning with a disc from a cereal packet which I told him not to put in. It is making a terrible grinding sound and all the text is in Japanese and it is not even our computer. Charlie’s father borrowed it from work …’

  Her voice trailed away. Charlie heard the door close and then a little scratchy noise that he knew was Henry’s interested fingers exploring the crack in the glass. Very carefully he stuck his head out into the open and hissed, ‘Henry!’

  Henry gave a great terrified jump.

  ‘I’m here! Behind you!’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Henry. ‘Oh! It’s you! I thought you’d run away!’

  ‘I have. To here behind the shed. Come and look!’

  ‘I’ve seen behind your shed millions of times,’ grumbled Henry, but he crawled round after Charlie anyway, and looked again.

  ‘It’s just the same,’ he said. ‘Not very nice.’

  ‘I think it’s brilliant. No one will ever know I’m here.’

  ‘They will if they look behind the shed,’ said Henry.

  ‘Yes, but they won’t look behind the shed,’ replied Charlie. ‘Dad’s too big. Mum’s scared of spiders. And Max thinks he’s much too important. I’m going to make it all comfy and stay here until they’re sorry.’

  ‘I think your mum’s sorry already,’ said Henry. ‘She’s sorry you wrecked that computer, anyway.’

  ‘That’s not the sort of sorry I meant,’ said Charlie. ‘Now, go and ask my mum if you can play in our garden.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ said Charlie, ‘then you will be useful.’

  Charlie’s mother seemed rather surprised to see Henry at the door again. However, she said he could play in the garden if he wanted to, and she hoped he would not be bored.

  ‘I am used to being bored,’ said Henry. ‘My family are very boring people.’

  ‘Well, just as you please,’ said Charlie’s mother. ‘I will be in the front room cleaning lemonade-bottle rocket fuel off the carpet. And walls. Do you know how to make a lemonade-bottle rocket, Henry?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Henry. ‘You partly fill it with water and pump it up with a bike pump. We did it at school in science.’

  ‘Outside or inside?’ asked Charlie’s mother.

  ‘Outside.’

  ‘Last night Charlie discovered that it works just as well inside,’ said Charlie’s mother. ‘And you don’t need water. Orange juice is just as good.’

  ‘Is the computer fixed?’

  ‘No. It has Frozen. Oh, Henry, you might dump this on the bird table for me, as you go past. It is nearly lunch time.’

  She led him into the kitchen and handed him a large picnic plate. Henry stared at it in astonishment.

  ‘Do you always feed the birds like this at lunch time?’ he asked.

  ‘I do since Charlie ran away,’ said Charlie’s mother, and shooed him back into the garden.

  Since Charlie had finished Max’s stick of rock, starving to death had been one of his biggest worries.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, popping out as soon as his mother had gone.

  ‘Cheese sandwiches, apple pies, crisps and tomatoes,’ said Henry, heading for the bird table.

  ‘Don’t dump it on there! Bring it here! I’m starving.’

  ‘You can’t eat bird food. You’ll drop down dead!’

  Charlie did not agree, and after a few minutes of watching him gobble, Henry decided he might be right, and joined in before everything disappeared.

  Between bites, Charlie gave orders.

  ‘Carpet,’ he said. ‘I shall need a carpet. And a bed. And something to put my drink of water on in the night. And somewhere for my TV and PlayStation and an axe or a very sharp knife. I need to cut a hole in the shed.’

  ‘Why do you need to cut a hole in the shed?’ demanded Henry.

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Charlie. ‘Carpet first! What about that Thomas the Tank Engine rug in your bedroom? You’re much too old for Thomas! I’ve thought so for ages.’

  ‘You’ve wanted it for ages, you mean,’ said Henry, scooping up the last of the crisps. ‘But I’ll fetch it if you like. I’ll go now and eat my apple pie on the way. And that sandwich if you don’t want it …’

  Charlie passed it over, and Henry set off. He was back very soon with the rug rolled up under one arm. With his other hand he dragged along his beanbag. This was a horrible thing shaped like a legless purple horse. It had been passed on to Henry by his cousin Lily, and he had been trying to get rid of it for months.

  �
�It’ll do for a bed if you curl up,’ he said proudly. ‘And I brought you a tin-opener because I couldn’t find an axe or a very sharp knife. Here you are. Now don’t wake me up for a bit!’

  He curled up on the beanbag, tucked himself up with the Thomas rug and did some pretend snoring.

  Charlie, who had already started hacking at the base of the shed with the tin-opener, paused to look at him.

  ‘I’ll need my quilt,’ he said. ‘And my pillow and my bedside light. I wonder what Mum’s doing.’

  ‘I’ll go and spy on her when I wake up,’ offered Henry. ‘I’m very good at spying.’

  ‘OK,’ said Charlie, still busy with the tin-opener.

  Henry snored a few more snores and then said, ‘Charlie, do you think it might get quite boring, living behind this shed?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie.

  ‘I’m bored now!’

  Charlie grunted.

  ‘I think I’ll go and start spying.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  Henry crawled out from behind the shed again, across the garden, and crept silently up to the kitchen window.

  ‘Hello, Henry!’ said Charlie’s mother, popping open the door so unexpectedly that Henry fell over. ‘Did you get lonely? Come in, if you like. I’m on the phone. To a computer helpline. In a queue. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I was just wondering …’

  ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘Now that Charlie’s run away …’

  ‘Yes, yes? Hurry up! I am moving up the queue.’

  ‘… if you would mind me using his stuff?’