Henry Hoey Hobson
Christine Bongers has worked as a television journalist, documentary writer and media consultant, but is happier writing fiction. Her work was short-listed for the 2006 Varuna Manuscript Awards. She has a Master of Arts in youth writing. Her first novel, Dust, was published by Woolshed Press to critical acclaim and is a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book for Older Readers.
Christine enjoys life in Brisbane with her husband and kids, their ageing cat Al, and a very bad beaglier called Huggy. No-one listens to her at home. At Saturday swim club, she wields a megaphone and no-one listens to her there either. More at www.christinebongers.com
ALSO BY CHRISTINE BONGERS
Dust
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 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.
Henry Hoey Hobson
ePub ISBN 9781742740102
Kindle ISBN 9781742740119
FOR CONNOR, BRYDIE, CLANCY AND JAKE
Every effort has been made to acknowledge and contact the copyright holders for permission to reproduce material contained in this book. Any copyright holders who have been inadvertently omitted from acknowledgements and credits should contact the publisher and omissions will be rectified in subsequent editions.
A Woolshed Press book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au
First published by Woolshed Press in 2010
Copyright © Christine Bongers 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Woolshed Press is a trademark of Random House Australia Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved. www.woolshedpress.com.au
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 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 Random House Australia.
Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.
The quotation on p 93 from The Wrong Bookis copyright © Nick Bland 2009
and reproduced by permission of Scholastic Australia. All rights reserved.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Author: Bongers, Christine
Title: Henry Hoey Hobson/Christine Bongers
ISBN: 978 1 86471 995 6 (pbk.)
Dewey Number: A823.4
Cover illustration by Geoff Kelly
Cover design by Sandra Nobes
It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
JOHN ANDREW HOLMES
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
An evocative and earthy novel for young adults from a powerful Australian voice
CHAPTER ONE
She was waiting with a gaggle of mates, blocking the stairs leading back down from our classroom. Golden in the sunlight, with that curious blend of stealth and grace that marked the lion queens of the jungle. I lumbered towards the all-female pride, a wildebeest, hell-bent on his own destruction.
In nature, there were thousands of us, protected by numbers, sacrificing only the occasional member to predators that liked to feed on the weak. But here in the wildlife preserve of Perpetual Suckers, I was the only straggler. The odd one out. The one to be brought down, torn to pieces and consumed.
Not for the first time that morning, I cursed Mum, threefold, under my breath.
For renting a house, two weeks into first term, in the same street as the smallest, daggiest school in Brisbane.
For enrolling me, a non-Catholic (non-anything as far as I knew), in Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, a school that even Catholic boys knew to avoid.
And for not doing her homework – yet again – so that it was left for me to discover, during the drawn-out assembly and the class that followed, that I was the onlyboy in Year Seven.
There was no point in pretending I was cool with it. Mum always said that one look at my face and Blind Freddy could tell what I was thinking. The curse of a thin skin and a strong heart: that awful rush of blood that swept up my pale neck and engulfed my head at times like these.
Hot blood hammered an urgent jungle beat in my ears, competing with the breathy, singsong chant that started up at the head of the stairs. Henry Hoey Hobson ... Henry Hoey Hobson...
I buried my burning face in my bag, but there weren’t too many places a lunch box could hide. Eventually I’d have to surface and face the inevitable problems of where to sit, and how to while away a twenty-minute break, with no friends and no prospects.
‘Omygod, how redare you? Look, everyone – Henry Hoey Hobson is blushing!’
The voice was incredulous, teasing, with the tiniest underlay of triumph. The same voice that had led the chorus. I’d made her day, revealed a weak spot; given her an opportunity to parade my private failing as a public event.
My heart sank. It only took one. One pushy personality to take a set against the newbie and the rest of the class would fall like dominoes.
A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed my worst fears.
It was her, the queen of the catty Year Sevens.
She was pretty – they usually were – with the sort of aggressive playfulness you’d see in a cat toying with a lizard in the sun. She tossed a thick blonde rope of hair over one shoulder as she turned to giggle back at her friends.
A name popped up out of the green jumble of uniforms, the red haze of confusion.
Angelica. Angel child.
Like hell.
I ran a sweaty hand through the straight black hair that fell from twin cowlicks on my forehead.
Girls never singled me out for anything good. Not at the last school and sure as hellfire not here at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.
I squared my shoulders and my hair flopped back into its usual daggy centred bum-part. It was better to meet the challenge head-on. Six primary schools in less than seven years had taught me that much.
Might as well get it over with and try, yet again, to rise above my natural disadvantages.
Maybe this time, for the first time, I’d beat the odds, and fit in.
I stretched a tight-lipped smile over the new metal grill in my mouth and swung it in the direction of the catty pack blocking the stairs.
I was aiming for friendly, would have settled for approachable, and hoped against hope that, just this once, I could avoid deranged.
A burst of wild giggling set me straight.
I ducked my head, the loopy grin stapled to my teeth. Blood pumped furiously through my brainless skull, lighting it up like a red neon bulb.
Smiling made me look like a village idiot; why couldn’t I just accept it and stop doing it?
I tried to rearrange my lips, but they chose that moment to stop responding to my commands. The metal cheese-grater in my mouth had been shredding the inside of my lips for the past week. Mum said it would get better when my mouth toughened up. Like my mouth could achieve what the rest of me had never managed.
Now my lacerated lips, dry as snakeskin from nerves, had stuck to the wires encasing my teeth. I could feel my face twitching with the effort of trying to get the stupid crazed grin off my face.
A fresh explosion of giggles spiked panic through my veins. I gulped like a stranded fish, trying to prise my lips off the metal cage on my teeth. On the third attempt, the skin tore loose, my poor ulcerated lips sagging in relief.
A high-pitched shriek cut short any hope of a reprieve.
‘Yuck! That’s blood running out of the corner of his mouth! Omygod, run! Henry Hoey Hobson’s a vampire!’
CHAPTER TWO
I splashed water on my face and stared at my reflection in the mirror above the washbasin.
I was alone with my cowardice, having ditched lunch box and morning break for the safety of the boys’ toilets.
My lip had stopped bleeding. The high colour had drained from my face, leaving it pale against the black wings of my hair.
My eyes were blue marbles, too big for my face; ‘freaky’, I’d heard kids mutter when I stared too hard in their direction. So I’d learned to keep my eyes to myself. Spare them the attention; spare myself any further humiliation.
But here, alone in the whitewashed toilet block, I could stare openly at the strange creature in the mirror.
I no longer recognised myself; God only knew what other people made of me.
My last school had dubbed me Blowy Blobson, thanks to the baby fat that no amount of swim training in a succession of school pools had ever managed to shift. But somehow, turning twelve had achieved what six years of swimming laps had never managed.
The end of the school year and the long summer holiday that followed had seen great changes in my size and shape, but it was proving a mixed bag of blessings.
In less than a year I had sprinted through three shoe sizes, adding to Mum’s budgetary woes. I had hoped that staying the same size in shorts and shirts for two years running would help balance the financial scales. But no such luck; not when we factored in new uniforms for the three new schools I’d attended in that time.
There was no escaping the scale of change. Where once size-fourteen boys’ shorts had cut into the jelly roll around my waist and flapped self-consciously around my knees, now they exposed an alarming and ever-increasing length of white thigh, despite their low-slung position across the newly exposed angles of my hips.
Unfortunately, the disappearance of what Mum called my puppy fat had given me little to crow about.
My voice could no longer be trusted. Most days it would desert without warning, joining the traitorous ranks of thin skin and strong heart. Letting me down when I needed help most; providing ammunition to my enemies. Henry Hoey Hobson blushes like a girlie and squeals like one too.
He flushes. He squeaks.
He bleeds.
The latest recruit in Our Lady of Perpetual Succour’s desperate drive to retain boys until the end of primary school. Henry Hoey Hobson: the perfect candidate, a pin-up boy for Perpetual Suckers.
A bloodsucker now, according to the latest opinion poll.
I plucked my lip away from the implement of torture in my mouth and studied the ulcers lining my inner cheeks. Getting better, I concluded, and let it go.
I pushed away from the basin and almost barrelled over the top of a tiny kid who had skidded in under my guard. On reflex I reached out and caught him before he fell.
‘Whoa, little fella, sorry about that – you OK?’
He looked like a mushroom. All I could make out under the huge broad-brimmed hat were a couple of sturdy little arms and legs sprouting from the striped shirt and bottle-green shorts. I hoped he had a head. A headless prep kid would just about round off my first day as a Perpetual Sucker.
The hat tilted back and a pair of solemn brown eyes stared up at me.
‘You’re vewy tall.’ His voice was soft and growly like a lion cub’s, but those eyes, they were one hundred percent puppy.
I felt the braces grate against my lips as I stifled a smile; the kid was cute. ‘And you’re very short.’
‘No, I’m not.’ He jutted his chin. ‘I’m Sebastian.’
Hard to argue with that. I stuck out my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Sebastian. I’m Henry.’
He latched onto my hand and pulled me down to his level. He was surprisingly strong for a fungus. I dropped into a squat to avoid snapping my own spinal column. He leaned forward, right into my face, round eyes barely a handspan in front of mine.
‘You better be careful, Henwy.’ He glanced about, dropping his voice to a throaty whisper. ‘There’s a vampire in the boys’ toilet.’
He drew back to gauge my reaction, but for some weird reason I was more interested in his.
‘A vampire, huh? So what are youdoing in here then, Sebastian?’
He puffed up a solid little chest and roared like a miniature lion. ‘I’m not scared of any old vampire, mister.’
He risked another quick squiz round the empty washroom. ‘Have you seen it, Henwy? Is it here?’
I shook my head. ‘Nah, I haven’t seen anything.’ I bit my lip, unsure if adding more information would help my case any, but my answer seemed to satisfy the toadstool.
‘That’s good. ’Cos I really gotta pee. See ya.’ He scampered off into an empty stall, the door banging behind him.
The curiously empty toilet block was beginning to make sense.
I pushed myself back up onto my feet. Better make a move before I precipitated a genuine alarm. The last thing I needed was to be responsible for a spate of little accidents from any small fry less adventurous than Sebastian.
I straightened my shoulders, took a deep breath and ventured back out into the Lion’s Den.
CHAPTER THREE
Call it a death wish, but Sebastian’s defiance in the face of fear had inspired me. If a hip-high mushroom could face up to a vampire in an empty toilet block, then I could face down this first day.
Bring it on.
I made a beeline for Angelica, the leader of the pack. I wanted her to be the first to draw blood, to wound me so badly that I could take home the evidence. Let Mum see how I’d suffered, then rub her face in my injuries. Force her to accept that she’d been wrong to send me to this godforsaken school. Make her realise that I wasn’t ever going to be remade in their image, a Perpetual Sucker. Not now, not ever.
Angelica’s pretty face lit up as she whispered asides that made her posse scream with la
ughter. The pounding of my heart flushed blood to the surface, heating my skin to scalding. But still I marched on. Into the valley of death. Preparing to meet my doom.
I ground to a halt in front of her. She took a step towards me. We were exactly the same height. Our eyes met. Her lips parted and I caught a glimpse of white, even teeth.
Silence roared in my ears. The giggling had stopped. Everyone was waiting. For me. For Angelica. For someone, to say something.
A bead of sweat trickled down the side of my face. I didn’t trust my voice. I stood, dumb as a stump, waiting for the axe to fall.
A sly smile spread across her face. I stiffened –
‘Angelica, I hope you’re making Henry feel welcome.’
The mild tones of Mr Paulson, the principal, spun me round on the spot.
He was like a toy principal, a mini man. Shorter than me and I’m only twelve-and-a-bit years old. As short as my mum, who’s finer than a fairy’s fart and wears killer heels to make herself taller. They’d make a lovely matched pair of bookends, both small and perfectly formed, but for the one glaring difference. (Well, two if you count the fact that Mr Paulson is a bloke and Mum isn’t. She’s so not a bloke. With that soft blonde hair, the ridiculous girly heels and the short tight skirts, she barely qualifies as a mum, but don’t get me started...)
Anyway, the key difference between Mum and Mr Paulson is colouring. Mr Paulson is a ranga. Possibly the rangiest ranga of all time. The kind of iridescent springy-haired ranga that makes the reddest orangutan look dull in comparison. With matching freckles that sizzled like bacon bits in the white bun of his face. Poor man. Miniscule, with hair like fluorescent orange steel wool. His school days must have been hell.
But he’d remembered my name, after only meeting me the once, so maybe he wasn’t too bad. I remembered the school secretary, Mrs Newton, leaning in confidentially when Mum hauled me in for the interview. ‘You’ll like Principal Paulson,’ she whispered. ‘Knows the name of every child in this school.’ Then nodded, like that was a good thing.
Henry Hoey Hobson Page 1
