Clockworld

By Will Perks

"Now it's been acknowledged, now he's had to think about it, it won't go away. War Vladistov. One fucking conversation, two swigs of lukewarm beer, a crap almost-snog, the appearance of crazy Xiaoping Hathaway, and suddenly the world is way too complex for Josie to handle.

"Josie starts to get a bad feeling, a feeling he can't shake. A premonition of bad things to come.

"It chases him all the way back to the dorms like a shadow."

What do you get when you put a bunch of capital-P Problem Kids on a planet where almost all the vegetation is narcotic? An absolute disaster, but that's how it always is with teenagers. Josie, War, Ping and Aubrey--four broken boys stuck at on the other side of the Milky Way and fit together like pieces from four different jigsaw puzzles--struggle day to day with their own mounting personal problems. And that's before you consider the forest full of space drugs encroaching from every side of the campus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Will Perks
• Release date: May 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463727331

Will Perks

Imaginary.

Book preview

Clockworld

Copyright 2018 Will Perks

Published by Will Perks at Smashwords

Cover Artwork by Rob McCue

Will Perks can be found at http://www.gab.ai/willperks

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Table of Contents

Josie and War

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Lies, Lies, Lies

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Clockworld

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

What Happened to Xiaoping Hathaway

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Josie and War

Chapter One

The phone call with his dad is awkward. It’s always awkward. It’s not the words themselves but the silences, which seem to stretch on forever.

I haven’t quit the weed yet.

Silence.

I didn’t get any As this year.

Silence.

Yes, I’m still talking to Partington-Hale. He’s cleaned up his act, honest...

Silence.

If there is a god, Josie thinks, if there is a heaven and a hell, then limbo is his father’s silence, his judgement, the sound of him breathing on the other end of the phone, a million-and-something miles away across the Milky Way. And despite the pain, Josie still longs for him, longs for him desperately. His father’s approval is bound up inextricably in his homesickness, because home for Josie Cooper is his father’s hand on his shoulder. China, America, even bloody planet Clockworld, it doesn’t matter—Josie doesn’t feel connected to places, just to people. Just to that hand, solid and heavy as a rock, and the simple, wordless commune of father and son.

I’m still pretty queer, dad. I don’t think my counsellor is going to cure that.

His father says, I don’t want her to cure you of all men, Jocelyn. Just that one.

After they say their goodbyes, Josie goes for a walk in the grounds. Everything in Blackhall is bright and sweet; the air is redolent with the smells of fresh-blooming vanilla and lilac and jasmine, and the sun is high and warm. Clockworld is ripe with the raw potentiality of its second Spring. Students play frisbee and cricket in the sunshine, or sunbathe on towels in the shade. A fat boy with straight, dark hair is waiting for Josie under a big willow tree, reading a dog-eared book—The Prince.

Machiavelli, of course it’s Machiavelli. What else could possibly entertain Aubrey Partington-Hale?

Aubrey watches Josie and there’s nothing said, no invitation laid out there in the seamy Spring sunlight, but Josie knows what Aubrey’s feeling the same way he knows his father’s hand. Almost everything important that he says to Aubrey is said through silence. He lies back in the grass beside Aubrey and watches the clouds scudding past, quick and intangible as he imagines thoughts must be.

My problems are insignificant in comparison to the problems of the rest of the world, he tells himself, fiercely blinking back tears. I am just one person out of ninety billion. Nothing I will do or say will change the course of the universe.

He’s heard that it’s a tall-person thing, this: to feel better only when you feel small.

Chapter Two

On the bleachers, Thursday afternoon, with dusk creeping in quickly around the corners of the sky. Thirty metres below the boys of Blackhall’s uni-prep football team are jogging around the college oval, their skinny legs bouncing through an obstacle course of orange witches-hats. White wisps of air steam from their noses and mouths; sweat makes their skin gleam and their hair fall flat and lank across their foreheads. They make Josie think of horses, fine thoroughbred horses, proud and handsome. He’s always fancied athletic types. It’s not about their bodies but about the way they move, easily, effortlessly, like they aren’t bound by the rules of physics the way everyone else is. Like the limber little bastards could practically fly if they wanted to.

He leans back against the sharp wooden bench behind him and clicks his fingers impatiently until dippy, hippy Ping Hathaway, who’s sitting beside him, finally passes on the joint. Josie takes a long drag and holds it until his eyes start to water. Weed always makes him so mellow, which is a good thing out here. There’s nothing like checking out cute guys and being totally down with the universe at the same time.

You’ve dated one of them, haven’t you, Aubrey? he says. Years ago, I remember you saying.

The Slovak. We sort of didn’t-date for about three months. Aubrey, sitting on Josie’s left, pulls a face. Lots of clandestine meetings in ditches and bushes and even round the back of the Farmstead, because there was no way in piss he’d ruin his reputation by bringing me back to his dorm. Spent most of those three months picking twigs out of my hair and wishing I was with a guy who’d—oh look, he’s waving.

Josie looks down at the oval. The Slovak, a strikingly handsome youth with very black eyebrows, is flipping Aubrey the bird.

What a sweetheart, says Aubrey, unfazed, taking the joint and tucking it in the corner of his mouth. Aubrey smokes joints like he smokes cigarettes, with a sort of casual hunger—he doesn’t savour the high. It’s my uncle’s money that pays for his bloody sports scholarship, you know. If the little prick doesn’t change his attitude I’ll have it taken off him. Get him sent back to Eastern Europe. My uncle’ll probably like that, he’s a lifelong member of the BNP.

Bit harsh, don’t you think, Aubrey? Josie says.

Aubrey inspects the joint. Better than the rubbish Hathaway got us last month.

That’s not what I meant— Josie begins, but Aubrey’s smug grin tells him he shouldn’t bother. Aubrey is such a prat, an absolutely incorrigible prat, and his prattiness is starting to do