Reach

By Hugh Brown

Shy Will is finally forced to come out of seclusion, and reach past the myths of his past and the fantasies of his future, to grab hold of life. This witty first novel will wrap you up in its delightful word play as you join Will on his journey.
Raised by octogenarian grandparents after his narcissistic mother left to join a retreat centre, Will Clark is an uncomfortable mix of teenage shyness and adult candour. Fiercely loyal to his mother, he resents his father, whom he blames for her leaving. Convinced his Year twelve classmates think he's a loser, he retreats into the imaginary world of fantasy novels every chance he gets, entertaining himself between times with fantasy takes on the real life around him, with himself cast as the hero Superclerk. But, try as he might, Will can't keep reality at bay. As his first full-contact taekwondo fight looms ever closer, Woody the bull-necked prop starts bullying him, and his grandfather is taken to hospital with suspected cancer. And when his mother returns, his schoolmates begin treating him as if he's their friend - and Conway, the girl of his dreams, starts treating him like more than a friend - and Will is forced to question his vision of himself and his version of reality. Finally he musters the courage to join his peers, confront Woody, talk to Conway, and accept his parents for who they are. Ages: 10+

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Apr 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781743097243

Hugh Brown

Hugh Brown is a debut novelist and winner of the inaugural Tessa Duder Award for Young Adult Fiction.

Book preview

Contents

Cover

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

About the Author

Copyright

You want a hand?’ Will called.

Lloyd Clark, wiry and tireless, was digging in his huge vegetable garden, his white singlet patched with sweat. He put a gnarled boot on the shovel, pushed it in, then turned to his grandson.

‘Could do with a cuppa.’ He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead, the back of his neck. ‘Put the kettle on for us, will you?’ he said, then stumped across and retrieved his plaid shirt from the blackcurrant canes and shrugged it on.

Will headed inside to find that his grandma, Lucy, was already organizing afternoon tea. He carried the tray out to the verandah, then hurried back down the hall to take Lucy’s plate of perilously skating cheese-and-pickle crackers. On the verandah, Will passed the crackers to Lloyd, who took two and put them together like a sandwich.

Lucy eased herself into her wicker chair and started pouring the tea. ‘Your father popped in for lunch today,’ she said. ‘He was asking how your schoolwork’s going.’ She gave a small, exasperated sigh. ‘I do wish this teapot wouldn’t dribble. I’m forever having to wipe up after it.’

Lloyd reached for more crackers. ‘You have to give it a shake when you’ve finished —’

‘I’d still be wiping up after it, if the bath room’s anything to go by.’ She scowled good-humouredly as she gave Lloyd his tea.

‘What did you tell him?’ Will said.

‘You’re doing very well, except maybe at maths.’ She passed him the crackers. ‘Your mother didn’t like maths either, apparently.’

‘Another half-hour should do it,’ Lloyd said, looking across at the vege garden. ‘I can get some winter peas in. I’ll put up a bit of netting, train them up it. Messy buggers go all over the place otherwise.’ He handed his cup back for a refill.

‘Maybe you could put some netting in the bathroom while you’re at it,’ Will said. Lucy chuckled softly as she held the lid and tipped the pot up, getting the last of the tea.

‘Now who does that remind you of?’ Lloyd said, looking at the final drips coming out. He shook his head. ‘The old waterworks ain’t what they used to be. Must’ve swallowed too many tea leaves over the years and now they’re blocking up the spout.’ Lloyd gulped his second cup and stood up. ‘Better get back to it. Garden won’t dig itself.’ He put his hands up to his head, fingers pointing like horns. ‘And then The Hexing Hour will be upon us.’

Will poked at a floating tea leaf until it sank. ‘What else did Dad have to say?’

Lucy gazed down across the lawn at the magnolia. One creamy flower was freshly opened and not yet bruised by rough weather. ‘He didn’t have much to say.’ A fantail flew onto the verandah, tumbling and twisting through the air like a tiny circus act. Lucy picked up the empty teapot, tried unsuccessfully to refill her cup, then put it down again. She reached over, stroked Will’s dark curls. ‘I know you’re dying to see your mother again now she’s back in the country, but I’m sure she’ll let you know as soon as she’s set up enough for you to visit.’

It was only three minutes from his grandparents’ house to the Town Flats, the lower twelve hectares of his father’s farm. From there you could go cross-country all the way to the top of Bill Clark’s land in the foothills. Further than that there were pine plantations, regional parks, and no people as far as the eye could see. Most days after school Will did a training run to the top of the farm and back — forty-five minutes if he didn’t stop on the way. And most Sundays he went over into the wild bushland behind his father’s farm, sometimes running for hours. He’d never been good at sprints, but the endurance of long-distance running appealed to him, and satisfied his occasional overpowering desire to be alone.

Near the top of the Town Flats, Will slowed to a walk. Over on his right, across the Long Paddock and the Triangle, was his dad’s house. He took a Granny Smith out of his pocket, polished its greasy green skin on his sweatshirt, took a bite. Sour and crisp, his favourite apple.

There didn’t seem to be anybody about but he couldn’t be sure — it was hard to see the house itself, half-buried, like a bewitched fairytale castle, in the overgrown garden his mother had planted.

Over by the macrocarpas his father’s dogs, Don and Sharp, started to bark. Will threw his apple core to the cattle in the next paddock and carried on running.

When he got up to the bush-choked gullies near the top of the farm he went right, to Dead Dog Gorge, pushing himself until his breath sobbed, daring his feet not to find the narrow sheep track that wound through the trees clinging to the rocky slope.

Above the gorge it was grassland again. He ran along Hawk Ridge, past Kanuka Creche — a stand of trees where his father used to leave him as a preschooler while he mustered the slopes further north — and on up to the foothills’ summit, Harrier’s Rest.

He stopped there to get his breath, stretching his arms like wings, his body a thin rind pounded by his heart’s pulse and the buffeting wind. Then, once he had stopped gasping, he let himself fold, curving into a t’ai chi pattern his taekwondo teacher had taught him, the gestures melting and moulding together. When he had finished it he moved on to the hard lines and straight edges of his taekwondo poomsae, ending with a kihap — the fierce shout meant to focus power and intimidate enemies — down the hills towards the plains of Springton.

The lunch bell had scarcely stopped ringing when Will made it to the music annex. He smiled at Mr Mountbatten, who let him book practice-room L for every morning tea and lunch break, even though he no longer played the violin.

Will went into ‘his’ room and sat down. He got out his lunch, and that day’s book, Kron Detharm: Chronicles of a Smoking Sword. After unwrapping the pile of sandwiches, he flipped through them like unopened letters. What had his grandma given him today? There was stew, sliced potato and pickle, and mashed carrot-and-parsnip delight. He grinned as he reordered them so he could start on the delight, getting it over with, then potato, finishing with stew. As his hand groped for his first sandwich he started to read.

When he had chosen the next, he glanced out the window, which looked over to the other side of the asphalt quadrangle where his Year Twelve classmates ate their lunch. Tim Perkins, known universally as ‘Perky’, was tilting his head back and holding up something dark-red and glistening. It looked like a huge leech. He made it wriggle as he opened wide, then slowly lowered the writhing food into his mouth and took a bite. He chewed with exaggerated satisfaction, before offering the rest to Matt and Stella, who were sitting on either side of him. He got no takers. Stella, clearly unimpressed, jabbed at him viciously with her elbow, whereas Matt Knowles, the First XV’s star number eight, merely ignored him. Matt had a certain calmness that meant everyone, including the teachers, treated him with due caution. Conway Jones, sitting next to Stella, was reading and didn’t even notice what was going on.

As Will watched, Conway finished her first comic and her fourth samosa at precisely the same moment. Without even looking up, she got another comic, then a fifth samosa and an apple. Even from that distance Will could see it was a Golden Delicious. How appropriate.

Perky dangled another gobbet of food in the air, but even Stella ignored him this time. Perky called his current diet — which he’d described in lavish detail to Will during class one day — the ‘lion diet, because it’s all raw’. It consisted of uncooked liver, eggs and carrots. His last lunch phase had been a cup of soaked wheat sprinkled with tamari, and a side serving of sauerkraut. What would he do once people stopped noticing raw liver, Will wondered. Live rats?

From where he sat, Will could just see between H and D blocks to the playing fields, the houses and, beyond them, the slopes of the Springton foothills. Up there he knew there would be a cool afternoon sea breeze, skylarks and space. Will stretched his legs under the desk, then returned to his book.

The first bell rang — time to come in from the playing fields. Will flicked through the pages: twelve left. Maths was in the next block so he could get there in about a minute, and he had five minutes from the first bell until he had to be in class. Just enough time to find out what happened to Kron in the end. He concentrated furiously — arm-pumping, lung-burning reading; eyes skimming across the pages.

Still reading, he started walking. He vaguely heard a group of boys coming in late from the playing fields, but paid them no attention. Kron carved a bloody path through the fell army of King Murklor, frantic lest the —

The book was snatched out of his hands. Jared Wood, who played loosehead prop in the First XV with Matt, had recently started hassling Will whenever their paths crossed.

‘Fascinating!’ Woody said. ‘Blah blah blahdy blahdy blah,’ he read as he walked back to his smiling friends. ‘Thanks, Wet Willy,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘I’ve always wanted to try reading a book. Now off to class or you’ll be late.’

Will started towards the bull-necked prop. Woody scampered behind a couple of his team-mates. ‘Ah, ah, he’s coming to get me!’ he squealed. ‘Help!’ Several of his mates laughed as they watched Will — tall, lean, barely shaving.

‘Can I have my book back?’ he asked, wishing he didn’t sound so nervous.

Woody cowered behind his friends. ‘Aaahhh, he’s threatening me!’

Feeling his hands beginning to shake, Will put them in his pockets, then turned away and headed to class. He heard a scuffling and looked back to see that Matt had Woody in a headlock and was knuckling the top of his head. Matt grabbed Will’s book and thwacked Woody on the shoulder. ‘See you at practice,’ he said, grinning, then ran over to Will and handed him the book.

‘Thanks,’ Will said, embarrassed at having to be rescued. Only two pages to go.

‘Maths with Ms Herne. Gotta love it,’ Matt said, looking in through the window. Most of the class were already seated and the whiteboard was half-full.

He waved at someone. ‘Be still my beating heart,’ he said. Will looked at him quizzically. ‘Conway was watching. No wonder Woody was being a dick.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought she was his type.’

‘Have you got eyes? She’s anyone’s type. And she’s smart, sarky, takes no shit … The real question is: who’s her type?’ Matt nudged him with his elbow. ‘Maybe it’s Will Clark.’

‘Doubt it,’ he said. Especially not after being treated like the school geek by Woody the sports jock. Not a chance. Will tried to check if Conway was still looking, but the sky had darkened and now all he could see was the reflection of white and grey cumulus rolling down from the foothills.

Sometimes, when he was thinking about doing maths, Will imagined he could feel how it all fitted together — sort of like a three-dimensional web glistening with jewels of dew in the morning sunshine.

He tilted his chair back and rocked.

Unfortunately, doing maths was actually more like being a daddy-long-legs fly that had to get through the sadistic Matharachnid’s vast sticky web without getting his snappable legs or gossamer wings fatally snarled and gummed.

On Will’s left, Perky had finished. Now he was flicking through the textbook to see if he could find anything harder. On Will’s right, Matt was steadily writing down neat rows of working. Two tables away, Conway was poking the end of her pencil into the corner of one eye and frowning. He knew it was pathetic, but seeing her having difficulty made him feel a little better. He looked at her desk and realized she was reading a comic. Ms Herne noticed it, too.

‘You won’t find the answers to your quadratic equations in there, Conway.’

‘I’ve finished,’ she said.

‘Excellent. Bravo. Now you do the exercises on page ninety-five.’

‘Weren’t they for if we felt like extending ourselves?’

‘Yes. If you’ve finished the first set already, you need extending. Do them.’

‘I’m pretty happy where I am.’

Ms Herne spun the whiteboard duster in the air and caught it with her other hand. ‘Ha ha,’ she said dryly. ‘Now put the comic away. How’s everyone else doing?’

Perky stretched his arms over his head and yawned. ‘Are there any more in the book anywhere? Or another book?’

‘Any more extending and you won’t fit out the door,’ Will muttered.

Ms Herne picked up a book from her desk and gave it to Perky. ‘Keep it. I’m getting sick of having to copy extra bits out of it for you. Whenever you finish what everyone else is doing, use that.’ He turned to the beginning of the book and started reading.

‘The rest of you keep going. Let me know if you need help.’

Will glanced down at the exercises. When they looked the same as the examples Ms Herne had given them, he could do them easily. But as soon as they morphed into some other freakily shaped mathematical monster his learned plan of attack was completely useless. He was clearly the only one who had missed Ms Herne’s lesson titled ‘Mathematical morphing, mutation and replication: counter spells and charms; effective death strikes’.

And, speaking of mutants, why had Woody suddenly started bothering him? It was the third time in about a week. Was it better to ignore it, or try some sort of verbal counter-attack? If Woody lost face in front of his friends he’d probably get nastier … and anyway if it came to any sort of confrontation, Will knew he wouldn’t know what to say and would end up making a complete idiot of himself. For the umpteenth time Will wished that his fictional alter-ego Superclerk — of the quick-witted repartee and lightning-fast reflexes — was his real self.

Superclerk of Wintersville

A dark shadow fell across Superclerk’s book. Even though he was utterly engrossed in his reading, Superclerk’s finely tuned senses told him that the huge form blotting the scant sun was a Sterdroid — one of the President’s personal bodyguards. Part steroid-enlarged human, part android-enhanced machine, and entirely the last word of the law, the Sterdroids made the President’s slightest whims into reality. This particular Sterdroid was the most famous and celebrated of them all: Wojo Dread. He snatched at Superclerk’s book, but the slim hero of the People — the lowest class of Citizen in Wintersville — flicked it out of reach.

‘Wojo Dread, thrice winner of the coveted title of Behemoth in the Presidential Games, tired of being a mere champion in the physical sports of Endure, Deft, Speed, and Control, decides to branch out into the subtle intellectual pursuit that is Ling — the bionic battle of words. Excellent.’ Superclerk smiled up at him with clerical joie de vivre. ‘Does that mean I can look forward to meeting you in the debating ring?’

‘Where People-scum like you get book, eh? Sewers where father fishes, guess,’ Wojo sneered.

‘Perhaps my mother found it in the algae tanks,’ Superclerk suggested. ‘But really, one doesn’t become a Lingmeister such