Charlie and the Rocket Boy and Charlie and the Great Escape

by Hilary McKay

  www.hodderchildrens.co.uk

  Look out for all the Charlie books!

  Charlie and the Cheese and Onion Crisps

  and Charlie and the Cat Flap

  Charlie and the Rocket Boy

  and Charlie and the Great Escape

  Charlie and the Tooth Fairy and Charlie

  and the Big Birthday Bash

  Charlie and the Haunted Tent

  and Charlie and the Big Snow

  For older readers:

  Saffy’s Angel

  (Winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award)

  Indigo’s Star

  Permanent Rose

  Caddy Ever After

  Forever Rose

  Caddy’s World

  Binny for Short

  Contents

  Charlie and the Rocket Boy

  Charlie and the Great Escape

  Sneak Peek

  Copyright

  If you liked this, you’ll love…

  1

  Best Friends

  Charlie and Henry were best friends. They had been best friends for years. They had met on the Naughty Bench on their first day at pre-school when they were three years old.

  Charlie had looked at Henry and thought, I bet I could push him off.

  Henry had looked at Charlie and thought, I bet I could squash him flat.

  As soon as the three-years-old Charlie and Henry had thought these thoughts, they had tried them out. Sure enough, Charlie had been quite right, he could push Henry off. And about five seconds later Henry found that he was also right. He could squash Charlie flat.

  Very soon Charlie and Henry were back on the Naughty Bench again and for various reasons they stayed there for the rest of the morning.

  And by home time they were best friends. Their mothers liked them being friends. It cheered them up. Secretly Charlie’s mother thought Henry was slightly worse than Charlie. Secretly Henry’s mother thought Charlie was slightly worse than Henry. It was nice for their mothers to think that they had only the second naughtiest boys in pre-school, instead of the absolute worst.

  Charlie and Henry lived very close to each other.

  They could play at each other’s houses whenever they liked, and when the playing turned into fighting they could be marched home in disgrace with no trouble at all. Very soon they were doing almost everything together: Easter egg hunts, haircuts, bonfire night and shoe shopping. Also chicken pox, nits, tummy bugs and colds, because if one of them got something the other one caught it too. One summer they discovered a wasps’ nest together and poked it with sticks until they were simultaneously attacked. One winter they both made traps for Father Christmas and very nearly caught him.

  When Charlie and Henry started school together their mothers sighed ‘At last!’, hugged each other with relief, and went out to lunch to celebrate. Charlie and Henry spent the next few weeks showing their classmates how easily they could knock each other over, and how well they could squash each other flat. But still, they stayed best friends. During lessons they sat together. At lunch time they ate together. At the end of the day they went home together.

  Sometimes teachers got tired of the whisperings and pushings and grabbings that went on at Charlie and Henry’s table and tried to separate them. This did not work. Charlie and Henry’s behaviour did not change. It just got noisier, because they were further apart.

  When Charlie and Henry were seven they moved into Mrs Holiday’s class. Mrs Holiday did not try to separate them. She said, ‘I might as well keep all the trouble in one place,’ and gave them a special red table very close to her desk.

  ‘Mrs Holiday colour codes the tables in her room,’ said Max, Charlie’s big brother, who had once been in Mrs Holiday’s class himself. ‘Red for danger.’

  ‘Mrs Holiday likes us,’ said Charlie and Henry, but they asked her about their red for danger table, just in case.

  ‘Where ever did you get such an idea?’ asked Mrs Holiday.

  ‘Max.’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Mrs Holiday. ‘Oh yes, I remember Max! Very tall! School chess team and brilliant at football!’

  ‘What colour was his table?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you,’ said Mrs Holiday. ‘He sat right at the back. How would you two like to be the donkey in our class Christmas play?’

  Charlie and Henry went suddenly silent with joy and surprise.

  ‘It would be perfect for you!’ continued Mrs Holiday. ‘Two wonderful starring parts! The head and the tail. I know I can trust you not to even think of fighting about who is which.’ Charlie and Henry, who had been about to fight about that very thing, said that of course they wouldn’t.

  ‘Very well then,’ said Mrs Holiday, and so Charlie and Henry, those two best friends, were the actual donkey in the actual play and they did it very well.

  ‘Perfect casting,’ said Mrs Holiday, and gave them real carrots wrapped in silver paper for their Christmas presents, instead of boring chocolate money like everybody else.

  ‘Told you she liked us!’ said Charlie to Max.

  After the Christmas play it was the end of term.

  And then it was Christmas.

  And then it was after Christmas, and Charlie and Henry felt like rockets that had gone up into space with a bang and a trail of stars and then come down all grey and flat and dismal to the same old planet Earth.

  ‘Happy New Year! How soon can we take down the decorations?’ asked Charlie and Henry’s mums.

  ‘Happy New Year! They will soon be back at school,’ said Charlie and Henry’s dads.

  ‘Happy New Year! Cheer up! Only three hundred and fifty eight days till Christmas!’ said Max.

  None of this cheered Charlie and Henry up at all.

  2

  Welcome Back!

  Christmas was over. The decorations were down. Now there was nothing to do but wait for Spring, and that was ages away. It was January, the coldest January anybody could remember for years.

  Also it was morning on the first day of term, and Mrs Holiday, teacher of Class 3, was in the office meeting a new boy who had just arrived.

  Zachary was the new boy. He had arrived very early and all alone. When Mrs Holiday first saw Zachary she thought she had never known a boy so new. He was as new as if he had been plonked down that morning into the middle of an alien world.

  Zachary had come with a letter from his last school.

  Zachary likes to talk about his family, it said. But often questions upset him, because he does not know the answers.

  Mrs Holiday could understand that. She did not ask questions. She just smiled and led him along the corridors to her class.

  ‘We have never had a Zachary before,’ she told him as they walked. ‘You will be our first.’

  ‘Maybe there are no more Zacharys,’ said Zachary. ‘Could be that I am the only one.’

  ‘That makes us very lucky then, doesn’t it?’ said Mrs Holiday.

  Zachary managed to smile a little.

  ‘Do you know what I say to myself at the start of term?’ asked Mrs Holiday. ‘I say, Courage!’

  ‘Courage?’

  ‘That’s right. It helps. And if somebody says it to me, that helps, too!’

  ‘Courage, Mrs Holiday!’ said Zachary.

  ‘Courage, Zachary!’ said Mrs Holiday, leading him into the empty classroom. ‘Now, let me find a home for you!’

  She looked around the classroom thoughtfully. Not at the back, where the brainy ones sat, that was too far away. Not with the boys whose favourite thing was football because Zachary from America would not know about En
glish football. Not on the blue table of never-stop-talkers where Zachary would never get a chance to speak. Not on the yellow table of perfect-school-uniform, huge-stuffed-pencil case people either. Zachary had arrived with nothing at all.

  ‘Here you are, Zachary!’ she decided at last and pulled out a chair for him. ‘Quite close to me, and a lovely view of the guinea pig!’

  So Zachary sat down and looked quietly at the guinea pig and the guinea pig looked quietly back at Zachary and the room was perfectly silent, waiting for the day to begin. Meanwhile, Charlie and Henry were on their way to school. Also they were in the middle of a quarrel about Henry’s new remote control car (which was lost somewhere at Charlie’s house) and Charlie’s new electric guitar (which Henry had retuned the day before with terrible string-snapping results).

  Charlie and Henry had spent most of the Christmas holiday quarrelling, starting the day after Christmas when the Curly Wurly from Charlie’s Selection Box and the Jelly Santa from Henry’s stocking had mysteriously gone missing.

  This morning Charlie and Henry were especially grumpy. They had not felt like getting up in the dark and putting on school uniform and eating chilly cereal and plodding up the road in the cold.

  WELCOME BACK!

  read a sign over the school front door.

  ‘I wish I was still in bed!’ grumbled Charlie, shrugging off his school bag in the cloakroom and accidentally hitting Henry in the eye.

  ‘I wish you were still in bed!’ said Henry crossly, pushing him out of the way.

  They stamped into the classroom not pleased with the world, and there was Zachary, sitting at their table.

  Charlie and Henry were shocked. In an instant they forgot the Jelly Santa and the Curly Wurly. The remains of the electric guitar and the lost remote control car (gone forever down the back of Charlie’s mum’s washing machine) suddenly did not matter. Instantly they were best friends again, the sort of friends who did not want anybody else. And each of them knew, without saying a word, that of all the people they did not want, they did not want this one most of all. This boy with the round blue eyes and round yellow curls and round pink face and no school uniform.

  ‘Why haven’t you got school uniform?’ hissed Henry to Zachary, the moment he sat down.

  ‘Because I’m not staying,’ said Zachary. ‘I’m only here for a while.’

  ‘Just today?’ asked Charlie hopefully.

  ‘More than that.’

  ‘Just this week then?’

  ‘No, more than that.’

  ‘How long then?’ demanded Charlie, forgetting to whisper, and Mrs Holiday, who had been filling in the register, said, ‘Charlie!’ and glared at him.

  Mrs Holiday had a glare like a weapon. Charlie always hated it when she aimed it at him. He could feel exactly where her eyes were pointing. They felt like two icy fingers on the back of his neck. Wriggling made no difference. So Charlie shut up.

  ‘I am trying to fill in the register,’ said Mrs Holiday, removing the icy fingers from Charlie for a moment and flicking them across to the top of Henry’s head. ‘And I would like a little hush.’

  Charlie rubbed the back of his neck, and Henry rubbed the top of his head, and they looked across at Zachary to see if he was sorry about getting them into all this trouble. The guinea pig came over to the bars of the cage to look as well. Zachary looked back at all three of them and smiled. A little smile for Charlie and Henry, and then a much bigger one for the guinea pig.

  Zachary didn’t seem to understand there was any trouble.

  He didn’t look sorry at all.

  3

  Zachary

  After she had finished the register Mrs Holiday introduced Zachary to the class. She said, ‘Zachary has come all the way from America to be with us for a while. I hope you will all be very good friends. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself, Zachary?’

  For a moment it looked like Zachary wouldn’t. He gazed around the class as if there was nothing he could tell them that they could possibly understand. But then he seemed to change his mind, and he stood up.

  He said, ‘My name is Zachary but most folks call me Zack. I am seven going on eight. I have come a long way. My dad is an astronaut on his way to a star.

  ‘It will take him two n’half years to get there, and two n’half to get back so I shall be more than thirteen when I see him again.’

  Then he sat down.

  There was moment of stunned silence, and then Class 3 erupted. They had never heard such a ridiculous story! They had never heard such awful showing off! Twenty-six hands shot up as high as they could reach. Several people jumped up, so as to get their hands even higher. The noise was immense. It sounded like the classroom was falling apart.

  ‘QUIET, EVERYONE!’ said Mrs Holiday in her loudest voice. ‘HENRY! PICK UP YOUR CHAIR! CHARLIE STOP SHOUTING! HANDS DOWN ALL OF YOU! Now, Zachary!’

  ‘Yes ma’am?’ said Zachary politely.

  ‘Thank you for talking to us. It is not easy to stand up like that and talk to so many people. You did very well indeed. Charlie, stop waving your hand about!’

  Charlie stopped waving his hand about because Mrs Holiday was looking so fierce. She would not let anyone ask a single question about Zachary’s father. She would not let anyone say that what he had told them could not possibly be true. She acted like she believed every word. Only Charlie was allowed to speak, and only after he had promised he really had something sensible to say.

  When Charlie was excited or bothered about something his voice went squeaky. It was squeaky now as he said,

  ‘If Zack is seven going on eight and it takes two’n’half years to get to the star and two’n’half to get back then that is only five years his dad will be gone. So Zack will be twelve when he gets home, not more than thirteen like he said.’

  ‘Good Heavens, Charlie!’ said Mrs Holiday, looking truly astonished. ‘I believe that is the first time I have ever heard you do maths on purpose! And you got it right! Zachary? Please can you explain to Charlie?’

  Zachary stood up again, as if he had been asked to explain to the whole class, not just Charlie.

  He said, ‘He’s got stuff to do when he gets there. He’s not going to go all that way and take all that time and then just turn right round and come back. He’s got to look around and do stuff.’

  Mrs Holiday was giving her class a look which said as plainly as speaking, Move one finger, speak one word, and you are all in at break time!

  ‘He’s got seeds to plant,’ said Zachary.

  ‘On a star?!’ exploded Henry, before he could stop himself.

  ‘Henry, apologize to Zachary or leave the room!’ ordered Mrs Holiday.

  ‘’Pologize, Zachary,’ muttered Henry furiously.

  ‘Seeds to plant,’ repeated Zachary, as if nothing at all had happened to interrupt him. ‘And then, I suppose he’ll have to hang around and wait and see if they come up. That’ll take time. So, I’m going to be thirteen when he gets back,’ Zachary paused. ‘I guess,’ he said, and sighed.

  Mrs Holiday seemed to want to change the subject. She said it had been very interesting to hear about Zachary’s father, and now they would do maths. They were doing charts and graphs, and she said they would make a chart called a bar chart showing everyone’s pets. Very quickly she began to write up on the board all the sorts of pets people had. She made everyone help.

  They counted five dogs, eleven cats, two rabbits, two hamsters, five guinea pigs, one cockatoo and nineteen goldfish and then Zachary put up his hand and said, ‘Four horses.’ Charlie and Henry jumped up so fast they banged their heads together.

  ‘Four horses?’ asked Mrs Holiday.

  ‘I have four horses,’ said Zachary.

  Mrs Holiday wrote FOUR HORSES at the bottom of her list on the board and took no notice of Henry and Charlie.

  ‘Anything else?’ she asked.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ said Zachary.

  The four horses went on to the chart with
all the rest of the animals.

  Mrs Holiday would not let anyone say that nobody has four horses.

  Once the four horses were down on the list Zachary took no more notice of the maths lesson. He sat through it as if it was something going on far, far away from him. As if he was peacefully watching it through a telescope, slightly interested and slightly sleepy.

  It was not the same for the rest of Class 3. To them it seemed the longest lesson ever, and they themselves felt like balloons blown up too hard and about to explode. Even Charlie (newly discovered mathematical genius) could hardly bear it.

  But at last it was break.

  The whole class rushed out into the playground and surrounded Zachary.

  They had decided what they thought about him, with his four horses, and his dad on a two and a half year long journey to a star. They sang,

  ‘Liar, liar! Pants on fire!

  LIAR, LIAR! PANTS ON FIRE!’

  Zachary stood and looked at them with his hands in his pockets and a little frown on his forehead, and his round blue eyes even rounder than ever.

  4

  Liar, Liar! Pants on Fire!

  ‘Disgraceful!’ exclaimed Mrs Holiday, appearing from nowhere and freezing them all into silence with one terrible look.

  ‘Inside, all of you! Zachary, wait here! Charlie and Henry, what do you think you are doing?’

  Charlie and Henry had not joined in the singing of ‘Liar, liar! Pants on fire!’ with everyone else. This was because in the mad rush to get out of the classroom Charlie had tripped over his feet and landed sprawled on the ground. While he was rolling around saying, ‘Oh, oh, nobody cares!’ Henry had seen the wonderful chance to sit on his friend’s stomach and tie the laces of his two shoes together in a big hard knot.