Looking for Trouble

  John Marsden has been looking for trouble most of his life and managing to find it. He spent so much of his time at school in the detention room that a teacher offered to name it after him. When he left school he dropped out of four different university courses in five years, while trying more jobs than are found in a Centrelink office. At one stage he found himself working alongside Australia’s most notorious drug boss; at another, guarding Australia’s oldest house against ghosts and vandals; at another, hiding on a hilltop spying on a factory. He has worked in abattoirs, orchards, pizza shops and morgues.

  Eventually he made his way into teaching and began a satisfying and rewarding career working in schools in New South Wales and Victoria. But the publication of his first book changed his life again and he is now a full-time writer.

  John enjoys enormous popularity among young readers. In 1999 three of his books from the Tomorrow Series, The Night is for Hunting, The Dead of the Night and The Third Day, the Frost, were shortlisted for a YABBA award, and Staying Alive in Year 5 was nominated for a KOALA award.

  John Marsden can be visited at his website:

  www.johnmarsden.com.au/

  Also by John Marsden

  So Much to Tell You

  The Journey

  The Great Gatenby

  Staying Alive in Year 5

  Out of Time

  Letters from the Inside

  Take My Word for It

  Looking for Trouble

  Tomorrow … (Ed.)

  Cool School

  Creep Street

  Checkers

  For Weddings and a Funeral (Ed.)

  This I Believe (Ed.)

  Dear Miffy

  Prayer for the 21st Century

  Everything I Know About Writing

  Secret Men’s Business

  The Rabbits

  Norton’s Hut

  Marsden on Marsden

  Winter

  The Tomorrow Series

  Tomorrow, When the War Began

  The Dead of the Night

  The Third Day, the Frost

  Darkness, Be My Friend

  Burning for Revenge

  The Night is for Hunting

  The Other Side of Dawn

  Pan Macmillan Australia

  First published 1993 Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This Pan edition published 1996 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited,

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © JLM Pty Ltd 1993

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  cataloguing-in-publication data:

  Marsden, John, 1950-.

  Looking for trouble.

  ISBN 978-1-74334-621-1

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

  This electronic edition published in 2012 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Looking for trouble

  John Marsden

  EPUB format 978-1-74334-621-1

  Macmillan Digital Australia www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  When I was a child my favourite stories were those of the late Nan Chauncy, three-time winner of the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award. Though we both lived in Tasmania, I never met her, but I still think she’s our best ever writer for young people. I dedicate this book to her, with thanks for the pleasure her writing has given me.

  Thanks to:

  Jessica Russell

  Jackson Watson

  Lynette Jessup

  Andrew Gibson

  Christian Lohberger

  Hannah Madin

  for ideas and stories

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by John Marsden

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Begin Reading

  Tuesday, Jan 28, 5 pm

  Sixteen hours before I start school again and things have not kicked off well. I opened my bag to pack it for tomorrow and the first thing I found was my lunch from December 17 last year. There was an orange, a piece of cheese and something that might have been a salami and tomato sandwich. I didn’t eat it then because we had our Christmas party at school, and I’m not going to eat it now. The second thing I found was half a Mars Bar. I don’t know where it had come from, or where it had been, but I checked the use-by date and it still had two months to go. So I wiped off the dust and fluff and recycled it. It didn’t taste too bad.

  Another thing in the bag was a letter to Mum from the Principal about a school council meeting. Maybe I should recycle that too, into the garbage bin. Hide the evidence.

  We’ve just been shopping for school stuff, leaving it a bit late, but we didn’t have much money till last Friday when Dad finally got paid for a job he did way back in November. So it came just in time. I had to get new shoes and some pens, and Dad shouted me a box of Derwents. Jodie had to get a new lunch box and a pencil case and some pens too, and Dad shouted her a calculator. We must have spent about a hundred bucks. It’s lucky parents have kids, I reckon, ’cos they wouldn’t know what to spend their money on otherwise. I said that to Dad and he chased me through the house with a chain saw. Well, maybe not a chain saw. It was actually his electric toothbrush.

  Wednesday, Jan 29, 10 am

  Oh no, what a shock! I got Mrs Hazell, and everyone reckons she’s so crabby. I hoped I’d get Mrs Falzarano or Mr O’Keeffe or the new teacher. But my luck ran out. Well, at least I’m with Luke and Phil, and there’s a new girl at the next desk who’s really pretty. Right now, we’re not doing much, just getting our books and putting our names on things. In a few minutes we have to write our autobiographies. That’ll be the third time in twelve months—we had to do it at the start of last year, then again in September when we changed teachers. I think I’ll store it on a disc for next year in case we get it again in high school.

  2.15 pm

  Mrs Hazell just got mad for the first time. This is going to be a long year. It was Phil who copped it. Helen was pushing past him to get the Maths books and she said ‘Excuse me’ and Phil said ‘We did, as soon as we saw you’, and Mrs Hazell heard him and gave him this long lecture about manners and respect and the way boys treat girls and all this stuff. I thought she’d never stop.

  After six weeks holiday you get pretty wrecked by a day’s school. I’m not catching the bus home ’cos Mum’s picking me up—she’s enrolling Jodie and me in swimming classes. I want to learn butterfly this year. I wouldn’t mind some diving lessons too, but you have to pay for those, I think.

  Thursday, Jan 30, 11.45 am

  Phil and Helen are at war again, just like they were by the end of last year. They’re at each other all the time. Phil says to Helen ‘You’re a pain’ and she says back ‘You go beyond pain’. Phil’s trying to learn how to
thread a needle, in craft, and Helen whispers, loud enough for everyone to hear: ‘It’d be quicker to train a dinosaur’. Helen makes a mistake in Spelling Baseball and Phil goes ‘Helen, if brains were rain you’d be a drought’.

  I don’t know why they hate each other. I think Helen liked Phil last year and he pretended he liked her for a while, then she heard what he really thought. The girls go on and on about that sort of stuff sometimes.

  Mrs Hazell started reading us this book before Recess. I’ve got to admit, she reads pretty well. She puts a lot of expression in her voice, and makes it sound exciting. The book’s called A Line to the Top and it’s about these kids who see a robbery and because they’re the only witnesses they help the police find the guys. I wish something like that would happen around here. My life is seriously boring. I get up in the morning, have the same stuff for breakfast, get the bus, have school all day, go home, watch TV, have tea, do Homework, watch more TV, go to bed. The first few days of school are good each year, but it gets boring after that. In Year 5 Mr Quigley asked us what the best thing about school was and I said ‘Recess and lunchtime’. Phil said ‘Going home’. Luke said ‘Holidays’. But to be honest, holidays can get boring too.

  8.50 pm

  I’m in bed writing this. I’ve only got ten minutes before I get my lights turned off. I reckon it’s really unfair that Jodie’s fifteen months younger than me and she goes to bed at the same time I do. She’s so spoilt. The younger one always gets it easy, if you ask me. Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to write about. I just wanted to put down that it looks like there’s new people moved in down the street at number 17. It’s where Paul Choo, who was my best mate, used to live, before they went to Greendale. There was a truck unloading stuff when I was coming home from school, and there were lights on there tonight. I wonder who they are and if they’ve got kids. Whoa, here comes Mum to turn off my lights.

  Friday, Jan 31, 4 pm

  Today was pretty good. Mrs Hazell only cracked at us once, when she found Terry had scratched the desk about six times while he was cutting out stuff for Art. I don’t blame her. Terry’d have any teacher making a move for the Mortein. He was bad last year and he looks like he’ll be worse this year. Mr Quigley couldn’t control him too well, but maybe Mrs Hazell’ll do a better job.

  We had a bit more of A Line to the Top, where the kids think they see the men the police are looking for but it turns out they’re Red Cross workers doing a doorknock. Bit of a bad mistake that one.

  After lunch we started a game of cricket that we’re going to finish next week. It’s A to L’s against M to Z’s, going by our family names, so we’ve got Nick and Luke and Karen, who’d be the best three players in the class except for Darren. We batted and got 78. Luke got 25, when you have to retire, Karen got 18, Nick got a duck and I got 14. I got given out stumped but I reckon I was in. My back foot was still on the line, and that’s in. We should have action replays.

  Saturday, Feb 1, 8 am

  Jodie just ran in and gave me a pinch and a punch for the first of the month. I wish I’d never taught her that. She’s getting quite strong. Dad’s going through the papers looking for jobs and when he’s finished I’ll help him wash the truck. Auntie Sal and Uncle Ben are coming over for lunch. That means I’ll have to look after Toby again. I hope I do a better job than last time. Last time I left him alone for three minutes while I went to the toilet, and when I got back he’d taken the goldfish out of the bowl and was cooking it on the heater. I rescued it just in time but I wasn’t too surprised when it died the next week.

  Sunday, Feb 2, 9.30 am

  Phil and Luke came over yesterday at about five o’clock, when Auntie Sal and Uncle Ben were just leaving. Toby had been good, but he started showing off when Phil and Luke arrived, so I wasn’t too sorry to belt him into the car. I mean, put the seat belt on him. I got my bike and we went down to the soccer ground for a kick. Passing the Choos’ old house we slowed down and had a good look. There were people there all right, and they must have kids ’cos there was a bike on the lawn and a tricycle in the drive. Out the front they’d put a whole heap of boxes and rubbish from the unpacking. But all the blinds were down, so you couldn’t see anything else.

  We played 3 on 3 with some older Italian kids who were at the soccer club. It was good, except when Phil chucked a fit at Luke for not passing him the ball, with the goal wide open. I reckon Luke should stick up for himself more. Phil gets too bossy sometimes. Anyway, after the game finished, we went over to the swings and sat on them and talked. We were talking about the book Mrs Hazell had been reading us, the Line to the Top one. I had this idea that I wanted to try on Phil and Luke. I thought we should start a club to see if we could solve some crimes ourselves. I mean there’s that many crimes going on nowadays, with kidnappings and murders and shoplifting and stuff. Mrs Lee had her car stolen last week and the police don’t seem to have done much about that. If we could only find one good clue, or catch just one person, we could be famous and get rewards and be on the News and ‘Minute by Minute’ and all those shows.

  So that’s what I suggested, and Phil and Luke thought it was a pretty cool idea, so we agreed we’d do it. We decided to call ourselves LFT, which means Looking for Trouble. In the book the kids called themselves the Junior Bureau of Investigations which we thought was a bit sterile. We decided to have a badge that Luke would design ’cos he’s the best at Art, and a password, which we’d change every day, and an office, which would be our garage, seeing we don’t have Dad’s car any more.

  Then, instead of passwords, we decided to have pass-sentences. Phil chose the first one. One of us had to say:

  These are my trousers,

  going to my shoes,

  and the other one had to answer:

  These are what I pull down,

  for doing Number Two’s.

  I don’t know where he got that from. He said he’d made it up, but I doubt it. I don’t think it was too good as a pass-sentence because we kept laughing too much every time we tried to say it.

  We went back to my place to have a look at the garage. It was a bit of a mess, but we fixed up an office in the back corner by putting an old door across two forty-four gallon drums to make a desk. Then we got some kero tins for chairs and a box for a filing cabinet. Phil said he’d bring a pair of binoculars from his father and Luke said he’d get pens and paper and stuff like that. We made a sign saying LFT, and we got some clothes from the rag-bag for disguises.

  It’d be hard to disguise Phil though. He’s quite big and his hair’s the colour of liquorice, even his eyebrows. Luke’d be easier, except for his glasses. Luke’s skinny, so what you could do is stuff a cushion down his shirt, then stick potato slices in his cheeks to make his face fatter. I read about that in a book somewhere.

  Dad came in while we were setting everything up and said ‘What are you doing?’ and we said ‘Making a cubbie’. Jodie came in and said ‘What are you doing?’ and we said ‘Minding our own business’.

  7.15 pm

  Mum’s watching the News on TV which is really boring, so I’ve come in here to write this.

  I think the big problem with LFT is finding some crimes. No, the biggest problem is the pass-sentence, because every time we say it, we crack up laughing. We were saying it all day.

  But crimes are going to be hard to find. I mean, I’m eleven years old and I’ve never seen a murder or a bashing or a bank robbery. Phil was being a big help, going ‘Look, there’s a guy not wearing a seat belt’ or ‘Look, that kid just dropped a bottle top’. I wanted to find some major crime, like drug smuggling or a prison breakout.

  We went down the pool and splashed around. Luke got warned for doing bombs. That bloke down there, Danny or whatever his name is, the life-saver, thinks he’s so tough, strutting around all day in his Speedos, trying to impress the girls. He hates us because we keep laughing at him, so then he busts us for every little thing. Anyway, when he warned Luke, Phil raced after Luke and grabbed him
and said ‘I arrest you in the name of LFT’. Danny couldn’t work out why we fell in the water laughing.

  8.30 pm

  Just had to leave this for a bit. Dad got a phone call from the foreman at Crest Paints, offering him two days’ work, so I went out to help him put the gates on the truck. It’s lucky he got those gates I reckon—he gets a lot of work with them. Crest Paints is hard though. You can get 40 drops on a Monday. I know, because I’ve done it with Dad quite often in the holidays. One day we got the city run, 53 drops and not home till half past six.

  Monday, Feb 3, 11.30 am

  This is a free writing time, so I can really get into this. Today’s pass-sentence is, one person says:

  Hold my spout, hold my spout,

  the other one answers:

  Stop my insides coming out.

  I don’t know how Phil thinks of them. He’s the smartest person I know.

  Mrs Hazell was in a terrible mood this morning. Maybe she had a bad weekend. As soon as I walked in she yelled at me for leaving the door open. She puts these sayings on the board every day, and today’s one is ‘Least said, soonest mended’. Wish she’d apply it to herself.

  At the bus stop this morning were some kids who I think are from the Choos’ old house. I’d never seen them before, anyway. They were in the street, just ahead of me, walking to the bus stop, and I don’t think they’d been past our place or I’d have seen them from the kitchen window. So they probably did come from the Choos’. There was a red-headed kid, about our age, and a fair-headed boy who looked like about Year 3, and a little girl who’d only be in about Year 1, I’d reckon.

  None of them were in school uniform, just jeans and stuff.

  I saw the red-headed guy again at recess—I think he’s in Mrs Falzarano’s class. If they’re at the bus stop tomorrow I might say something to him.