Tom Jones Saves the World Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One: Tom Jones and the Bottle Top Collection

  Dead parents

  Thomas

  The house

  A gated community

  Arnold

  Our old town

  Barbara

  Shock! Horror! Belly!

  School

  Class 6 W

  Bribery

  Time and motion

  Money

  Chapter Two: Grandpa Jones and the Funeral

  Grandpa Jones

  Shock! Horror! Drunk!

  The Grandpa Jones list of things to do at a funeral

  The moon and the stars

  The deal

  Chapter Three: Cleo and the Escape Plan

  Cleo and the pinhead parents

  Aunt Ruth and Uncle Robert

  Cleo, the snake, and how to be instantly popular

  Tom and the snake girl

  Tom and Cleo

  Cleo’s bright idea

  The plan

  Cleo’s house

  Cleo, the archeologist

  Friends in prison

  Tom, the gardener

  Tom

  The escape hatch

  The prison gates

  Chapter Four: The First Day of Freedom

  Escape

  Cleo—snake-charmer, escape-expert, and Queen of the Nile

  The right side of the fence

  The phone call

  Saturday—yabbies, bulls and being a carnivore

  Lunch

  Snob!

  Chapter Five: The Gardens of Mercy

  Outside the gates, okay

  Mercy Gardens

  Tom’s visit

  Tom and Grandpa Jones

  Chapter Six: Gobbledegook, And the History of Tom’s Family

  Cleo

  Gobbledegook

  The history of Arnie and Grandpa Jones

  Thick shakes

  Uncle Robert, the pop-star

  Chapter Seven: Cleo, the Genius

  Cleo’s bright idea # 2

  Tom, bottle tops, and Cleo the genius

  Cleo’s letter

  Long and loud

  Tom’s bottle top collection

  Exclusive?

  Chapter Eight: Barbara, To the Rescue!

  Mercy Gardens calls

  Grandpa

  Tom’s dream

  Slow and steady

  Barbara to the rescue

  Two secrets

  Tom

  Whose letter?

  The Treasure Chest of Mystery

  Cleo’s letter #2

  Chapter Nine: Tom Falls In Love ... with a Dictionary!

  Cleo plan # 3

  My love affair with the dictionary

  Dinner with Dad

  Rejoice (meaning “to celebrate, have fun, etc”)

  Thomas extends his vocabulary

  Cleo

  Tom

  Double gobbledegook?

  A virus

  After three days, a breakthrough?

  Breakfast

  Chapter Ten: Quivering Lips, Trembling Hands, Beating Hearts and Other Stuff

  Grandpa and the bottle tops from China

  Quivering lips, trembling hands, beating hearts and other stuff

  Thursday afternoon

  Cleo, and ladders

  The parcel and the possiblilities

  Dead parent wish #9, or not?

  Cheating

  Uncle Robert and Aunt Ruth at morning tea

  Like riding a bike

  Murchison Creek

  Bulls, Hamburgers, and Dads

  The reason there are so many dead parents in books

  Almost caught

  Two words for a moron

  Chapter Eleven: Cleo’s Last and Absolutely Final Plan

  Tree

  Skimming stones

  What is Dad saying?

  Cleo’s last and absolutely final plan

  Perfect

  Uncle Robert’s surprise

  Strangely normal

  Chapter Twelve: The Time of His Life

  Saturday

  The time of his life

  Lunch, and music

  The music

  Copyright

  TOM JONES SAVES THE WORLD

  Steven Herrick is one of Australia’s most popular poets. He has published ten books of poetry for adults, young adults, and children.

  His three verse-novels for young adults— Love, ghosts and nose hair; A place like this and the simple gift were all shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year Awards and the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.

  Steven’s verse novel for younger readers, The Spangled Drongo, won the Patricia Wrightson Prize at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

  Over the past ten years he has performed his poems throughout Australia in schools, pubs, universities, festivals, rock venues and on radio and television. He has also toured Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and Singapore. He is one of Australia’s most travelled and widely heard poets. Steven lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner and two sons.

  Also by Steven Herrick

  Young Adult Fiction series

  Water Bombs

  Love, ghosts and nose hair

  A place like this

  The Simple Gift

  Storybridge series

  My Life, My Love, My Lasagne

  Poetry to the Rescue

  Love Poems & Leg Spinners

  The Spangled Drongo

  Jam Roll series

  The Place Where the Planes Take Off

  PRAISE FOR TOM JONES SAVES THE WORLD

  As one of Australia’s favourite poets, he crafts his work brilliantly, and the underlying message will benefit all ages.

  Lyndon Riggall

  The Examiner

  Steven Herrick’s unconventional storytelling works well, injecting an immediacy and intimacy that illustrates the importance of family ties and the love of true friends.

  Russ Merrin

  Magpies

  After a succession of heroes battling with difficulties after the loss of parents here Herrick turns the tables and creates an ‘over-parented’ hero who longs to be an orphan like the boys in the books he reads! ... A jaunty, funny and sentimental verse novel.

  The Source

  Chapter One

  TOM JONES AND THE BOTTLE TOP COLLECTION

  Dead parents

  Sometimes

  I wish I was like

  those kids I read about

  in books.

  The kids who live with

  weird Aunts because their parents

  died in a car accident

  or

  of some heartbreaking disease.

  The kids who lead exciting lives

  without parents to moan about

  unfinished homework

  unmade beds

  uncombed hair.

  When these kids

  don’t do homework

  or don’t make their beds

  eve
ryone thinks

  “oh, that’s all right,

  they’re still recovering from the loss.”

  Even when the accident

  happened ten years ago,

  the kid is allowed

  to be a slob.

  Don’t get me wrong.

  I don’t want

  Mum and Dad to die.

  Maybe if they went

  to live in another country

  for twenty years

  and left me alone?

  That would be enough.

  Thomas

  My name is

  Thomas Wilbur Johannas Harold Jones.

  But, please, call me Tom.

  Everyone else does,

  except Dad

  who calls me Thomas

  because he says Tom

  is what you call a stray cat,

  and Mum

  who calls me Darling,

  or Sweetie,

  or if I do something wrong, Honey.

  (Now you know what I mean

  about dead parents.)

  I live in a big brick home

  in a new suburb

  called Pacific Palms.

  Between us and the Ocean

  are five suburbs—

  Pacific Meadows

  Pacific Green

  Pacific Heights

  Pacific Crescent

  and, of course,

  Pacific Beach.

  Because of our name

  every house has a palm tree

  planted smack-bang

  in the middle of the frontyard.

  There are no other trees.

  Everyone has planted

  shrubs instead.

  That’s all Mum

  and Mrs Johnson next door

  talk about.

  “Your camellias are looking lovely, dear.”

  “Why thank you, Mrs Johnson.

  And so are yours.”

  Dead Parent Wish # 1

  The house

  The Real Estate Agent

  said it was an

  “architect-designed

  five-bedroom, two-bathroom

  slice of heaven set

  among immaculate gardens

  in the prestigious gated-community

  of Pacific Palms”.

  Well, the architect

  must have been very popular

  because I’ve already counted

  fifty-two houses

  exactly the same as ours.

  Yes, it does have five bedrooms–

  one for Mum and Dad,

  one for me,

  and three for Dad’s

  bottle top collection.

  (Dead Parent Wish # 2).

  The bathrooms each have a spa.

  And the “immaculate gardens”

  are one palm tree

  and forty-eight varieties of Camellia.

  All of this is surrounded by

  a wrought-iron fence

  on which Dad has hung

  a sign that reads

  NO Hawkers Allowed

  NO Junk Mail

  BEWARE! Dog on Premises

  That last line is a lie.

  Dad said if the first two lines

  didn’t work

  the last one would.

  A gated community

  To get into our suburb

  you drive

  down Cherrywood Avenue

  and at the end of the street

  is a sandstone wall

  and a massive iron gate.

  To get through this gate

  you reach out of

  the car window and punch your

  Personal Entry Number (PEN)

  into the keypad on the pole.

  The gate slides open,

  you drive through,

  and it closes behind you.

  Often there is a Security Guard

  in the office beside the entrance.

  He sits at his desk

  reading the paper

  waiting for something to happen.

  After two months

  of living here

  I realised it was

  like a prison that

  parents paid lots of money

  to live in so

  they could say things like

  “I feel so secure now.

  Thomas can walk the streets

  and I know he’s safe.”

  In our old town,

  I used to walk to the shops

  to the river

  to the school.

  I knew everyone.

  At Pacific Palms, I only know

  Mrs Johnson

  who keeps trying to show me

  her garden.

  I live in a Camellia Prison.

  Arnold

  My Dad is Arnold Jones

  from Beacham Beacham Beacham and Zibrowski,

  Accountants.

  Arnold the Accountant.

  Each morning

  Dad drives his clean white Commodore

  down Cherrywood Avenue

  to his office at Pacific Beach for a day spent

  adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.

  He returns at exactly 5:30pm,

  parks the car in our double garage,

  removes his shoes at the back door,

  and says

  “I’m home, dear”,

  places his briefcase in his office—

  Bottle top Collection Room # 2—

  kisses Mum,

  sees me in the kitchen doing homework

  and says,

  “How was your school experience today, Thomas?”

  (Yes, Dead Parent Wish # 3).

  I answer “Okay, Dad”.

  Arnold the Accountant

  then goes upstairs to

  change into

  white shorts, white polo shirt,

  white bowling hat,

  white long socks,

  and white running shoes.

  Arnold the Albino Accountant

  then walks downstairs

  and out the front door with Mum,

  also dressed all in white,

  for their “Afternoon reflection walk”

  as Dad calls it.

  Sometimes, they ask me

  if I’d like to go with them.

  I lie about too much homework,

  watch them walk, wiggling bottoms,

  down the street,

  then I run upstairs

  and change into my swimmers

  and jump into the spa,

  sit back,

  and read novels

  about children with dead parents.

  Some people have all the luck!

  Our old town

  Dad’s always been like that.

  Original?

  Unique?

  Unusual?

  Mad!

  In our old town,

  not far from here,

  he had more time

  to spend with me.

  We’d play cricket in the backyard,

  and he’d bowl these wild

  spinners that seemed to

  turn at right-angles.

  “Here’s my astronaut ball, Thomas,” he’d say.

  Then he’d bowl one

  really high

  so high it took forever to land.

  I’d smash it over

  the neighbour’s fence.

  Mum would say,

  “Another astronaut in space, dear?”

  Then Dad got this new job

  and we moved here.

  Now he’s always working.

  Our old town is so close

  yet

  it’s a million kilometres away.

  Barbara

  My Mum is Barbara.

  She used to be an Accountant as well,

  but she “retired”

>   to have a baby (that’s me!).

  Dad calls her

  The Minister for Home Affairs.

  And she does

  spend a lot of time at home.

  She loves cleaning, and cooking,

  and gardening.

  I try to tell her about

  Feminism

  and Equality of the Sexes,

  but she just says

  “Tom, darling,

  why would I want to

  be anywhere but here,

  with you and Arnold.”

  (Dead Parent Wish # 4?)

  Shock! Horror! Belly!

  Now,

  that’s the Barbara

  that Dad knows.

  And it’s the Barbara

  that Mum wants the world to see,

  but

  I know a different Barbara.

  One day, two weeks ago,

  I came home early from school.

  As I’m unlocking the back door

  I hear this really loud music—

  bongos, drums, and strange wailing sounds,

  coming from upstairs.

  All the curtains are drawn.

  I quietly close the door

  and follow the sound.

  I’m a little scared.

  It could be a burglar

  with mad musical tastes

  robbing our house!

  But no,

  It’s Mum,

  dressed in some weird

  Middle Eastern costume

  with balloon trousers,

  spangled top,

  and bare

  totally naked!!! stomach

  belly dancing

  in front of the bedroom mirror.

  Luckily,

  she’s so involved in her dance

  she doesn’t see me

  so I duck into the hall closet

  leaving the door open

  just enough to watch

  Barbara

  Barbara

  Barbara the Belly dancer!

  glide, shimmy, shake,

  and gyrate through an hour

  of dance.

  Mum’s pretty good too

  and here in the dark of the closet,

  I realise,

  that to be this good

  Mum must have been

  dancing and practising for ages.

  Me and Dad

  never knew.

  Dad would have a heart attack.

  Maybe I should tell him!

  (Dead Parent Wish # 5)

  School

  Now get this.

  Our suburb is so new