Reluctant Hallelujah Read online

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Penguin Books

  THE RELUCTANT HALLELUJAH

  Gab Williams writes part-time and procrastinates full-time. She’s stunned to see that she’s finally finished her third book and suspects elves come and write for her at night while she’s asleep. She plans to set her next book in Paris and travel there often; for research purposes only, of course.

  Advance praise for The Reluctant Hallelujah

  ‘Funny, vibrant and at times incredibly moving … a must-read for fans of Williams’ widely acclaimed first YA novel, Beatle Meets Destiny.’

  AUSTRALIAN BOOKSELLER & PUBLISHER

  For Harry and Charlie

  It’s Dodie.

  Doe as in doe-a-deer-a-female-deer; Dee as in de-lighted to meet you.

  Not do-die as in ‘do die now because we’ve got a million other people to go stab and can’t hang around waiting for you all day’. If it was pronounced do-die, I would have some serious concerns about how happy my parents were to have me in the first place.

  Dodie Farnshaw.

  As opposed to ‘Dorothy’ Farnshaw, which is what they kept calling me when I was in the news all those months back. ‘Dorothy’ made me sound like I was an old grandma – which is fair enough because that’s who I’m named after, but if I’d wanted to be called by my grandma-name, I’d have dressed up in nanna-clothes and dyed my hair grey. But I didn’t, so I’d have preferred it if they’d stuck with Dodie.

  But there I go, getting ahead of myself. Skipping straight to the part where I was front-page news and they were calling me Dorothy, instead of starting at the beginning and going right the way through in an orderly fashion. The trick is figuring out exactly when the beginning began. I could go way back twenty-eight years to my grandma – who’s the one who got us stuck in this mess in the first place – but that’s probably too far back. Ten months ago is probably about right.

  The day my parents went missing.

  Now that I know the whole story – how it ends – I guess I should have called the police as soon as I noticed things warping. But I didn’t. And the reason I didn’t is because my parents went missing on the eighteenth of October last year. Which wasn’t just any old eighteenth of October. It was the eighteenth of October my third-last day of school forever. Not counting exams.

  If you’re in year twelve, you get what I’m saying. ‘Distracted’ doesn’t cover it. ‘Brain overload’ comes closer.

  So when I got home and Mum wasn’t there, I thought nothing. As you would have. Instead, I went up to my bedroom and read through my notes on Maestro for Time Number 173, then went back downstairs to go stare in the pantry.

  It was about this time that I vaguely registered the lack of cooking smells.

  Is this the moment I should have called the police?

  Hello, triple 0. My mum’s not home to cook me dinner.

  Hardly.

  Instead, I went into the lounge room where Coco was lying on the couch watching some piece of crap on TV.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  Coco tilted her head a millimetre in my direction before looking back at the screen.

  ‘Dunno.’

  Coco is my younger sister. Sixteen years old. Year ten at school. Creator of friction, angst and arguments at Number 18 Woodfield Street, East St Kilda. She can’t help it. It’s her job. And she’s an expert in her field. Coco spends a fair chunk of her time having the polar opposite opinion of our folks. She wants to go out, they want her to stay home. She wants to watch TV, they want her to do homework. She wants Facebook time, they want face time. She wants to buy shorty-shorts, they want her to wear something decent. She wants more pocket money, they want to know what she spends it all on.

  So when Mum wasn’t home, Coco wasn’t worried because all it meant was someone wasn’t nagging her for a change.

  I called Mum’s mobile. ‘Hi, it’s me, just wondering what’s for dinner.’ Called Dad’s mobile; ‘Hi, wondering where Mum is.’ Then went back to the lounge room and watched a bit of teev.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ Coco asked, bare legs crossed at the ankle, lanky arms lifted over her head, face zoned in on the TV. As if I was second-in-command when Mum wasn’t here and responsibility for dinner had shifted onto my shoulders. As if.

  I went on Facebook. ‘Cooking dinner apparently my gig. Any suggestions?’

  Minty was first up. ‘Two-Minute Noodles? Nutritious and delicious.’

  Nique: ‘Toasted cheese.’

  Harry: ‘Weet-Bix?’

  Charlie: ‘Home-delivery Dominos. Covers all the major food groups of pizza and dough in a handy home-delivery format.’

  All excellent suggestions.

  I opted for Two-Minute Noodles.

  Here’s the thing about Two-Minute Noodles. They take two minutes. And they’re noodles. And they’re a meal for one, so I didn’t have to be a martyr and make a whole heap for everyone else in the house. Coco could make her own if she felt so inclined.

  And here’s another great thing about Two-Minute Noodles. Eat noodles, put bowl, saucepan and fork in dishwasher.

  If I was the inventor of Two-Minute Noodles I’d call them Two-Minute Noodles One-Second Wash-up because that’s a more accurate description. Two-Minute Noodles only describes one half of the process.

  It wasn’t till I was getting ready for bed that I started considering maybe something weird was going on. My folks still weren’t home, and we still hadn’t heard from them.

  But it’s not like this hadn’t happened before. Mum often went to meet Dad after his work and go out for dinner, although usually she’d let us know the plan.

  I called Mum’s mobile again. ‘Hi, it’s me. I’m off to bed and was wondering where you are.’ Called Dad’s mobile. ‘Hi. It’s me. Just ringing to say goodnight.’ Then went in to Coco, who was now lying on her bed, laptop on her knees.

  ‘Do you think it’s a bit weird,’ I said, brushing my teeth as I stood at her door, ‘that Mum didn’t say anything?’

  ‘About what?’ she asked, looking up at me.

  ‘About tonight.’

  She tilted her laptop lid down slightly and looked over the screen at me.

  ‘She probably did,’ she said, then tilted her screen back to its readability position and went back to typing, ‘but we didn’t listen. Or she forgot to tell us. You know what she’s like.’

  I do know what she’s like. My mum is forgetful to the point where she can be midway through a sentence and stop talking. Just wander off in a vague kind of way. It drives us insane.

  I went into the bathroom, spat out my toothpaste, rinsed my mouth, then went back to Coco’s doorway.

  ‘You don’t think they’ve had an accident?’

  Coco looked over the screen of her laptop at me, then went back to whoever she was Facebooking.

  ‘Why would you even think that?’ she asked, tap tap tap. ‘The police would have told us if they had.’

  Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. Tap.

  T
hat’s true. That’s what licence plates on cars are for.

  ‘You don’t think we should ring Manda, see if she knows where they are?’ I asked.

  My final attempt.

  Manda is Mum’s best friend. Our extended family is pretty pathetic (uncommunicative on Dad’s side, dead on Mum’s) but Mum and Dad have a pretty tight group of friends who are substitute aunts and uncles to us.

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ Coco said, not taking her eyes off the screen. ‘Besides, we can’t call Manda now – it’s like eleven o’clock or something. They’ll be home later,’ tap tap tap, ‘and then tomorrow morning we get the satisfaction of telling them off for a change instead of the other way round.’

  As I drifted off to sleep that night the hum of prayers from the church across the road drifted through my bedroom window.

  I imagined asking Mum sarcastically whether her phone had run out of charge. Or credit. Or both. I would tell her that it wouldn’t have killed her to find a public phone and call me. There was something delicious about rolling the sentences around on my tongue as I went to sleep, practising how they would come out. There was a better-than-even chance that I was going to throw in that old cliché, ‘I was worried sick.’

  Even though I wasn’t.

  But the next morning, they still weren’t home.

  With hindsight, this is the moment we should have called the police. The problem with hindsight – the catch-22 that is the essence of hindsight – is that you only know the exact moment you should have called after the moment has passed. Usually a few days after. Hindsight is good in theory, but it’s a pretty poor life skill to have considering you never get to use it when you actually need it. Hindsight is a bit like deja vu. Hard to know what the point of it is.

  So instead of calling the police that morning, Coco and I convinced ourselves there wasn’t a problem.

  Coco said, ‘They obviously left this morning before we woke up.’

  Wouldn’t have been the first time. Dad often left early to miss the morning traffic, and despite Mum’s lack of gourmet cred, she often went to Vic Market early early early to get whatever meal she was going to burn the bejesus out of that night.

  ‘They probably knocked on our doors to say goodbye but we didn’t hear because we were asleep,’ I suggested, as we clicked the front door shut and headed to the tram stop at the end of our street.

  Poor old God was still being bothered by the rosary-rattling Micks across the road.

  Coco added the hazy idea that now she thought about it, Mum had ‘mentioned something last week about doing something with Dad but I wasn’t really listening so maybe that’s where they are.’

  ‘Besides,’ I said, as the old green tram with its faded bronze coat of arms lurched us along Chapel Street towards Brighton Road, our school bags kicked under the seats beneath us, ‘even if something’s happened to them, you can’t file a missing person’s report until twenty-four hours has passed. They always have that on TV.’

  Coco nodded. ‘And then we’d get in trouble for having filed a false report. We’ll get home from school this arvo and the Old Dear will be there for sure.’ Coco had taken to calling Mum ‘the Old Dear’ recently, which the Old Dear hated.

  Twenty-four hours was our cut-off. After that, we’d make our move.

  Twenty-four hours of official ‘missing persons’ time – as it turned out – was not required.

  At 11.02 a.m. Minty and I were being carried along by the surge in the corridor towards our third-period English class, when this guy Enron wandered up to us, hands jammed into his pockets. I know it was 11.02, because the bell had rung for period three.

  At our school each class – except first period – starts at a precise minute. Not on the hour, or on the half hour, or even on the quarter hour. At a precise, random, whoever-decided-the-timetable-must-be-on-crack minute, resulting in a school timetable that looks like this:

  8.45 first period.

  9.48 second period. Nine forty-eight. I kid you not.

  10.41 recess. Ten forty-one. Seriously, pass the crack pipe.

  11.02 third period. And so it goes on.

  The theory seems to be that if a class starts at a precise time, we’ll get there by that very minute. We don’t, of course, but props to the principal for giving it a red-hot go.

  So, this guy called Enron wandered up. Enron isn’t his real name. His real name’s Ron Nicholls. Enron’s the name of a massive corporation in the US which was named ‘most admired’ corporation by Fortune magazine in 2000 only to collapse into a big-black-bankrupt-billion-dollar-hole a year later. They made a documentary about it called Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, which the economics teacher showed us a couple of years back. And ever since, Ron Nicholls has been called Enron. A nickname that works on two levels.

  One: Ron Nicholls equals Ron N. equals N. Ron.

  Two: it’s ironic. He’s not the smartest guy in the room. Not even close. It’s doubtful that he’s even a midfielder.

  Enron.

  The smartest guy in the room.

  If the room was a cupboard for one.

  Enron said, without really looking, ‘Hi Dodie, how are you?’

  Minty and I stared up at him.

  Allow me to put this greeting in context. Enron was not a Facebook friend. He didn’t live near me – or maybe he did and I didn’t know about it. We didn’t sit near each other in class. I didn’t know how many brothers and sisters he had, or even if he had any. We never walked to class together. His locker was nowhere near mine.

  Enron saying, ‘Hi Dodie, how are you?’ went against the natural order of things.

  ‘I was just wanting to ask you something,’ he said. And then he added, ‘Just you.’

  I felt like Alice, falling head-first into Wonderland. Things were getting curiouser and curiouser at every tumble.

  Minty frowned at me.

  ‘I’ll see you in there then,’ she said after a moment, hugging her English books to her chest in a vaguely offended way before flowing with the rest of the tide in to class.

  ‘So,’ Enron said, the noise sucking out of the corridor and quietness settling on our shoulders, ‘how’s everything going?’

  ‘Um, good. Yeah. Thanks.’ Pause. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah. Good. All good.’

  And then. Nothing.

  ‘Okay, so,’ I said, wrapping things up, ‘what did you want to ask? Cos you know, I’ve got class, and stuff, whatever. You know, eleven o two, tick tock.’

  And I tapped on my wrist at the watch that I don’t wear.

  Enron hauled his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms across his chest, his shoulders hunching with the move. He rummaged inside his mouth for the exact words he wanted to use.

  ‘I know this is going to sound weird,’ he said finally, ‘but yeah, anyway, so my mum said to me this morning that she was wondering how your folks are going.’

  ‘My mum and dad?’ I asked, tilting my head back to see him better. His eyes were shadowed by the bad lighting in the school corridor. A flush of heat ignited inside me like the element of a bar heater. ‘I didn’t know your mum and my parents were friends.’

  Enron shrugged. ‘I don’t think they are exactly.’

  ‘So why would she be asking about my parents?’

  Again, he shrugged, the very movement of his shoulders irritating me.

  ‘She just wanted me to check that everything was all right,’ he said. ‘With your folks.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know; are they all right?’ he asked me quietly.

  My brain felt sticky and slow. A similar feeling to one I’ve had in some of my maths SACs, when everyone is scribbling down formulas and equations and calculations, and I don’t even know where to start.

  Enron was looking at me, expecting an answer.

  This is the problem with going to school – you spend twelve years being told the correct answer to each question – that X plus Y equals Z; i before e except afte
r c; formula formula formula – and you get lulled into the false sense that there’s a correct answer for every situation.

  And actually, it’s not just school. Even in life, with your parents, you learn rote answers to questions.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘How was school today?’

  ‘Boring.’

  ‘What did you learn today?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How was the party last night?’

  ‘Good.’

  I’m ill-equipped to answer unexpected questions. So I resorted to the only answer I felt comfortable with. The rote answer.

  ‘They’re fine,’ I said to him. ‘How about yours?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yeah. She’s okay. Good. Well, that’s good then. I’d better get going to class.’ He turned away from me, relief visible in his posture.

  I looked up at his back, the broadness of his shoulders blocking out my view of the rest of the corridor. l grabbed at his arm and pulled him back towards me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, the words escaping before I had a chance to censor them. ‘I don’t know where they are. How does your mum know they didn’t come home?’

  ‘They haven’t come home?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Shit,’ he said.

  He pushed his hair off his face before it flopped back down over his eyes.

  ‘First of all.’ He leaned towards me, so close I thought he was going to kiss me. ‘Just act normal. Like we’re mates about to go to class. Okay?’

  I looked up at him without moving, unsure that my face was trustworthy. What. The. Hell.

  ‘I don’t want you to react when I tell you stuff,’ he continued. ‘You understand? No kind of, whatever, crying or whatever. Yeah? Just in case anyone’s watching.’

  ‘What do you mean, someone’s watching?’

  Enron shook his big shaggy head.

  ‘All I know is what Mum told me. Your mum and dad were looking after something. I don’t know what, she didn’t say. All she said was that some other people are trying to get hold of whatever it is your parents were hiding, and we’ve got to get rid of it before they find it.’