Penguin Books Australia

Chapter One

It was the eighth day straight he'd been left at Kids' Club and Max had had enough. He'd had enough stupid volleyball. Enough stupid kayaking. Enough doing the stupid Macarena. Even enough Pirates of the Caribbean.

Eight days ago Max had been excited when he saw the big box of DVDs. But he soon found out most of them were scratched and stopped so often they weren't worth watching.

Pirates of the Caribbean was the only one that played all the way through.

Max had watched it so many times he knew it off by heart. If he closed his eyes he could see it playing. If he put his hands over his ears he could hear the dialogue.

Still, it could be worse: he could be out kayaking, or playing volleyball.

Through the window Max could see the sparkling blue of the pool and the adults sitting up at the bar, half-submerged, drinking beer. Though he couldn't see them, he knew his parents would be there. Max and his parents hadn't been out of the resort since they'd arrived.

It's not a go-and-see-everything holiday, his parents had said to him. It's a holiday to relax. Both his parents worked hard and deserved to relax. But after eight days, Max thought that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to see what else was on the island besides the resort.

'You know what?' said Max, to nobody in particular. 'We should escape from Kids' Club.'

'Escape from Kids' Club,' said Boaz, sitting on his skateboard. 'That sounds like the gnarliest movie ever.'

There was nowhere to skate in the resort, but Boaz still carried his skateboard everywhere with him.

Lily looked over at Max. Or is it Lily? thought Max. Almost all the girls in the resort had their hair braided, and sometimes Max found it hard to tell them apart.

It was Lily. She was the one he had seen in the dining room with her mum, just the two of them.

'Where would we escape to?' she asked.

'Yeah, where would we go?' said Boaz.

Max shrugged. He didn't know what the rest of the island was like. They'd come across from the main island in a boat at night.

'There's plenty of places,' said Jesse.

The other kids looked at him, surprised. In the five days he'd been coming to Kids' Club, Jesse had said only a few words, mostly yes or no. The other kids weren't even sure where he came from.

Max thought Jesse was from New Zealand. Boaz said he was French. Lily was sure Jesse was from Bulgaria, though she admitted that she didn't know where Bulgaria was.

Jesse always carried a pack, inside of which was a small laptop, a red notebook, and an array of pens and pencils. Occasionally he'd bring out the laptop and go online for a while, stopping only to write things in the notebook.

'Got any rad games on that?' Boaz had asked him yesterday.

'No,' Jesse had said, and he had given Boaz a scathing look, like he was some sort of child.

'What places?' Max asked Jesse.

'Room 174, enough talking!' said Sonny, head of Kids' Club.

Sonny had told them that he'd been in the army before he took this job. Max thought that Sonny still believed he was in the army, and saw it as his duty to whip this unruly mob of kids into shape, to turn them into a disciplined fighting force. Especially Max.

'Yeah, what places?' asked Boaz, standing up, balancing on his skateboard.

'Room 324, enough talking from you, too! This is quiet time now,' Sonny said.

Max glared at Sonny. Max listened to his parents because they were his parents. His teachers because they were his teachers. But Sonny?

Sonny glared back at Max.

'You're not the boss of me!' Max wanted to say, but he knew he wouldn't. It wasn't a good idea to get on the wrong side of Sonny.

'There are plenty of places,' repeated Jesse.

'Please, this is quiet time, now,' said Sonny.

Rooms 174, 324, and 612 turned their attention back to the TV.

Max thought of something. 'What room number are you?' he asked Jesse.

'Quiet, Room 174,' boomed Sonny, before Jesse had a chance to answer.

It was the same old Pirates of the Caribbean they were watching. Same old Johnny Depp. Something had changed, though.

Max's throwaway line - We should escape from Kids' Club - hadn't been so throwaway after all.

Occasionally one of the other kids would look across at Max and give him a conspiratorial smile. He knew exactly what they were thinking.

It was time to escape from Kids' Club.