Trash - Andy Mulligan [0]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2010 by Andrew Mulligan
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
David Fickling Books and the colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mulligan, Andy.
Trash / Andy Mulligan. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Fourteen-year-olds Raphael and Gardo team up with a younger boy, Rat, to figure out the mysteries surrounding a bag Raphael finds during their daily life of sorting through trash in a third-world country’s dump.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89843-3
[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Poverty—Fiction. 3. Refuse and refuse disposal—Fiction. 4. Developing countries—Fiction. 5. Political corruption—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M918454Tr 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2010015940
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Three
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Four
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Five
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Appendix
A Note from the Author: What is a book-code?
Acknowledgements
About the Author
PART ONE
1
My name is Raphael Fernández and I am a dumpsite boy.
People say to me, ‘I guess you just never know what you’ll find, sifting through rubbish! Today could be your lucky day.’ I say to them, ‘Friend, I think I know what I find.’ And I know what everyone finds, because I know what we’ve been finding for all the years I’ve been working, which is eleven years. It’s the one word: stuppa, which means – and I’m sorry if I offend – it’s our word for human muck. I don’t want to upset anyone, that’s not my business here. But there’s a lot of things hard to come by in our sweet city, and one of the things too many people don’t have is toilets and running water. So when they have to go, they do it where they can. Most of those people live in boxes, and the boxes are stacked up tall and high. So, when you use the toilet, you do it on a piece of paper, and you wrap it up and put it in the trash. The trash bags come together. All over the city, trash bags get loaded onto carts, and from carts onto trucks or even trains – you’d be amazed at how much trash this city makes. Piles and piles of it, and it all ends up here with us. The trucks and trains never stop, and nor do we. Crawl and crawl, and sort and sort.
It’s a place they call Behala, and it’s rubbish-town. Three years ago it was Smoky Mountain, but Smoky Mountain got so bad they closed it down and shifted us along the road. The piles stack up – and I mean Himalayas: you could climb for ever, and many people do … up and down, into the valleys. The mountains go right from the docks to the marshes, one whole long world of steaming trash. I am one of the rubbish boys, picking through the stuff this city throws away.
‘But you must find interesting things?’ someone said to me. ‘Sometimes, no?’
We get visitors, you see. It’s mainly foreigners visiting the Mission School, which they set up years ago and just about stays open. I always smile, and I say, ‘Sometimes, sir! Sometimes, ma’am!’
What I really mean is, No, never –