Middle School--Born to Rock Read online

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2019 by James Patterson

  Illustrations by Neil Swaab

  Excerpt from Katt vs. Dogg copyright © 2019 by James Patterson

  Illustrations in excerpt by Anuki López

  Excerpt from Max Einstein: The Genius Experiment copyright © 2018 by James Patterson

  Illustrations in excerpt by Beverly Johnson

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  JIMMY Patterson Books / Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  JimmyPatterson.org

  First ebook edition: February 2019

  JIMMY Patterson Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Middle School® and the JIMMY Patterson Books® name and logo are trademarks of JBP Business, LLC.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-45194-9

  E3-20190116-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1: My Name is Georgia Khatchadorian (But You Probably Already Knew That, Didn’t You?)

  CHAPTER 2: The Challenge

  CHAPTER 3: Sam and Eggs (Get It?)

  CHAPTER 4: Princesses on Patrol

  CHAPTER 5: Best. News. Ever!

  CHAPTER 6: Caught in the Act

  CHAPTER 7: The Detention Song

  CHAPTER 8: A Walking Disaster

  CHAPTER 9: Head Honcho

  CHAPTER 10: Tick-Tick-Tick

  CHAPTER 11: Partners!

  CHAPTER 12: First Day, Worst Day

  CHAPTER 13: Pool Girl

  CHAPTER 14: Lemon Bars

  CHAPTER 15: Our Big, Medium-Sized Break

  CHAPTER 16: Change of Plans

  CHAPTER 17: Mixed Messages

  CHAPTER 18: Worse Than I Thought

  CHAPTER 19: What’s the Big Idea?

  CHAPTER 20: Crossing Over to the Dark Side

  CHAPTER 21: Reality Check

  CHAPTER 22: Let’s Go to the Movies

  CHAPTER 23: Scene One

  CHAPTER 24: Science Experiment

  CHAPTER 25: #DoYouLikeMeLikeThat?

  CHAPTER 26: Two to Tutor

  CHAPTER 27: Missy − Phone + Math x Georgia = ?????

  CHAPTER 28: Shopping!

  CHAPTER 29: A Lean, Clean Music Machine

  CHAPTER 30: Tonight’s Top Story

  CHAPTER 31: Not Quite Lying

  CHAPTER 32: Well, That Explains a Thing or Two

  CHAPTER 33: Dream On

  CHAPTER 34: Overnight Sensation

  CHAPTER 35: Greatest Hits

  CHAPTER 36: A… Plus

  CHAPTER 37: SAMSAMSAM

  CHAPTER 38: Turning Tables

  CHAPTER 39: Band Aid

  CHAPTER 40: Infiltration Station

  CHAPTER 41: Turning Tables, Part 2

  CHAPTER 42: You’re Invited

  CHAPTER 43: Parrr-tay!

  CHAPTER 44: Down to the Wire

  CHAPTER 45: Four Steps Forward, One Step Back

  CHAPTER 46: Damage Control

  CHAPTER 47: And the Surprises Just Keep on Coming. Not in a Good Way.

  CHAPTER 48: Lying Low in High Places

  CHAPTER 49: Road Tripping

  CHAPTER 50: Welcome to the Big Time

  CHAPTER 51: Here Comes the Judge

  CHAPTER 52: Special Delivery

  CHAPTER 53: Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding

  CHAPTER 54: Shake It Up

  CHAPTER 55: And the Winner Is…

  CHAPTER 56: And Then This Happened

  CHAPTER 57: Virally Yours

  CHAPTER 58: Five Days Later…

  CHAPTER 59: Sweet and Sour

  CHAPTER 60: But Then…

  CHAPTER 61: Not Exactly Over

  CHAPTER 62: Four of Hearts

  CHAPTER 63: We Stink

  CHAPTER 64: Togetherness

  CHAPTER 65: By the Way

  CHAPTER 66: Onward and Upward

  About the Authors

  Jimmy Patterson Books For Young Readers

  A Sneak Peek of Katt vs. Dogg

  A Sneak Peek of Max Einstein: The Genius Experiment

  My Name is Georgia Khatchadorian (But You Probably Already Knew That, Didn’t You?)

  I’ve wanted to be a famous rock star for a long time now. Then the other day I got my wish.

  Believe it or not, I’m famous now. Everyone in my hometown knows who I am. In fact, it feels like everywhere you look these days—there I am again.

  Just not in a good way.

  More like a ruin-your-life, wish-you-could-crawl-in-a-hole-and-never-come-out kind of way.

  And if you know anything about me and my family, then you won’t be surprised when I tell you this is all my big brother Rafe’s fault.

  Have you ever heard the story of King Midas? He’s the guy who turned everything into piles of gold just by touching it. Well, my brother is like the opposite of that. Everything he touches turns into huge, enormous piles of disaster.

  Like, for instance, my life.

  For the record, I’m not saying I’m perfect. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, and I’ve had some Titanic-sized disasters of my very own. But none of it erases the fact that trouble follows my brother around the same way that an awful smell follows a skunk everywhere it goes.

  Don’t worry, I’m going to tell you all about it. But to do that, I really need to take a step back and start this story where every story starts. At the beginning.

  And this one begins with a single, solitary egg.

  The Challenge

  The name of the assignment was the Great Egg Drop Challenge. Our science teacher, Mrs. Hibbs, said that everyone had to design a capsule that would protect an ordinary egg from breaking when it got thrown off the roof of Hills Village Middle School.

  Kind of cool, right?

  For my capsule, I used a shoebox. Inside it I put a block of Styrofoam with an egg-sized hole cut out, and I tied five purple helium balloons to the outside.

  Those balloons were my secret weapon. If this worked, my capsule was going to float gently down to the ground like it was made of feathers. I was really careful about the way I designed the whole thing and spent a lot of time putting it together for a few days before it was due.

  As for my brother, I think he started his project about ten minutes before we had to leave for school that morning. I could hear him crashing around in his room while I ate my pancakes.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Grandma Dotty asked.

  “Just barely scraping by,” I said, because it’s true. The last time Rafe got his homework done ahead of time was… never.

  “Rafe! If you want me to drive you to school, now’s the time!” Mom ye
lled.

  “Here I come!” he said, which is when his project came rolling down the hall.

  Have you ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? You know that part where a giant boulder goes tumbling after Indiana Jones and it’s so big it takes up the whole tunnel? Well, that’s about what our hallway looked like just then. Except instead of a boulder, it was a giant ball made out of Bubble Wrap. Miles and miles and miles of Bubble Wrap.

  “That’s your egg capsule?” I said.

  “When in doubt, think big!” Rafe said.

  Basically, that’s my brother’s motto. But he also has a history of BIG-thinking his way into BIG trouble. Which is why my motto is more like, “When in doubt, do the opposite of Rafe.”

  “It’s not even going to fit in the car,” Mom said.

  “That’s what this is for,” Rafe said, holding up some rope. “It’s going on the roof.”

  I couldn’t tell if Rafe’s capsule was going to pass the challenge or if his egg would wind up like Humpty Dumpty Junior on the sidewalk. And to be honest, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to get an A on my own project.

  IMPORTANT FACT #1: There are some things you’re going to need to know for this story. The first is that Rafe and I are in some of the same classes, even though I’m younger than him. Mom says we all have our own special talents. Being smart wasn’t one of Rafe’s.

  But you know what else? If I’d known about the Mount Everest–sized trouble that egg was going to cause by the end of the day, I would have faked sick, stayed home, and skipped the whole thing. Too bad for me—I’m better at science than I am at seeing into the future.

  So I got in the car with Mom and Rafe and headed off to school to begin the craziest, best-worst, most up-down and awful (but also awesome… but mostly awful) day of my life.

  So far.

  Sam and Eggs (Get It?)

  Here we go!” Mrs. Hibbs yelled from the roof of the gym. “Let the Great Egg Drop Challenge begin!”

  And just like that, it started raining egg capsules.

  Mrs. Hibbs sure knows how to make science class fun. She’s one of my favorite teachers because of her awesome project assignments. And it was especially fun to see my own capsule touch down at about zero miles an hour. And let’s just say, some of the landings weren’t as graceful as mine was. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said it honestly looked like some capsules exploded on contact.

  I held my breath the whole time it took me to retrieve my shoebox, but when I looked inside, my egg was still whole, not a gloppy mess. Yes!

  Mine wasn’t the only one, either. About half of the eggs made it through the challenge, including Rafe’s. His giant Bubble Wrap ball got the most attention when it dropped and bounced a few times, but it definitely wasn’t the best capsule. The best one was Sam Marks’s. He made a whole self-deploying parachute for his, which was a bit like my balloon idea, but better. And more sophisticated. And cooler.

  Which brings me to…

  IMPORTANT FACT #2: I have a big fat crush on Sam Marks.

  Sam is the cutest boy I’ve ever known. He’s also really nice. Nice to be around. Nice to look at. Nice to everyone he knows, including me. And it doesn’t even seem like he’s pretending!

  We even danced at a school dance one time, but I didn’t know if that meant Sam liked me the way I liked him… or not.

  That’s the problem with nice. It can mean all kinds of things!

  So anyway, I was putting my capsule away after class, and Sam came right up to me at my locker.

  “Hey, Georgia,” he said. “Cool capsule.”

  “Thanks!” I said. “But yours was better. My balloons will only last for—”

  “Twelve to twenty hours,” he said. “I know. I thought about using them, but then I came up with the parachute instead.”

  I haven’t even mentioned yet how smart Sam is. He’s kind of a geek, but that’s one of the reasons I like him. I’m kind of a geek, too. Which makes us perfect for each other. Sam probably just hasn’t realized it yet.

  I didn’t get any closer to finding out, either. Because that’s when the first really bad thing happened that day. And it was really, really bad—almost as if a dark, evil shadow that brought pain and suffering to everything it touched just happened to cross my path at the exact wrong moment.

  And this time, I’m not even talking about Rafe.

  Princesses on Patrol

  That’s when Missy Trillin came slithering by.

  At school, Missy is the Queen of Mean. The Duchess of Darkness. The Sultan of Snobbery.

  Missy makes it her full-time business to make sure everyone knows how much better she is.

  “Oh, look who it is,” she said. “Tell me, you two. Which came first? The geek or the egg?”

  Which is when her two friends started cackling like they were at a junior witch convention. I call them the “Princess Patrol,” because the princesses keep changing so there’s no point in using their names. These days, Alicia and Chloe are on patrol, but Missy Trillin switches best friends the way other people change their underwear.

  The thing about the Princesses is, you can’t avoid them. They’re just an unfortunate fact of life. Like diseases. Or tornadoes. Or that boiled vegetable medley they serve in the cafeteria.

  Boy, do I hate that vegetable medley. It’s like Alicia and Chloe are the mushy carrots and corn and Missy is the lima beans, which are twice as bad as both of the other two put together.

  Before Sam could answer Missy’s mean little joke, I glared right at her. “Buzz off, Lima Bean,” I said. “We’re talking here.”

  “Did you just call me Lima Bean?” Missy said.

  The other two looked at me like I’d spat on the Queen of England. Or, at least, the Queen of Hills Village Middle School. Nobody talks to Missy that way, but I gave up worrying about her a long time ago.

  Still, I probably shouldn’t have made that “buzz off” comment. And I don’t mean because it was rude or uncalled-for—I mean, I shouldn’t have said it the same way you shouldn’t poke a hornet’s nest with a stick.

  So there I was, standing between the nicest boy at HVMS and the meanest, most vile collection of girls on the face of the earth, not knowing what to do next, when something else came along and changed everything… again. I told you this was a roller-coastery kind of day, right?

  Because that’s when the world’s coolest news hit like a ray of sunshine made out of hundred-dollar bills and unlimited Skittles.

  But you’re just going to have to turn the page again to find out what I mean.

  Best. News. Ever!

  Before Missy could pounce, and before Sam could say another word, my friends Nanci, Mari, and Patti came running up the hall, grabbed me by the arm, and just kept on moving, sweeping me right along with them.

  “Come with us,” Mari said.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Something good,” Patti said. “See you later, Sam! Georgia has to go now!”

  They totally ignored the Princesses. But as we were flying away, I heard Chloe behind me.

  “Why did Georgia call you Lima Bean?” she asked.

  “Shut up, Chloe,” Missy said.

  “See you later, Georgia!” Sam called, and just like that I was gone with the wind. I mean, with the band.

  IMPORTANT FACT #3: I’m in a band. Like an actual, real band. That’s a big part of this story, too. It’s pretty cool, but probably not as cool as it sounds. For starters, the band’s name is We Stink.

  Obviously, this had something to do with We Stink—but what? Whatever it was, it had to be some kind of high-security matter, because we headed straight for the bathroom. And believe me, nobody goes in there for the cozy atmosphere.

  “Look at THIS!” Nanci said, as soon as the door swung shut behind us. She held up her phone and pressed Play on a video of a commercial.

  “Why are you—?” I said.

  “Just listen!” Mari said.

  The voice in the ad said: “Oka
y, all you young rock stars and mock stars out there, start warming up, because Lulu and the Handbags are looking for a warm-up act.”

  I’m not sure what it said next, because I was too busy screaming. It was like my ears blew open, my brain caught on fire, and my stomach filled up with popping corn, all at the same time.

  Lulu and the Handbags is one of my three favorite bands, and Lulu is my number one idol. She’s totally cool, and talented, and she’s not a supermodel or a princess or any of those other things. She’s just Lulu.

  And Lulu is AWESOME.

  “It’s open to anyone under sixteen,” Nanci said. “First, you have to post a video on the contest site. Then the top twelve vote-getters will be invited to the live auditions. And the winner of that round will be the warm-up act for Lulu’s big show in the city—”

  “And win a thousand bucks!” Mari said, and we all screamed again.

  To be honest, I don’t like all that girly stuff, like screaming when you’re excited. But for Lulu, I made an exception. If anything was worth screaming over, I’d say that a chance to meet my idol and warm up for her band was it.

  This was turning out to be the best day ever!

  For about another twenty seconds.

  Caught in the Act

  I was just about to start watching that ad on Nanci’s phone again when the bathroom door swung open.

  Our principal, Mrs. Stricker, was standing right there looking at us like she’d snared four little chipmunks in her trap.

  “Section three, rule two, from the Hills Village Middle School code of conduct!” Her voice echoed off the slightly slimy tiled walls. “No unauthorized cell phone usage is allowed in school except for emergencies!”

  I broke in, “But Mrs. Stricker—”

  “Is this an emergency?” she said.

  Patti tried to get a word in. “Well—”

  “No, it is not,” Mrs. Stricker said. “Was there any reasonable cause for all the screaming?”

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “No, there was not,” Mrs. Stricker said.