I Funny--School of Laughs 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 © 2017 by James Patterson

  Cover art by Laura Park and Jomike Tejido

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Illustrations by Jomike Tejido

  Excerpt from Pottymouth and Stoopid © 2017 by James Patterson

  Illustrations in excerpt by Stephen Gilpin

  Excerpt from How to Be a Supervillain copyright © 2017 by Michael Fry

  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: April 2017

  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. The JIMMY Patterson name and logo are trademarks of JBP Business, LLC.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-54566-2

  E3-20170324-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER 1: DEAD MAN ROLLING

  CHAPTER 2: THAT’S NOT A SANDWICH, THAT’S A WRAP!

  CHAPTER 3: PIE-IN-THE-SKY IDEAS

  CHAPTER 4: SCHOOL DAZE

  CHAPTER 5: BOOKING IT

  CHAPTER 6: SHOWTIME BY THE SEA

  CHAPTER 7: HEART ON A STRING

  CHAPTER 8: BASKETBALL COURT JESTER

  CHAPTER 9: MORE BASKETBALL JOKES

  CHAPTER 10: DOUBLE GROANERS

  CHAPTER 11: LET’S GET READY TO RUUUUUMBLE

  CHAPTER 12: CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SPITBALLS

  CHAPTER 13: JOKES TO THE RESCUE!

  CHAPTER 14: DINOSAUR ROAR

  CHAPTER 15: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH UNCLE FRANKIE?

  CHAPTER 16: TAKE A WALK ON THE BOARDWALK (I WISH I COULD)

  CHAPTER 17: CIRCUS SNACKS TO THE RESCUE!

  CHAPTER 18: BATTLE OF THE BOOKS

  CHAPTER 19: “I’M DOING WHAT?”

  CHAPTER 20: LOVE IS FUNNY (AS IN WEIRD)

  CHAPTER 21: THE BOOK OF YUKS

  CHAPTER 22: A DEGREE IN HEE-HEE-HEE

  CHAPTER 23: HEARD ANY BAD IDEAS LATELY?

  CHAPTER 24: UNCLE FRANÇOIS

  CHAPTER 25: TALKING THE TALK (WITHOUT WALKING THE WALK)

  CHAPTER 26: HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN

  CHAPTER 27: BRAINSTORMS WITH A CHANCE OF FOG

  CHAPTER 28: ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING

  CHAPTER 29: BACKSTAGE HORROR SHOW

  CHAPTER 30: BOOKING IT!

  CHAPTER 31: FIRST-CLASS TREATMENT?

  CHAPTER 32: CHICKEN FOR LUNCH

  CHAPTER 33: I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND

  CHAPTER 34: ROUND TWO

  CHAPTER 35: GIVING IN TO THE DARK SIDE

  CHAPTER 36: HAVING A FRANKIE DISCUSSION

  CHAPTER 37: BATTLE TALK

  CHAPTER 38: BREAKFAST OF COMEDIANS

  CHAPTER 39: ROUND THREE!

  CHAPTER 40: STEVIE’S AFTER-SCHOOL SPECIAL

  CHAPTER 41: ABANDON SHIP! THE LIBRARY, TOO!

  CHAPTER 42: ANOTHER STEPHEN

  CHAPTER 43: ROLLING HOME

  CHAPTER 44: NOT-SO-CRAZY BOB

  CHAPTER 45: QUITTING TIME?

  CHAPTER 46: SECRET ANNOUNCEMENT

  CHAPTER 47: NERDY JOKE-ATHON

  CHAPTER 48: STEVIE FUNNIE!

  CHAPTER 49: ALL THE RAGE

  CHAPTER 50: SHOWTIME!

  CHAPTER 51: EMERGENCY ACTION

  CHAPTER 52: ROAD SHOW

  CHAPTER 53: DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE COACH WHO MIGHT BE A CROOK?

  CHAPTER 54: HYSTERIA IN THE CAFETERIA

  CHAPTER 55: LIBRARY HOURS

  CHAPTER 56: THERE’S ALWAYS HOPE

  CHAPTER 57: PI R FUNNY

  A SNEAK PEEK OF HOW TO BE A SUPERVILLAIN

  A SNEAK PEEK OF POTTYMOUTH AND STOOPID

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  JAMES PATTERSON BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  Chapter 1

  DEAD MAN ROLLING

  Hi, everybody, I’m Jamie Grimm and here are a couple of things you should know about me right away, since these will probably be my last days on Earth.

  One, I’m a comedian.

  Two, my cousin Stevie Kosgrov is going to kill me this coming Friday night at eight o’clock Eastern (seven o’clock Central).

  Yep. I’m like a carton of milk. I have an expiration date. Because Friday nights at eight is when my new TV show, Jamie Funnie, airs on BNC-TV.

  And, this time, Stevie might actually have a pretty good reason to destroy me. You see, just for yuks, we’re shooting an episode making fun of Long Beach Middle School’s longest-running bully. We’re halfway through the first season of Jamie Funnie, which tapes in New York, and guess what? My sitcom is a huge hit. Almost as big as the fist Stevie Kosgrov is going to hit me with when he sees this Friday’s episode about Skeevy Musgrove! Guess we should’ve disguised his name better, huh?

  My good friend Gilda Gold is directing the Skeevy episode. Our best buds Joey Gaynor and Jimmy Pierce are playing my best buds Joey and Jimmy. Yeah. The TV show is kind of based on my life. It makes things easier.

  And much more dangerous.

  “Quiet on the set!” calls Gilda. “Aaaaaand, action!”

  We start the scene.

  “Congratulations, Jamie,” says Gaynor, sitting in the front row. “You won the Teacher for a Day Contest!”

  Turns out, Gaynor is actually a pretty decent actor—way better than me.

  Jimmy Pierce? Well, he’s a brainiac. He more or less mumbles most of his lines.

  “Yeah, Jamie,” Pierce mumbles. “Congratulations, man.” (Actually, it sounds more like, “Yuh, Mamie. Math calculations, ham,” which is sort of funny, so Gilda doesn’t call “Cut” and the scene keeps going.)

  “Class,” I say, popping a wheelie, “as teacher for the day, I hereby outlaw homework for the rest of the year!”

  “Whoa!” says Gaynor, totally in character. “Can you do that?”

  “Today I am a teacher. Today I can do anything!”

  “Even if it’s about tomorrow?” asks the actress playing Jillda Jewel, who’s sort of my love interest on the show (not that I have all that much interest in the mushy junk the writers keep coming up with). And, yes, she’s kind-of-sort-of based on Gilda Gold.

  “Teachers are like Roman emperors,” I say.

  “You mean they’re all dead?” snarls the burly kid playing Skeevy Musgrove. “Just like you!”

  Gilda gives the Skeevy actor a cue to raise his gigantic peashooter, which is about the size of an Amazonian blowgun.

  “It’s time to play dodgeball with spitballs!” he shouts as the prop guys use an off-camera air cannon to blast wet paper wads at me.

  I duck, dart, dodge, rock, and roll to avoid all the incoming projectiles. They splat on the wall behind me and sort of ooze their way down. It’s gross, which means it’s funny.

  Skeevy goes to reload.

  “As teacher for the day,” I say as fast as I can, “I hereby declare that it’s time for dessert!”

  All the kids on the set pop open their lunch boxes and pull out cream pies. Then everyone hurls them at Skeevy!

  He is creamed. By eighteen different pies, all of them made out of 100 percent whipped cream. Gloppy, foamy goop covers his head and dribbles down to plop into his lap. He looks like a whipped-cream abominable snowman.

  “And that, class,” I pronounce, “is another way to silence a bully. Fill his piehole with pie!”

  Chapter 2

  THAT’S NOT A SANDWICH, THAT’S A WRAP!

  Okay, everybody,” says Gilda. “That’s a cut and a wrap. Episode number eleven is in the can! We’ll edit it, sweeten the sound track, and air it on Friday. After that, Jamie Funnie is officially on a five-week hiatus!”

  The studio audience cheers. The cast and crew cheer, too. We’ve been working pretty hard on the show for three months straight. Now we all get to take a well-earned vacation. Instead of being tutored on the set, next week Gilda, Gaynor, Pierce, and I will be heading back to Long Beach Middle School, where the real Skeevy Musgrove still reigns supreme. But these days, Stevie Kosgrov shares his head bully duties with Lars Johannsen, an eighth-grade giant who moved to Long Island from Minnesota. Lars is so big, I think he used to be Minneapolis.

  It’ll be weird going back to a real middle school instead of the fake one on the Jamie Funnie set. But I’m kind of looking forward to it. Middle school is where I’ve always found my best material. It’s also where I first ate mystery meat, had my head stu
ffed into a toilet, and learned that there are three kinds of people in this world: those who are good at math and those who aren’t. But, hey, it all turned into pretty good punch lines.

  Life has really changed for my friends Gaynor, Pierce, and Gilda, too.

  Gaynor has earned enough money to help out his mom, who is still recuperating from a bout with cancer. He’s also bought himself a couple of new nose studs. One sparkles so much, it looks like an electronic zit.

  Pierce, our resident genius, is saving his Jamie Funnie paychecks to bankroll his college education. At Harvard. And MIT. He wants to go to both at the same time.

  “They are, actually, quite close to each other,” he tells me. “I, of course, may need to purchase a hoverboard for the commute between campuses. Or a drone. I need to crunch some numbers to determine which one would be most efficient.”

  Gilda? Well, she’s already won a full scholarship to study filmmaking at UCLA. She’s going to use the money she’s made directing episodes of Jamie Funnie to finance her first independent feature film.

  As for me, I’m putting away a big chunk of money in what I call my Medical Miracle Fund. I’ve gotten pretty good with my wheelchair, but who knows? Maybe someday there will actually be a cure for what ails the bottom half of me. Maybe aliens will land and their doctors will have a way to zap my spinal cord to make it work again. If they do, I want to be financially ready, just in case alien doctors don’t accept most forms of major medical insurance.

  I’m also doing everything I can to help my uncle Frankie keep his diner running, because, well, he always does everything he can to help me. I even offered to buy him a new jukebox. A deluxe digital-music dealio, with flashing LEDs and surround-sound speakers, that can stream the latest radio hits.

  “Thanks but no thanks, kiddo,” Uncle Frankie told me. “I only like vinyl doo-wop records. Doo-wop is like rap. But with a melody. And lyrics. And music. And harmonies. And…”

  Yep. Uncle Frankie hates rap. “You can’t yo-yo to it,” he says.

  I’ve also been helping out at Smileyville, which is what I call my aunt and uncle Smiley’s house. That’s where I live. In the garage. Actually, it’s more like my personal Jamie cave, with remote-control gliding doors, a jumbo flat-screen TV, my red Mustang convertible roommate, a fridge and microwave for late-night nachos or s’mores, and all kinds of gardening gear. Need a weed whacked? I’m your guy.

  Smiley isn’t my aunt and uncle’s real last name. I just call them that because they seldom smile. They’re missing the grin and chuckle genes, too.

  Their real name is Kosgrov.

  As in Stevie Kosgrov.

  Yep. Long Beach Middle School’s meanest bully is their son, making him my cousin.

  Which will make it super easy for him to cream me on Friday night when his character gets creamed on Jamie Funnie!

  Chapter 3

  PIE-IN-THE-SKY IDEAS

  Since I can’t stop the earth’s rotation (hey, I can’t even walk), Friday night rolls around right on schedule.

  We order pizza for dinner, which means I have to answer the door because the pizza delivery guy, Tony, is a budding stand-up comic. He likes to try out his jokes on me. I don’t mind. Every comic needs a chance to work on his material. When I was starting out, I used to recite my routines to seagulls and pigeons. And, yes, if birds don’t like your jokes, they will poop on your shoes.

  “Hiya, Jamie,” Tony says when he comes to the door with three pepperoni pies. “Good to be here. You know, when Mrs. Smiley called in the pizza order, she wondered if it would be long. I told her, ‘No. It’ll be round.’”

  Tony looks around behind me nervously. “So is your cousin Stevie home?”

  “Not yet. I think he’s still shaking down a few sixth graders behind the 7-Eleven.”

  “Good. I’m not saying Stevie’s dumb, but one time, I asked him if he wanted his pizza cut into six slices or twelve. He said, ‘Six. I’m not hungry enough to eat twelve.’”

  I laugh. Tony smiles.

  “You like my new material?”

  “Keep working on it,” I say, because I remember some of my early jokes. They came right out of books for first graders, too. The only way to get better at anything is to practice, practice, practice.

  Tony takes off. I wheel the pizzas into the dining room, where we wolf down dinner, then settle into our usual spots in the living room for Jamie Funnie. Mrs. Smiley cozies up on the couch with Mr. Smiley. Stevie’s little brother and sister perch on ottomans. I just sit where I park.

  Good news: Stevie still isn’t home. I may live to laugh another day.

  “You know,” says Mrs. Smiley, who’s just read the show’s plot synopsis in TV Guide, “I think it’s wonderful that you’re playing a teacher in this episode, Jamie. Your grandmother would’ve been so proud.”

  She, of course, is talking about my mom’s mom, who was also her mom. That’s, basically, how you become an aunt.

  “Your grandmother was a teacher,” Mrs. Smiley says. “Third through fifth grades.”

  I nod because I remember my grandma, even though she passed away two years before my mom and dad and baby sister did, too.

  “Yep, she was definitely a teacher,” grumbles Mr. Smiley. “That’s why she never had any money.”

  “Well,” says Mrs. Smiley with, believe it or not, the hint of a smile. “That didn’t matter to her. Mom always said, ‘Instead of making money, I’m trying to make a difference.’ And that’s what Jamie’s doing, too. With his TV show. He’s teaching kids all kinds of important lessons.”

  And then she pops up off the couch and kisses me on the cheek! “We’re all so proud of you!” gushes Mrs. Smiley.

  I blush. All this praise might’ve gone to my head.

  Except that’s when Stevie comes in the front door.

  “Where’s my pie?” he hollers.

  “In the pizza box!” his little brother shouts back.

  “I don’t want pizza,” says Stevie as he stomps into the kitchen. I hear the refrigerator door jiggle open.

  Stevie marches into the living room with a frozen Mrs. Jane’s apple pie he must’ve yanked out of the freezer. “I want this kind of pie. Just in case anything bad happens to a certain character on Jamie Not So Funnie tonight.”

  Oops.

  I think Stevie saw the sneak preview of tonight’s episode on YouTube.

  He tosses the frozen pie up and down in his hand like he’s weighing a cinder block.

  I have a funny feeling this one apple pie is going to hurt a lot worse than all the cream pies in Boston.

  Chapter 4

  SCHOOL DAZE

  Fortunately, Aunt Smiley saved me from Stevie’s frozen discus to the face.

  “You put that pie back in the freezer this instant, young man!” she told him. “I’m saving it for Thanksgiving.”

  Yes, if I’m still alive, I’m going to be extremely thankful when that holiday rolls around.

  Unfortunately, Aunt Smiley can’t protect me from her son (and his buddy Lars) at school.

  But that’s okay. If Stevie and Lars try to bully me, I’ll hit them with a punch line. I figure it’s called that because making a bully double over with laughter means he’ll have a harder time punching you.

  When I roll through the front doors of Long Beach Middle School for the first time in months, I notice that things have definitely changed. Not the smell. It still reeks of antiseptic hand soap mixed with dirty mop water and taco fixings. No, the first thing that strikes me as different is the vice principal—a.k.a. the school’s head disciplinarian—standing guard at the door. It’s not Mr. Sour Patch, the old guy who used to glare at every kid first thing every morning. It’s Ms. Somebody I’ve Never Met.

  “Let’s hustle, children,” she barks. “Put some pep in your step. Except you, kid in the wheelchair. Pump some rubber! We need to improve our hallway traffic flow rating!”

  All of a sudden, Stevie Kosgrov and Lars Johannsen chase a skinny sixth grader down the hall—right in front of the new vice principal.

  “Um,” I say to the new vice principal, “aren’t you going to give those two eighth-grade bullies a detention for picking on that sixth grader?”