Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar Read online

  LISA PAPADEMETRIOU is the author of the Confectionately Yours series and many other novels for young readers. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.

  NEIL SWAAB is a freelance illustrator, art director, cartoonist, animator, writer, and educator. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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  TuRN THe PAGe FOR A SNeAK PReVieW!

  A SLAM-BAM ENDiNG(?) FOR OuR STORY

  Let’s get one thing out of the way here.

  My name is Rafe Khatchadorian, and if you already know me, then you know that trouble tends to follow me around like a bad smell. But if we’ve never met before, I just want to say—it’s not my fault! (Okay, not always.) I hope you can trust me for a little while and give me a chance to explain.

  In fact, I don’t know if this has ever been done, but I’m going to give you the short version of this story—right here, right now—so you know what you’re getting into. It goes like this:

  I went to summer camp. I did some stuff. Some of it, I’m proud of. Some of it… not so much.

  Then, before the full eight weeks of camp was up, things went kind of crazy (okay, a lot crazy), and I ended up packing my bags early.

  It might have had something to do with this:

  Or maybe it looked more like this:

  It also could have had something to do with this:

  Or with this:

  And I can tell you for sure that it definitely had something to do with this:

  Somewhere in all of that, there’s an ending to this crazy story. There’s some middle in there too. And yeah, okay, some of it didn’t exactly happen like that. What can I say? I like to keep things interesting.

  But don’t worry. I’ll always steer you straight… eventually.

  The point is, my summer at Camp Wannamorra basically went the same way a lot of my life goes. There were some ups, some downs, some good luck, and a whole lot of bad luck before it all came crashing down around me in a giant ball of flame. (Not a real one—that was my last book.)

  But that’s as much as I’m going to tell you for now. If you want all the gory details, you’re just going to have to read this whole thing.

  Because, as the Booger-Eater always said, getting there is half the fun.

  WeLCOMe TO CAMP WANNAMORRA

  You know those regular camps, where kids spend the summer running around in the fresh air, and roasting marshmallows, and swimming in the lake all day? Maybe you’ve even been to one of those places.

  Well, hold that thought. Here’s another question:

  Have you ever read the book holes? If you haven’t, you should, because it’s an awesome book. But there was a camp in that story too—Camp Green Lake, which was actually a prison for kids.

  Let’s say that the place I went, Camp Wannamorra, was somewhere right in the middle of all that. Half camp and half prison. And by prison, I mean school.

  That’s right. Me. Summer school. Again.

  If you read my last two books, then you know that school isn’t exactly my best subject. In fact, I’ve already done time at Hills Village Middle School, Cathedral School of the Arts, and Airbrook Arts. (I’m kind of, sort of, an artist, but more about that later.) Crazy, right? Let’s just say I move around a lot.

  The bottom line: If I wanted to keep going to Airbrook, I was going to have to “do some work” over the summer. And we all know what that means.

  So when Mom told me and my sister, Georgia, that she’d found the “perfect” camp for us, I was suspicious right away.

  Every morning from eight to twelve at Camp Wannamorra, we would be in classes. I was going to take the kind for kids who needed a little extra help. And brainiac Georgia, who couldn’t even wait to start middle school in the fall, was going to take the “Challenge Program,” for kids who had nothing better to do during school vacation than get smarter than they already were.

  The more Mom talked about it, the more excited Georgia became, which made me even more suspicious. She kept calling it “summer camp,” but I was pretty sure it was going to look something like this:

  Well, guess what? It turned out I was half-right about Camp Wannamorra. Some of it was exactly as terrible as I’d expected it to be.

  Some of it was even worse.

  LET’S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT: RAFE KHATCHADORIAN IS NO BOOGER-EATER!

  He’S JuST STuCK AT SuMMeR CAMP WiTH ONe.

  Contents

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Rafe Is a Big, Fat Liar

  Chapter 2: Don’t Mess with a Khatchadorian

  Chapter 3: Horrors of an (In)Famous Brother

  Chapter 4: Miller the (Mini) Killer

  Chapter 5: Rhonda Helps Me, Helps, Helps Me, Rhonda

  Chapter 6: The Princess Patrol!

  Chapter 7: The Awesomes!

  Chapter 8: We Stink!

  Chapter 9: Home, Sweet Home

  Chapter 10: Sweet Home Georgiabama

  Chapter 11: My Mom Is My Best Friend

  Chapter 12: The Princess Dress Code

  Chapter 13: Not My Problem

  Chapter 14: This Is Probably a Ginormous Mistake, But…

  Chapter 15: I’m In!

  Chapter 16: Mrs. Stricker Loves Me

  Chapter 17: Mrs. Stricker Loves Me Not…

  Chapter 18: “The First Detention Is Always the Hardest”—RAFE K.

  Chapter 19: A Day at the School Factory

  Chapter 20: Every Band Needs a Groupie

  Chapter 21: Squealing on Rafe Is Fun

  Chapter 22: My Mom Is My Worst Nightmare

  Chapter 23: It Ain’t Easy Being Green

  Chapter 24: The Princesses’ Hairstyle Rules

  Chapter 25: I Wasn’t Crying About My Hair

  Chapter 26: I’m Being Followed

  Chapter 27: Stop, Book Thief!

  Chapter 28: My Six Favorite Books This Year (So Far)

  Chapter 29: The Truth About Jeanne Galletta

  Chapter 30: General Rafe Torture

  Chapter 31: Rafe’s Revenge

  Chapter 32: Playing War

  Chapter 33: Shoo Pie, Don’t Bother Me

  Chapter 34: Completely Insane

  Chapter 35: Grandma’s Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown

  Chapter 36: “We Stink” Up the Garage Sale

  Chapter 37: The Aftermath

  Chapter 38: Going Bananas

  Chapter 39: I Find You Offensive, Mini-Miller the Killer

  Chapter 40: The Princesses

  Chapter 41: Georgia’s Last Stand

  Chapter 42: Rhonda Runs

  Chapter 43: South Nowhere Street

  Chapter 44: Smacked Down

  Chapter 45: When You Seek Revenge, Dig Two Graves

  Chapter 46: Revenge Served Lukewarm

  Chapter 47: A Visit with the Lizard King

  Chapter 48: This Deserves Two Chapters

  Chapter 49: Crime and Punishment

  Chapter 50: Shrinkology

  Chapter 51: More Shrinkology

  Chapter 52: Jeanne Galletta Is Actually a Princess

  Chapter 53: Practice Doesn’t Always Make Perfect

  Chapter 54: How I Became a Princess

  Chapter 55: The Strange Truth

  Chapter 56: Jules Explains It All

  Chapter 57: I’m Not Going

  Chapter 58: My First Middle-School Dance (Will I Ever Forget This Moment?) (I Have No Idea.) (Meh—I’ll Probably Forget It.)

  Chapter 59: Band Gone Weird

  Chapter 60: Princess Gone Wild

  Chapter 61: My Mom Is… My Mom

  Chapter 62: One Other Thing

  Chapter 63: Cease-Fire Between Rafe and Me (This Is Real. Honest.)

  Chapter 64: Cease-Fire Over, War Resumes

  Chapter 65: And… I Lost the Bet

  A Preview of Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli and Snake Hill

  Copyright

  Copyright

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bsp; 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 © 2013 by James Patterson

  Illustrations by Neil Swaab

  Cover design by Alison Impey

  Cover art by Laura Park

  Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc

  Copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

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  First e-book edition: March 2013

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  ISBN 978-0-316-20752-2