My Life Is a Joke Read online

  “You mean Bubblebutt?” sneers Ringworm. “No problemo. I’ve got an understudy for that big chicken.”

  And guess who steps out of the shadows, dressed up in the same kind of heavy metal costume as Ringworm?

  Travis Wormowitz.

  CHAPTER 65

  I think you nerds know my big brother, the high school theatrical superstar Travis Wormowitz,” says Ringworm.

  “The one you jerks got kicked out of the Shakespeare show,” adds Travis, giving Meredith a really dirty look. “Not that I’m bitter. No. I’m furious! You wimps cheated me out of my first major Shakespearean role.”

  “Travis is your b-brother?” stammers Bill.

  “Duh,” says Ringworm. “How do you think I got my nickname? I’m Reggie Wormowitz. Bob turned it into Ringworm. So I turned him into Bubblebutt. Because he has one. That thing jiggles, man.”

  “Excuse us, children,” says Travis. “We’re on!”

  “And when we do our number,” gloats Ringworm (I mean Reggie Wormowitz), “everybody will know who the true thief in this town is! Schuyler!”

  The Wormowitz brothers do a chest bump. Their Mohawks shimmy when they collide.

  To spare you the pain of hearing about Toxic Trash’s head-banging heavy metal screed, which had only two guitar chords in it, I’ll make a long story short. The Wormowitz brothers do a loud and annoying song about “Schuyler, the liar, the thieving highflier, the sneaky crooked smiler.” They even have a verse about Schuyler being arrested and sent to prison, which isn’t totally true. But the audience doesn’t know that.

  That’s right. They had the same plan that we did, but worse—using the Battle of the Bands to trash Schuyler’s reputation in front of all of Seaside Heights even before they knew we’d be at the Battle of the Bands singing about them.

  We’re standing in the wings, watching the nasty brothers publicly humiliate Schuyler.

  “He’s a dog, that Schuyler. A nasty ol’ rottweiler!” Travis snarls into the microphone while Reggie thrashes out the other chord he knows on his electric guitar.

  “Guess they had the same rhyming dictionary we did,” says Bill.

  “Our lyrics were better, man,” mutters Jeff.

  “Our music was better, too,” adds Meredith.

  “Um, you guys?” I say. “We didn’t enter the Battle of the Bands to win the competition. We did it to clear Schuyler’s name by having Ringworm confess to all the crimes!”

  “Gee, Jacky,” says Schuyler sarcastically. “That sure worked out well, didn’t it?”

  It’s true. My mousetrap plan flopped. We wasted all that time working on our rap and our break-dance moves. We have nothing to show for it except some goofy costumes and even goofier hair.

  Plus, now all of Seaside Heights thinks Schuyler’s a thief and a liar.

  And it’s all my fault.

  CHAPTER 66

  Schuyler glumly turns off his Walkman, the one Ms. O’Mara let him borrow. There’s a blank cassette inside where the Paula Abdul tape used to be because Schuyler wanted to record our rap and then Bob’s confession.

  So much for that foolproof plan. I’m surprised anyone can look me in the eye right now.

  But seeing the Walkman, I suddenly have a new idea!

  “This isn’t over!” I say.

  “You’re right,” says Schuyler. “Sounds like they’ve got a third verse.…”

  The Wormowitz brothers continue to thrash their guitars and stomp all over Schuyler’s reputation.

  “Pretend like you don’t know me,” I tell everybody.

  “Easy,” says Schuyler. “Because I sure wish I didn’t.”

  I ignore that. I have too much to do and not much time to do it.

  First, I run around the backstage area, hastily putting together a new costume by borrowing stuff from the other acts and raiding the trunk we dragged over from the dressing room. I wind up with a curly blond wig, a floppy hat, a fuzzy boa, and some very dark bug-eye sunglasses.

  Next, I ask Schuyler if I can borrow his Walkman.

  “I want to record something.”

  “What do you want to record? All those horrible things Toxic Trash are saying about me because you used to believe it, too?”

  “Look,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. Getting you arrested was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life and, hopefully, I’ve learned my lesson. In fact, I’ve definitely learned my lesson. But this is no time for whining. ‘Up, and away! / Our soldiers stand full fairly for the day’!”

  “Huh?” Schuyler puzzles.

  I grab the Walkman out of his hands.

  “It’s Shakespeare. What? Do you think you’re the only one who can memorize obscure quotes? Disappear, you guys. It’s time for Jacky Ha-Ha to get into character.”

  “Who are you going to be this time?” asks Dan.

  I smile and put on my best Valley girl voice. You know, like, all my sentences end with a question mark? Even when they’re not questions?

  “I’m, like, Toxic Trash’s number one fan? Seriously, dudes. I am!”

  Toxic Trash finish their horrible song. Maybe one person in the whole crowd claps, but that might just be the sound of a pizza box being thrown in a trash can.

  “Scram, you guys,” I tell everybody. They scurry away.

  The Wormowitz brothers waltz offstage, slapping each other high fives.

  “We were so totally awesome!” says Reggie.

  “I am always awesome,” says Travis, looking around the backstage area, seeing nobody he recognizes from the play (which means my costume is working!). “Guess those middle school dorks couldn’t stand the heat. They all ran home to their mommies. Except Schuyler. He ran home to his horrible aunt. The one who cut me from my first professional Shakespeare gig!”

  “We showed them!” says Reggie, who will always be Ringworm to me, because just thinking about him gives me a rash.

  I take in a deep breath. It’s time for the performance of my life. First, I have to pretend that I loved the Toxic Trash show. And, more important, I have to do it without Travis figuring out who I am!

  CHAPTER 67

  Wow!” I gush as I press the record button on Ms. O’Mara’s professor-style Walkman. “I’m Brianna, from Long Beach Island, and I am in loooove with your music! You guys, like, rock!”

  Ringworm does a double heavy metal thumb-and-pinkie wave at me. “Chya! Totally!”

  “Thanks,” says Travis. “Usually, I perform in nonmusical shows. But I was glad I was able to demonstrate my range as a performer. I’m quite good, aren’t I?”

  “The best!” I say, happy that he doesn’t recognize me.

  I’m also trying to imitate the way Sophia is around boys. The way the young romantic leads in A Midsummer Night’s Dream behave when they are under the love potion’s potent spell. In other words, I act super-goofy.

  “You looked so mean and nasty out there!” I say in my Brianna Airhead voice. “I like the bad ones. I thought Sean Penn was dreamy in that movie Bad Boys.”

  Yes, now instead of quoting Shakespeare, I’m quoting my big sister Sophia.

  “And, of course, I loooooove Johnny Depp. He was soooo cute on 21 Jump Street. But he’s sort of bad, too. Brooding. I like brooding.”

  Ringworm sneers. “You want bad? I’ll give you bad.”

  “Please,” I say, batting my eyes. I got that move from Sophia, too. “Tell me everything. And is it okay if I record you? Because, well, I’d totally like to fall asleep every night with your voices in my headphones.”

  “No problemo,” says Ringworm, puffing up his chest. “Me and my lame ex-friend, Bob? We tore up Seaside Heights this summer.”

  “I bet if the world knew that,” I say, fawning over him, “they’d never call you Ringworm again.”

  “They better not! My name is Reggie. Reggie Wormowitz.”

  I hold up the Walkman.

  “Could you repeat that? I want to remember it, always.”

  “I’m Reggie Wormowitz!” he shouts
into the tiny microphone on the edge of the cassette recorder.

  “And I’m his big brother, Travis. The guy who should be starring as Puck in Shakespeare Down the Shore this summer. But the casting system was rigged. Sad.”

  “Bob and me robbed, like, a half dozen game booths, man,” boasts Reggie. “Stole all the cash out of this one balloon-pop stand where that clown Schuyler was supposed to be standing guard. Totally framed him.”

  “Which was doubly sweet,” adds Travis, “because this chick who stole my part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream worked there until they got her fired.”

  The Wormowitz brothers slap each other five. Inside I’m fuming, but outside I clasp my hands and bat my eyelashes like I’m impressed.

  “I stole an awesome Walkman, sort of like yours, out of this one dorky dude’s beach bag,” brags Ringworm. “Bag had an orange, tiger-striped P on it.”

  “That’s for ‘Princeton,’” I say. Then I catch myself. Brianna Airhead would not know that. “Or it could be for, you know, tiger pee?”

  “Huh,” says Ringworm. “Probably. I did graffiti, too. Because I didn’t like that dude Schuyler calling me ‘fat guts.’ I have a glandular issue.”

  “So you made it look like he did it?” I gush. “That is so clever.”

  “Yeah, he even got arrested for it! And then, to seal the deal, Travis and me wrote that song you just heard about him.”

  “Will that be on your first album?”

  “Totally!”

  They tell me everything.

  Which means they’re also telling the Walkman everything. I have their full and complete confessions on tape. And since they gave me permission to record it, I think that makes it admissible as evidence.

  Yeah. The Harts watch a lot of cop shows on TV.

  CHAPTER 68

  Early the next morning, I tail Dad and his Seaside Heights PD patrol car on my bike.

  Why don’t I just immediately hand over my tape-recorded confessions? Well, I’m a little like the girl who cried wolf. My “evidence” misled Dad once. It’ll be better, I figure, if he discovers the tape on his own.

  Dad and his partner don’t see me pumping La Bicicletta behind them, because Dad isn’t the one driving and checking the rearview mirror. His partner doesn’t know who I am. When they stop at Dunkin’ Donuts to get coffee (and probably doughnuts, since, you know, they’re cops), I use my boardwalk ringtoss skills to throw the cassette tape with the Wormowitz brothers’ confession through a partially open window.

  It lands on Dad’s seat.

  I want him to be the one to discover the evidence that’ll bring the summertime crime spree to a stop.

  It might help him land the full-time gig after Labor Day.

  It might also help him forget (or at least forgive) my jumbo-sized mistake. I know I sure learned my lesson—a lesson best summed up by another line from Shakespeare. It’s true. The guy has the right words for any situation. This quote, which I have tried to engrave on my heart, comes from that play All’s Well That Ends Well. When I read the line, I had the biggest aha moment of my summer. No, my life!

  Love all, trust a few,

  Do wrong to none.

  CHAPTER 69

  Nine days later, the Shakespeare Down the Shore production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has its opening performance at the same outdoor amphitheater where they held the Battle of the Bands.

  Which means it’s my professional stage debut. I’ve performed a thousand times since then, but the memory of acting in front of a huge crowd on a summer night by the ocean is something I’ll never forget.

  The show is fantastic! Better than I imagined it could be. I don’t stutter or miss a line. I also earn a few laughs, which, as you know, is my favorite thing to earn in the whole world. Laughter is always better than money. Seriously, it is!

  I’m also onstage with my friends and the teacher who, more than once, has, more or less, saved my life—or at least helped guide it in the right direction. Ms. O’Mara is terrific as Titania.

  And my new friend, Schuyler? He makes an awesome Tom Snout and Wall!

  Being on that stage with a cast of professional actors made me realize that if I could perform for a living—if I could become a professional, too—I would never have to work a day in my life. Of course, that was something Mom and Dad had already tried to explain to me when they shared their early-summer daydreams about becoming cops. Just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I guess I had to learn it for myself, huh?

  When I say my last line, which is also the very last line in the play, in my mind, I’m saying it directly to Schuyler. I’m apologizing one last time for falsely accusing him of committing someone else’s crimes.

  When we take our curtain call, Schuyler stands right next to me and clasps my hand.

  We be friends. We restore amends.

  EPILOGUE

  After the show, I’m a little late to the opening-night cast party.

  I need to celebrate with my family first.

  For cracking the big case, thanks to an anonymous tip he received in the form of a cassette tape he discovered on the passenger-side seat of his cop car, Dad has already been offered a permanent job on the Seaside Heights police force.

  No, he didn’t recognize my voice as the interviewer on the tape. Even at age twelve, I was pretty good at putting on voices. And when I pretended to be that gushy and goofy about two boys, it definitely didn’t sound like me. It was a character I created: Bad-Boy Fangirl.

  Maybe you’ve seen her on Saturday Night Live. I still call her Brianna Airhead.

  Yes, girls, that was the summer a lot of dreams came true—and not just for me. Your grandfather landed his first official cop job. Your grandmother graduated first in her class from cop school. Vinnie got most of his money back. I got my job back, and it was excellent practice for my future career in showbiz. To show there were no hard feelings, Vinnie and Maria treated me to two tickets to see City Slickers. I, of course, asked Bill Phillips to go with me because I could talk to him about it afterward. Remember that. If you want to talk to a boy about everything and anything, then he’s probably a keeper.

  It was also the summer when I quit calling Bob Brownkowski “Bubblebutt.” Because he kept trying to become the very decent human being he is today. He walked out on Ringworm and changed his ways for the better.

  The summer of 1991 was also famous for your aunt Victoria meeting your uncle Jeff. Not to mention your aunt Sophia meeting your uncle Schuyler, who, as you know, needs us all to keep praying for him. He’s overseas, wearing a similar uniform to the one his father wore in the First Gulf War. Making his father, and all of us, proud.

  Being here in London has made me remember so much about my first Shakespearean summer. The huge mistake I made and then everything I did to try and fix it.

  In closing, I want to leave you with words better than any I could ever write. The ones Mr. Shakespeare wrote. The ones I repeat to myself on a daily basis. The ones I had framed in a portable little picture frame so I can take this simple reminder into every dressing room I use, no matter where in the world my talent takes me:

  Love all, trust a few,

  Do wrong to none.

  If you can do that, my darling Grace and Tina, trust me: You’ll be howling at the moon with joy on a regular basis.

  JAMES PATTERSON received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community from the National Book Foundation. He holds the Guinness World Record for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers, including Middle School, I Funny, and Jacky Ha-Ha, and his books have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide. A tireless champion of the power of books and reading, Patterson created a children’s book imprint, JIMMY Patterson, whose mission is simple: “We want every kid who finishes a JIMMY Book to say, ‘PLEASE GIVE ME ANOTHER BOOK.’” He has donated more than one million books to students and soldiers and funds over four hundred Teacher Education Scholarships at twenty-four colleges and universities. He has al
so donated millions of dollars to independent bookstores and school libraries. Patterson invests proceeds from the sales of JIMMY Patterson Books in pro-reading initiatives.

  CHRIS GRABENSTEIN is a New York Times bestselling author who has collaborated with James Patterson on the I Funny, Treasure Hunters, and House of Robots series, as well as Jacky Ha-Ha, Word of Mouse, Pottymouth and Stupid, Laugh Out Loud, and Daniel X: Armageddon. He lives in New York City.

  KERASCOËT is the pen name of Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset, a couple of French graphic novel authors and illustrators living and working in Paris.

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