Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading Read online

  “Hi, Bill,” my mom said as she walked through the door. She knew Mr. Radonski because she had subbed at our school a few times over the years.

  She smiled warmly at him, which was pretty impressive considering there was a tear in her eye.

  “Nice to see you again, Claire,” Mr. Radonski said, also smiling, like he was about to tell her that I was the greatest kid in the world.

  My dad sat down next to me and just looked at me for what felt like ten years. Then he slowly shook his head.

  “Let’s go home,” he said.

  And we went home.

  At first, I felt terrible.

  That night, as expected, I was grounded indefinitely. Which was fine by me, because there wasn’t anybody I particularly wanted to see.

  I had to give up my cell phone, which was also fine by me, because there wasn’t anybody I particularly wanted to text or talk to.

  I had to give up my computer, which was fine by me, because … well, you get the idea.

  I spent that entire weekend in my room, staring at the walls, looking back on everything that had happened, trying to figure out if I was a horrible person.

  Eventually I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t a completely horrible person, and I felt a lot better.

  I was definitely a careless person. Possibly a lazy person, although as we all know, it takes a lot of work to avoid reading. And maybe I was a slightly scheming person. But horrible? Come on. Remember, I knew horrible. I knew Teddy Spivero.

  And yeah, I did some dumb things. I put Jake Katz in a bad position where he did something he wasn’t supposed to do, and it was quite possible he would get in a little trouble, but that’s a small price to pay for Hannah Spivero looking you in the eyes and saying “I really, really like you.”

  And yeah, Jake read all the books for me, but I memorized his notes, and wrote the whole presentation, and had the idea for the grande finale with all the drama and announcements and stuff. Come on, that was pretty original, you gotta admit.

  Don’t get me wrong, I still felt bad, but I was done beating myself up. What good would it do? And it’s not like I’m the only kid in all of recorded history who ever tried to get away with something.

  In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it’s exactly that kind of good old-fashioned creativity that’s made America the great nation it is today.

  Suddenly, I wanted my cell phone back. And my computer. And my video games.

  But I wouldn’t see any of them again until I went back to school.

  Next year.

  By Sunday night, I felt a different kind of terrible.

  I’d moved on from the I’m-a-horrible-person kind of terrible to the man-this-summer-is-going-to-stink kind of terrible.

  Monday was yearbook-signing day for the entire student body, minus one.

  Guess who was the one?

  I guess now’s as good a time as any to introduce you to Mrs. Sleep, the principal of our school.

  I kid you not, that is her name.

  You know that saying that helps you tell the difference between princiPAL and princiPLE? “The principal is your pal?”

  Well, whoever invented that saying never met Mrs. Sleep.

  It’s not that she was a mean, awful person. It’s just that she was really old-fashioned.

  She was so old-fashioned that even the teachers called her Mrs. Sleep. She was so old-fashioned that her first name, which nobody ever used, was Enid.

  She was tall, and smelled a little dusty, and looked kind of like Eleanor Roosevelt on a bad hair day.

  But most important, she had a huge scary chair behind a huge scary desk in a huge scary office, and right at that moment she was sitting in that very chair staring down at me.

  I was as prepared as I could be. I knew Timmy and Katie had been to the principal’s office earlier that day, and I figured they were kind of like the appetizers.

  I was the main course.

  And the main course was sitting in the chair on the other side of Mrs. Sleep’s desk, ready to be devoured.

  It felt like I was squeezed into one of my sister’s dollhouse chairs she used to play with, back when she was into dollhouses.

  Ms. Ferrell was there, too. She did the talking, while Mrs. Sleep just stared down at me like a disapproving owl.

  I knew how disappointed Ms. Ferrell was in me, so I couldn’t really look her in the eye.

  She cleared her throat nervously. Why was she nervous? It was my funeral, not hers.

  “I want you to know that your friends are very loyal to you,” Ms. Ferrell began, “and they shared the following information with Mrs. Sleep and myself very reluctantly.”

  That was nice to know. I was sure that at some point in the very, very distant future, I would learn to appreciate it.

  “According to Timothy McGibney, you and he have had an arrangement for several years, in which you buy him snacks in the cafeteria and he reads your assigned books, in order to tell you what’s in them.”

  She waited for a response. I had none, so she continued.

  “And according to Katherine Friedman, you were famous for reading as little as possible. In fact, you were quite proud of it, and carried it around as a sort of badge of honor.”

  Ouch. That one left a mark.

  For a split second, I couldn’t believe I’d been betrayed by my friends.

  But in the next second, I realized I couldn’t really blame Timmy or Katie for spilling the beans.

  After all, they had been sitting in the same chair that I was sitting in right now.

  And short of reading the collected works of Mark Twain, I can’t think of a scarier situation.

  Looking at some sort of report, Mrs. Sleep asked Ms. Ferrell, “And what of Jacob Katz? Has he confirmed what he said at the dance, that he read Mr. Jackson’s books for the Position Paper, in exchange for a date with Hannah Spivero?” That wasn’t technically true, it wasn’t that he HAD to read the books in order to go out with Hannah, it just seemed that way now. But it was too late, the damage was done.

  Mrs. Sleep was looking at me like I was a kitten killer. Or worse.

  And then Ms. Ferrell did a strange thing. First she paused. Then she said, “In fact, Jacob Katz has retracted what he said, and is now denying that Charlie Joe Jackson ever asked him to do any such thing. In fact, Jacob said the whole thing was his idea.”

  Wait, WHAT?!

  At that very moment, I officially decided that Jake Katz—book-reader, miracle-baseball-catch-maker, contact-lens-wearer, hair-mousser—was 100 percent worthy of Hannah’s love.

  * * *

  Mrs. Sleep looked at me over her reading glasses. “Well, Charles Joseph? Is Mr. Katz telling the truth, or is he protecting you? Do you care to enlighten us?”

  I took probably the deepest breath of my life.

  Then I did something that goes against every bone of my body, every fiber of my being, every ounce of my personality, and against everything that has made me the remarkable person I am today.

  I told the truth.

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #23

  IT’S POSSIBLE TO DISLIKE READING AND STILL BE GOOD AT WRITING.

  Just because I don’t like to read doesn’t mean I can’t write.

  In fact, I’m a pretty solid writer. For example, I’m very good at similes, metaphors, and oxymorons.

  Here’s an example of a simile:

  Finding out I had to read that book was as disappointing as a rainy summer day.

  Here’s an example of a metaphor:

  I slogged my way through that book in about a year.

  And here are some helpful oxymorons:

  1. good book

  2. happy reader

  3. important author

  4. nice library

  5. favorite bookstore

  Did I mention that my parents were in the principal’s office, too?

  They weren’t in very good moods.

  My dad had taken the day off from work, which I thought might have made h
im happy, but for some reason didn’t, and my mom had missed yoga, which threw off her “center of being,” and therefore made her grumpy.

  In any event, they were sitting in these weird little aluminum folding chairs that looked like they were left over from the time Mrs. Sleep was a student at the school.

  Though I had bigger things on my mind, I did take a minute to notice how ridiculous my parents looked in those chairs.

  After I told everyone that Jake was just covering for me and that I had, in fact, asked Jake Katz to read the books for me, and after I insisted that it was all my fault, and after I begged that Jake not be punished, which they said they would “look into”—after all that, they sent me to the outer office while they discussed my punishment.

  It was kind of like being strapped into the electric chair, then suddenly being sent to wait outside while they fixed one of the switches.

  I waited there for ten minutes, while several kids came in so the school secretary could sign their yearbooks. When they saw me, they acted like they felt sorry for me, until they giggled.

  Suddenly Ms. Ferrell poked her head out of Mrs. Sleep’s office.

  “Would you come back in here please, Mr. Jackson?”

  Mr. Jackson? I got up with a heavy sigh and headed in behind her.

  “You’re going to love this, Charlie Joe,” she said, chuckling.

  I was pretty sure she was being sarcastic.

  * * *

  I took my seat. Everyone was silent, waiting for Mrs. Sleep to speak. This was her moment. This was what she lived for.

  “Charles Joseph Jackson, I do hope you realize the pain you’ve caused not only your fellow students, but also the teachers who are trying to guide you, and your parents, who love you so much,” she began.

  I didn’t buy the student-pain thing—everybody seemed to be having a pretty darn good time running around getting ready for the summer and feeling relieved they weren’t me—but I did feel bad about letting down Ms. Ferrell, and really bad about embarrassing my parents. (So far, they hadn’t found out that Megan had read a book for me, too. Thank God for small favors.)

  Mrs. Sleep came around and sat on the front of her desk. She did this when she was getting ready to break out the big guns. “There are several courses of action we could take here. Obviously suspension is not an option, because the school year is essentially over.”

  For some reason that didn’t make me feel better.

  “And your parents have told me of all the many times they’ve tried to get you to read on your own, with absolutely no success.”

  No argument from me.

  I was hoping she was going to tell me to write “I will never not read my assigned book again” over and over again on the blackboard like Bart Simpson, but I was pretty sure that’s not what she had in mind.

  The principal peered down at me in that time-honored, principally way. “Apart from finding a suitable punishment for your recent infraction, it is clear that you need to learn how vital reading is to your growth and development, both as a student and as a young person.”

  Mrs. Sleep pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, which magnified her eyes into huge flying saucers.

  “So, after consulting with both Ms. Ferrell and your parents, we have decided on a course of action for you that we feel is reasonable and appropriate.”

  I liked the sound of reasonable. I didn’t like the sound of appropriate.

  Mrs. Sleep nodded to Ms. Ferrell, who talked next. “Charlie Joe, I’ve had you in my class for a year now, and I know how bright you are. Despite your best efforts to deny yourself knowledge, you have learned quite a bit in school, and you are an imaginative, creative thinker. Perhaps even more creative than we realized, in ways that may not always reflect the best judgment on your part. And we’d like to help you channel that creativity in a more constructive way.”

  Why did this feel like the calm before the storm?

  “So we are going to give you a choice.”

  I looked at my parents, who were both nodding at Ms. Ferrell.

  They were in on it.

  “The first option,” Ms. Ferrell continued, “is to read ten books over the course of the summer, and write a five-page book report on each one.”

  I think I threw up a little in my mouth. Somehow I managed to sputter, “Ten books?!” in disbelief. “What’s the other choice?”

  It seemed like they were all dying to answer, but Mrs. Sleep got there first.

  “The other option is to write a book. A book no less than 150 pages in length, on any topic you choose.”

  It felt like time stopped as they waited for me to object. Which I did, even though by that point I could barely talk.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I wheeezed.

  Mrs. Sleep was more than happy to answer, her eyes looking scarier than ever behind those granny glasses. “I can assure you Charles Joseph, we are not kidding. In fact, we’ve never been more serious.”

  Ms. Ferrell piled on. “It’s your choice, Charlie Joe. Read ten books or write one. Whichever assignment you choose, it will have to be completed before the first day of school next fall.”

  It was a good thing I was sitting down, because otherwise I would have keeled over.

  Read ten books or write one.

  I was being asked to choose between the firing squad and the hangman.

  But right away, I knew which one I was going to choose.

  I was born a non-reader, and I was going to die a non-reader.

  “I think I’ll write the book,” I managed to whisper mournfully.

  A wave of grief, nausea, and disbelief washed over me. I’m pretty sure it’s no exaggeration to say that my life flashed before my eyes.

  Nice knowing you, world.

  I had only one hope left. I turned to the two people who had raised me, fed me, sheltered me, protected me, and loved me. Now it was time for them to save me.

  “On the up side, this means you can have your computer back,” my dad said.

  So now you know why I spent the whole summer writing a book.

  * * *

  I’m sorry the book didn’t turn out the way I planned. I feel like I let you down.

  It was supposed to be a Guide to Not Reading—but when you consider everything that happened, I’m probably the last guy that should be giving advice on that subject.

  And it was supposed to be filled with really short chapters. But it turned out to have some not-so-short chapters after all.

  I feel like in the beginning, everything was going great. I had, like, a zillion tips in the first few chapters.

  But then the pages got longer. The chapters got longer. The sections got longer. Now that I think about it, it turned out to be exactly the kind of book I’ve spent my entire life avoiding.

  Inexcusable.

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #24

  NEVER READ A BOOK WITH A MORAL.

  It’s bad enough if you have to read a book. But books with morals are worse, because morals always involve behaving in an extremely honorable fashion, which we all know is completely unrealistic.

  I don’t need a book reminding me I’m not perfect.

  I’m well aware of that already.

  If this were one of those books that adults want you to read, there would be some sort of moral right about now.

  But the only moral I can think of is, “never try to cut corners and have someone else do what you’re supposed to do.” (Especially if you end up getting caught and you receive a horrible punishment that ruins your whole summer.)

  And if this were one of those books that you get assigned in school, it would have a happy ending, the kind where the kid says that writing this book was one of the most rewarding things he’s ever done because it helped him see the error of his ways, and he’s so thrilled to have discovered the joys not only of reading, but of writing.

  But when it comes right down to it, this just isn’t one of those books.

  And I’m just not one of
those kids.

  * * *

  But I will admit a few things.

  I’ll admit that writing this book—even though it totally wrecked my summer and quite possibly my life—wasn’t the soul-killing, mind-numbing chore I thought it was going to be.

  In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that writing a book is far less annoying than reading one.

  After all, I was allowed to pick my own topic, so I picked my favorite one: not reading.

  And even though the book ended up being about a lot more than not reading, at least I was able to tell my side of the story, so maybe people like my parents and Ms. Ferrell would understand what happened, and not be so disappointed in me.

  As my once-and-future best friend Katie Friedman would say, it was “therapeutic.”

  And even though I didn’t exactly do what I set out to do with this book—and you have every right not to believe what I say—I can make you one last solemn promise.

  When the new school year starts, I’m going to figure out a way to read as little as possible.

  In fact, I already have a few ideas.

  Don’t tell anyone.

  So now that I’ve finished the book, I can finally relax for the rest of the summer.

  Too bad school starts tomorrow.

  * * *

  Did I mention that Hannah gave me my “Dead Babies” Beatles album cover back?

  Yeah, that was pretty cool of her.

  She dropped it off over the summer with a note that said “Thanks for everything. Love ya! Hannah.”

  The word love doesn’t count when the word ya comes right after it.

  * * *

  I haven’t exactly been out and about very much this summer—I did have a book to write, after all—so I’m kind of looking forward to seeing everyone.

  I hope they’re looking forward to seeing me.

  I’m looking forward to telling Jake he’s more of a man than I’ll ever be, even when he’s wearing his glasses, and how happy I am for him and Hannah. (Honest.)