Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading Read online

  It’s hard enough to read a book, but reading standing up?

  Fortunately, the one thing that can get Jake’s nose out of a book is Xbox—it’s just that good—so we headed inside to play.

  But his mom met us at the door, announced it was a beautiful day, and told us to go back outside.

  So we stayed outside for three minutes, then went around to the other side of the house, snuck in through the side door, went downstairs to the basement, and played Xbox.

  In the middle of the game I got this weird text from Timmy: Read any good books lately?

  I texted back: Haha what do you think? and forgot all about it.

  After about forty-five awesome Xbox minutes, Jake’s dog gave us away by barking furiously at one of the Nazi Zombies. His mom chased us outside again.

  So we went outside and hung out in his front yard for about an hour, talking about Nazi Zombies.

  Then Jake said, “So, how come you don’t like Eliza?”

  Jake was incredibly smart, but he wasn’t exactly Einstein with the girls, so he couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t like a girl who already liked him.

  Especially a girl who looked like Eliza.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I answered. “I wish I did like her though. It would make life so much easier.”

  “I don’t think life is supposed to be easy,” said the kid who’s never gotten less than an A in his entire life.

  Little did I know.

  * * *

  I knew something was wrong right when I got home, when I walked in the door and Moose and Coco didn’t run up to greet me as if I was the only human being in the world that had ever existed.

  The thing about dogs is, they pretty much reflect the mood in the house. If someone’s sad, they’re sad. If someone’s happy, they’re happy. And if someone’s mad, which happened to be the case in this particular instance, they hide.

  I made my way to the kitchen for my usual pre-dinner bowl of cereal. I like my stomach to be prepped with a solid snack before a sit-down meal.

  I stopped in my tracks when I saw my mom sitting at the table with Timmy’s mom.

  Now, under normal circumstances, I love Ms. McGibney. She has, like, the best snack cabinet in the entire town: chips, chocolate-covered pretzels, cheese-covered popcorn, cookies galore, literally every kind of junk food that I want to eat and my mom will not buy. Plus, Ms. McGibney is always happy to drive Timmy and me anywhere.

  But these were not normal circumstances. In fact they were highly abnormal.

  Almost paranormal.

  I gave a quick wave as I tried to sneak by them on my way to the cereal container.

  “Hi, Ms. McGibney.”

  She smiled semi-brightly. “Hello, Charlie Joe dear.”

  My mom interrupted the pleasantries. “Charlie Joe, the Captain Crunch/Fruit Loops combo platter will have to wait. Please come over here and sit down.”

  I sat. Coco went into the other room—she hated confrontation. Moose stuck around, looking at me like, “I really feel badly for you, but at the same time, I’m so glad I’m not you right now.”

  My mom folded her hands in that universal mom sign for I’m talking and you’re listening.

  “Rose has come here today with some very disturbing news.”

  * * *

  Do you want me to go on, or should I end the chapter here? Are you desperate to know what happens, or are you more desperate to finish the chapter, put the book away and go watch TV?

  I’d say we should take a vote, but since that’s kind of impossible, I’ll just put myself in your shoes. What would I want? How would I vote?

  That settles it. End of chapter.

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #9

  READING CAN MAKE YOU FAT.

  Surely you’ve heard all about the studies that show how kids today just sit around eating candy and cheeseburgers, and how obesity among young people is a huge national problem. I think one of the cable news channels called it “An American epidemic of fatness,” which sounds almost as scary as global warming.

  Well, do you know what a major contributor to all that fat is?

  Reading.

  I’ll have you know that reading burns absolutely no calories whatsoever.

  So the next time you consider picking up a book, you might want to remember what an unhealthy choice you’re making.

  It’s for your own good.

  As my mother stared at me across the kitchen table, it suddenly occurred to me what happened.

  When something interesting happens at school, kids like to talk about it.

  Who knew?

  It turns out that after Eliza and I had our little chat, Eliza immediately told her friend Talia about it. And Talia told this kid Adam about it. Then Adam told Becky, Becky told David, David told Emily, Emily told Eric, and Eric told Cathy … who happens to be Timmy’s sister.

  And Cathy told her mother. Who happens to be Timmy’s mother.

  And Timmy’s mother told my mother.

  And my mother told me, but good.

  At first it sounded perfectly harmless. “So let me get this straight,” she said, even though we were both pretty sure she had it straight. “You asked Eliza Collins to talk to her father about making sure Timmy made the lacrosse team?”

  “Yup,” I said. “What’s the big deal? I was just trying to be a good friend.”

  My mom sighed heavily, which usually meant the beginning of the end.

  “A good friend who wants someone to keep reading his books for him, apparently.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Timmy told me all about your little arrangement, dear,” Ms. McGibney said, almost apologetically.

  I started to sweat. “What did he tell you?” I asked, needlessly.

  Mom took this one. “In exchange for you buying Timmy food at lunch, he tells you what’s in the book that you’ve been assigned to read. So you don’t have to read it.”

  Then she waited for me to confirm or deny. What could I do?

  “Oh,” I confirmed.

  But she wasn’t done. “And according to Timmy, this has been going on for several years, and in all that time you pretty much haven’t read even ONE of the books that you were supposed to read.”

  Wow. Timmy had really gone into the gory details. He must have been really upset that I talked to Eliza. Or, more accurately, he must have been really upset that the whole school found out that I talked to Eliza.

  Dang it, I thought to myself, Katie was right. As usual.

  “It’s not that simple,” I said. “I read parts of the books. I read all of the first chapters, and some of the second chapters, and most of the endings and stuff. I was really completely able to get the point of these books for sure. Timmy just helped me fill in some of the details, that’s all.”

  Yeah, that wasn’t gonna fly.

  My mom looked at me with real disappointment, which made me feel terrible. “We’ll talk more about this when Dad gets home.”

  Great. Something else to look forward to.

  Mrs. McGibney took a sip of her cider, which reminded me that I had absolutely no saliva in my mouth and was dying of thirst. Her eyes were full of pity as she said the one thing she knew would make me feel at least a tiny bit better.

  “I want you to know, Charlie Joe, that Timmy is going to be in just as much trouble as you are.”

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #10

  IT’S EASY TO CONVINCE OTHERS THAT YOU DO IN FACT READ, EVEN IF YOU DO IN FACT DON’T.

  There are plenty of ways to come across as a book lover. Just follow these simple steps:

  1. Have a bookshelf in your room. Stock it with books.

  2. Wear glasses—even if you don’t need them.

  3. Use the word therefore a lot.

  4. Put a Harry Potter poster up on your wall.

  5. Keep a library card handy at all times.

  6. Ask for a gift certificate to Amazon for your birthday. (Don’t worry, they sell DVDs.)

  7. Get a shirt w
ith a picture of Mark Twain on it.

  8. Hang out at Barnes & Noble. (Great hot chocolate.)

  9. Make your local library’s Web site the homepage on your computer.

  10. PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANT: Don’t annoy or embarrass your friend who’s reading all your books for you. EVER.

  Can a book be divided into quarters, kind of like a football game? I think this is the end of the first quarter. Let’s go to commercial break.

  You know the expression “read it and weep”?

  Whoever came up with that is a genius.

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #11

  BOOKS THAT ARE DIVIDED INTO PARTS SHOULD BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS.

  Except this one.

  It’s very difficult to sit there facing your mom and dad and be told you did something wrong, which in fact you did, and come up with some kind of quick, clever comeback.

  So perhaps you’ll forgive me for what I came up with, after listening to my mom tell my dad the whole story, and listening to my dad ask me what I had to say for myself:

  “I am so, so sorry, and I swear, it will so totally never ever happen again.”

  I know, brilliant, right?

  I’ll spare you the details of my shameless pleas for mercy—it’s possible a tear or two might even have leaked from my left eye—and cut right to the part where my dad announced the punishment. “Grounded—one week.”

  I could live with that, not so bad.

  Then my mom chimed in. “Set the table, two weeks.”

  Well, now that seemed a little extreme.

  “Load the dishwasher, three weeks,” she continued.

  Wait, what? This I could not let stand.

  “Load the dishwasher for three weeks?!” I stammered. “That’s crazy; that’s so not fair! Not only do I get punished, Megan gets rewarded? How is that fair?”

  My dad did that thing where his eyes suddenly get real narrow, and it occurred to me that I might have been a little out of line, jumping in to complain when the emotions were still raw. I waited nervously.

  “Oh, you don’t think it’s fair, do you? Fine. We’ll skip that one,” he offered.

  Wait … had my plea actually worked?

  “Instead, we’ll go with no cell phone for a month. And that actually works out really well since they don’t allow cell phones at the public library anyway, which is where you’ll be spending every day after school.”

  Um, can we go back to the whole dishwasher thing?

  I know you feel my pain on this one, but I have to say this anyway. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the cell phone in a person’s life.

  Especially if that person is grounded and has a paper due in five days.

  Actually, technically in four and a half days.

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #12

  THE LIBRARY CAN BE YOUR FRIEND.

  Don’t automatically assume that just because the library is filled with books it’s a bad place.

  It all depends on why you’re going there.

  For example, there’s a pretty good movie section in most libraries. And they have computers.

  The library in my town even has a place to buy snacks. I like to grab a book (that I have no intention of reading), then amble over to the café for a little hot chocolate and conversation.

  Every once in a while I’ll even open the book.

  Sometimes, a girl I know will wander over and ask me what I’m reading. (Unless she goes to my school, in which case she’ll know that books and I don’t get along.) Then I’ll ask her what she’s reading. Then I’ll ask her lots of questions about her book, which shows how curious and sensitive I am. Then I’ll say it sounds like a book I might like. She’ll smile. I’ll smile back.

  Yeah—like I said, the library can be your friend.

  The library can also be your mortal enemy.

  Take the girl out of the equation, add your mother and your sister, and a complete lack of texting, and the library becomes a kind of hell on earth. A pit of despair. A black hole of desperation and misery.

  A place you don’t want to be, especially on a Saturday.

  But that Saturday—the day after my little kitchen table chat with Mom and Ms. McGibney—I was sitting in the Eastport Public Hell on Earth, with a copy of Billy’s Bargain in my hand.

  I tried to find a corner of the library where I wouldn’t be seen, because I had a reputation to uphold.

  And then—believe it or not—I started reading.

  So, yeah, this should be the place in the book where I tell you that it turns out that the book was amazing, time flew by, and all of a sudden I looked up and it was eight o’clock. I had discovered the joys of reading and storytelling, and the characters spoke to me, and not only did I want to read more books, I wanted to move into the library.

  Only, that’s not what happened AT ALL.

  Listen, I’ve got nothing against Billy’s Bargain, or the guy who wrote it, some guy named Ted Hauser. I’m sure Ted Hauser is a perfectly nice man with a great family, and congratulations to him for writing a book that most kids seem to enjoy. I’m sure his mom is really proud of him and brags about him at dinner parties.

  But, no matter how nice a guy and how successful an author Ted Hauser is, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t give him the right to ruin my life.

  After two hours—and believe me, I was counting, pretty much a second at a time—I realized I had read eighteen pages.

  Now, I’m no expert—in fact, far from it—but I’m pretty sure eighteen pages in two hours is not record-setting speed.

  At this rate, I was going to finish the book in about three years.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was my sister, Megan, who had four—count ’em, FOUR!—books in her hands.

  “How’s it going? Are you getting anywhere? Are you enjoying the book?”

  Sometimes, having a nice sister is no better than having a mean sister. Trust me, sometimes it’s worse.

  I looked up at her and rubbed my eyes. “Oh yeah, I’m cruising along. It’s actually really good.”

  “I’ll bet it is.”

  I looked around at everyone else in the library, seemingly there of their own free will. Who were these people who seemed to actually enjoy the act of just sitting there, doing nothing but looking at words on a page, and somehow finding some sense of happiness or joy or satisfaction or fulfillment? There were even people reading the newspaper, for crying out loud. The newspaper! When you could go online and catch three quick headlines that tell you everything you might need to know. (War, peace, disaster, a new 3-D movie premiere—it’s all just a click away, thanks to the good people at Google.)

  Who were these people, and what was I doing here with them?

  Megan sat down next to me. “Listen. I’ll make you a deal. This is probably the stupidest thing I’ll ever do in my life, and I’m sure I’ll regret it forever—”

  She stopped—a second-thoughts kind of stop.

  Go on. Go ON!!! My mouth didn’t say it, but my brain was screaming it.

  “I can’t stand seeing you this mopey. I know you’re in a time crunch. I’ll read the book for you tonight. This one time, and that’s it. From now on, you read your own books. READ THE BOOKS!”

  Like I said. Sometimes having a nice sister is the best freakin’ thing in the world.

  A BRIEF TRIBUTE TO MY AWESOME SISTER

  The funny thing about Megan Jackson is that she is completely not funny. She has zero sense of humor, she can’t tell a joke to save her life, and she doesn’t get what’s funny about The Simpsons, which is just sad.

  Let’s call her comically challenged.

  But—and I’ve racked my brain about this, believe me—that’s the only thing in the whole entire world that is wrong with Megan Jackson. She’s pretty, she’s nice, she’s smart, she’s athletic, she’s friendly to dorks and others less fortunate than she is—she’s just an all-around kind of amazing person.

  And I thought this even before she decided to save my life.r />
  I mean, I haven’t always been crazy about her boyfriends, and occasionally she hijacks the bathroom, but basically, I scored big time with my big sister.

  She’s what they call “good people.”

  (I love that expression. How can a person be a “people”? What does it even mean?)

  Charlie Joe’s Tip #13

  YOU CAN GO TO THE MOVIES AND STILL BE READING.

  I love going to the movies. (When I’m not grounded, that is.) It’s like one of my favorite things. And sometimes, when I get back from a movie and my parents ask me where I was, I say, “reading.”

  If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.

  Seriously. Check out all the ways you read at the movies:

  1. Ticket stub (Make sure you got a ticket for the right movie!)

  2. Trailer credits

  3. “This movie is rated…”

  4. Opening credits

  5. Subtitles (foreign movies can be good, and the girls are totally beautiful)

  6. Closing credits

  7. The posters outside the theater

  8. The menu at the diner after the movie

  9. The IMDB reviews of the movie that you check out when you get home

  10. The texts you get from your friends arguing about whether the movie was any good or not

  So, after inwardly jumping up and down and screaming for joy—it was the library after all, and I didn’t want to make a scene and distract all those dedicated readers—I decided to take my sister out for ice cream. It was the least I could do, and I kind of figured I owed her one, you know? (Actually, if you count the number of pages in Billy’s Bargain, I owed her 167.)

  So—and here is where the story gets weird—we get to the ice-cream place and who’s there? Timmy McGibney. That’s right—the backstabbing, book-plot-admitting, he’s-in-as-much-trouble-as-you-are, supposedly grounded Timmy McGibney.

  But it’s not just that he was out when he was supposed to be in. After all, I’m also out when I’m supposed to be in.