Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading Read online

  I was traditionally a proud summer slacker, but this was the year my parents had decided I would do something productive, like go to soccer camp, or get a babysitting job, or—it makes my skin twitch just writing this—take a summer school class.

  But that was before my Position Paper triumph. The pleasure my parents took in my achievement (they had finally read my Paper, and loved it) made me think I might be able to avoid any additional academic duty over the summer; and when I mentioned that I needed a new bathing suit, my mom didn’t give me her usual “you can go to the beach on weekends, after you do your chores and read at least one complete book during the week” speech.

  Maybe they were proud of me, maybe they had just given up, or maybe it was a combination of both—but it was starting to look like the summer was shaping up to be chock full of my favorite activity.

  Nada.

  * * *

  Anyway, on the day of the dance, the whole school was buzzing with anticipation, and the usual last-minute rush of boys asking girls to go was happening at a record-setting pace. As for myself, ever since the day four months ago when Eliza thought I was asking her, I had wondered who I would end up going with. I considered asking about thirty girls.

  I ended up asking Timmy McGibney and Pete Milano.

  * * *

  I got to the dance right on time—forty-five minutes late.

  It was dark, it was sweaty, it was impossible to hear anyone talk.

  In other words, it was just right.

  Timmy, Pete, and I were hanging out, trying to decide if we should a) ask specific girls to dance, b) join the general clump of dancers, or c) shoot baskets for a few minutes in the gym while deciding how to approach the whole dancing situation.

  Pete had a firm opinion. “Dudes, you don’t ask a girl to dance at these kinds of things. That totally pins you down. You just dive into the pile, and dance with all of ’em at once! Right, C.J.?” he said to me, punching my arm. Pete was a puncher.

  “Right,” I said, scanning the crowd for a couple of faces that I hadn’t yet seen. It took me a minute to find Katie, who was hanging out with her usual friends, doing her usual thing (texting them).

  I caught her eye and waved, and she smiled and waved back. I know, not exactly a momentous event, but it made me feel good, so I thought I’d tell you about it.

  Mainly because it was just about the last thing that made me feel good that night. Or ever.

  Another punch on the arm from Pete. “Whoa!” he said, pointing at the front door.

  I looked. Whoa indeed.

  Coming through the door was Hannah Spivero, and holding her hand was a kid who used to be Jake Katz.

  * * *

  You know that thing in cartoons where a character sees something he doesn’t believe, so he rubs his eyes, shakes his head, and looks again?

  Well, I’m pretty sure that’s what I did.

  Jake bore only a passing resemblance to his former self. He wasn’t wearing his glasses—so either he couldn’t see or he was finally wearing those contact lenses his parents were begging him to get. His clothes were all new and actually fit, and he moussed up his hair to the point where it would have made a porcupine jealous.

  He looked good.

  Hannah, on the other hand, looked like she always looked. Perfect.

  Everybody turned to stare as the happy couple entered the cafeteria. Trailing behind them and basking in their reflected glory was Teddy Spivero, Hannah’s shallow-end-of-the-gene-pool twin brother.

  Teddy surveyed the crowd until he found what he was looking for.

  Me.

  “Yo, Jerko Jackson,” he bellowed, using a beloved nickname I hadn’t heard since fourth grade. He pointed at Jake and his sister. “Check it out—still going strong!”

  Timmy nudged my shoulder—he was a nudger—and turned to me with a jealous look on his face.

  “Are they still going out?” He wasn’t so much asking me as asking the universe how a thing like this could happen.

  I could feel the universe shrug in response.

  “It would appear so,” I said testily. I was a little annoyed at him. What right did he have to be jealous? He’d dated her for about seven hours, whereas I’d loved her for about seven years.

  Teddy bounded over to us like a St. Bernard who’d had too much caffeine. “PEOPLES!”

  Did Teddy Spivero just say “peoples”?

  He elbowed me right in the stomach. (He was an elbower.) “I bet you thought it wouldn’t last more than a minute, huh? Well look at the two of ’em now, gettin’ ready to hit the dance floor and do a little bit of the old ookie ookie.”

  “Ookie ookie?” “Peoples?” Say what you will about Teddy Spivero—which is that he is an idiot—he had apparently come up with his own language, and I had to admit it had a certain style.

  “I couldn’t be more happy for them,” I said, trying to sound happy for them.

  Jake brought Hannah over supposedly to say hello, but really to take a sort of victory lap. “Hey, Charlie Joe,” he said, while trying to drape his arm around Hannah’s shoulders but only reaching the middle of her back. “How’s it going? Hey, Timmy. Hey, Pete.”

  We all mumbled something that sounded kind of like “Hey, Jake.”

  Jake looked at me. “You were right. People from very different cliques can thrive together if only given the chance.”

  Hannah looked at me. “You are so smart sometimes, Charlie Joe Jackson.”

  “It’s nice to be smart,” I said, dumbly.

  Remember back in chapter forty-six when Jake was happy with the idea of going to the dance solo, because if he went with a girl he would have felt tied down, and wouldn’t have been able to go get a drink or hang out with his friends whenever he wanted?

  Yeah, well, it turns out he didn’t end up talking to his friends barely at all, and he didn’t make it to the punch bowl very often.

  And you know what?

  He didn’t seem all that devastated about it.

  Pete’s idea, dancing with everybody in a big clump, turned out to be totally fun. We spent most of the night jumping up and down with pretty much the entire grade, just a bunch of kids together, boys and girls, having a blast, putting the stress and pressure of another school year behind us.

  At one point during the heat of the moment, I actually had a weird feeling that I was going to miss school.

  That was pretty creepy.

  Then came the song where the girls are supposed to ask the boys to dance. Everyone was pairing off, and I saw Eliza heading over to me. It occurred to me that there were worse things in the world than dancing with the prettiest girl in school.

  “Hey, Charlie Joe.”

  “Hey, Lize.”

  She flipped her hair a few times. “I just wanted you to know that even though you never ended up asking me to the dance, I’m not mad. But even so, I won’t be asking you to dance, because you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him eat.”

  I looked at her. “I think it’s ‘you can’t make him drink.’ You know, since it’s water?”

  She squinted, considering the possibility.

  “Whatever,” she said, and she meant it.

  * * *

  As Eliza departed, Katie arrived.

  “What was that about?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual,” I said. “She likes me, I don’t like her, but somehow I’m the one who ends up standing there alone like a doofus.”

  “Well, does the doofus want to dance?” Katie always knew just what to say.

  I looked at her gratefully. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  It was one of those Coldplay songs that’s neither fast nor slow, so we just kind of looked at each other and shuffled back and forth.

  “Did you have a good year?” she asked. She didn’t mess around; she always went straight for the big questions that were far too complicated for someone like me to answer.

  “Pretty good,” I said. I was watching Jake and Hannah da
nce. They were in their own little world, and no one else was invited.

  “‘Pretty good?’” she echoed. “What does that mean? Did you grow? Did you learn anything? Or are you still the same Charlie Joe Jackson that I usually find adorable but sometimes find impossible?”

  “What?” I answered, distractedly.

  She saw me staring at Jake and Hannah, rolled her eyes, and sighed.

  “This whole thing was your idea, don’t forget,” she said, as if I could ever forget.

  “I know. And it worked like a charm,” I said glumly. “I’m a genius.”

  “Be happy for them,” she said in her wise, I’m-going-to-be-a-therapist-someday voice. “You can be shocked, you can be confused, and you can be a little freaked out. But try to be just a little bit happy for them. Can you do that?”

  I looked at her, and thought for a second.

  “Want to get some punch?”

  A couple of sweaty hours later, Phil Manning and Celia Barbarossa came in second in the voting for king and queen of the dance. I was really happy for them. They were a perfectly normal couple except for the fact that they’d been going out since fourth grade, were completely devoted to each other, and everyone was pretty sure they’d get married and live happily ever after.

  Guess which couple came in first?

  I’ll give you a hint: one’s a Goddess and one’s taking ninth-grade algebra.

  I was somewhat less happy for them.

  In our school, the two top couples get to make a little speech. It was a year-end-dance tradition.

  Did I ever mention I officially hate traditions?

  Phil and Celia gave a lovely speech, all about the sanctity of their love (whatever that means), thereby proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were way too emotionally mature for the rest of us.

  Then it was Hannah and Jake’s turn. Hannah took the microphone first, caressing it like she was an American Idol finalist, about to do a deeply emotional interpretation of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.”

  “Jake and I stand here before you as an example of how opposites attract, and how you can never predict who will end up liking whom,” she purred, making googly eyes at her dork-turned-dreamboat. “Like The Beatles once said, ‘the love you make is equal to the love you take,’” she added, probably unaware that she was reminding me I had given up not one but two things: any shot at her love and my most precious material possession.

  She handed the mike to Jake, and bent down (she was three inches taller than him) to give him a kiss on the cheek.

  Timmy and I both touched our own cheeks involuntarily.

  “My name is Jake Katz,” Jake said, in that way that made you realize he was going to go on for a while. “I have never had a girlfriend. I do really well in school but I’m not really that popular or anything.”

  I suddenly got a weird feeling in my stomach. Jake was being honest. Very honest.

  Too honest.

  “I tried to convince myself that I was perfectly happy. I told myself I would be a famous writer someday, and when I was rich and successful I’d have all the girls in the world, and everything would be fantastic.” He reached up to adjust his glasses, momentarily forgetting that he wasn’t wearing them. “But really I was just kind of fooling myself, because actually I was pretty lonely.”

  Uh-oh. I could tell he was being emotional and not thinking.

  “So when Charlie Joe Jackson told me about his idea to fix me up with Hannah, I didn’t get it,” he said next.

  One cat, officially out of the bag.

  All eyes turned to me.

  My eyes turned to the fire exits, in case I would need one.

  Jake continued. “He’s my friend, but I couldn’t help but think that maybe it was some kind of cruel joke. You know, kind of like that movie Carrie.”

  Wow, interesting example there, dude. Have you ever seen Carrie? The unbelievably scary movie where the loser girl with supernatural powers is picked on by all the kids in her grade, and is set up with the popular boy as a practical joke, until she gets her revenge by burning them all to death at the YEAR-END DANCE?

  Suddenly, everybody was looking for the fire exits.

  Jake looked at Hannah and for one brief wonderful moment I thought maybe he wouldn’t have the nerve to continue.

  Then she smiled at him, and off he went.

  “But then, when Charlie Joe explained about his Position Paper, and how he wanted to prove that cliques were wrong and could be overcome, I was glad to be part of his noble experiment. And I wanted to find out if the most popular girl and the dorkiest kid in the grade could find true happiness together, too.”

  Then Jake looked directly at me, and suddenly, for some strange reason, I knew exactly what was about to happen. I knew that I would be powerless to stop it, that I would just have to let it happen. No fire exits. No hole in the ground to crawl into. No nothing.

  “But it wasn’t until Charlie Joe asked me to read his books for the Position Paper for him,” Jake said, sealing my fate, “that I realized just how deeply entrenched cliques were in our society.”

  It seemed like the room went dead silent right then. Except for the sound of my heart pounding, of course, which was deafening.

  “Every school has them, and it seems like every school is powerless to stop them,” Jake said, getting more passionate by the second. “So if somehow I could be just a small part in ending the cliques in our small corner of the world, then I would have done something really, really, cool.”

  Then Jake took his girlfriend’s hand. And even though I knew my life as I knew it was about to end, I couldn’t help but be a little bit touched.

  “So we started going out,” Jake said, raising his voice to be heard over the increasing din. “And three days ago, Hannah Spivero kissed me in front of the whole world.”

  Jake raised his arms to heavens, as if to say thank you.

  “Hannah Spivero!”

  * * *

  A lot of kids missed his second “Hannah Spivero!”—which was as pure a declaration of love as you’ll ever hear —because the room had exploded in a lollaplooza of sound. And everywhere I looked, kids were pointing at me and laughing.

  Pete Milano elbowed me in the ribs. “You are so screwed!” he said, helpfully.

  I felt like I was having one of those out-of-body experiences, which sounds kind of cool, but in this case most definitely was not.

  I looked around, hoping for a friendly face, and I caught a quick glimpse of Katie and Ms. Ferrell. Their faces didn’t look friendly. They looked crushed.

  That made me feel bad.

  Then I saw Mr. Radonski heading over to my table.

  That made me feel worse.

  Meanwhile, Jake was still up on the stage, confused. Of course, he had no idea what he had just said. He had no idea that he had just ruined my life. It wasn’t his fault. He was in love. He was caught up in the moment.

  I was just caught, period.

  * * *

  When Jake uttered the fateful words, “But it wasn’t until Charlie Joe asked me to read his books for the Position Paper for him,” the only one in the whole building who wasn’t surprised was Timmy.

  Timmy, who had been my co-conspirator for years. Timmy, the only one who knew what I was up to—the one, in fact, who had helped me refine the plan when it was just a dream in my head—nudged me one last time, just as Mr. Radonski reached for my arm.

  “Dude, you probably should have just read the books,” he said.

  * * *

  The second-to-last thing I remember from that night was catching Katie’s eye as I left the dance. She was waving good-bye, sadly, as if she wasn’t going to see me again for a long time. Which was pretty much true.

  And the very last thing I remember was Mr. Radonski escorting me out of the cafeteria just as the music kicked back in: “I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night,” by Kiss.

  “Dang it, I love this song,” said Mr. Radonski as we headed out—as if he needed anothe
r reason to hate me.

  I’ve been grounded before, and I’ll be grounded again.

  This time, I would probably be grounded for six years, but as we all know, the good thing about being grounded is that it never really lasts that long.

  I mean, you can get grounded for longer and longer periods of time, you can even get grounded for life, but when you think about it, the average grounding really only lasts approximately 5.5 days, because by then everybody is pretty much sick of you hanging around the house whining all the time.

  I was already planning on being as whiny as possible.

  * * *

  I was waiting in the gym for my parents to pick me up from the dance when Mr. Radonski showed me his tattoo.

  “See this?” he said, rolling back his right shirtsleeve to reveal a large bald eagle smoking a cigar. “I got this baby in the service. Took me six hours. Getting that tattoo was by far the most painful thing I’ve ever had to endure in my life.”

  He leaned in close, close enough for me to recognize the brand of tomato sauce he’d had for dinner.

  “But that pain is going to feel like walking on a bed of marshmallows compared to the hell I’m going to put you through in my class next year.”

  I love you, too, Mr. Radonski.

  I was trying to figure out how to convince my parents to move to another state, when lo and behold, they walked through the door.

  My dad is one of those guys who never loses his temper, but when he does, look out. And every great once in a while, he gets so mad that you feel it even before he says a word.

  This was one of those times.

  I could tell he was trying not to blow when he came through the door. His eyes were very narrow and his body was kind of hunched over, and I could tell that what he felt most—more than anger, or disappointment, or frustration—was shame.

  “Hi, I’m James Jackson,” he said to Mr. Radonski, and they shook hands. “I want to thank you for looking after my son, and I apologize for whatever trouble he’s caused you tonight.”

  “No problem,” Mr. Radonski said, giving no indication that he’d put the fear of God in me about thirty-eight seconds earlier.