Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (26 page)
Read Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! Online
Authors: James Patterson
Tags: #Young Adult, #Adventure, #Humour, #Childrens, #Juvenile Fiction / Family - Multigenerational, #Juvenile Fiction / Lifestyles - City & Town Life, #Juvenile Fiction / Comics & Graphic Novels - General, #Juvenile Fiction / Social Issues - New Experience
There’s this one zombie I see almost every morning. He’s usually dribbling his coffee and eating a doughnut.
“Do zombies eat doughnuts with their fingers?” you might ask.
No. They usually eat their fingers separately.
The school crossing guard? She can stop traffic just by holding up her hand. With her other hand.
Are there
really
zombies on my way to school every morning?
Of course there are! But only inside my head. Only in my wild imagination. I guess you could say I try to see the funny side of any situation. You
should try it sometime. It makes life a lot more interesting.
So how did I end up here in this zombified suburb not too far from New York City?
Well,
that
, my friends, is a very interesting story….
A STRANGER IN AN EVEN STRANGER LANDI
moved to Long Beach on Long Island only a couple months ago from a small town out in the country. I guess you could say I’m a hick straight from the sticks.
To make my long story a little shorter, Long Beach isn’t my home, and I don’t think it ever will be. Have you ever felt like you don’t fit in? That you don’t belong where you are but you’re sort of stuck there? Well, that’s exactly how I feel each and every day since I moved to Long Beach.
Moving to a brand-new town also means I have to face a brand-new bunch of kids, and bullies, at my brand-new school.
Now, like all the other schools I’ve ever attended, the hallways of Long Beach Middle School are plastered with all sorts of
NO BULLYING
posters. There’s only one problem: Bullies, it turns out, don’t read too much. I guess reading really isn’t a job requirement in the high-paying fields of name-calling, nose-punching, and atomic-wedgie-yanking.
You want to know the secret to not getting beat up at school?
Well, I don’t really have scientific proof or anything, but, in my experience, comedy works. Most of the time, anyway.
That’s right: Never underestimate the power of a good laugh. It can stop some of the fiercest middle-school monsters.
For instance, if you hit your local bully with a pretty good joke, he or she might be too busy laughing to hit you back. It’s true: Punch lines can actually beat punches because it’s pretty hard for a bully to give you a triple nipple cripple if he’s doubled over, holding his sides, and laughing his head off.
So every morning, before heading off to school, just make sure you pack some good jokes along with your lunch. For instance, you could distract your bully with a one-liner from one of my all-time favorite stand-up comics, Steven Wright: “Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID, he just whipped out a quarter?”
If that doesn’t work, go with some surefire Homer Simpson: “Operator! Give me the number for 911!”
All I’m saying is that laughing is healthy. A lot healthier than getting socked in the stomach. Especially if you had a big breakfast.
Read more in
I FUNNY
Coming December 10, 2012!
for Readers of All Ages
The Witch & Wizard Novels
Witch & Wizard
(with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Gift
(with Ned Rust)
The Fire
(with Jill Dembowski)
The Angel Experiment
School’s Out—Forever
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
The Final Warning
MAX
FANG
ANGEL
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X
(with Michael Ledwidge)
Watch the Skies
(with Ned Rust)
Demons and Druids
(with Adam Sadler)
Game Over
(with Ned Rust)
Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life
(with Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Laura Park)
Middle School: Get Me out of Here!
(with Chris Tebbetts, illustrated by Laura Park)
Daniel X: Alien Hunter
(graphic novel; with Leopoldo Gout)
Daniel X: The Manga, Vols. 1 – 2
(with SeungHui Kye)
Maximum Ride: The Manga, Vols. 1 – 5
(with NaRae Lee)
Witch & Wizard: The Manga, Vols. 1 – 2
(with Svetlana Chmakova)
For previews of upcoming books in these series and other information, visit
www.maximumride.com
,
www.daniel-x.com
,
www.witchandwizard.com
, and
www.middleschoolbook.com
.
For more information about the author, visit
www.JamesPatterson.com
.
THE AUTHORS WOULD LIKE TO THANK
CHAPTER 3: OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT
CHAPTER 4: MY TOP TEN (ACTUALLY ONLY SIX)
CHAPTER 5: WELCOME TO THE BIG CITY!
CHAPTER 7: A NIGHT ON THE TOWN
CHAPTER 9: MOM THROWS A CURVEBALL
CHAPTER 10: THE RETURN OF THE DRAGON LADY
CHAPTER 13: GREETINGS FROM THE BIG CITY!
CHAPTER 14: TWENTY-TWO HOURS AND FORTY-NINE MINUTES LATER (NOT THAT I WAS COUNTING OR ANYTHING)
CHAPTER 15: THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE
CHAPTER 16: FIRST DAY ON PLANET CATHEDRAL
CHAPTER 17: THE BIG CATCH (AND I DON’T MEAN FISH)
CHAPTER 19: WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
CHAPTER 20: CRIT-ICAL CONDITION
CHAPTER 22: REVENGE IS SWEET (AND WET)
CHAPTER 23: OPERATION: GET A LIFE
CHAPTER 28: MY NEW LIFE, STEP 1
CHAPTER 29: LEO TURNS UP THE HEAT
CHAPTER 30: ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT IT
CHAPTER 31: WELCOME TO DUMPSTER DIVING
CHAPTER 33: QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS
CHAPTER 35: SPILLING (SOME OF) THE BEANS
CHAPTER 41: A REALLY GOOD PLAN
CHAPTER 42: OPERATION: ART-NAP
CHAPTER 43: EVERYTHING I DESERVED, AND THEN SOME
CHAPTER 44: RAFE KHATCHADORIAN, WORST SON EVER
CHAPTER 45: HOW RAFE SURVIVED HIS IN-SCHOOL SUSPENSION
CHAPTER 46: THE NEXT-BEST THING
CHAPTER 52: THIRTY-TWO TRILLION AND COUNTING
CHAPTER 54: BIG-CITY TAKEDOWN!
CHAPTER 57: THE FIRST PART OF THE WORST PART
CHAPTER 58: THE REST OF THE WORST
CHAPTER 60: JUST PASSING THROUGH
CHAPTER 68: MY HAPPY(ISH) ENDING
A PREVIEW OF
I FUNNY: A MIDDLE SCHOOL STORY
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by James Patterson
Illustrations by Laura Park
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 is 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 and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
First e-book edition: May 2012
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
ISBN 978-0-316-20670-9