erased all traces of previous mileage. Dads can be cool that
way sometimes . . . even my dad.
Turn the page to read an excerpt from
CHAPTER 1
can see a bead of sweat clinging to Byczykowski’s mus-
tache hairs, and on her it doesn’t look bad. Hector is right
I
about Eastern European women being able to rock that look.
He used to hang out with this chick named Autumn Solak,
who was a total granolahead—meaning she never shaved
her legs or anything. The first time I saw her in a tank top
reaching up to get something off the top shelf of her locker,
I thought she had two cats glued to her armpits. But she was
really nice, and really hot, and Hector was crazy about her
body hair. Personally, I’m not into that look, but I do admire a
well-groomed mustache.
Every eye in the room is on the clock behind the teacher as
it hangs on 3:29. And hangs . . . and hangs . . .
Ms. Byczykowski has this weird habit of overenunciat-
ing when she reads and accompanies that with exaggerated
facial expressions. I guess she’s trying to make sure we all
understand what she’s saying, but instead we all get dis-
tracted by watching the afternoon sun reflect off her gold
crowns whenever she says “the Battle of Antietam.” When
she gets to the Emancipation Proclamation I’m going to have
to wear sunglasses.
Somebody’s cell phone vibrates, and thirty-five hands
silently slide into thirty-five backpacks to check to see if it was
theirs. It wasn’t mine, and when I reach down to put my phone
back, I notice a mouse-sized dust bunny rolling around under
my desk. I watch it kind of randomly rock back and forth for a
second, then rise slightly upward before it vaporizes from the
wind force of thirty-five American History books simultane-
ously slamming shut.
It’s 3:30 and the classroom doors burst open, creating
hallway-wide rivers of humanity that roll through the build-
ing, around corners, and cascade down stairwells toward the
outside doors.
Which is cool unless, like me, your last class happens to be
on the first floor and your locker is on the third. I twist, spin,
duck, and juke my way through the crowd until I finally make
it to the first landing.
Pasting myself against the wall reduces drag as I gasp for
air and watch the endless flow of studentage rush by. It’s like
standing on the edge of a freeway, only a lot more dangerous
and about ten times louder. I’m serious. If you get near a group
of cheerleaders on game day or in the vicinity of the Drama
Club when one of them has a cute new pair of shoes, it can
make your ears bleed.
Sensing a break in the flow, I dart in and hook my elbow
around the metal handrail, and lowering my head, I push
upward through the crowd one determined step at a time. The
key is not to lose hope. There’s this story of a kid who did give
up during a cross-grain stairway rush like this. They found
tiny pieces of his backpack
downstream in the metal
shop and his shoes
lodged under the
vice principal’s
Prius.
I am not about to end up there, so I turn my focus inward
concentrate on my breathing as I fight against the current.
Except for me the current isn’t white water; it’s elbows and
saxophone cases and the enormous armloads of books carried
by the simple freshmen who are either too insecure
to use their lockers or too clueless to care about
hazard they present. Can’t they see them-
selves? What is the advantage of carrying
everything you own everywhere you go? Is this a school or a
refugee camp? As I turn the corner I drift farther toward the
middle of the stream. Experience has taught me that this is
the spot where the jocks hulk in the eddies and swat at the
vulnerable with their bearlike paws, feeding
on the weak and unfortunate.
And then suddenly the crowd is gone and I’m moving freely.
The damp, Frito-scented air of the crowded stairwell has dis-
sipated and been replaced by a cooler, fresher school smell of
floor wax and urinal cakes. I’ve reached the third floor.
My locker is dead ahead, and I drag myself to it with my
backpack and my dignity somehow still intact. All this just for
the privilege of shedding a few eight-pound textbooks for the
night. A stupid salmon who makes it all the way upstream at
least gets to spawn. Lucky fish.
A few minutes later, I’m leaning against the van, talking to
my friend Tim, when my girlfriend, Sara, and her best friend,
D’ijon, come dancing out of school. They’re singing this ancient
Katy Perry song (Note to all girls: This never gets old), and
after a final spin and a little
butt thrust, Sara throws
her arm around my neck
and kisses me on the
cheek. “Hi, Jeremy.”
“Hey,” I manage.
Let me just say this: Sara
Toomey is hot. She’s not
Cheerleader Hot or Brazilian
Supermodel Hot . . . she’s more
Ohio Hot. Perfect, okay, but not
airbrushed and with just a few minor flaws to make her majorly
interesting. She has this great smile (my dad was her ortho-
dontist, so I guess I have him to partially thank for that) and
a dancer’s body that just moves in all the right directions at all
the right times. But the best thing about Sara is the way she
talks. She’s really, really smart, but she gets her words mixed
up sometimes and comes up with more assaults on the English
language than country music. Some of my recent favorites are:
I defy anyone to not fall in love with that.
I wipe the drool off my chin, and the four of us pile into
the van. The girls scrunch way down in the back, afraid to be
seen and ratted out to their parents. I guess they promised
that they’d never ride in it for safety reasons or something,
but I think it probably has as much to do with the lack of seat
upholstery or possibly the exhaust fumes that waft up from
the rusted floorboard under the front seat.
I finally find the key at the bottom of my backpack and wave
my arm out the window to give the ignition signal. There’s
an electric snapping sound, a little yelp, and then the engine
roars—okay, wheezes—to life. The passenger door flies
open and my amigo Hector
Garcia hauls himself into
shotgun.
“Hey,” he says as he digs
between the seat and the
backrest for the seat belt.
“’Sup,” I say, just be-
cause I feel chatty.
Hector is six foot six
and pushing 230 pounds. We’ve been best friends since we
were, like, four years old. We met on a dirt pile in front of the
house that my mom and dad were
building. That was where we dis-
covered a common interest (dirt)
and, even more important, that
we were going to be in the same
preschool class. It wasn’t Best
Friends at First Sight or anything
I bit Hector during a glue stick
struggle and we had to spend an
hour sharing our feelings about it
with Miss Jenny that we became
what you would call friends.
He rightfully bit me back after Miss Jenny let us go, mak-
ing us even and launching an amigoship that’s lasted all the
way through elementary school and middle school.
We co-own the van, Hector and me, but he’s the one who
found a way to start the engine after the ignition switch got
wonky. And he says that he hardly even feels the shocks any-
more. However, I take credit for noticing that the wires on his
retainer happen to be the perfect length for this operation.
Since Hector always wears his retainer, he’s the designated
starter, and we’re never without a van key. I’m happy, he’s
happy, and his orthodontist has a BMW.
Plus, the faint electrical-ozone tang on Hector’s breath is
an improvement over the smell of his grandma’s habanero red
sauce that he pours on almost everything he eats (I saw him
put it on a bowl of Lucky Charms once, in case you think I’m
exaggerating). The guy has a Kevlar stomach.
The van shudders forward like some kind of arctic
Chihuahua as we inch along in the school parking lot traf-
fic (I do the best I can, but we do need to get that clutch
fixed). I don’t know why the traffic is always so bad. You
have maybe two or three hundred teen-
age drivers who are all in an insane
rush to get as far away from school
as fast as possible. Could
someone please explain
it to me? The van rolls
forward another quarter-
tire revolution. We’re
moving slower than the
line outside the women’s restroom
at a concert.
Speaking of concerts, Hector turns around and rests his
meaty elbows on the back of the seat. He
smiles at Sara and D’ijon as he scratches
the little soul patch under his lower lip
with two shiny Gingivitis passes.
“I wonder if there’s anybody
we know who’s cool enough
to have actual tickets to the
actual Gingivitis concert
next weekend,” he fake muses.
“OHMYGAWDICAN’TBELIEVEYOUGUYSGOTTICKETS,”
the girls scream.
The line of cars trying to get out of the school parking lot
is endless, so we have plenty of time to really rub it in. So I
say, “Gosh, if I knew you were interested, I would have gotten
tickets for you— Oh, wait . . . you’re the girls with curfews who
always follow the rules.”
“I am so jealous.” Sara pouts as she grabs the tickets from
Hector. She sniffs them and then starts rubbing them all over
her neck. “Mmmmmm . . . .” she purrs. “I can almost smell
the roadies!”
This is the effect that certain music has on females, and the
main reason I have dedicated my life to rock music. It’s common
knowledge that the average rock star is up to 30 percent uglier
than the average non–rock star, yet 900 percent more likely to
be seen hanging out with supermodels. It’s simple math.
D’ijon grabs the tickets from Sara and starts studying them
like some kind of an exam guide before a midterm.
“Can you imagine what our
parents would say if they saw us
even holding these tickets?”
for some pretty insane stage behav-
ior. Sure, there has been the occasional
wardrobe slippage, virgin sacrifice, and
live animal ingestion, but it’s not like these
guys use that to get attention. They are first
and foremost musicians. And
people always bring this up,
but I personally think the
exploding-porpoise-bazooka
thing never really happened
and was just some story their pub-
licist concocted to sell tickets . . .
which is something that I can’t believe
they even need to worry about.
These guys are gods.
Their music is the basis for everything our band is and
wants to be. Seriously, Gingivitis is arguably the best guitar
mayhem band since Flatulent Rat, and that’s not something I
would say casually.
Anyway, we’re all talking while Tim (who’s always quiet
normally) just sits there watching it all happen and texting
somebody off and on.
I look at Hector and say pretty loudly, “Dude, what kind of
loser sells tickets to a Gingivitis concert when he’s not having
brain surgery or something?”
And Hector goes, “Unfathomable, dude.”
“This is crazy fun all around, with just the right
degree of seriousness to anchor the levity. Fans of
Zits can rejoice in this new direction.”
—BCCB
“An engaging and fast read. A great recommendation for
kids who have graduated from Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”
—SLJ
“A hilarious window into the world of adolescent males.
Scott and Borgman hit all the right notes.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Well-executed, clean fun with a heart.”
—Kirkus Reviews
has been a professional cartoonist (aka getting paid to
do a comic strip) for almost thirty years, and has been
the corecipient of the National Cartoonists Society’s
Best Comic Strip of the Year honor four times. Sweet!
In 1997 (the nineties ROCK!), and along with the
artistic genius of Jim Borgman, Zits the comic strip
was born. Jerry is a total overachiever, the recipient of
many prestigious awards, which are too numerous and
we’re too lazy to list—just trust us, he’s awesome. He’s
currently livin’ the dream in California with his family.
has been a cartoonist since kindergarten. An
overachiever like Jerry, he has been voted the Best
Editorial Cartoonist in America five times (whoa!),
been the corecipient (with Jerry) of the Best Comic
Strip of the Year Award three times, and he’s won most
of the top cartooning awards ever presented. Jim’s
cartoons have hung in some pretty serious places, like
the Smithsonian, the National Archives, and various
presidential libraries—and above the president of the
United States’ personal toilet (okay, that one’s pretty
cool). Jim lives in Colorado with his family.
For exclusive information on your favorite authors
and artists, visit www.authortracker.com.
Also available as an ebook.
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