Funny Business

by Jon Scieszka

  Guys Read Funny Business

  Edited and with an Introduction by

  Jon Scieszka

  Stories by

  Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo & Jon Scieszka, Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Adam Rex, and David Yoo

  With Illustrations by

  Adam Rex

  Contents

  Before We Begin by Jon Scieszka

  1. Best of Friends by Mac Barnett

  2. Will by Adam Rex

  3. Artemis Begins by Eoin Colfer

  4. Kid Appeal by David Lubar

  5. Your Question for Author Here by Kate DiCamillo & Jon Scieszka

  6. A Fistful of Feathers by David Yoo

  7. Unaccompanied Minors by Jeff Kinney

  8. “What? You Think You Got It Rough?” by Christopher Paul Curtis

  9. My Parents Give My Bedroom to a Biker by Paul Feig

  10. The Bloody Souvenir by Jack Gantos

  About Guys Read and Biographical Information

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  BEFORE WE BEGIN…

  A kid gets transferred to a new school. He’s at lunch the first day. A sixth grader yells out, “Thirty-seven!” Everybody starts laughing. A seventh grader yells, “Fifty-one!” Even bigger laughs. The new kid asks his classmate sitting next to him at the lunch table, “What the heck is going on?” The guy says, “Well, we’ve got only one joke book in the library. And everybody has read it a million times. So now instead of telling the whole joke, all we have to do is yell out the number of the joke. Everybody gets it. It saves a lot of time.”

  The new kid thinks this is a pretty funny idea. He goes down to the library, checks out the joke book, and memorizes three of the funniest jokes and their numbers.

  The next day at lunch, the same thing happens. A fifth grader yells out, “Forty-four!” Lots of laughs. An eighth grader yells, “Twenty-seven!” Huge laughs. The new kid calls out his favorite, “Thirty-eight!” Nothing. Dead silence. Nobody laughs. The new kid turns to his classmate and says, “What happened?” The guy shrugs and answers, “Some people just can’t tell a joke.”

  And some people just can’t write humor. Those people are not in this book. Because Guys Read believes that humor is seriously one of the best kinds of reading. Humor is important. To get why something is funny, you have to first understand the thing itself, then understand why changing it in an unexpected way is funny. Your brain is doing some great work when it’s laughing.

  It was E. B. White, a pretty funny guy, who once said, “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” So we won’t do any more dissection. We’ll just let you know you are in for a raging robot, a homicidal turkey, a bloody souvenir, a biker taking over a kid’s bedroom, and more, by some of the best and funniest writers around.

  And one more bit of good news before you dive into the funny business: this is just Volume 1 of the multivolume Guys Read Library. Each volume will cover one genre, with a bunch of the best writers and illustrators contributing original pieces of Nonfiction, Action/Adventure, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Thriller/Mystery, Sports, and Who Knows.

  But we do know that every Guys Read Library book will be packed with the kind of writing guys will enjoy, the kind of writing that gives guys a reason to want to be readers.

  Check out www.guysread.com for more news…and more recommendations of good stuff.

  And always remember: “Eighty-seven!”

  Jon Scieszka

  BEST OF FRIENDS

  BY MAC BARNETT

  Ernest was a nerd, but it was fourth grade: we were all nerds. Even the best of us were shackled to some fatal flaw. James, who was the fastest kid in the class, was also the last one to carry a lunch box. Jean-Pierre had already started cutting the sleeves off his gym shirts, but he hadn’t yet started going by J.P.: even little Tim Houston wasn’t afraid to put on a French accent and say “Jean-Pierre, oui oui” when they stood next to each other in line. And me? I was terrible at sports, last picked for everything. At recess I hung out on the sidelines of the basketball court and bet kids quarters that they couldn’t make free throws. (I usually cleared a few bucks a week.) It was there, on the sidelines, that I would sometimes talk to Ernest.

  Ernest looked more ninety than nine. He had thick-lensed glasses that were attached snugly to his face by a cloth band that wrapped around his head. Our school had uniforms, and he was the only kid to opt for the cardigan instead of the sweater. Twin deposits of dried spit lined either side of his mouth; he always looked like he had just eaten lots of vanilla frosting.

  Sometimes you’d feel bad for Ernest, but he’d always do something to mess it up. Example: in kindergarten I’d let him sit next to me in art. One day I was drawing a picture of a veterinarian, and in the middle of our conversation, Ernest leaned over and drew a long oval in between the guy’s legs. I was dumbstruck.

  And so I missed Ms. Maxwell coming up behind us.

  “Lovely picture, Ernest,” she said. He’d drawn Freddy Krueger battling Jason battling a Ninja Turtle underneath a fleet of stealth bombers. All the guys in his drawing had too many muscles—it looked like they had three biceps on each arm.

  And then: “Dean, what’s that?”

  Ms. Maxwell’s tone was strange, like her throat was tight.

  I tilted my head straight back so I was looking right up at Ms. Maxwell’s chin. She was looking down at my paper.

  “It’s a veterinarian?” I said. “You know, a vet? Someone who takes care of animals?”

  “I know what a veterinarian is, Dean,” said Ms. Maxwell. “What’s that?” She frowned and pointed to Ernest’s contribution to the piece.

  “Oh,” I said. “He dropped a hot dog.”

  “A hot dog?”

  “Yeah, he was eating a hot dog and he dropped it. So now it’s falling to the ground.” I started to draw a hot dog bun in the hand that wasn’t holding a stethoscope.

  “Oh,” said Ms. Maxwell. “That’s very silly.” She believed me, but I think only because she didn’t want to believe the alternative.

  Ms. Maxwell moved on to another table. Ernest collapsed onto folded arms, giggling. As he shook with laughter, the end of the cloth band wriggled like a tadpole’s tail on the back of his head.

  Ernest.

  Things hadn’t changed much since then. That was the thing with Ernest: as soon as you tried to be nice to him, he made you regret it.

  But before I keep going about what Ernest did, I have to tell you a little bit about the first-best television commercial that year. In case you’re wondering, the third-best television commercial was for some sort of G.I. Joe watercraft. The kids in the commercial had an elaborate system of aqueducts in their room that basically looked like a real miniature swamp, and the ad made it seem like the toy was self-propelled. Joe’s boat slammed into and capsized Cobra Commander’s hover-craft and then jacked up onto a sandy beach, at which point two kids popped up from behind a line of miniature man-grove trees and shouted, “Go, Joe!” I didn’t even like G.I. Joes, but I wanted a swamp in my room.

  The second-best commercial of the year was for a board game called Crossfire. It started with two kids—one with an edgy, spiky haircut—entering a futuristic gladiator arena. At the center of the arena was the Crossfire game board, which looked like a tiny plastic version of the same arena the boys were standing in. The kids started playing Crossfire, which involved shooting silver ball bearings at a ninja star in the middle of the arena. There were five intense seconds of stuff flying around and colliding while some invisible guy just shredded on an electric guitar and screamed “Crossfire!” ove
r and over. Finally the spiky-haired kid threw his hands in the air and said, “I win!” This commercial was notable not just for being heart-spasmingly intense but also because it was pretty much the only board-game commercial I ever saw where the winning kid didn’t have a dorky bowl cut.

  But the number-one best commercial of the year was so much better than these two runner-ups. The competition wasn’t even close. It was an ad for Nesquik Chocolate Syrup, and it was the kind of thing that would make you drop your Pop-Tart and run in from the kitchen if you heard it come on in the other room. The ad took place in the Nesquik factory. It started with an establishing shot of the building that looked like it was taken from a helicopter or maybe from a powerful camera attached to a satellite orbiting Earth. A voice invites you to see what’s going on inside. The camera zooms in fast until it passes through the walls, and then we see a rapid-fire procession of scenes from the factory’s belly. Conveyer belts sending an endless parade of chocolate candy to be melted into chocolate syrup, shiny metal instruments spewing liquid chocolate like geysers—that kind of thing. It was amazing, exactly what you hoped a chocolate milk factory would be like. But the best part, the part that got stuck in your mind until it was melted and processed into the stuff of chocolate daydreams, was the ending. A kid in swim trunks leaps into what seems to be the mouth of an ordinary waterslide but turns out to be a huge, twisty-straw-shaped waterslide. He plummets around and around the straw’s dizzying red-and-white-striped spirals until he lands, delighted, in a giant pool of cool, delicious chocolate milk. Other kids are in the pool with him, laughing and splashing around. A guy from the Nestlé corporation with long blond hair and a whistle is there to act as a lifeguard, but you can tell by the way he’s smiling that he’ll pretty much let you get away with anything.

  It was fantastic.

  I wanted to ride down that waterslide into that pool of chocolate milk so badly. Everyone did. We talked about it at lunch. We thought about it in class. Sometimes the kids who didn’t play sports would act it out during recess. I wished—and I wasn’t the only one—that somehow one day I could gain access to that factory.

  I thought maybe if I made enough money, I could bribe my way into the chocolate milk pool. And so my betting at the basketball courts took on a new urgency. One Friday morning at recess, I was standing courtside while James shot. He had just made a free throw, and I was twenty-five cents in the hole.

  “Double or nothing,” I said.

  “Okay,” said James.

  Usually the prospect of doubling your money was enough to break your concentration. The ball bounced off the rim. We were even.

  “Again,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  James shot and missed.

  “Double or nothing,” said James.

  “Okay.”

  He missed.

  I saw Ernest trudging up to the sidelines. I could tell he was excited about something because he kept opening and closing his mouth like an eel.

  “Again?” James said.

  “Hey, Dean,” said Ernest.

  “Hold on, Ernest,” I said.

  “Dean, I’ve got to tell you something. It’s important.”

  James dribbled. He was getting too much time to focus.

  “Dean,” said Ernest.

  James shot, and the ball made a lovely arc and went in the hoop.

  “We’re even!” said James.

  “I didn’t agree to that bet!” I shouted.

  “We’re even!” James ran around the court, pumping his fist.

  “Dean,” said Ernest.

  I slowly turned to Ernest. “What?”

  Ernest opened and closed his mouth a couple times before he began. “You know that one commercial?”

  I figured he was talking about Nesquik. We’d discussed the ad a couple times before. But I was annoyed.

  “What commercial?” I said.

  “The one for Nesquik? Where they go to the chocolate factory and stuff and the kids go down that straw and swim in chocolate milk and stuff?”

  “Yeah, Ernest. I know that commercial. You know I know that commercial.” James was shooting around with some kids from the older grades. Pretty soon they’d have a game going and then there’d be no chance to make some money. “What about it?”

  Ernest gave an open-mouthed grin and the corners of his mouth glistened whitely in the sun. “I won the Nesquik sweepstakes.”

  I tensed. “What?”

  “I won the Nesquik sweepstakes,” he said again.

  “What sweepstakes?” I didn’t know there had been any sweepstakes. I suddenly felt angry at my mom. She never bought me Nesquik even though I always asked her for it. Instead we got Black and Gold Chocolate Milk Powder. The tin was yellow (not gold) with black lettering, and it looked like the kind of chocolate milk mix they must have used in the trenches of World War I.

  “The Nesquik sweepstakes,” Ernest said. For the third time.

  “What’s the prize?” I asked. My body was still. My heart had paused; my lungs had stopped filling. I thought I knew, but I wanted to hear it from Ernest’s mouth.

  “I get to go to the Nesquik factory and stuff.”

  Unbelievable.

  “I get a plane trip and hotel and stuff and a ticket to the factory and I get to spend an hour in the waterslide part.”

  Fury washed over me. Ernest? Ernest won a ticket to the Nestlé factory? Ernest wasn’t even allowed to watch much TV, so he had seen the commercial only once. One time. He’d told me this. And Ernest had never even been down a waterslide. He was afraid of heights and got motion sickness. How was he supposed to ride down the twisty straw? I wasn’t even sure Ernest knew how to swim. He’d probably just doggy-paddle over to the edge of the pool, then get out and lie there sputtering like a turned-over turtle. And now he was sitting there grinning at me, the Nesquik sweepstakes winner.

  “And guess what?” Ernest said, still smiling. “I get to bring a friend.”

  I smiled back.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Seriously,” said Ernest. “Cool, right?”

  “That’s really cool,” I said, then paused to scratch my head. “Who are you going to bring?”

  Ernest adjusted his glasses. “Well, it’s hard. I have so many great friends and stuff—”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure.”

  “So I’m just going to have to think and stuff and pick whoever in the class is my best friend, you know.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know.”

  “I figure I’ll make my decision next Friday.”

  One week. I had one week.

  “Ernest, who else have you told about the sweepstakes?”

  Ernest looked surprised. “Just you.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s good. You probably should keep it secret for now. Otherwise everybody might just kiss up to you and pretend to be your friend so they can get that ticket.”

  Ernest nodded slowly. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s good advice.”

  “Sure, Ernest.”

  “Thanks, Dean. You’re a good friend.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I clapped Ernest on the shoulder.

  At lunch I traded Ernest my fruit snacks for actual fruit, a sucker’s bargain if I’d ever made one. Then I invited him to sit with me and Brandon and Mark even though lunch conversation with Ernest was almost always a disaster.

  “Want to hear a joke?” Ernest asked while Brandon was in the middle of a story. He didn’t wait for us to answer. “When is a horse not a horse?”

  We were silent.

  “When he turns into a pasture!”

  I looked at Brandon and Mark, who sat there staring at Ernest. Then I started laughing. Hard.

  “Good one, Ernest!” I said. “Oh, man. That’s a real good one. I’ll have to use that one. I’ll give you credit of course…. A pasture!”

  Now Brandon and Mark were staring at me.

  “Looks like these guys don’t get it,” I said, pointing my thu
mb at my two closest friends. “Not really up to our level, humor-wise, Ernest.”

  Ernest nodded energetically.

  Brandon shook his head and pulled a Nesquik drink box out of his lunch bag.

  I saw Ernest look at it. He opened his mouth to say something.

  I stuffed my cookie into my backpack.

  “Ernest, let’s go play four square,” I said.

  “But there’s only two of us,” said Ernest.

  “Then let’s play two square.”

  “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “I’ll show you,” I said.

  Ernest and I spent the rest of lunch bouncing a ball slowly back and forth.

  “What kind of horse only comes out at night?” Ernest asked.

  It was raining after school. We all stood under the overhang by the parking lot waiting for our parents to pick us up. Ernest’s mom pulled up in a blue station wagon.

  “Bye, buddy,” I said as Ernest trudged out to his car.

  “Bye, Dean,” said Ernest.

  We waved at each other.

  “Later, Ernest,” said James.

  I snapped my head toward James. He gave Ernest a little two-fingered salute.

  “Bye, James,” said Ernest.

  “See ya, Ernest,” said Kim.

  I turned around behind me. She was waving enthusiastically.

  “Bye, dude,” said Angelo.

  “Bye, Ernest!” said Tiffany.

  “Bye,” said Adam.

  “Bye,” said Jean-Pierre.

  “Bye, Ernest!” said Matt. “You’re the man!”

  Ernest turned around and smiled at everyone. He stood in the rain and waved. Droplets of water collected on his forehead and glasses, but he didn’t seem to care. “Bye, everyone,” he said.

  His mom honked the horn. Ernest turned around and hustled over to her.

  And even as the station wagon pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared down the road, everyone still waved.