by Geoff Rodkey
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Table of Contents
A Sneak Peek of The Tapper Twins Run for President
Copyright Page
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AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE FIRST ANNUAL CULVERT PREP MIDDLE SCHOOL SCAVENGER HUNT FOR CHARITY
which took place in
New York City, NY
on
Saturday, October 25
(and absolutely DID NOT cause a riot)
interviews conducted by
CLAUDIA TAPPER
with
Reese Tapper
Akash Gupta
Parvati Gupta
Carmen Gutierrez
Sophie Koh
Kalisha Hendricks
Jens Kuypers
Xander Billington
Wyatt Templeman
James Mantolini
Dimitri Sharansky
Toby Zimmerman
Vice Principal Joanna Bevan
Eric S. Tapper, Esquire
And anyone else I forgot
Media inquiries: contact Claudia Tapper ([email protected])
Lawsuits/subpoenas/etc: Eric Tapper ([email protected])
Dear Ebook Reader,
Hello! My name is Claudia Tapper, and I wrote this book. Then I printed it out so people could read it. And when I did, I realized I’d left a lot of things out, so I handwrote them in the margins.
Then some person at a publishing company decided to turn my book into an ebook. Which was personally VERY exciting for me.
Except it turns out you can’t handwrite things in the margins of ebooks. You can handwrite photo captions, but not margin notes. Which is weird. But whatever.
So somebody in the publisher’s office typed out my handwritten margin notes and stuck them in the text. Every time you see Ed. note: blah blah blah, you should know that A) Ed. note is short for Editor’s note and B) the editor is me, Claudia.
Sincerely,
Claudia Tapper
P.S. Thank you for buying my book!
PROLOGUE
CLAUDIA
This is the official history of the First Annual Culvert Prep Middle School Scavenger Hunt For Charity.
I am writing it because there is a WHOLE lot of bad information out there about what happened. Mostly because of that stupid article in the New York Star.
Which was almost completely not true. At NO point did ANYBODY involved in the hunt “run riot.”
Except possibly for a couple of minutes at the end. But I can explain that.
And I’ll admit that what happened was technically a “fracas.” But since almost nobody has any idea what that word means, it’s kind of ridiculous to put it in a headline.
Also, some of the things that happened with my brother Reese’s team were definitely not good. Or legal.
But overall, the scavenger hunt was a HUGE SUCCESS. We raised $8,748.75 for the Manhattan Food Bank, which is TOTALLY AMAZING. A LOT of hungry people got to eat decent meals thanks to our scavenger hunt.
Not that you’d know any of this from reading the stupid New York Star.
Which, again, is why I’m writing this history, based on interviews with everyone involved. Ed. Note: except people who wouldn’t talk to me Because, as the person who not only had the idea for the hunt but also organized it, all this misinformation has been very painful and frustrating.
The fact that there will not be a Second Annual Scavenger Hunt—because Vice Principal Bevan has banned them forever—is also very frustrating.
And honestly, I think Mrs. Bevan overreacted. Nobody actually filed a lawsuit. Those were just empty threats. Ed. Note: (so far)
REESE
All I can say is, none of the bad stuff that happened on our team was my fault. Most of the laws we broke, I didn’t even know were laws. So those shouldn’t count.
And none of it would’ve happened in the first place if Dad had done a better job of being our team chaperone.
I don’t want to throw Dad under the bus or anything. But that was pretty much the whole problem right there.
Mom’s still really mad at him for it.
MOM AND DAD (Text messages copied from Mom’s phone)
(MOM) FYI, Claudia is writing another
oral history
(DAD) About what?
Guess
Please tell me it’s not scavenger hunt
Bingo
OMG. You’re not letting her use
our texts again, are you?
why not?
BECAUSE I WILL LOOK LIKE WORST
PARENT IN HISTORY
Also worst husband. Don’t forget that
I know! I am sorry for 100th time! Please
please please don’t let C use texts
I won’t
thank you!!!!
unless I’m lying. Because we know ALL
ABOUT lying to people in text messages,
DON’T WE ERIC??
I am so so so very very sorry
I know you are. And I forgive you
so you won’t let her use texts, right?
right?
honey?
no comment Ed. Note: Thanks, Mom!
CHAPTER 1
I HAVE AN EXCELLENT IDEA (WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY BROTHER)
CLAUDIA
I came up with the idea for the scavenger hunt while taking the M79 bus across Central Park to school.
REESE
You didn’t come up with it! It was MY idea!
You just ripped it off. And you never once gave me credit!
CLAUDIA
Do you seriously want credit for it? After everything that happened?
REESE
Oh, yeah… Good point. Never mind.
CLAUDIA
By the way, for anyone who doesn’t already know, Reese and I are twins.
Which is weird. Because we are not twin-like at all. In fact, we are VERY different.
I don’t want to get into HOW we’re different, because I believe every person is special and unique—and if you put a label on someone, it’s like forcing them into a tiny box where they have no room to move and can’t just be themselves.
Which, obviously, is not cool.
Although if I absolutely HAD to put labels on us, I would be The Smart One.
And Reese would be The Sporty One.
Or possibly The Smelly One.
Or maybe even The One Who Wastes His Life Playing Video Games While His Sister Is Busy Trying To Make The World A Better Place.
See what I mean about labels? They are very unfair.
Even when they’re true.
Back to the M79 bus.
Reese and I were sitting together, and I was writing a speech for Student Government about my proposal to do a fundraiser for the Manhattan Food Bank.
The fact that some people in New York City don’t have enough food to eat REALLY bothers me. Especially when you consider how well off a lot of families at Culvert Prep are. It just seems completely unfair and wrong that kids could go hungry in one part of the city while people like Athena Cohen have so much money they can fly to Bermuda every weekend on a private jet.
And as president, I’d decided I should do something about this.
&nbs
p; REESE
You realize you’re only president of the sixth grade, right?
Like, you’re not president of the whole city?
CLAUDIA
Okay, A) Duh.
B) New York City has a MAYOR, not a president.
And C) have you ever heard the term “Think globally, act locally”?
REESE
Maybe. Was that in a Burger King commercial?
CLAUDIA
I am almost completely sure it wasn’t.
REESE
Oh. Then no.
CLAUDIA
That is just sad, Reese. Seriously.
Back to the bus. I was working on my speech. And Reese was babbling about some MetaWorld thing.
REESE
MetaWorld is, like, the greatest video game in the history of the universe. It’s not even one game. It’s more like fifty different games all skrudged together. Ed. Note: not an actual word
And one of them is MetaHunt, which is this super-massive scavenger hunt. Only it’s MUCH cooler than a regular scavenger hunt, because you can kill other players and take all their stuff. So if you kill enough people, you don’t even have to find any of the stuff yourself.
I’d been playing a ton of MetaHunt, and it got me thinking how awesome it’d be to do a scavenger hunt for real all over New York City.
We couldn’t, like, actually kill each other. But it’d still be cool.
So when Claudia was like, “Shut up, Reese! I’m writing my Student Government speech!”
I was like, “You should have the SG do a scavenger hunt! For the whole school!”
And Claudia was like, “That is the DUMBEST idea—heeeeey, wait a minute…”
CLAUDIA
And that’s basically how it all started.
CHAPTER 4
SCAVENGER HUNT FEVER GRIPS CULVERT PREP
CLAUDIA
So, this is Chapter 4.
You might be wondering why there’s no Chapter 2 or 3.
There used to be. And personally, I thought they were fascinating.
But everybody Ed. Note: Sophie, Parvati, Carmen, Mom who read the first draft said they were incredibly boring.
So I got rid of them. But in case you’re wondering, Chapter 2 was about the speech I gave that got the Student Government to pass a resolution creating the First Annual Culvert Prep Middle School Scavenger Hunt For Charity.
Not to brag, but it was a very effective speech. I quoted both Miranda Fleet AND Gandhi.
Chapter 3 was about all the planning we did to put the hunt together. By “we,” I mostly mean me and Akash Gupta, my co-chair on the Scavenger Hunt Committee. And also Vice Principal Bevan, because she had to approve everything.
Akash is in eighth grade. He’s the older brother of one of my best friends Ed. Note: (Parvati), and he’s basically a genius—although tbh, that can make him kind of hard to work with.
AKASH GUPTA, co-chair of Scavenger Hunt Committee
I can’t believe you cut Chapter 3! That was the best chapter!
CLAUDIA
I know, right?! But everybody else thought it was death.
AKASH
People are idiots. It’s the same way with coding. Everybody wants to play Exploding Cows. But nobody cares how it gets made.
And planning that scavenger hunt was seriously complicated! Especially after you quit and I had to do everything myself.
CLAUDIA
I did NOT quit! It’s just that once I decided I wanted to PLAY as well as PLAN the hunt, Mrs. Bevan made me resign as co-chair to avoid any appearance of corruption.
AKASH
Oh, sure. Just keep telling yourself that. Whatever lets you sleep at night, quitter.
CLAUDIA
FYI, this is what I mean when I say Akash can be hard to work with.
Here’s what happened: at first, I was not planning to be in the hunt at all. But one of the things Akash and I had to do was come up with prizes for the winning teams.
And since Mrs. Bevan wouldn’t let us spend any serious money, second and third prize wound up being kind of lame.
AKASH
I’m sorry, but a $20 Starbucks gift card? When there’s four players on a team? It’s ridiculous! You can’t even get everybody grande Frappuccinos for that kind of money.
And third place was even worse. Those Culvert Prep pencil cases are total crap. They’re, like, ten for a dollar.
Mrs. Bevan’s a complete cheapskate.
Wait, don’t print that. Ed. Note: forgot to take this out—sorry, Akash!
CLAUDIA
I won’t.
But first prize was a whole other story. Allegra Bell has a dad with some kind of big job at Madison Square Garden. And Akash convinced Allegra to get her dad to donate four front-row seats to ANY EVENT at the Garden as a first prize.
Which was completely, insanely, amazingly, incredibly, and in all other ways TOTALLY AWESOME.
Because the list of upcoming events at MSG included not just Knicks games, Rangers games, and some wrestling thing that a bunch of the fifth grade boys were into, but also Fiddy K, Deondra, AND Miranda Fleet concerts.
Which was huge for me. Miranda Fleet is not only the world’s greatest singer-songwriter, she’s also my idol and the one person besides the president whose job I want when I grow up. So the chance to see her live, from the FRONT ROW… was something I absolutely did not want to pass up.
Pretty much everybody at Culvert Prep felt the same way. Once word got out about the front-row seats, interest in the scavenger hunt basically exploded.
SOPHIE KOH, best friend of Claudia
People went NUTS for those tickets. It was all anybody talked about for days.
PARVATI GUPTA, second-best friend of Claudia Ed. Note: (tied with Carmen)
Can I just say, when I heard I could get front-row seats to Deondra? I practically peed my pants. She is TOTALLY AMAZING.
CARMEN GUTIERREZ, second-best friend of Claudia Ed. Note: (tied with Parvati)
I had a real moral dilemma. Because I seriously didn’t know whether I wanted to see Miranda Fleet or Deondra more. But either way, I was all, “SQUEEEEE!”
REESE
At first, a lot of my friends were like, “It’s a scavenger hunt—only we can’t kill people and take their stuff? What’s the point?”
But when they found out they could get free tickets to the Knicks, or Fiddy K, they were like, “BA-DA-ZING!” Ed. Note: not actually a word
WYATT TEMPLEMAN, friend of Reese Ed. Note: (also minor idiot)
I was totally psyched. I heard if you sit in the front row at a Knicks game, the players will, like, actually sweat on you. That would be SO sweet. Ed. Note: NO IT WOULDN’T (eeeew)
XANDER BILLINGTON, friend of Reese Ed. Note: (also MAJOR idiot)
I’s all, “FIDDY K IN DA HIZZZZ-OUSE! I’M’A HAMMER DOWN ON DAT!”
Dem free tix wuz BEAST, yo.
CLAUDIA
FYI, it’s important to know this about Xander Billington: he’s not only a major idiot, he’s also from one of the oldest families in America. Apparently, the Billingtons came over from England with the original Pilgrims on the Mayflower. Whenever I think about this, I feel really bad for the other Pilgrims.
REESE
The tickets were beast and all, but it wasn’t even about that with me. I just wanted to win. Because I’m a really competitive person. Ask anybody on my soccer team—I get fired up just for scrimmages!
And there just aren’t a ton of chances to pwn the whole school in something. Ed. Note: pwn is actually a word (go figure)
Except for Battle of the Books. Which is seriously unfair. ’Cause the only way you can win that is to, like, y’know…
CLAUDIA
Read books?
REESE
Yeah. So that’s not a good situation for me. But a scavenger hunt? Totally my thing.
CLAUDIA
Scavenger Hunt Fever blew up so huge that it even infected the Fembots.
I should explai
n about the Fembots.
Actually, no. I shouldn’t. Because as sixth grade president, it’s my job to represent everyone in our grade fairly and equally. Even Fembots.
It would be VERY unpresidential of me to badmouth anybody.
So I’m going to let Sophie do it.
SOPHIE
Okay, so it’s basically like… if Satan and the absolutely worst woman on Violent Housewives had a baby, it’d be a Fembot. They’re this group of girls at Culvert who are either crazy rich and think they’re all that, like Athena Cohen and Ling Chen. Or they’re total wannabes, like Meredith and Clarissa.