Zits: Shredded

by Jerry Scott

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

  with us. In fact, it wasn’t until

  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?”

  See, Gingivitis has a reputation

  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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