The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr. AKA Houdini

by Peter Johnson

  The

  AMAZING ADVENTURES OF

  JOHN SMITH, JR.

  AKA

  HOUDINI

  by

  PETER JOHNSON

  DEDICATION

  For George Nicholson

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  MY NAME

  WHY THEY CALL ME HOUDINI

  HOUDINI WEENIE

  NO SWEARING OR SEX

  TEN RULES FOR WRITING A KID’S NOVEL

  MY NEIGHBORHOOD

  WHAT’S IN A NAME?

  “MY FRIENDS, I THINK WE HIT THE BIG TIME”

  TEN CREATURES MR. GREGORY GREGORY COULD HAVE BEEN IN A PREVIOUS LIFE

  MY FAMILY

  THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CRAZY AND MEAN

  EVERY NOVEL NEEDS A VILLAIN

  “A BUNCH OF WIZARDS WITH THEIR BUTTS STUCK IN BOOKS”

  OLD MAN JACKSON

  GEARS OF WAR

  TEN THINGS I MISS ABOUT FRANKLIN THAT ARE REALLY ONE THING

  BEING A WRITER AIN’T EASY

  A MOUNTAIN OF LEAVES

  “TAKE A HIKE”

  TWO HOUDINIS

  INSIDE JACKSON’S HOUSE: PART ONE

  TEN URBAN LEGENDS ABOUT JACKSON AND DA NANG

  “A LOT CAN HAPPEN TO A PERSON”

  WAR

  IN THIS CORNERR

  THE IMPORTANCE OF BRAINS

  TEN OTHER QUOTATIONS FROM HOUDINI

  THE FIRST ANNUAL LEAF-DIVING CONTEST

  ONE GOOD REASON NOT TO INVITE ANGEL DIMITRI TO A LEAF-DIVING CONTEST

  A WORM OF AN IDEA

  NINE IDEAS FOR REVENGE ON ANGEL I DIDN’T USE, AND ONE CRAZY ONE OFFERED BY JORGE

  “FOUND TO BE MISSING”

  “GET YOUR BEHIND IN HERE, BOY”

  INSIDE JACKSON’S HOUSE: PART TWO

  RIP

  TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO TO CALM DOWN YOUR FATHER WHEN HE LOSES IT, WITH THANKS TO THE THESAURUS

  FAMILY REUNION AT THE POLICE STATION

  A WHOLE NEW ENEMY

  NO EXPLANATIONS

  THE WORM CRAWLS OUT OF ITS HOLE

  TEN THINGS THAT MAKE YOU HIP IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD

  THE STORM

  “CAN WE TAKE A HAND VOTE ON THAT?”

  BARBER SCHOOL

  OLD MAN’S JACKSON’S HOUSE YET AGAIN

  TEN WAYS TO DESCRIBE ANGEL’S SHAVED HEAD

  “VERY CREEPY”

  THE ZOO

  “DON’T TELL ME ABOUT FAIR”

  THE STUPID LAW

  ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY

  TEN OTHER GUESSES ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO ANGEL AT OLD MAN JACKSON’S

  “TAKE A PILL OR SOMETHING”

  JOHN SMITH AND SONS

  “JUST LET IT END, DUDE”

  BOOKS JOHN SMITH, JR., AKA HOUDINI, MIGHT HAVE READ

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  MY NAME

  My name is John Smith, Jr., but everyone calls me Houdini. If you can be patient, I’ll explain the Houdini part, but first you should know what it’s like to be named John Smith, Jr.

  It sucks.

  It’s like calling your dog Fido, or your cat Mittens, like plain white bread dipped in skim milk, spaghetti without meatballs, or an old Ford Focus with roll-down windows and no CD player.

  My father’s name is John Smith, too. Well, really, it’s John Smith, Sr. I guess we’ve had hundreds of years of this John Smith nonsense in our family, which would be fine if we were related to the guy who knew Pocahontas, but we’re not. In the future, if some other John Smith decides to trace our family tree, he’ll find a few other John Smiths hanging from one of its branches or stealing silverware from some rich guy’s house.

  But we are English, though none of us were born in England. My father even has our coat of arms hanging in the living room next to a very ugly painting of an October sunset. He says hundreds of years ago someone in our family owned a castle with servants and hunting dogs, though I find that hard to believe.

  All I’m really interested in is why my parents didn’t call my brother John Smith, Jr., because he was born twelve years before me. His name is Franklin, and if you call him Frank or Frankie, he won’t even respond. He was a big-time quarterback at my high school, and he played in college before joining the Marines. Now he’s stationed in Iraq, fighting a war my father calls the “stupid nightmare of the most colossal goofballs of all time,” meaning the politicians who voted for it. When he says this, my mother responds, “John, I’ve asked you not to use that word,” but the “goofballs” (that’s not really the word he uses) keep flying like spitballs.

  It’s weird, though, that my father hates a war my brother is fighting in. He’s proud Franklin is a marine but says every time he gasses up the car he wants to strangle someone. By that he means Franklin is risking his life so rich guys who own oil wells in Iraq can get even richer. He’s also mad about the economy, but then everyone in my neighborhood is afraid of losing their jobs.

  WHY THEY CALL ME HOUDINI

  First of all, I’ve read everything written on Harry Houdini. One day in study hall, I found a book in our library on magic tricks and magicians. The first page I opened to had a picture of Houdini, dressed in a pair of what looked like white Jockey shorts, hanging upside down and handcuffed in a Chinese Water Torture Cell. When I turned the book around, he seemed to be smiling while holding his breath underwater. I laughed because that’s something my friend Lucky or I would’ve done, though Lucky would’ve drowned because he’s the unluckiest person I know, which is why we call him Lucky.

  That day in the library I became obsessed with Houdini. I read biographies on him and books he’d written on tricks and on other magicians. Most people think Houdini was crazy, but he was actually very smart and disciplined. “Genius is repetition,” Houdini supposedly said.

  What an amazing concept. When I first read it, I thought, “Brilliant, now all I have to do is find something I like, then do it over and over until I’m great at it.” Because Houdini meant that there were no secrets to his acts. He used to pretend he was a wizard because his audience needed to believe that, but, in fact, he’d practice a routine until he perfected it. And here’s the cool part. After wearing himself out from all this practice, sometimes even he couldn’t explain how he escaped. He’d just zone out, like he had tapped into some power from above.

  I explained this to Lucky and to my other friend Jorge one day while we were shooting baskets. “It’s like he had a religious experience where he could leave his body and watch himself escape.”

  Lucky laughed and said I sounded like an altar boy.

  Jorge said he loved me like a brother but that I was a flake.

  And that was the first day they called me Houdini.

  HOUDINI WEENIE

  Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for some wise guy to add Weenie to Houdini, so sometimes I was called Houdini, other times Houdini Weenie, but at least no one ever called me Weenie, which would have been worse than John Smith, Jr. Well, almost no one, except for Angel Dimitri, who is one of the bad guys in this story, and so, like Lucky, has a name that doesn’t fit him.

  NO SWEARING OR SEX

  In the beginning, I decided to write this book because I wanted to make money. We talk about money a lot at my house. We’re always afraid my father will lose his job, and sometimes my parents argue if my mother buys something without asking him first.

  Last week, a famous author came to class to discuss his book, which probably only three of us had
read. His name was Mr. Peterson, a tall, skinny guy with a receding hairline and eyes as blue as Lucky’s. Writers are always coming to my school. Our teachers email them, explaining how poor we are. Dear Mr. Peterson, I imagine them writing, please find it in your heart to visit a few classes, since we feel you will motivate (they always use this word) so many of our students. Then these writers show up, expecting to be lifted onto our shoulders and paraded through the halls.

  We don’t need their charity.

  We don’t want to be MOTIVATED.

  We are sick of the word MOTIVATED or any word related to it, like MOTIVATION or in Jorge’s case, UNMOTIVATED.

  But we all want to make money, and Mr. Peterson said he’d been doing well with his books about “kids in crisis.”

  “What does he mean by that?” Jorge whispered to me, and Mrs. Guido cruised down the aisle and tapped him alongside his head with her big meaty hand.

  Mr. Peterson’s comment made me think about Lucky, Jorge, and me because we certainly had problems, and I figured if Mr. Peterson could write a book about this stuff, then it would be easy for me, since I’m one of the best writers in class.

  Mr. Peterson said any of us could write a kid’s book if we worked hard enough. He said we all have “authentic” voices, while he had to invent them.

  “What’s ‘authentic’ mean?” Jorge whispered too loud again, and Mrs. Guido made a return visit, shaking her head so violently I thought her wig would fall off.

  I didn’t know what “authentic” meant either, but I think Mr. Peterson’s point was that, unlike him, we didn’t have to pretend to be thirteen. And he was right. One reason I didn’t like his book was because I couldn’t believe the kid telling the story was really a kid. I knew it was Mr. Peterson pretending to be thirteen. It’s like when I eat Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, and even though it tastes good, my mother’s recipe blows it away. Now my mom, there’s someone who makes “authentic” macaroni and cheese.

  But Mr. Peterson did make me think about what it’s like to be thirteen. He also made me want to write my own book because I know my life was more interesting than the kid he wrote about.

  For one thing, the thirteen-year-old in Mr. Peterson’s book never swears, and just about every thirteen-year-old swears, especially Jorge. We can’t do it in front of our parents, even though our fathers swear all the time. My father says one curse word over and over, but Mr. Peterson said if I use it, no one will publish my book. He said kids’ books with swear words “won’t sell in the South or Midwest.”

  The South or Midwest might as well be Mars or Jupiter to me, since I’ll probably never live more than five miles from home. But I think Mr. Peterson must know something because he got his book published, so there will be no swear words in my novel.

  Instead, here’s a list of words, and when they’re spoken, imagine that the person using them is really swearing:

  Goofball. (This should be my father’s middle name because he says it so much.)

  Take a hike.

  Freaking. (Jorge has trouble completing a sentence without this word.)

  Jackass.

  Tick me off.

  Heck.

  Damn.

  Privates.

  No kidding. (This is my favorite.)

  I realize that calling someone a freaking goofball isn’t the same as calling them a you-know-what, but at least the sound of you-know-what will be ringing in your ears, and, hopefully, my own personal cash register will be ka-chinging when the kids in the South and Midwest buy this book.

  Mr. Peterson also said a kid’s book can’t have “explicit sex.”

  No problem there.

  None of us has had explicit sex.

  None of us has had any sex.

  Most of us feel weird just talking about sex.

  After Mr. Peterson finished his lecture, Mrs. Guido invited us to meet him. Everyone was asking the usual questions, like if his characters were based on real people, or if he had kids. Then I blurted out, “If I write a book like you, can I make enough money to buy an Escalade and still have cash for college?”

  Mr. Peterson laughed. “What’s your name?”

  “They call me Houdini.”

  “That’s a good name. Houdini was an admirable fellow.”

  I had never heard anyone use the words admirable and fellow together.

  “Do you think you have a story worth telling, Houdini?”

  “I’ve got a lot of them,” I said, though I was thinking mostly about what was happening to me, Lucky, and Jorge at the moment.

  “Then we should talk. Maybe I can give you some pointers. One thing you’ll learn is that if you write a novel, you’ll learn a lot about yourself and never be the same person again.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Your characters change you. They get into your blood.”

  Because I hadn’t started my novel, I didn’t know what he meant, but all this got me thinking there must be other writers who could give advice, so I surfed the internet and looked them up. Sure enough, there were a lot of people who swore they knew how to write a bestselling novel, even though most of them hadn’t done it themselves. They even made lists. So I read their ideas and decided to make my own list, which I’m calling “Ten Rules for Writing a Kid’s Novel.” I’ve already been following a few of them, but at the end of this book you can decide if I hit the jackpot. I guess if you make it to the last chapter, I did something right.

  TEN RULES FOR WRITING A KID’S NOVEL

  1. A kid’s novel should have a lot of little stories that come together to make one big story. (One writer described it like “live overlapping electrical wires that make a huge spark.” I liked that.)

  2. A kid should be the main character. (Obviously.)

  3. No swearing. (Got that one covered.)

  4. No explicit sex. (Ditto.)

  5. A few digressions will keep your reader off balance. (That’s when you seem to change your topic but you really don’t.)

  6. You have to like your characters or the reader won’t care about them. (How can I not like myself?)

  7. Include a moral dilemma for your characters. (That won’t be hard when it comes to dealing with Angel Dimitri or my brother deciding to go back to Iraq.)

  8. Try to include a few lists in your novel. Kids like lists. (This one is a good start.)

  9. Put in a few comic scenes. Kids like to laugh. (No kidding.)

  10. Create a happy ending because people won’t buy books that say the world is a lousy and confusing place. (Who can blame them?)

  Although I like my list, I have to admit the ones I read made me think most writers are clueless about real life. One said, “Kids like books that remind them of their own nurturing families.” Another wrote, “Kids today all own iPhones and Wiis, so you better put them in your novel.”

  Those two writers obviously never spent a day in my neighborhood.

  But since you can’t write just any junk, at least my list will give me something to follow, so if the smart kids in my school (who are usually girls) ever read my book, they won’t think I’m a moron. Not that anyone in my school actually hangs around their lockers talking about books. Most of the time, we’re all just trying to get by. That’s what Lucky, Jorge, and I were doing that fall.

  MY NEIGHBORHOOD

  My neighborhood is on the East Side of Providence, but not where the rich families live. Instead, it lies between their neighborhood and the one people won’t walk through after midnight unless they have a bodyguard.

  Obviously, the kids in the rich neighborhood don’t go to my school. They get shipped across town to a magnet school or they go to private schools. My mother says I should take the test for one of the Catholic schools that offer scholarships, but why should I get Bs at those schools when I can glide by and get As at mine? I also want to stay with Lucky and Jorge, who have a better chance of being astronauts than going to private schools.

  Not because they’re dumb.

  L
ucky is even smarter than me, smart enough to know he can’t work for anyone. He plans to open his own landscaping business when he graduates, so why bother doing schoolwork?

  “I’ll study hard enough to get a diploma,” he says. “People think you’re a jackass if you don’t have that, my friends.” Lucky says “my friends” a lot, like he’s a politician addressing the voters.

  “The heck with people,” Jorge said, “the goofballs tick me off,” and then he went on a torrent of obscenities. That’s just the way Jorge is. If Jorge were rich, he’d be seeing a shrink and on some kind of meds, but instead, people say he’s “wired” or “crazy,” depending on how they feel about him.

  Jorge is short and thin and always wears a New York Yankees cap sideways. He dresses in baggy jeans that slide halfway down his rear end, and if you were to see him on the street, you’d label him a punk because he walks with an attitude. But he’s really a good guy—and a great friend.

  Still, you never know from day to day how he’ll respond to something. Sometimes he’s very mellow, soft-spoken, and would gladly volunteer to clean toilets at the old folks’ home. Other days you’d think he had about fourteen cups of coffee. On those days, his left leg has a mind of its own, jiggling up and down as he clings to his desk, like he’s afraid he might fly out the window if he lets go. That’s when I wish his ear was an on-and-off switch, so I could lean over and shut him down.