“Sorry.”
“Look, we’re buying Dad a new pickup truck. A real beauty. It’s red, a few years old, and it has what they call a cargo fiberglass body that fits into it. It can hold all his tools.”
“But he’s not working.”
“But he will be. The only good thing about this recession is that you can get houses real cheap. They’re pretty beat up, but you know Dad can fix anything. I often wondered why he never started his own business in the first place. He’s always pointing to our coat of arms, talking about those John Smiths who owned property. Now he can have his chance. I’ve some money saved, and because I’m a Marine, I can get a home loan. I can buy a two- or three-family, Dad can renovate it, and we can either sell or rent it out. That will keep him busy until I get back, and you can help him on weekends.”
“So we’ll all be working together?”
“Just on weekends. You have to go to college. If you want to work with us after that, fine. But I’m serious about college, you understand?”
I nodded. “Does Dad know anything about this?”
“Nope,” he said, smiling. “But Mom does.”
After breakfast, we took a bus to a Ford dealership, and Franklin took care of the paperwork while I climbed behind the wheel and watched them attach a sign he’d had a specialty shop make. It read JOHN SMITH AND SONS: HOME RENOVATIONS. After Franklin was done, we drove home. The truck was so large and solid I thought I was inside a tank, but the ride was smooth. About two miles from home, Franklin called my mother. He had told her to bring my father to the picture window when she heard a honk.
We pulled into the driveway, and Franklin beeped the horn, positioning the truck so my father would see the sign on the driver’s side door. A minute later he appeared at the window in a white T-shirt, pajama bottoms, with a newspaper in one hand, reading glasses in the other. Franklin and I got out of the truck and stood next to the sign, and Franklin wrapped his arm around my shoulder. In an instant, my father put it together, shaking his head while my mother hugged him.
Later that night, when I took out the garbage, I opened the lid, and there, all wrinkled and balled up on top of a green plastic garbage bag, was my father’s shirt and hat from the cleaning company.
“JUST LET IT END, DUDE”
After Franklin found out he didn’t have to return to Iraq, after we fixed up Jackson’s house, and after Angel seemed to have become a normal human being, Lucky, Jorge, and I were hanging out at my house one rainy April Saturday afternoon, when out of the blue, Jorge asked, “How did Houdini die, anyway?”
“Appendicitis,” I said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“You mean this guy tried to kill himself his whole life and then dies of something as stupid as appendicitis.”
Lucky laughed.
“Man, that’s nuts.”
That day, besides playing video games, Jorge and Lucky were helping me find an ending for my novel. They had read it and had reacted very differently. They both realized Franklin was the real hero of the book, though Lucky thought he was a close second. He already had decided on an actor to play his role, some kid who starred in a basketball movie called Jumpshot.
“Thats guy’s a wimp,” Jorge said.
“But girls dig him,” Lucky responded. “All they have to do is dye his hair red.”
Jorge liked the action in my book, especially the sections with him telling Angel off, but at first he was angry, saying that if anyone read it and made fun of him, he’d sue me. I said all he’d get was my autographed football, which made him laugh and forget his complaint.
But I still needed an ending to my story, and my mind was a blank.
“I think it should have a happy ending,” Lucky said. “We should all become mayors of Providence surrounded by twenty clones of Fiona Rodriguez and we could make Angel chief of police, so he can put a beat-down on anyone we don’t like.”
“Nah,” Jorge said, “Kids like those books where some goofball on a dragon flies out of the sky and saves everyone. I think you should have Da Nang drink some magic potion so that he’ll be as big as that Clifford dog, then let him go to Gregory’s house and eat him.”
I laughed but I reminded them about the last rule for writing a bestselling kid’s novel: “Create a happy ending because people won’t buy books that say the world is a lousy and confusing place.”
“But it is,” Jorge said.
Lucky shook his head. “I’d just let it end, dude.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let it end wherever it wants to.”
“I agree,” Jorge said. “The heck with everybody’s rules. What do those writers know about kids, anyway? And if people are too dumb to understand our lives, or if we get on their nerves, then all I can say to them is ‘Take a hike.’”
Jorge had a point, but he missed something very huge. If you remember, that Mr. Peterson guy said I’d never be the same person if I wrote a book, and I’ve come to see he was right. Life used to be this big blur of unconnected events. I never understood why people acted weird, and I never thought they could change much.
But being a writer made me look closely at people, maybe even care more about them. I know this sounds weird, but it also made me see a wacky order to things, that maybe Lucky had to get hurt so that Angel could change, and maybe Jackson had to lose an arm so Franklin would join the Marines and get shot and then come back and set my father up in business. None of the “Ten Rules for Writing a Kid’s Novel” prepared me for such a cool revelation, but if I ever become a famous writer, I know I’ll put it first on my list.
BOOKS JOHN SMITH, JR., AKA HOUDINI, MIGHT HAVE READ
Brandon, Ruth. The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003.
Carlson, Laurie. Harry Houdini for Kids: His Life and Adventures with 21 Magic Tricks and Illusions. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2009.
Fleishman, Sid. Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini. New York: Greenwillow Books, 2006.
Kalush, William, and Larry Sloman. The Secret Life of Harry Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero. New York: Atria, 2007.
Lutes, Jason. Illustrated by Nick Bertozzi. Houdini: The Handcuff King. New York: Hyperion Books, 2008.
Selznick, Brian. The Houdini Box. New York: Atheneum, 2008.
Silverman, Kenneth. Houdini!!!: The Career of Ehrich Weiss. New York: Perennial, 1997.
Welsh, CEL. Illustrated by Lalit Singh. Harry Houdini (Campfire Graphic Novels). India: Campfire, 2010.
SOURCES
Brown, Derren, and Harry Houdini. On Deception. London: Hesperus Press, 2009.
Houdini, Harry. Houdini on Magic. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1953.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, a shout-out to Kurt and Lucas, who know the daily pains and pleasures of being a boy. Also, a special thanks to Phoebe Yeh, who pushed me to make a decent novel, hopefully a very special one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER JOHNSON is the critically acclaimed author of several collections of poetry, short stories, and novels, including MIRACLES & MORTIFICATIONS, winner of the James Laughlin Award, EDUARDO & “I,” PRETTY HAPPY!, LOVE POEMS FOR THE MILLENNIUM, RANTS AND RAVES: Selected and New Prose Poems, I’M A MAN, and two young adult novels: LOSERVILLE and WHAT HAPPENED, a Paterson Prize winner that ALA Booklist called the “most gorgeously written YA of 2007.” Johnson is the recipient of two creative writing awards from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing and children’s literature at Providence College in Rhode Island, where he lives with his wife, Genevieve, and two sons, Kurt and Lucas. You can visit him online at www.peterjohnsonya.com.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2012 by Iacopo Bruno
Cover design by Tom Forget
COPYRIGHT
The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr., aka Houdini
Copyright © 2012 by Peter Johnson
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Johnson, Peter, date.
The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr., aka Houdini / by Peter Johnson. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Thirteen-year-old John “Houdini” Smith tries to write a book about what is happening in his life, from his parents’ worries about money and his brother in Iraq, to his new understandings of people while he and his friends rake lawns in their East Side Providence, Rhode Island, neighborhood.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-06-198890-5 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062099129
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Moneymaking projects—Fiction. 3. Neighborliness—Fiction. 4. Family life—Rhode Island—Fiction. 5. Authorship—Fiction. 6. Providence (R.I.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.J6356Am 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011019387
CIP
AC
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First Edition
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