STOP THE PRESS! I’m in a band with Miller the Killer … Oh, and all these other things are happening!
I got a new job—with a rad Aussie hipster (man bun alert!)
Mom’s taken up sweaty yoga—GROSS
We have the world’s most boring teacher, Mr. Mann, who may or may not be who he says he is …
My friend Kasey is visiting from Down Under—basically, the Aussies have invaded Hills Village
Will I end up a rock god, or will I hit rock bottom?
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1: It’s a Long Way to the Top if You Wanna Rafe and Roll
Chapter 2: Everything You Need to Know about One R. Khatchadorian
Chapter 3: I’ll Take the Non-Pounding Option, Thanks
Chapter 4: It’s a Melon Entry, My Dear Watson
Chapter 5: You’re the Creative Genius. Right, Genius?
Chapter 6: Invasion of the Hipsters
Chapter 7: How to Speak Strayan
Chapter 8: Everybody Yurts
Chapter 9: And Breathe …
Chapter 10: Miss Murgatroyd and the Kettledrum Incident
Chapter 11: Definitely Not Jack Black
Chapter 12: The Smell of Cool
Chapter 13: The Sweaty Yoga Problem
Chapter 14: My Eyes! My Eyes!
Chapter 15: Hairy Harry’s Horror Thong
Chapter 16: Enter the Shin-Kicker
Chapter 17: The Man Bun Vote
Chapter 18: A Brief History of the Khatchadorian Man Bun
Chapter 19: The Bit Where it All Gets Super Awkward
Chapter 20: Never Carry a Walrus When Arguing with an Australian
Chapter 21: Maybe He Just Needs Ta
Chapter 22: Parmesan Cheese Smells Like Baby Sick and Other Hits
Chapter 23: The “Nothing Much Happens” Chapter
Chapter 24: Triple Whoa with Chocolate Sprinkles on Top
Chapter 25: Coincidences? Khatchadorian Doesn’t Believe in Coincidences
Chapter 26: Gottogobye
Chapter 27: The Iceberg of Hidden Meanings
Chapter 28: Gorilla Taming 101
Chapter 29: The Astonishing Transformation of Jason Chang
Chapter 30: Hefty Potatoes
Chapter 31: The Almost Half-Time Recap Chapter
Chapter 32: Dodging Namastes Behind the Great Wall of Tofu
Chapter 33: The Mystery of the Cool
Chapter 34: Check Out the Yoga Daks
Chapter 35: Good Night, Hills Village, You’ve Been Awesome!
Chapter 36: Total Fruitcake Alert
Chapter 37: The Pent-Up Rockage Theory
Chapter 38: Vegan Beetroot, Kale, and Wheatgrass Smoothie, Anyone?
Chapter 39: Kompletely Krushing Kangaroo Krush
Chapter 40: Getting to the Bottom of the Blister Mystery
Chapter 41: Mr. Blister’s Sister
Chapter 42: You Seriously haven’t Heard of Bon Jovi?
Chapter 43: The Angus Young Plectrum
Chapter 44: This Rock-Star Thing
Chapter 45: What Exactly is a Hotcake?
Chapter 46: Boot Camp 1: The Way of the ’Tude
Chapter 47: Boot Camp 2: Big Hair Science
Chapter 48: Zombie Mom Alert
Chapter 49: The One Weird Thing
Chapter 50: Everything Doesn’t Suck
Chapter 51: Some Bad News and Then Immediately Some More Bad News
Chapter 52: Ever Been Laughed at by a Toy Rabbit?
Chapter 53: Back to Dorksville
Chapter 54: Go Figure
Chapter 55: The Leftover Meat Loaf Spaghetti Special is off the Menu
Chapter 56: The Leftover Meat Loaf Spaghetti Special Disaster
Chapter 57: She’ll be Right, Mate
Chapter 58: A Brilliant Idea to Fix Everything
Chapter 59: Are You Ready, Hills Village?
Chapter 60: G’day, America!
Chapter 61: Moshpit Mom
Chapter 62: Captain Exposition Strikes Again!
Epilogue
About the Authors
Also by James Patterson
Imprint
Read more at Penguin Books Australia
To the real Mr. Mann and everyone at Bathurst West Public School; Trangie Central School; St Pius X, Dubbo; Glenroi Heights; St Joseph’s Primary, Mungindi; Mungindi Central School; North Star Public School; Pallamallawa Public School; Tingha Public School; Sacred Heart Primary, Boggabri; Boggabri Public School; Dunedoo Central School; Dubbo West Public School; Kinross Wolaroi School, Canobolas Rural Technology High School; St Joseph’s Catholic School, Blayney; Oberon High School and everyone doing it tough in the drought—M.C.
WITH A NOISE like a rusty dumpster full of scrap metal and plate glass being dropped into a steam-powered woodchipper, The People—aka the Absolutely Bestest Most Totally Ace Glitter-Punk Rock Band on the Planet—launched into the crowd-slaying anthem “Everything Sucks” from the platinum-selling My Life Stinks album.
The mosh pit at the front of the Hollywood Bowl went absolutely ape and completely chimp, totally tapir, wickedly wildebeest … Basically, you name an animal, we went it. A roar of applause came crashing back at us as I placed one of my silver platform boots on the riser and leaned into the tidal wave of love (like that woman in Titanic … only with a guitar and without Leonardo DiCaprio standing behind me). I brought down my heavily insured hand and smashed out the final chords that led into the chorus.
“Keep your marzipan, schoolwork, your Peking Duk! Brussels sprouts, fake tan, and all textbooks!” I screeched into the mic. “I don’t like ’em ’cause …”
“… EVERYTHING SUCKS!” the crowd yelled as one.
“I love you, Rafey!” a girl screamed from the front.
I winked at her and she fainted (seeing as how I’m a super-famous, MASSIVELY COOL, glitter-punk rock god and all). I made sure one of my bodyguards carried her to safety (I may be a super-famous, MASSIVELY COOL, glitter-punk rock god, but I still care about the fans) and then did a backwards scissor kick with a triple jeté.
Behind me, Miller the Killer (yep, him … more deets on that later) was laying down a beat on the drums so intense it made your insides wobble. To my left, the magic fingers of Jason “The Changmeister” Chang were flying across the keyboards. The People were on fire and—
“FOR THE LAST TIME, RAFE, TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN!”
Reality, in the shape of my mom, came crashing into my daydream. It was day one of us—me, Miller, and The Changmeister—as a band and, instead of performing to a sellout crowd of adoring fans at the Hollywood Bowl, we were practicing in my garage in Hills Village. And we absolutely sucked.
MAYBE I’D BETTER explain a few things and give you some background to this rock-and-roll tale. I’m Rafe Khatchadorian. Teenager. Dark hair. A loser, mostly. Not always, but mostly. This is me:
If you’ve read my previous books, some of this is going to be a little boring, but it’s got to be done, so let’s get it out of the way.
I’m kind of okay at drawing and art stuff, but not much else, if I’m honest. I’ve got a bad habit of making the wrong decisions at the right time, or maybe it’s the right decisions at the wrong time. Either way, by the time the dust settles, it usually turns out I’m in the wrong.
I live with my mom (Jules) and sister (Georgia) and grandma (Dotty … that’s her name, but it could also work as a description), in a totally average house in a totally average town called Hills Village, a place that’s north of nowhere and south of sorry-what-did-you-say-I-totally-tuned-out. My dad left a while back and I once had a brother, Leo, who died when we
were both little. He’s going to pop into this story now and again, and you might catch him in one of our Loozer and Leo comics later. Oh, and just to make things real clear, because Leo is, uh, deceased, only I can see him. Don’t freak out, okay?
I get along fine with my mom (most of the time), and even though Georgia can sometimes be MASSIVELY ANNOYING, she’s still my little sis.
I also have a (non-imaginary) dog called Junior and, between all the usual arguments and family stuff everyone has, us Khatchadorians generally look out for each other. We do okay.
Hmm, what else do you need to know?
When I’m not at school, I work at Swifty’s Diner on weekends and in the holidays. The place is rated number 12 of—you guessed it—exactly 12 restaurants … and that includes Old Sal’s Pizza Palace aka Old Salmonella’s Pizza Palace, which has been shut down three times in the past two years by the authorities. I’m hoping to get another gig somewhere else, but I’m also not holding my breath since my skills amount to washing dishes and taking out the trash. I’m not exactly top of anyone’s wish list when it comes to employees. Even allowing for my lack of cool, I have done some pretty cool stuff. I’ve been to Australia a couple of times, and London too. I’ve accidentally worked on a movie and been chased by zombies (who turned out to be angry Australians, but I didn’t know that at the time).
I’ve kind of got a “thing” for Jeanne Galletta, a girl at my school.
Jeanne doesn’t have a thing for me, which sucks, but I’m used to it. I’m only telling you this because someone’s bound to blab sooner or later. It’s all right—I’m pretty good at dealing with soul-crushing disappointment (it comes with the Khatchadorian territory).
So, that’s me taken care of. Now we can move on with the story of how I came to be the nearest thing to a rock star Hills Village has ever seen.
IT’S NOT AS if I ever wanted to be in a band. For a start, I couldn’t play an instrument and I’d never been that interested in music.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I listen to music. I’m just not one of those uber-cool musos like Solo Barnes or Terri McCready, who always seem to know exactly what’s hot and (more importantly) what’s not at all times. Want to find out about the best beats, the next big thing, the gnarliest grooves? Don’t ask one R. Khatchadorian. By the time people like me know what the coolest thing is—whether that’s music or clothes or movies or whatever—it instantly becomes UNCOOL.
Anyway, back to the story …
So, I hear you ask, seeing as how you aren’t cool and don’t really like music and all, how’d you end up in a band then, Captain Smarty-pants?
The truth is, this whole thing started with Miller the Killer, which may be a shock to anyone who’s read my books before. For those joining the circus now, this is him:
Scary, huh?
Miller has been pounding on me since dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Any time he gets slightly bored, Miller would think nothing of making my life (more of) a misery. Sometimes, he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. It’s just an instinct for him. So, like I say, that was the situation between me and Miller.
Until London, that is, and The Strange Case of the Two Millers …
(Screen starts to wobble and “going back in time” music plays.)
THE LONDON FOG was as thick as pea soup. As luck would have it, I was actually eating a bowl of pea soup, so it was easy to compare the two. Yup, it was totes a pea-souper. I, Sherlock Khatchadorian—London’s greatest consulting detective—and Dr. John Watson, my sidekick, were deep in the bowels of London’s Limehouse district, an area close by the stinking mud of Old Mother Thames and within spitting distance of the Smithfield Market, where the alleys ran with blood. What with all the bowels and spitting and stinking and blood and stuff, it was plenty gnarly, but we were hot on the trail of the Fruit Thief of Old London Town, so there wasn’t much we could jolly well do about it.
“I say, Khatchadorian,” Watson said, “how on earth did the thieves get in?”
I pursed my thin lips and looked down my long, sharp nose at the scene that lay before me. There, lying in the window of Josh Miller’s Bespoke Fruit and Veg Emporium, was a watermelon surrounded by shards of glass from the broken shop window. The Miller mandarins, renowned across our great empire, from Afghanistan to Zanzibar and back, had vanished without a trace. Miller himself was unconscious on the floor of the shop.
“It’s a melon entry, my dear Watson,” I said. “That much is clear from the merest trifling observation.”
Watson sprang forward to administer what aid he could to the unfortunate fruiterer. “But who would do such a thing?” he said. “And what has trifle got to do with it?”
I snorted. “Isn’t it obvious? Miller is the culprit.”
Watson looked at me as though I had finally gone mad. He always did think I was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise. “How could Miller be the culprit when he is here and the mandarins are gone?”
I smiled. Even though I say so myself, it was the smile of a superior intellect at work. “Why, because there are two Millers in this tale.”
OKAY, MAYBE WE went a tad too far back in time, but you get the idea. As Sherlock said, there were two Millers in this tale—the Miller the Killer who likes nothing better than to pound me into mush, and a Miller who is my … buddy.
“WHOA! How’d that happen?” I hear you ask.
We were on a school trip to London a little while back (see Middle School: From Hero to Zero) when Miller (SPOILER ALERT: his first name is Dryden … no, really it is, snarf-snarf …) got it into his head that me and him—him and me?—were best buds. This was probably because, as ridiculous as it sounds, that’s exactly what had happened over there in Old London Town. Yup, me and Miller were buddies. I mean, some of me being nice to him was due a little (okay, a lot) to me not wanting to get pounded, but there’s no getting around the fact that we had sort of accidentally become friends. How long that would last, I didn’t know. I also didn’t care on account of the fact Miller doesn’t pound me any more … although I’m sure that would change if I ever called him Dryden to his face.
Now, being someone in the non-pounding sector of Miller the Killer’s brain is very definitely A GOOD THING. But it does come with a flip side: Miller gets ideas from time to time and, when he gets one of those ideas, guess where he takes ’em? That’s right, straight to me.
Last Tuesday, just after school had finished, my bestie cornered me with a total doozy. I was practicing staring into space while thinking about Jeanne Galletta when Miller stomped across, took off his headphones, jabbed a finger the size of a hot dog (with bun) into my chest, and asked me if I played guitar.
“No,” I said, pleased that I’d just gotten myself off the hook with whatever lousy idea he’d dreamed up. Although I hadn’t exactly been paying much attention to what Miller had been doing, now I stopped to think about it, he had started wearing headphones and T-shirts with band names on them. Maybe this guitar thing was something to do with that?
Miller eyed me suspiciously. “I thought you played guitar,” he said, like maybe I was a secret guitar player who was holding out on him. “You sure you don’t play guitar, Khatchadorian?”
“Yep,” I said, nodding. “I mean, nope. I mean, yep. I’m sure, but, no, I don’t play guitar.”
Snappy, huh? Even when he’s my buddy, Miller the Killer has that effect on me.
“Whatever,” Miller said with a shrug. “You’ll learn. I’m learning the drums. It’s easy.”
So that was it. I was learning guitar.
It seemed this time Miller had gotten it into his head that he was going to form a band PLUS I was going to be the lead guitarist in that band. He told me he’d already recruited Hills Village Middle School’s Head Nerd, Jason Chang, on keyboards, and was looking for a bass guitarist. That’s how he said it—he was “looking” … as if he was a band manager or something.
“By the way, we’re called The
Village People,” he added.
A dim memory of my mom singing along to a group of cowboys and construction workers popped into my head. “Um … aren’t they … already a band?” I asked.
“Well, we’re people and we’re from a village, right?” Miller said. He cracked his knuckles and stared at me from under that overhanging forehead of his.
“Anything you say,” I said, and raised a fist in the air. “Yay, The Village People!”
Miller nodded. “And we’re gonna win the crummy New Bands competition. I already entered us. We’ve got six weeks to get good.”
I should mention that the “crummy” he’s talking about is KRMY, the Hills Village radio station. Only thing is, their annual New Bands comp is for bands who can, you know, actually play songs. We had absolutely zero chance of winning. I didn’t even know what kind of band Miller wanted us to be. Punk? Thrash? Grunge? Rap? Hungarian folk metal?
G'day, America Page 1
