Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Making Money

by Tommy Greenwald

  “My mom,” Zoe said.

  She started walking to her car. As I watched her go, I got this really strong, weird feeling that I was never going to see her again. And then I got this even stronger, weirder feeling that I really, really didn’t want that to happen.

  “I would love to come visit you,” I said.

  She stopped. “You would? For real? What about your parents?”

  I shrugged. “The least I can do is ask.”

  “Oh, Charlie Joe!” Zoe ran back, grabbed me, and gave me the longest hug I’ve ever gotten in my life. Or at least it was in the top ten of long hugs. (My mom had the other nine spots.) “That would be so totally totally amazing! I’ll send you all the details!” Then she hugged Katie. “It was so great seeing you guys!”

  We watched Zoe run to her mom’s car. As they drove away, Katie turned to me.

  “Did I hear that correctly? You’re going to ask your parents if you can go visit Zoe Alvarez in Ohio?”

  “She’s awesome,” I said, which wasn’t exactly an answer to either of her questions.

  “Well, good for you,” Katie said. “There’s only one small problem with your incredibly romantic plan.”

  “What’s that?”

  She gave me one of her legendary eye rolls.

  “Everything.”

  32

  My parents didn’t say yes.

  They didn’t even said no.

  What my dad actually said at breakfast the next morning was, “You’re kidding, right? This is insane, even for you.”

  “You’re in middle school,” my mom added. “Middle school boys don’t fly halfway across the country to visit middle school girls.”

  “It’s not that crazy,” I said. “Other kids are going to visit her.”

  “Like who?” my dad demanded.

  “Like Katie,” I said, even though technically that wasn’t exactly, completely true.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” my mother said. “Where would you even get the money to do something like that?”

  “Right,” I said. “So, I was kind of hoping you might help out with that part.”

  My dad laughed so hard, I think a piece of bacon flew out of his nose.

  I waited until he was done, then I said, “Okay, so I guess that’s out.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” my dad said, drying his eyes. “You’ve been on this kick lately about making money. Well, now’s your chance. You figure out a way to make yourself enough money to buy a plane ticket, and I’ll let you go visit that friend of yours.”

  “Are you sure?” said my mom.

  My dad snorted again, but this time, it was baconless. “Yeah, I’m sure. I think we’re on pretty solid ground here, considering the plane ticket alone is going to cost around five hundred dollars.”

  Five hundred dollars?

  Nice knowing you, Zoe.

  33

  “You’re nuts,” Jake said.

  We were sitting in Jake’s kitchen two days after his bar mitzvah, plowing through a bucket of fried chicken while I blabbed on about the whole Zoe-moving-to-Ohio-and-my-going-to-visit-her thing.

  I chomped on a wing. “So you think I should just forget it?”

  I think he said, “That’s a tough one,” but I couldn’t be sure, since his mouth was full. So I waited until he finished, then asked again.

  Jake took a swig of root beer. “Well, like I said, you’re insane, but I definitely think you should go if you can,” he said. “Zoe is so cool and she likes you, and you’re obviously like totally in love with her.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. Obviously totally in love sounded a little pathetic, although I suppose I could understand why Jake thought that.

  “Whatever.”

  “But the really crazy part is that my parents said they would let me go,” I told him. “All I have to do is pay for it myself.”

  Jake laughed. “Which basically means, they said forget it.”

  I nodded sadly. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  We ate in silence for a minute, as I thought about the situation. I’d never turned down a challenge from my parents, and I didn’t want to start now. Even a challenge that was completely impossible.

  “There’s got to be a way for me to make some money,” I said to Jake.

  “Not some money,” he corrected me. “A lot of money.”

  I nodded. “Right. And it has to be something that doesn’t involve dogs, gophers, or lawyers.”

  “Somebody somewhere must need a mattress tester,” Jake said.

  “I would so do that.”

  He laughed. “Too bad you don’t have a bar mitzvah coming up.”

  I looked up. “What does that have to do with it?”

  Jake wiped his face with his shirt (How come there’s never a napkin around when you need one?) and stood up. “Wait till you see this,” he announced. Then he grabbed a big manila envelope, turned it up side down, and proceeded to dump about 6,347 checks onto his kitchen table.

  I stared in shock. “Are you kidding me?”

  Jake grinned. “I know, right? Suddenly all those mornings in Hebrew school don’t seem so bad.”

  I picked up one check. It was from some people named Herman and Sheila Bergstein, and it was for one hundred dollars. I picked up another, from Paul Milano (Pete’s dad), for thirty-six dollars, which for some weird reason was the traditional amount you were supposed to give. I picked up a third, from Betty Rosner, for fifty dollars.

  And on and on and on and on.

  When I thought about it for a second, it made complete sense. If my parents are writing a check, obviously so are everyone else’s parents. Meanwhile, relatives are writing even bigger checks.

  Holy moly. So THIS was how to make money.

  Now, it’s not like it was free money, which is what I was after. Jake had to work for his payday, and work hard. Hebrew school was a job, and a tough job, three days a week, for probably like five years.

  Come to think of it, if you divided the money he made at his bar mitzvah by the amount of time he spent at Hebrew school, the hourly rate probably wasn’t even that great.

  But still … like I said, holy moly.

  “How much money is this?” I asked, lovingly cradling a bunch of checks in my arms.

  “I have no idea,” Jake said. “A boatload.”

  “More like a whole navy.”

  Eating helped me think, so I helped myself to another piece of chicken. Something was spinning in my head, but I couldn’t quite get at it. It was like a trying to touch the rim on an eight-foot basket—just out of reach.

  I ate my chicken, thinking, until the basket in my mind got lower. And then it got even lower. And then it got low enough so that I could touch the rim.

  And then it got low enough so I could jam that basketball right through.

  “I GOT IT!” I screamed. In my excitement I spit a tiny piece of fried chicken skin onto the table, which completely grossed Jake out. But I didn’t care. I’d solved my problem.

  “You got what?” Jake asked, trying not to gag.

  “I finally figured out how to make a lot of money without working,” I yelled, as proud of myself as I’d ever been in my entire life.

  “This I gotta hear.”

  I held Jake’s envelope over my head like it was the Super Bowl, World Series, and NBA Finals trophies all rolled into one.

  “I’m going to have a bar mitzvah!”

  I started racing around the room shouting, “I’m rich!” and, “Zoe here I come!” Jake watched me, munching quietly on his chicken, until he offered the only reasonable response to my grand plan.

  “But you’re not Jewish.”

  Charlie Joe’s Financial Tip #6

  NEVER MAKE EXTRA WORK FOR YOURSELF.

  It’s hard enough doing all the work you have to do just to get by in the world. So why would you create any extra?

  If you have to read two books over the summer, pick short books. If you have to pick up your clothes off t
he floor, use a ski pole. If you have to mow the lawn, move to a house with a small yard.

  Do what you have to do, what you’re supposed to do, and not a thing more. Save your energy for the big stuff. Like eating and resting.

  Part Four

  THE BOY AND THE COW

  34

  So who would have thought my supercool friend Charlie Joe could act like a lovesick puppy?

  Sure, he’d been infatuated with Hannah for all those years, but he’d never done anything crazy about it. He just kept it to himself, except for the occasional comment to Jake, like “The fact that Hannah likes you and not me is proof that there is no logic to the universe.”

  But this was a whole new level.

  All of a sudden Charlie Joe announces to a girl whom he hasn’t seen in months that he’s going to fly halfway across the country to visit her. How is he going to pull that off? Who’s he going to go with? Where’s he going to get the money? Has he thought about any of those things?

  Of course not.

  Charlie Joe doesn’t work that way. He comes up with some grand idea and worries about the details later.

  And usually, it’s those details that get him into trouble.

  Why do I have the feeling that this time won’t be any different?

  Okay, I’ll give you back to Charlie Joe now.

  35

  Thanks for the vote of confidence, Katie.

  36

  Remember how we started, way back at the beginning of the book? How I loved having money, but hated having to work for it? How I loved having stuff, but hated having to pay for it?

  How I wanted a Botman so badly that I wound up ruining a gopher’s day?

  And then remember the middle part? When I saw Zoe again at Jake’s bar mitzvah, and we really hit it off again, only for her to tell me that she was moving again? Then I had my brilliant but crazy idea of going to Ohio to visit her, and my dad actually saying I could go, as long as I figured out a way to pay for it?

  (Of course you remember that last part, because it just happened.)

  Well, all of that was a mere warm-up to the payoff: pretty much the best idea anyone ever had in terms of making money.

  Because not only was I going to make money, I was going to make money by not working! By having fun. By throwing a party. By being the center of attention.

  By having a bar mitzvah.

  * * *

  The first thing I had to figure out was how to get around the whole not-being-Jewish thing.

  Back at school, I assembled the brain trust at lunch: Timmy, Nareem, Jake, and Hannah. Pete Milano was there, too, but he’s more of a brain drain than a brain trust.

  Katie sat reading a book, texting, and chiming in with the occasional eye-roll.

  “This is going too far, Charlie Joe, even for you,” she said at one point.

  Fine, be that way.

  “So I’m going to have a bar mitzvah,” I announced to the group, ignoring the giggles. “Obviously, I’m not Jewish. But that shouldn’t be a problem, since I’m not going to do the synagogue part anyway.” People seemed confused by this, so I explained further. “I’m just going to do the party part.”

  More confusion.

  “The part where people give you checks,” Jake clarified.

  “Correct,” I confirmed.

  Nareem scratched his head. “So if I am to understand this correctly, Charlie Joe, you plan on having a bar mitzvah, but you don’t plan on actually preparing for, or following through on, the religious aspect of the ritual. You only plan on reaping the financial benefits of such an occasion?”

  I nodded. “You pretty much nailed it, Nareem.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not quite sure if you’re incredibly clever or incredibly stupid.”

  “Or both,” Jake suggested.

  “I have to tell you, Charlie Joe,” said Nareem, “I find your plan extremely risky and perhaps ill-advised.”

  Pete Milano didn’t think it was ill-advised at all. In fact, he seemed awed by the plan. “Dude, you’re gonna be rich. I should totally do that.”

  Wanting to steal your idea was the highest compliment Pete Milano could pay a person.

  “So, Charlie Joe,” Hannah said.

  I looked at her, just like someone would look at a regular person. Seeing Zoe again made me able to look at Hannah without being blinded by her glorious aura. What a relief.

  “Yeah?”

  Hannah wrinkled her nose. (In the old days I got a little dizzy when she did that.) “I get that you’re not having a religious ceremony,” she said. “But you can’t call it a bar mitzvah, right? I mean, isn’t that only for Jewish people?”

  “Hey, yeah,” Pete said, showing some skepticism about my plan for the first time.

  “That’s true,” I said. “I thought of that. Which is where you guys come in.”

  “Oh, great,” muttered Timmy, who’d seen my ideas go wrong one too many times.

  I ignored him. “I can’t call it a bar mitzvah. I can’t call it a confirmation, because I’m not doing the church part.”

  “Church has awesome cookies,” Pete said, which didn’t have anything to do with anything.

  “Where my parents come from, they practice what is called the Sacred Thread ceremony,” Nareem said. We all looked at him, so he went on. “I don’t know anything about it, really, except that it’s how a boy becomes a man. Do you want me to look it up on Wikipedia?”

  “No thanks, I’m not into sewing,” I said. “But you’re on the right track, Nareem. I need to find some sort of weird, foreign ceremony that nobody has heard of, that I can make my thing.”

  “The Sacred Thread ceremony is not weird,” Nareem objected.

  “But it is foreign,” I said. “And I need something even foreigner than that, if possible.”

  “More foreign,” corrected Jake.

  “Whatever.”

  Everyone thought for a minute, but it became clear pretty quickly that none of us had a lot of experience with ceremonies in which a boy becomes a man.

  “I can’t think of anything,” Pete said, stating the obvious.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “That’s what the Internet is for.”

  Timmy and Jake had cell phones, so they immediately went to work. It turns out there are plenty of ways for a boy to become a man out there in the world. For example:

  Genpuku—in Japan, kids get adult clothes and adult haircuts. Didn’t seem dramatic enough.

  Poy Sang Long—in Thailand, boys have to become monks for a while before they become men. That wasn’t going to work for me.

  Rumspringa—where Amish boys get to experience the outside world before becoming men. Which actually sounds awesome, if you can ignore the fact that the Amish don’t use electricity, meaning no television, video games, or blenders to make milkshakes. Sorry, that’s a deal-breaker.

  It was kind of fascinating and scary, all the ways boys became men—some of them were pretty freaky, and a few were extremely inappropriate for a thirteen-year-old, if you ask me.

  But so far, none of them were going to help me get paid.

  “This is quite educational, Charlie Joe, but so far nothing seems the slightest bit practical for your purposes,” Nareem said.

  “Besides, lunch is just about over,” Hannah added, “and I’ve got to walk all the way to Health.”

  “We can’t give up yet,” I begged, but everyone started to gather up their stuff and get ready to go.

  Then Timmy said, “Hey, has anyone ever heard of the Hamar?”

  We all looked at Nareem, because if anyone had, he had. But he shook his head.

  “What’s the Hamar?” asked Jake.

  Timmy was scrolling furiously on his phone. “It says here the Hamar are a tribal people who live in Southern Ethiopia.”

  “Cool. Ethiopia,” Pete said. “That’s a country, right?”

  “It’s a country in Africa,” Nareem said.

  “I thought Africa was a country,” Pete respo
nded.

  Poor Pete.

  “What about the Hamar?” I asked Timmy, trying to get back to the subject at hand.

  “Well, they have a pretty cool thing that boys do to become men.”

  He stopped, relishing the moment, since he had everyone’s attention now. Especially mine.

  “Tell us,” Hannah said.

  “Tell us,” Jake said.

  “Would you mind please telling us,” Nareem said.

  Timmy stood up to make his big announcement. “Cow jumping.”

  “Cow jumping?” I said.

  “Cow jumping?” Jake and Hannah said.

  “Cow jumping?” Nareem said.

  “You mean jumping over a freakin’ cow?” Pete said, putting it another way.

  Timmy nodded, feeling the glow of a triumphant discovery. “Yup, cow jumping. It says right here on Wikipedia that for the Hamar tribe, cow jumping is ‘a rite of passage for men coming of age, as a symbol of the childhood he is about to leave behind him.’”

  My mind started spinning. Cow jumping. That sounded like something I could do. That sounded like a party I could throw.

  “Don’t even think about it, Charlie Joe,” Katie said, reading my mind as usual.

  “There’s nothing to think about,” I said. “I’m in.”

  The bell rang for the end of lunch. We all picked up our backpacks, except for Timmy, who was still staring at his phone.

  “Oh, there’s one more thing,” he said, in a way that made it clear that whatever the one more thing was, I wasn’t going to be too happy about it.

  We all stopped. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You have to do it naked.”

  Pete Milano laughed so loud the lunch ladies dropped their fish sticks.

  37

  So it was official: I had a cow-jumping party to throw, and not a lot of time to get it organized. I had to move fast.

  First stop was my sister Megan.

  The next night after dinner, I waited until the last thing she would want to do was have a conversation with me. Then I started a conversation with her.

  “Megan, you know how Mom and Dad are going away to dad’s college reunion next month?”