by Ali Benjamin
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Ali Benjamin
Interior illustrations © 2019 by Sarah J. Coleman
Cover art copyright © 2019 by Sarah J. Coleman
Cover design by Marcie Lawrence
Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Benjamin, Ali, author.
Title: The Next Great Paulie Fink / Ali Benjamin.
Description: First edition. | New York ; Boston : Little, Brown and Company, 2019. | Summary: Led by new student Caitlyn, seventh-graders at a tiny rural school in Vermont create a reality-show inspired competition to determine who will replace the school’s legendary class clown, Paulie Fink.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018032813| ISBN 9780316380881 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316380898 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316381529 (library ebook edition)
Subjects: | CYAC: Schools—Fiction. | Behavior—Fiction. | Contests—Fiction. | Luck—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B453 Nex 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032813
ISBNs: 978-0-316-38088-1 (hardcover), 978-0-316-38089-8 (ebook), 978-0-316-53076-7 (Barnes & Noble), 978-0-316-49261-4 (int’l)
E3-20190305-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
THE OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT GREAT PAULIE FINK
A DAY WITHOUT PAULIE
How It Begins
I’m Not Him
Witch in Yellow Boots
The Rules
Dance Party
My New Archenemy
I Make a Decision
Silence and More Silence
A WEEK WITHOUT PAULIE
The Real Megastar
Pick a Winner
Trapped in a Cave
Trampled
Zombies and Werewolves
Once upon a Mini
I Figure Something Out
Suit of Armor
Challenge Accepted
Raising the Scarecrow
Miss U
A MONTH WITHOUT PAULIE
The Land of Blah
The Opposite of Zukeball
Some Grand Drama
Glory and Renown
Plot Twist
THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT GREAT PAULIE FINK
Boxed into a Corner
Say It Like You Mean It
Swallowed by the Night
The Shakespeare Challenge
Victory Lap
What Would Jadelicious Do?
My First-Ever Speech
In Charge
The Mini Challenge
Bad Luck
The Banana Challenge
A Meeting of the Unoriginals
The Transcript
Secrets and Broken Promises
Gone Is Gone
The Fable of the Elephant
Among the Statues
The Office Challenge
Something Is Very Wrong
Canceled
Bad Omens
A Rabbit in the Fort
The Story I Don’t Tell
The Story I Do Tell
How to Be Brave
Surprise
THE FIRST GREAT PAULIE FINK
The One and Only
The Kickoff
Shark Attack
Chaos
The Final Challenge
It Gets Weird
Do the Caitlyn
Flying
We’re on TV
Something I Don’t Send, and Something I Do
Season Finale
The Final Countdown
We Have a Winner
Katharsis
It Won’t Last, but We Play Anyway
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.
—Homer, The Odyssey
THE OFFICIAL RECORD OF THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT GREAT PAULIE FINK
THE CONTESTANTS
Gabby Amisi
Timothy Boggs
Thomas Boggs
Henry Cardinali
Willow Das
Fiona Fawnstock
Sam Moyes
Lydia Shea
Diego Silva
Yumi Watanabe-Peterson
THE JUDGE
Caitlyn Breen
THE KICKOFF
[Recording on]
SEPTEMBER 25, four weeks ADP (After the Disappearance of Paulie)
FIONA:
Come on, Caitlyn. What are you waiting for? We’ve elected you leader. Just start this thing already!
CAITLYN:
Okay… uh… what am I supposed to say?
FIONA:
Anything! Who cares? Just make it sound official. And try to sound excited for a change.
CAITLYN:
Okay, so this is the official record of the Search for the Next Great Paulie Fink. This reality-TV-style competition is being conducted by the Mitchell School’s seventh grade, aka the Originals, aka the cave, aka this den of stinking goats…
FIONA:
Hey! Be nice. Actually, never mind. We elected you because you’re not nice. Go ahead.
CAITLYN:
The competition will be run and documented by me, Caitlyn Breen, the eleventh and most recent member of Mitchell’s seventh grade. But I’d like to state for the record that it’s ridiculous you all want me to be in charge. A month ago, I’d never even heard the name Paulie Fink, and I’d never met any of you, and—
ORIGINALS:
Cait-lyn! Cait-lyn! Cait-lyn!
CAITLYN:
—now here I am running an entire show, or whatever the heck this is, and will you please stop chanting like that?
ORIGINALS:
Cait-lyn! Cait-lyn! Cait-lyn!
CAITLYN:
Listen, if I’m going to do this, I need to hear more stories about this mysterious Paulie Fink. But I can’t start if you don’t stop making so much noise. So can you be quiet for a change? Please?
Okay, thank you. Now, who wants to go first?
Interview: Diego
CAITLYN:
Okay, it’s recording, Diego. Go ahead.
DIEGO:
Hey ho, Diego Silva, king of the soccer field here. Master attacker, wizard of kicks, genius of speed and agility—
C
AITLYN:
Diego. Stick to the topic, okay? We’re here to talk about Paulie Fink.
DIEGO:
Right. Diego Silva here, coming in live to talk about the one and only Paulie Fink. And I’m here to tell you: That kid was a god.
Oh, don’t roll your eyes like that, Caitlyn! I don’t mean he was God. I mean, duh. Obviously he wasn’t that. He was a god, which is totally different. I also don’t mean god like all those Brazilian soccer gods. Nah, Paulie couldn’t play soccer to save his life. I mean the kind of gods that Mags talks about in humanities class. The ones who sat up on Mount Olympus. In a way, those gods were like normal people—they messed up constantly, and they drove each other bonkers, and sometimes they played wild pranks. But they also had powers that regular people didn’t have, and they created chaos for everyone else.
That’s what Paulie was like. He messed up big-time. Sometimes he played wicked-funny tricks. And everything he did always led to chaos for the rest of us.
The kid was legendary. I’m pretty sure that’s the word. Paulie Fink was totally legendary.
Interview: Mr. Farabi
Paulie Fink? Brilliant, that kid.
Not that he was always a joy to have in class, mind you. But as the school’s science and math teacher, I found it hard not to appreciate his… um… innovative thinking.
I mean, the banana-peel debacle? Mini-geddon? His food wars with Principal Glebus? Wait, you haven’t heard those stories? Ask your classmates. I think you’ll see that every one of his stunts had a certain element of genius.
I don’t mean genius like Marie Curie or Neil deGrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking. He wasn’t like any sort of genius that’s going to appear in your textbooks. Paulie Fink was more of what you’d call… an evil genius.
Interview: Fiona
There was something about his eyes. Even when he was in trouble, even when Ms. Glebus was wagging that craggy finger in his face, his eyes were always kind of sparkly, like he had a disco ball back there, twirling around inside his brain.
And then he just up and disappeared. No warning. No good-bye. First day of seventh grade, Paulie just wasn’t there.
Poof.
Gone.
See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.
And no offense, Caitlyn, but it’s not like you were any sort of replacement. In fact, the first time I saw your eyes, I was all, Now there’s a girl who’s never laughed. Not once in her entire stinkin’ life.
A DAY WITHOUT PAULIE
How It Begins
If the whole thing really had been a TV show, like everyone kept pretending it was, there are a million places the first episode could have started.
Like, maybe a good place to start would have been back in June, when I came home toward the end of sixth grade, and Mom greeted me with three fateful words: Caitlyn, we’re moving. Not Would you like to…? Or What would you think if…? Or Would you ever consider…? Not a question at all. By the time she brought up the subject, she’d already accepted her new job as director of the Mitchell Urgent Care Center, given notice at the hospital where she’d worked as a nurse practitioner since forever, and taken out a lease on a tiny house in Mitchell, Vermont.
Which is to say, the middle of absolutely nowhere.
But that’s just one place where the show could start. There are other options. Like on the drive here, when we passed the big green sign: WELCOME TO THE GREEN MOUNTAIN STATE. I saw nothing but trees and fields in all directions, and suddenly it hit me: This is really happening. I had to pretend to sleep just so I could press my face into a rumpled old sweatshirt against the window and cry without Mom noticing. By the time I opened my eyes again, we were passing an abandoned factory, the words OXTHORPE TEXTILES, MITCHELL, VERMONT still faintly visible on the bricks.
Or maybe the show would begin the first time I pulled up in front of my new school. The sign said it was a school, anyway—THE MITCHELL SCHOOL, K–7—but it sure didn’t look like any school I’d ever seen. This place was more like a haunted mansion: a huge wooden house with broken shutters, peeling paint, and a tangle of weedy vines snaking up the exterior. Near the front door, there was a bell, like a miniature version of the Liberty Bell, with a sign that read, THE GOOD DAY BELL: RING IF YOU HAD A GOOD DAY.
I remember thinking, The Good Day Bell. Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
It’s strange how hard it is to choose just one beginning for this show. There are so many different ways to tell a single story. But I guess if I had to pick, I’d start the show a few minutes after I first saw that Good Day Bell. I’d begin in a classroom that doesn’t look like a classroom, inside a school that doesn’t look like a school, in a town where I never wanted to be living.
Let’s pause in that classroom to look around. Chances are, it’s not like any you’ve ever seen. There’s a marble fireplace and a gold-framed portrait of some old man. A stained-glass window featuring a bunch of half-naked flying babies. An enormous chandelier dangling from a cracked ceiling above a heavy wooden table. And around that table: ten seventh graders, all frozen in place.
They’re staring, twenty eyes fixed on something in the doorway. Whatever it is they see there, they don’t like it. Not one bit.
If we’d begun this show even ten seconds earlier, these very same kids would have been cheering their heads off. The applause began as soon as they heard a rap on the classroom door. They expected something fantastic when they heard that knock. They whooped and high-fived, shouted yeahs and woohoos, and it’s possible there was even a very enthusiastic Let the games begin!
Sorry, though. This show doesn’t begin with cheers. It begins only after the door opens all the way. That’s when the room goes instantly, eerily silent.
Look at those faces, how quickly the kids moved from excitement to disappointment. All of them: the pink-haired girl with a tiny guitar in her lap. The kid in the soccer jersey, one leg jutting casually to the side. The scrawny boy pushing up blue-framed glasses that are way too big for his face. There are three kids in headbands with pom-pom ears, two identical boys in camouflage, a girl in a lavender sweatshirt, the word MEGASTAR emblazoned across the front, and a small freckled girl in a bright red pantsuit, like it’s Halloween and she’s decided to dress as a middle-aged senator.
Different kids, different sizes, different shades, different styles. Yet they seem united in their feeling about what’s appeared in the doorway. Whatever they expected, whatever they were cheering for, it’s not this.
And what are they looking at? Well, I’m sorry to say that it’s me, Caitlyn Breen.
Hi. I’m Caitlyn. I’m the New Kid here at Mitchell. I like when everything’s in its place, because that’s how I know I have a place. I do not like when kids stare at me, making me feel like they can see right through me, all the way to my softest insides. So this, right here, is probably the most horrifying moment of my life.
Oh, and those ten kids who are staring at me right now? This is the Mitchell School’s entire seventh grade, right here—me, plus these ten strangers, who seem to despise me already, even as they’re seeing me for the very first time.
The girl in the red pantsuit tilts her head to the side. Eyes on me, she wrinkles her nose.
“Well, you’re not Paulie Fink,” she says.
Email sent to my mom back in late June, 61 days BDP (Before the Disappearance of Paulie)
TO: WENDY BREEN
FROM: PRINCIPAL GLEBUS
Dear Wendy:
We have received Caitlyn’s records, and we are delighted that she will be joining our seventh-grade class in the fall. As you can imagine, a school of our size in a location as remote as Mitchell doesn’t see many new students. We barely have enough seventh graders to field a soccer team in the annual soccer game against Devlinshire Hills.
You mentioned that Caitlyn is making this move only reluctantly—I believe you said she was responding to the move “with all the enthusiasm of a feral cat being dipped in an ice-water bath.” Please reassure Ca
itlyn that her new class is lively and friendly—if I’m being completely honest, I might describe them as lively to a fault. You’ll see what I mean soon enough, I suppose.
A bit of history that will help you understand this school a little better: Two decades after Oxthorpe Textiles—once the largest employer in town—closed its doors, our school lacked sufficient funds to continue operating. It’s a common story in rural towns like ours: schools closing after a steady decline in population and tax revenues, combined with rising costs. Mitchell’s school building was even torn down. Mitchell children began attending school over in St. Johnsbury. The drive was nearly forty minutes each way, even in the best weather; in winter, it could be downright hazardous. Eight years ago, a group of dedicated parents decided to experiment by opening up a town academy. While the approach is still experimental, the town-academy model allows for the flexibility needed to educate such small numbers. It’s often a rural community’s last chance for keeping schools local.
Descendants of the Oxthorpes generously donated the family’s old estate to the school. It hadn’t been occupied for years, so it took both creativity and elbow grease to adapt the place for educational purposes. Classes are held in what used to be bedrooms and sitting rooms. We don’t have a gym, and we had to knock out the servants’ quarters to make room for bathrooms. But here we are!
We began with just a kindergarten. In year two, we had a kindergarten and a first grade. By year three, we were a K-through-second-grade school. This fall, those original kindergarten students will be in seventh grade.
Yes, you can tell Caitlyn her class is comprised of the Mitchell School’s first-ever students. We call this group “the Originals” for that reason… though I suspect she’ll find the name fits in other ways, too.
Looking forward to seeing you on the first day of school.
Alice Glebus
