by Alyson Noel
Also by Alyson Noël
FOR TEENS
THE BEAUTIFUL IDOLS SERIES
Unrivaled
THE SOUL SEEKERS SERIES
Horizon
Mystic
Echo
Fated
THE IMMORTAL SERIES
Everlasting
Night Star
Dark Flame
Shadowland
Blue Moon
Evermore
Cruel Summer
Saving Zoë
Kiss & Blog
Fly Me to the Moon
Laguna Cove
Art Geeks & Prom Queens
Faking 19
FOR TWEENS
THE RILEY BLOOM SERIES
Whisper
Dreamland
Shimmer
Radiance
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Alyson Noël, L.L.C.
Cover art copyright © 2016 by Mina Price
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
randomhousekids.com
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Noël, Alyson, author.
Title: Five Days of Famous / Alyson Noël.
Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2016] | Summary: Relates the adventures of eighth-grader Nick Dashaway, whose Christmas request does not go according to plan.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015027454 | ISBN 9780553537963 (hc) | ISBN 9780553537970 (glb) | ebook ISBN 9780553537987
Subjects: | CYAC: Wishes—Fiction. | Christmas—Fiction. | Junior high schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.N67185 Kj 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Also by Alyson Noël
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Chapter 1: Sparkle Fit
Chapter 2: Lunchtime Purgatory
Chapter 3: Good Omen #1
Chapter 4: Frosted
Chapter 5: Sugarplum Fairy
Chapter 6: Tinsel Madness
Chapter 7: Three Turtledoves
Chapter 8: Run, Run, Rudolph
Chapter 9: End of the Line
Dashing All the Way
Chapter 10: We Three Kings
Chapter 11: Holly Jolly
Chapter 12: Twitter Lips
Chapter 13: Cookie Cutter
Chapter 14: All the Smooth Moves
Chapter 15: Starbucks Express
Chapter 16: Early Retirement
Chapter 17: Swoosh
Chapter 18: Hula Girls
Chapter 19: Pinhead
Chapter 20: #Lame-O
Chapter 21: Unexplainable Phenomenon
Naughty or Nice
Chapter 22: Cool Like That
Chapter 23: Operation Mistletoe
Chapter 24: I Knew You Were Trouble
Chapter 25: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Chapter 26: Do You Hear What I Hear?
Chapter 27: Just Like in the Movies
Chapter 28: You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch
Chapter 29: Kiss and Run
Chapter 30: Reality Bites
Chapter 31: Ninsley
Chapter 32: Bye-Bye, Birdie
Chapter 33: Player Gets Played
Dashaway Home
Chapter 34: Surprised Face
Chapter 35: Reindeer Games
Chapter 36: Reality Refugee
Chapter 37: Sk8tr Boy
Chapter 38: Vulture, Meet Prey
Chapter 39: All I Want for Christmas Is…
Holiday Delivery
Chapter 40: Magic of the Season
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For Irene, in loving memory of Bill
The two most joyous times of the year are Christmas morning and the end of school.
—Alice Cooper
PREFACE
(aka The Big Fat Lie I Told Myself)
Ever have one of those days when you just knew that, by the time it was over, you’d never be the same?
Only, in a good way?
For me, today was that day.
From the moment I woke up, I knew it was true.
Less than fourteen hours later, I fell for the absolute worst, most dangerous lie of all: the lie we tell ourselves.
If even the smallest smidgen of it hadn’t been a lie, I wouldn’t have ended up here—held hostage—on a runaway psychedelic Christmas Trolley—with a deranged Santa at the helm.
Which is how I know the whole thing was nothing more than a big fat delusion from the very beginning.
“On, Dasher! On, Dancer!” the lunatic shouts, one hand gripping the tinsel-wrapped steering wheel, the other waving wildly, as though wielding a whip on an imaginary herd of reindeer. The opening of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” blares from the overhead speakers as the trolley thrashes from side to side, under constant assault from a blizzard hurling snowflakes the size of golf balls. The strings of twinkling Christmas lights swing precariously overhead as sprigs of holly and mistletoe and random ornaments unhitch from the walls and careen across the aisle.
“Better hang on tight!” The driver swivels toward me, the only passenger on board—the only one stupid enough to get on board—his long white dreadlocks flailing over his shoulder, his golden teeth gleaming, the spiral lenses on his glasses spinning so quickly in and out of focus they’re making me dizzy. “This storm’s about to get crazy!”
Only, when he says it, it sounds like “Dis stawmsaboutagit craaazy!”
I press my face against the window, pounding the glass as I frantically search for someone to help me, get on a cell and report this kidnapping in progress. But the snow is coming down so hard and fast, it’s impossible to see much of anything. So I hunker low in my seat and check my own cell phone. No service. Same as before, when I was waiting for the normal bus to take me home.
But the note app still works, so I fight to steady my hand and thumb-type everything that took place, exactly as I experienced it, from the moment the trouble started until the moment I decided it was a good idea to accept a ride from a mental hospital escapee.
That way, when my body is eventually discovered, not only will the authorities have someone to prosecute, but my family will rest a little easier, knowing the whole truth behind the unfortunate chain of events that brought me to this dreadful conclusion.
It’s the only thing I can do.
I’m pretty sure I won’t live long enough to regret this.
DECEMBER 19
10:39 A.M.—11:50 A.M.
SPARKLE FIT
Today is the day my entire life changes for the better.*1
And yet, as many times as I’ve gone over it in my head, it’s still kind of weird to think that in just a little over an hour I’ll have made the transition from Brainiac Nerd to the coolest guy in school. And the crazy thing is—for someone who’s facing such a huge, monumental event—I’m not even nervous.
> I guess it’s like my hero, rock star/actor/singer/model Josh Frost, always says: you can’t live it if you don’t fully imagine it.
Well, I’ve spent the last year and a half fully imagining it, and it begins with the way I sit in this chair.
If it seems like something that simple couldn’t possibly matter, trust me: when it comes to other people’s perception—and by “other people,” I mean seventh-grade girls—there is no detail too minor.
Seventh-grade girls, especially the popular ones, notice everything. And they can be pretty brutal with their assessments.
If you want to be noticed—and even better, accepted—then you need to wear the right jeans and the right sneakers (but you’ll probably want to stop calling them sneakers), and you definitely need the right hair, which is basically styled to look as though you barely ever think about it, even though the time spent making it appear as though you barely ever think about it forces you to wake up half an hour earlier so you’re not late for school.
And yeah, you even need to sit the right way, which is pretty much the opposite of how I usually sit, with both feet on the floor, my back mostly straight—you know, the way teachers and parents sit.
But no more.
Today I push my chair away from my desk and slide all the way to the edge of the molded plastic seat until my jeans pockets are hanging off the rim and my legs are stretched out before me. Once that’s accomplished, I flick a hand through the hair I pretend to barely ever think about and covertly turn to my left like I’m only trying to brush my bangs from my eyes, when really I’m sneaking a glance at the far side of the room, where perfectly perfect Tinsley Barnes is too busy focusing on equally perfect Mac Turtledove to notice me looking so cool.
Still, I hold the pose way past the point when my butt starts to go numb, knowing that at any moment Tinsley could accidentally shift her attention away from Mac long enough to see the way I’m owning my chair and fall madly and deeply in love with me.
Only she doesn’t.
But really, it’s not a big thing.
So what if Tinsley’s still under the illusion that Mac Turtledove is the only guy worth noticing?
It won’t be long before she discovers she was entirely wrong about me.
Until then I just play it cool. Crossing my legs at the ankle, keeping it casual and loose, I shift my focus to the front of the room, where Mr. Sparks struggles with a tangled glob of tinsel that looks fat and promising until he climbs on top of his chair and tosses it over the chalkboard and it turns out to be as skinny and bald as he is.
But it’s not like that stops him from folding his arms over his chest and admiring his work. His eyebrows rise in a question that’s not really a question when he catches me watching, but all I can do is shrug in return.
He may be my third-favorite teacher (not my fault he doesn’t teach math or science), but I can’t fake enthusiasm I don’t really feel. I mean, it’s the last day of school before winter break—clearly he’s a little late with the holiday cheer. Besides, with our test papers turned in and class nearly over, any authority Sparks may have held is long gone.
Pretty much everyone around me is deep into texting, gaming, goofing off, or, in the case of Tinsley Barnes and Ivy Wilburn, laughing hysterically at everything Mac Turtledove says as he slouches low in his seat like his butt is not at all numb and it’s no big thing when the two hottest girls in the entire seventh grade pretend that you’re funny.
In less than an hour, they’ll be laughing with me—only they won’t be pretending!
As I watch Tinsley swing her long blond hair—the color of hot, buttery, movie-theater popcorn—over her shoulder, I’m fully imagining how it’ll be when she’s standing before me, hair shimmering and bouncing, blue eyes sparkling, laying a soft hand on my shoulder and saying, “Oh my gosh, Nick, I had no idea you were so funny!”
“Look at that.” Dougall Clement leans toward me, yanking the cord at my neck until my earbuds pop from my ears.
“Trust me, I’m looking,” I say, unable to keep the grin from my face, sure he’s talking about Tinsley and Ivy. I mean, other than Sparks’s little chair stunt, there’s nothing worth watching.
“Even Sparks can’t escape it.” Dougall frowns, shaking his head as he glares at the pathetic strand of tinsel dangling from the chalkboard.
I look at Dougall’s squinched-up brown eyes, clueless as to where this is going. “You seriously protesting Christmas?” I ask, remembering the time, not long ago, when Dougall had to print his wish list in an eight-point font just to keep it within his dad’s one-page limit.
Dougall looks at me like I’m the one not making sense. “I’m talking about the bell.” He puts extra emphasis on bell, as though that alone clears up the confusion. “Look.” He wipes a hand over his chin, growing increasingly frustrated. “The bell’s gonna ring in, what—fifteen minutes?”
My eyes track the clock. “Nine,” I say. I can’t believe he didn’t know that.
“Yeah, and because of it, Sparks goes on a sparkle fit, totally oblivious to the fact that no one even notices, because they’re all in a trance waiting for a stupid bell to ring.”
“And your point is…?” I drag out the words, still not getting why he’s so worked up.
“My point is, ever since the first day of kindergarten, our lives have been spent either waiting for a bell to ring or reacting to a bell that’s already rung.” His eyes sharpen. Lips flatten. Conspiracy Face—it’s a look I know well. “So far, that makes for a steady eight-and-a-half-year stream of morning alarm clocks, start bells, end bells, break bells, lunch bells, final bells…” He slides toward the edge of his seat, forcing the folds of his bulky red sweater to bulge over his desk. “And we’ve still got five and a half more years to go, not counting college.”
He cocks his head and squints into the distance as I fumble with the cord at my chest, straining to hear the Josh Frost song bleating from the speakers while mentally rehearsing the corresponding moves.
“Point is, they’ve got us right where they want us. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we’re completely programmed. And most of these people are too zombified to notice.” He shakes his head as he flicks a disdainful look at our classmates. All of whom, much like me, are living for the moment the bell will announce our escape.
I drum my fingers against my desk. I have no reply. Unlike Dougall, I’ve got no beef with the system.
On any other day I’d probably go along—might even help build on his theory. But today, well, let’s just say that today that bell is my friend.
The second it rings we’ll make for lunch and then over to the school gym, where Josh Frost—International Superstar, with his very own reality show, Frost World—will judge the Greentree Middle School Talent Show.
The kid who wins not only gets to stand on the stage next to Josh, but he’ll also snag an appearance on Josh’s show, which is pretty much a fast-track pass to a much cooler life.
Luckily for me, I’ve fully imagined a routine that virtually guarantees the win will be mine.
From the second they announced that Josh was stopping by his old school to offer us a brush with fortune and fame, I knew it was just what I needed to rid myself of the unfortunate Brainiac Nerd label my classmates have given me.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting middle school, it’s that the things that worked for me in sixth grade are now working against me.
I’m desperately in need of an image makeover.
Dougall is too.
But it’s not like he’s noticed.
He just slouches against his desk, shaking his head and sighing like an old man with two bad knees and a long list of regrets.
Dougall practically lives for conspiracy theories. Unexplained mysteries, Bigfoot, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle—they’re like catnip to him.
“We should start a revolt. Take back the clock.” He nods like he means it but otherwise doesn’t make a single move from his seat.
Dougall’s a talker. A thinker. More into theory than action. He’s also been my best friend going all the way back to the third grade, when he and his dad moved into the house next to mine and we discovered a mutual interest in getting good grades and avoiding PE.
But lately I can’t help but wonder if Dougall might be holding me back.
He hasn’t made a single adjustment since we got to this place.
And now, two years later, the only difference he sees between grade school and here is the number of bells.
He definitely hasn’t noticed that girls no longer have cooties.
Never mind just how far we’ve veered from the circle of cool.
The kind of things I noticed almost immediately.
It took me only a few days in this school to realize a startling truth: everything I once thought I knew is no longer true.
For instance, I used to be so proud of the “Most Likely to Succeed” certificate I was awarded at the end of fifth grade, I even tacked it to my bedroom wall as a daily reminder of just how high my personal bar had been set.
But here at Greentree, all that certificate really means is that out of a class of thirty-five fifth graders, I’d been pegged as the one with the best shot of achieving social obscurity.
When it comes to seventh-grade girls, that certificate makes me only slightly more appealing than a bowlful of maggots.
Which is not to say that I’m repulsive to look at. ’Cause I’m not.
