My Life Is a Joke

by James Patterson

  He breezes up the steps.

  “I just met him but I already hate him,” says Dan.

  “Ditto,” says Jeff.

  “Are you okay?” I ask Meredith.

  “Seriously?” she says. “You think I’m gonna let some high school knuckle-dragging Neanderthal get under my skin? No way. And don’t you let him get into your head, either, Jacky.”

  “I won’t.”

  The five of us march into the audition room.

  “Hi, guys!” says Ms. O’Mara from her seat behind a long cafeteria-type table filled with paper, notepads, and pencils. There are four other grown-ups behind the table, including Latoya Sherron, who’s talking to the guy with the goatee.

  “Travis was good, huh?” I hear her say.

  Mr. Goatee nods. “Fantastic. He’ll be hard to beat.”

  I try to remember the speech Wormowitz recited. That bit about shadows and slumbering. At least that part of the script will be somewhat familiar to me since I heard him say it.

  “Okay,” says the man in the black turtleneck sweater, checking the sign-up sheet. “Jacky Hart. You’re here for Puck?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ms. O’Mara claps.

  “This is the girl you told us about?” asks the man in the goatee.

  “She’s great.” Ms. O’Mara shoots me a double thumbs-up while the man in the black turtleneck hands me a sheet of paper.

  “Here are your sides,” he says.

  “Thank you.”

  Sides are what they call the part of the script they want you to read.

  Except my sides aren’t the same as the ones Travis Wormowitz just read.

  Time for a panic attack.

  I’m going to have to give a c-c-cold reading again. And you know how the first one turned out!

  CHAPTER 19

  I stare at the words.

  Okay. The first ones are the ones we heard Wormowitz read when we were spying on him through the basement window.

  I can power through those!

  “I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about a round,

  Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar.”

  I look up from the sheet of paper. Ms. O’Mara is nodding. Letting me know I’m doing fine. Encouraging me to keep on going.

  I do.

  Uh-oh. Here come the words I’ve never seen before, and a lot of them have an h in them, just like my last name, Hart. Which, as you might recall, is the word I couldn’t say without stuttering that turned me into Jacky Ha-Ha-Hart.

  “‘Sometime a h-h-horse I’ll be, sometime a h-h-hound.’”

  I’m h-h-having a h-h-hard time stumbling through the words, so I improvise a quick gag.

  “Ah-oooo!” I howl. “That’s my, uh, h-h-hound,” I explain.

  The adults stare at me. Except Ms. O’Mara. She stares at whatever she’s doodling on her notepad.

  “‘A h-h-hog, a h-h-headless b-b-bear.’” I stop. “Okay, that would be weird, right? A b-b-bear without a h-h-head? Did they have those running around in Shakespeare’s day? If so, w-w-wouldn’t they just keep b-b-bumping into trees because they couldn’t see where they were going? It’d be w-w-worse than W-W-Winnie the P-P-Pooh with his h-h-head stuck in a h-h-honey jar. By the w-w-way, what sort of last name is P-P-Pooh, anyway? A stinky one, if you ask me. And h-h-how about his middle name? ‘The.’ Wh-wh-what’s up with that?”

  Judging from the judges’ reaction, my improvised comedy routine isn’t exactly a huge hit.

  “Miss Hart?” says the guy with the goatee. “Please stick to the script.”

  “Right. My b-b-bad.”

  This is going about as badly as the morning announcements. In desperation, I jump to the end of the sides.

  “And n-n-neigh, and b-b-bark, and g-g-grunt, and roar, and b-b-burn,

  Like h-h-horse, h-h-hound, h-h-hog, bear, fire, at every t-t-turn.”

  For good (or bad) measure, I toss in a whinny, another beagle howl, a pig snort, and a bear growl. I would’ve done fire, too, but I’m not exactly sure how to make a snap-crackle-and-pop noise without a bowl of Rice Krispies.

  As my bear growl fades away, the people at the table all glance at each other. All except Ms. O’Mara, who is still staring at her doodles.

  “O-kay,” says the guy with the goatee, who I’m starting to think is the director, also known as the one who’ll make the final decision about who plays what part. I’m also pretty sure that, right now, he’s on Team Wormowitz.

  “Let’s move on to the other fairies,” says the director. “Kathy? Can you read them in?”

  “Sure,” says Ms. O’Mara as the man in the black turtleneck hands sides to Bill, Dan, Jeff, and Meredith.

  I guess there are only four other fairies. I start to move off to the side in defeat, but Meredith stops me.

  “Um, I’ve changed my mind,” says Meredith. “I don’t really want a speaking role. Here you go, Jacky.”

  She hands me her sheet of paper.

  “Would you be in the chorus?” asks Ms. Sherron. “Because we really want to add some musical interludes to this show.…”

  “Sure,” says Meredith. “I’d rather sing than speak, any day.”

  Me too, I think. Especially today.

  CHAPTER 20

  Okay,” says the director. “Bill, you try Cobweb. Jeff, you’ll be Moth.”

  “I promise not to fly too close to any candles or bug zappers,” cracks Jeff.

  Everybody laughs. (Something they weren’t doing during my recent joke-fest.)

  “Dan,” says the director, “why don’t you try Peaseblossom.”

  “Is that like a pea plant?” asks Dan. “With a flower?”

  “I’m not really sure.…”

  “No problem. If I get the part, I’ll research it like crazy.”

  “Good attitude.” Finally, the director turns to me. “Jacky, you can read Mustardseed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay,” says the director. “Kathy is Titania, the queen of the fairies. She is your fearless leader.”

  Ms. O’Mara takes her place in the middle of her four fairies.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Kath,” says the director. She reads us into the scene.

  “I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee,

  And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

  And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep…”

  I’m picturing that in my head. Pressed flowers sound like a pretty flat pillow. I’d rather have them unpressed and fluffy if I’m going to sleep on them. And what if you’re allergic to pollen? You’re gonna wake up sneezing, with snot all over yourself.

  “‘Peaseblossom!’” cries Ms. O’Mara. “‘Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!’”

  That’s our big cue.

  Dan goes first. “‘Ready!’”

  “‘And I,’” says Bill as Cobweb.

  Jeff, our Moth, is next. “‘And I.’”

  I bring up the rear as Mustardseed. “‘And I!’”

  No stuttering. Maybe because Jeff and Bill already said the exact same line I say.

  “Do we read this next part?” asks Jeff. “Where it says ‘All’?”

  “Yes,” says the director. “That means all of you; all the fairies.”

  We nod. Look at each other.

  “On three,” says Bill. “One, two, three…”

  “‘Where shall we go?’” the four of us say together.

  “Great,” says the director, because that’s all the lines for the fairy auditions. Fairies are teeny, tiny mythical creatures. Apparently, they’re even teenier and tinier parts in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If I land the role of Mustardseed, I think I already memorized all of my lines.

  “Great work, guys,” says Ms. O’Mara. “But in the show, we can’t do the countdown thing before you all speak together.”

  “Got it,” says Dan. “Shakespeare didn’t write ‘one, two, three.’ We’ll work on some other sort of nonverbal cue for the group lin
es.”

  “Thanks for coming in on a Saturday, kids,” says the director. “Now we have some tough decisions to make. You all wrote your phone numbers on the sign-up sheet, right?”

  We nod.

  “Great. We’ll let you know either way in a few days. Thanks again for coming in.”

  “Catch up with you guys later,” says Ms. O’Mara. “We have some more actors coming in this afternoon.”

  “For fairies?” asks Jeff.

  “No. Other parts.”

  “So we have a shot?”

  “Yes, Jeff.”

  “Booyah!”

  We head up the stairs. Everybody else is feeling pretty great. We may end up with ridiculously small parts (especially when compared with the juicy roles we’ve had in our school productions), but we’d be in the big Shakespeare Down the Shore show with Ms. O’Mara and Latoya Sherron!

  But, inside, I know I’ve totally blown my chance to play the part I really want to play.

  Puck.

  I guess I should’ve read the script before going to the audition, huh?

  CHAPTER 21

  After the audition, I go to work at the Balloon Race booth on the boardwalk.

  I’m pretty mad at myself. I should’ve practiced my lines—or even looked at them before today. I should’ve stuck to the script instead of cracking jokes. I should’ve realized that Shakespeare’s lines were better than mine because, hello, he’s Shakespeare and I’m Jacky Ha-Ha. Yes, I’m should-ing all over myself. Pouting on a stool in a plywood booth surrounded by freaky clowns with balloons growing out of the pointy nozzles in their heads.

  “Yo, Jacky?” says Vinnie. “Wake up, why don’t you? We’ve got potential customers here.”

  The boardwalk, of course, is packed. It’s a Saturday, so we have more day-trippers than usual.

  I launch into my usual spiel. It works pretty well. Then, after maybe two hours, I dip into my back pocket where I stuck my sides from the audition and pull out Mr. Shakespeare’s words. I’m curious if I can say them without stuttering if I do them in character as a carnival barker.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: It’s time to neigh and bark and grunt and roar and burn. Step right up and take your turn.”

  “What the…” says Vinnie. “What’s all them animal noises got to do with shooting squirt guns at a clown or popping balloons?”

  I shrug. “Just trying to shake things up a bit.”

  My goofy idea works. I fill the firing line with eager squirt gunners. They do funny grunts, growls, squeals, and squawks as they wait for the starting bell to ring.

  Vinnie is impressed with the power of my words, words, words.

  “Good job, Jacky,” he says, stuffing another wad of cash into his money box. “Keep on being goofy. Goofy is good.”

  I finally head home around seven. Mom and Sophia have pulled together our standard summer Saturday dinner: hot dogs, baked beans, and canned potato sticks.

  “How was work this week, girls?” asks Dad after we’ve all had dessert.

  That’s our cue.

  Time for all the Hart girls, except Riley and Emma, to add our paychecks to the family piggy bank, which is actually a cookie jar shaped like a pig.

  “Mr. Williams gave me a ten-cents-an-hour raise,” reports Victoria. “Apparently, every time I’m working the taffy-pulling machine in the front window, business goes up ten percent. It’s because I smile. And a smile is happiness you can find right under your nose!”

  She (finally) plops her paycheck into the pot.

  “I was docked a half day’s pay at the Fudgery,” Hannah reports glumly. “I didn’t think they would deduct the cost of the free samples I sampled.”

  “That’s okay, dear,” says Mom.

  “How else am I supposed to know what all the different fudge flavors taste like?”

  “You’ll do better next week,” says Dad.

  I can tell they feel sort of bad about putting this much of a financial burden on their daughters’ shoulders.

  “I did okay,” reports Sophia, stuffing a roll of cash into the cookie jar. She’s waitressing at a sit-down restaurant, so most of her paycheck is actually paper money. “Except some people just aren’t very good tippers. Including some people I thought were my friends…”

  I go last. “Vinnie gave me a bonus. Sales are way up. People seem to like my snappy patter.”

  “Way to go, Jacky!” says Dad when I add my check and cash bonus to the family’s bank account. “You really found a way to put your talents to work.”

  The way he says “talents,” I know he really means my weird and wacky antics. The ones, as a straightlaced cop type, he’s never really understood.

  “Thank you all,” says Mom.

  “Definitely,” adds Dad. “Thanks to you guys, this summer is going to be a great start to the rest of our lives!”

  Victoria applauds. “Bravo! Well said.” Hannah, Riley, and Sophia join in.

  I fake yet another smile and clap along with my sisters.

  How could this summer be a great start to the rest of my life?

  I know in my heart I won’t be playing Puck. That my dream of being an actress or a performer is a big, fat joke. Unless, of course, the only shows I want to do are on the boardwalk with clowns and balloons.

  Travis Wormowitz, the star of the high school drama club, is going to wind up a winner this summer.

  Me?

  I’m well on my way to L-L-Loserville.

  CHAPTER 22

  Later that night, I take Sandfleas out for a walk.

  We head toward the boardwalk.

  When I’ve done shows in the past, my nightly dog walks have been when I work on my lines. So, maybe just to prove to myself that I can, I recite a little Shakespeare to Sandfleas.

  “‘And neigh, and bark…’”

  Sandfleas barks. It’s one of the tricks I taught her.

  “Good girl.” I plow ahead with the lines I memorized after dinner, taking my time, saying all the words without a single stumble or stutter. “‘And grunt, and roar, and burn, / Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.’”

  Sandfleas wags her tail. I think she likes Shakespeare. Especially when it rolls trippingly off my tongue, which by the way, was the advice Shakespeare gave to a group of actors in his play Hamlet. He also told them not to saw the air too much. He wasn’t big on exaggerated arm gestures. Or lumberjacks, I guess.

  “Guess I should’ve looked at Puck’s lines before the audition, huh?” I say to Sandfleas.

  She yaps in agreement.

  “Lesson learned. If I ever go on another audition, no matter the role, I go in prepared.”

  (And you know what, ladies? I always do. “Be prepared” is my official motto. I’m like the Boy Scouts.)

  I look off to the horizon and see the silhouette of the Ferris wheel, black against the twinkling night sky. It’s the same one I climbed to make a solemn vow and howl at the moon, as you might recall.

  I’m thinking about climbing it again so I can make another solemn vow: If I ever get another shot to do what I love to do more than anything in the world, I will not waste it. The acting bug has bitten me hard. It’s up to me to be disciplined enough to take my talent to the next level, which isn’t up at the top of a Ferris wheel anymore.

  “You want to climb it?” asks a voice behind me.

  It’s Bob.

  “’Cause I’m down for anything.”

  “Not tonight,” I tell him, tugging on Sandfleas’ leash. “I don’t think my dog would approve. I’d have to drag her along like a floppy puppet on a string.”

  “I could hold your dog for you if you’d rather climb solo.”

  “Thanks for the offer, Bob. But I made a solemn vow that I wouldn’t climb any more Ferris wheels.”

  “When’d you do that?”

  “The last time I climbed the Ferris wheel. Way up at the top there. It’s a good spot for solemn vowing.”

  Bob nods. “I’m totally dow
n with that, too.”

  “Hey, Bob?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  I hesitate, then plow ahead. “Why are you suddenly acting like a decent human being?”

  He shrugs. “Not sure. Just thought, you know, I’d give it a whirl. Try something different. Well, I better bounce. Have a nice dog walk, Jacky. I’m outtie!”

  Bob strolls away. For half a second, I think about following him. Sandfleas sniffs the air to let me know the boy would be easy to track. His scent (or Calvin Klein’s) is on the breeze.

  But then I hear a giggle.

  From underneath the boardwalk.

  It’s a giggle I recognize.

  My sister Sophia!

  CHAPTER 23

  Have you ever heard that song “Under the Boardwalk,” by the Drifters?

  The lyrics paint a pretty picture:

  (Under the boardwalk) people walking above

  (Under the boardwalk) we’ll be falling in love

  Trust me, the real deal is nowhere near as romantic. There’s a lot of gross stuff down there. We’re talking slimy seaweed, grungy rodent poop, and rusty soda cans—not to mention discarded slices of pizza. From last year.

  Streaks of moonlight are filtering through the boards. I can see that Sophia is with a boy. A boy I don’t recognize. For sure it isn’t Mike Guadagno, this prepster Sophia and Hannah both had a mega crush on last fall. Sophia has already fallen “madly, deeply” in love with six other boys since then. Meanwhile, Hannah is still using her employee discount to buy boxes of peanut butter fudge for Mike G.

  The guy Sophia’s flirting with tonight is tall and lanky with a thick head of wavy hair. He kind of reminds me of John Stamos, the handsome hunk who plays Jesse Katsopolis on the TV show Full House. He’s wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt that match his awesome black hair.