My Life Is a Joke

by James Patterson

  “I didn’t mean to bail on you like that, Jacky,” Schuyler continues. “I just had to bounce home or I would’ve missed talking to my dad this week. He has to wait in line to use the phone over there.…”

  I give him a look. It’s not one of my sweeter ones. If that were true, he could have gone behind the booth to tell me that he had to leave. But maybe he didn’t want me to know he was leaving.…

  “But, hey, don’t worry,” says Schuyler, flashing me a big smile. “Tomorrow, I’ll help you figure out who stole the money. We’ll look for clues and junk. We can be like the detectives on that new TV show Law and Order.”

  “Sure,” I say sarcastically. “Let’s play cops. I have nothing better to do until rehearsal. Did I mention—I lost my job?”

  “Calm down, Jacky.”

  Oooh. Want to make me totally uncalm? Tell me to calm down. “Everything’s going to be okay,” says Schuyler. “And since you are temporarily unemployed, tonight’s French fries are my treat.”

  He digs into his pocket and pulls out a crumpled bill. He slaps it down on the counter. It’s a five.

  “This is no good,” says the French-fry man, looking at the bill with a scowl. “It’s defaced.”

  Yes, thanks to some joker’s rubber stamp, the Abraham Lincoln on Schuyler’s five-dollar bill has been turned into Mr. Spock from Star Trek.

  That’s right. Schuyler’s bill looks exactly like the messed-up fiver we collected from the frat boys at the Balloon Race booth earlier tonight.

  The one we put into the money box.

  The one that disappeared with all the other cash when somebody (I’m not naming names because I don’t need to) ran off with the loot and made up a bogus fairy tale about a super-long-distance phone call with his father over in Kuwait.

  The one that’s proof Schuyler isn’t just a shoplifter, he’s a thief. A thief who’s willing to get his friends in trouble for his crimes.

  “Hang on,” Schuyler tells the grumpy guy behind the counter. “I’ve got five singles.…”

  “I’m sure you do,” I say, pushing my box of cheese fries toward him. “You’re probably loaded. There were two or three hundred clams in that money box. Not real clams. That would be gross. Enjoy your cheese fries, Mr. Moneybags. I’m not really hungry. And that’s not really cheese! It’s a liquid version of whatever kind of orange dust Cheetos are covered with.”

  “Jacky?” says Schuyler. “Wait. Don’t leave.” And then it hits him. “What? You think that five-dollar bill came from Vinnie’s money box?”

  “Well, duh. Where do you think it came from? The starship Enterprise?”

  I walk away. Fast.

  “Jacky?” Schuyler calls after me. “I can explain.”

  “How about you pay first, Mac?” says the man behind the counter, who, by the way, doesn’t seem all that happy about working the late shift. “Then you can do all the explaining you want.”

  “Sure,” says Schuyler. “No problem…”

  I pick up my pace and duck down a dark alley between two closed game booths so Schuyler can’t follow me. I’ve lived in Seaside Heights all my life. I know shortcuts.

  Furious, I stomp my way home, all the while muttering one of Puck’s lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

  And I’m the biggest fool of them all.

  I was a fool to think that Schuyler was a good guy. That he could ever become a good guy, given his sketchy history in Philadelphia.

  I was doubly foolish to let Sophia fall in love with the guy.

  That was just another thing for me to set right!

  And I had to do it that night.

  CHAPTER 56

  He’s a bad guy,” I tell Sophia.

  “Whatever,” she says with a flick of her wrist. “I like the bad ones. I thought Sean Penn was dreamy in that movie Bad Boys. And, of course, I loooooove Johnny Depp. He was soooo cute on 21 Jump Street. But he’s sort of bad, too. Brooding. I like brooding.”

  “Sophia?” I plead. “Schuyler isn’t bad that way. He’s a criminal. A thief!”

  “Why? Because he stole my heart?”

  We’re in the bedroom that Sophia shares with Sydney (when she isn’t at college) and Victoria.

  “No,” I tell her. “Because he stole money from the booth where I work.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Rad! Now he can take me someplace nice instead of that greasy cheese-fries place on the boardwalk.”

  “Sophia?” I’m tugging at my hair. “Are you even listening to what I’m saying?”

  That’s when Victoria waltzes into the room.

  “What are you two conversing about so fervently?” she says, because she always tries to find the most complicated way to say anything. She’s worse than Shakespeare that way.

  “Jacky says Schuyler’s no good,” says Sophia. “She’s dissing him to the max!”

  “Because he’s a thief,” I say, my voice filled with exasperation. “He tried to shoplift taffy, too.”

  Victoria gasps. “From my store?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I can’t say as how I blame him. We do make the best on the boardwalk.…”

  “You guys?”

  Now I’m seriously considering yanking out all of my hair. My sisters just won’t listen to me. Fortunately, that’s when Dad sticks his head in the door. Probably because it’s after midnight and we’re talking way too loud.

  “Dad?” I say. “We need to talk.”

  “Seriously?” he says, stifling a major-league yawn. “It’s almost one o’clock in the morning, Jacky. Can’t we do the whole daddy-daughter talk deal tomorrow?”

  “This won’t be a daddy-daughter talk, Dad,” I tell him.

  “Um, yes it will be,” says Victoria, because, as you might recall, she knows everything about everything. “Anytime you and Father converse, it will, technically, be a daddy-daughter chat.”

  “Fine,” I say. “But this time, it will also be a cop-informant talk, too.”

  Dad gets a super-serious look on his face. “Jacky? What’s this all about?”

  “Your crime spree. I know who did it.”

  “Jacky?” gasps Sophia, choking back her tears. “Please. If you believe in the power of love… don’t!”

  Now Dad arches an eyebrow. “Sophia? Is this about that Mike Guadagno boy again?”

  “It better not be!” screams Hannah from the room next door.

  “It’s about Schuyler,” I scream back.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Who the heck is Schuyler?” asks Dad.

  “Ms. O’Mara’s nephew. He’s your thief, Dad. He’s the one who stole the Princeton professor’s Walkman on the beach. The one who spray-painted that Fat Guts graffiti on the rolled-down gate. The one who just robbed the booth where I work and got me fired!”

  “He also tried to shoplift some taffy,” adds Victoria. “But it’s so delicious, you can’t really call that a crime, can you, Dad?”

  “Yes, dear,” says Dad. “I can. I’m a cop.” He gives me the two-finger Come with me gesture.

  We head into the kitchen.

  It’s time for the Seaside Heights Police Department to get the 411 on their bad-boy crime wave.

  CHAPTER 57

  We sit around the kitchen table.

  Mom and Dad are both in their bathrobes, sipping coffee out of mugs even though it’s one o’clock in the morning. We have only one overhead light on (because, like I said, it’s one o’clock in the morning and other people in the house are trying to sleep). Suddenly, our cozy kitchen reminds me of a dimly lit, black-and-white detective movie.

  “I feel like I’m in the interrogation room on a cop show,” I say.

  “We call it the interview room, dear,” says Mom. Guess she learned that in cop class.

  I’m actually feeling pretty pumped, because I suddenly realize something: I’ll be the daughter handing Dad a collar that could guarantee he’s the part-ti
mer who wins the full-time gig with the Seaside Heights Police Department after Labor Day. And by collar, I don’t mean I hand him the spangly one our dog, Sandfleas, sometimes wears. Collar is more cop lingo. It means “an arrest.”

  “This kid Schuyler, Ms. O’Mara’s nephew, has been in all sorts of trouble with the police in Philly,” I say. “He came here for the summer to clean up his act; otherwise, I’m pretty sure he was headed for the state penitentiary.”

  Mom and Dad both cock skeptical eyebrows.

  “The penitentiary?” says Dad.

  “Well, maybe juvie. Is that what they call a juvenile detention facility? A prison for kids?”

  “Only in movies, dear,” says Mom.

  “Oh. Well, anyway, Schuyler came here, but he didn’t clean up his act. I saw him trying to shoplift taffy at Victoria’s shop.”

  “Did he steal anything?” asks Dad.

  “No. He saw me watching him before he could. He put the candy back in the bin. But the other night, he was showing off a Sony Walkman that can record and play cassette tapes. Said it was the kind college professors use. The kind he probably snatched on the beach.”

  Dad looks at Mom. They both nod. Okay. I have their attention now.

  “And that graffiti somebody spray-painted on that rolled-down security gate, where it said ‘Fat Guts’? That’s from a Shakespearean insult. Schuyler’s big on those. He’s memorized a ton.”

  “Anything else?” asks Dad.

  “Yes. He cost me my job!”

  “How?”

  “By stealing the money box out of the Balloon Race booth.”

  “How do you know that he was the one who stole it?” Mom wonders.

  “Easy. Some college kid gave us a five-dollar bill that had been defaced with a rubber stamp to turn Abraham Lincoln into Mr. Spock from Star Trek.”

  Mom grins. “Seriously?”

  I nod. “Later, when he was trying to buy my silence with a jumbo order of cheese fries, Schuyler paid with the exact same five-dollar bill! If you guys arrest Schuyler, get him to confess, and give Vinnie back the money he stole, maybe Vinnie will give me back my job, because I know how important it is that we all work this summer and I’m s-s-so s-s-sorry I lost my job.…”

  I start sobbing.

  Dad places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Everything’s going to be okay, Jacky.”

  Mom puts her hand on my other shoulder.

  I blink back the tears and nod, because if I tried to say anything, the words would stumble out in a sputter.

  “I’ll call this in,” says Dad. “Where can we find this boy Schuyler?”

  “At Ms. O’Mara’s apartment. She has a place over on Bay Terrace.”

  “Can’t this wait till the morning, Mac?” Mom asks Dad.

  He shakes his head. “If the boy senses that Jacky’s suspicious, he might try to leave town. He might try to do something worse.”

  Now I can talk. “T-t-to me?”

  “It’s a possibility,” says Dad. “One that I’m not willing to risk.”

  He picks up the phone.

  And then the two of us head to the police station. Dad says I’ll need to repeat my statement to a detective.

  On the ride, he tells me I’ve “done good, Jacky.”

  About an hour later, he wasn’t saying that anymore.

  CHAPTER 58

  Dad and I come out of the interview room after I tell a detective everything I told my parents.

  When we get to the hallway, we practically bump into Schuyler. He’s in handcuffs. Two cops are guiding him by his elbows.

  “What’d you tell these guys?” he asks, sounding mad.

  “The truth,” I say.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, Jacky.”

  “Really? What about stealing Vinnie’s money?”

  “Jacky?” says Dad, shaking his head. “You two don’t need to be talking to each other right now.”

  “Or ever!” I say, because I’m madder at Schuyler than he is at me. He made me turn into a rat fink. He made me turn him in.

  Schuyler shakes his head and shoots me a nasty look as they lead him into the interview room.

  “You want to sit in on this, Mac?” asks a detective.

  “Yes, sir.” Dad turns to me. “Wait for me out front, okay?”

  I nod. “Yes, sir.”

  I head into the small waiting room. One of the scoop-bottomed plastic seats is already taken.

  By Ms. O’Mara.

  And for the first time since we met all those months ago in detention hall, she isn’t exactly thrilled to see me.

  I don’t know what to say. So I try to break the ice with a line from our show. “‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.’”

  “There’s no moonlight, Jacky,” says Ms. O’Mara, even though, come on, she is playing Titania. “The clouds blocked it all out tonight. The same way they, apparently, blocked out your brain. What were you thinking?”

  “That Schuyler needs to give my boss back his money box.”

  “He didn’t take it.”

  “Oh, really? Then why did he have that Mr. Spock five-dollar bill?”

  “You mean like this one?” she snaps open her pocketbook (which is what we used to call a purse) and shows me a defaced Lincoln. “Or this one?” She shows me another.

  “Wh-wh-where…”

  “At the grocery store. And the gas station. This one”—out comes a third Spock-Lincoln—“came from Latoya Sherron because I lent her five bucks last week when she wanted to go grab a coffee. These things are all over Seaside Heights. So when the police are done interrogating Schuyler, they can come after me and Latoya.”

  “Wh-wh-what about the W-W-Walkman?”

  “Mine,” says Ms. O’Mara. “I let him borrow it. That was my Paula Abdul tape.”

  Now that I think about it, I guess not many college professors at Princeton are all that into pop songs like “Rush Rush” or “The Promise of a New Day.”

  “Jacky?” says Ms. O’Mara.

  “Y-y-yes?”

  “Slow down. Give your mouth a chance to catch up with your brain.”

  I nod. Ms. O’Mara is the one who helped me conquer my stutter, back when we were doing You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and I had to enter a public speaking competition. Since she’s still trying to help me, I realize that she doesn’t totally hate me, even though she probably should.

  I’m about to ask about my last shred of evidence, the graffiti, when the dispatcher behind the desk takes a call.

  “Seaside Heights Police… Yes, ma’am.… On your wall? Red spray paint. And you saw the perpetrator? Which way did he run?… Okay. I’m sending out a car.… No, ma’am. I don’t think the boy meant anything personal by it. Fat Guts is just what this kid tags every time he grabs a can of red spray paint.”

  I look at Ms. O’Mara.

  Oops.

  Schuyler didn’t do the Shakespearean-insult graffiti, either. Unless, of course, he just slipped out of the interview room while we weren’t looking so he could spray Fat Guts on someone else’s wall.

  He’s not a criminal. He’s just a high school kid who can’t catch a break.

  Especially that summer, when I made the biggest mistake of my whole, entire life.

  I made the police arrest an innocent kid.

  CHAPTER 59

  I decide to walk home. Alone.

  Dad needs to stay at the police station to see if he can “repair the damage” I’ve done.

  “We put an innocent boy in handcuffs, Jacky,” he says. “At two o’clock in the morning. We dragged him out of bed and hauled him into the station!”

  Long story short, this isn’t going to look particularly great on Dad’s job application for a permanent gig on the force: Experience: Writing up parking tickets and arresting the wrong children at 2 a.m.

  I reach the boardwalk and gaze up at my old friend the Ferris wheel. Somehow, life seemed a whole lot simpler last Labor Day, when all I had to do was figure out how to scale th
e giant wheel’s girders like a circular set of monkey bars.

  “Why so g-g-glum, Jacky Ha-Ha?” sneers a voice behind me.

  It’s Ringworm.

  “There’s a phone booth right over there,” I tell him. “I know the number for nine-one-one. My dad’s on the force this summer and—”

  “Whoa,” says Ringworm, holding up both his hands. “Chill, girl. Chill. I mean you no harm. Tonight’s a night for celebrating.”

  I study his hands. They’re smeared with something red and blotchy.

  “Haven’t you heard the news?” he says. “Toxic Trash is gonna be in the Battle of the Bands! We scored the entry fee.” He pulls a thick wad of cash out of his jeans. “Check it out. That’s more money than we need! We’re going to be rock stars and ain’t nobody ever gonna call me ‘fat guts’ again like your dipstick boyfriend, Schuyler.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say, annoyed that everybody seems to think I need one.

  “I just happened to see him riding in the back of a police car. What’d he get busted for, huh? Graffiti? Stealing? Ha-ha, what a loser!”

  I stare at him suspiciously. He seems to know an awful lot about the trouble that Schuyler was accused of.

  “Come on,” says Ringworm. “I’m on my way to Bob’s house. Come celebrate with us. It’s par-tay time.” He peels a five-dollar bill off his money roll. “We can pick up some cheese fries on the way.”

  “Where? Everything on the boardwalk is closed. It’s three o’clock in the morning!”

  “Too true. So celebrate tomorrow, Jacky Ha-Ha. Buy yourself the j-j-jumbo box with extra ch-ch-cheese and think about m-m-me.”

  He hands me the five-dollar bill.

  I take it, just to make the skeevy guy go away so I can think.

  And I’m figuring you already guessed the rest. When I flip the bill over, I notice that Abraham Lincoln has been rubber-stamped into Mr. Spock. And that red, splotchy stuff on Ringworm’s hands? Up close, I can tell: It’s sticky red spray paint. Because Ringworm is a sloppy graffiti artist who picked up on Schuyler’s “fat guts” Shakespearean insult and turned it into his signature tag to help me frame the wrong guy.