by Sean McGinty
Copyright © 2016 by Sean McGinty
Cover design by Matt Roeser
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.
ISBN 978-1-4847-6747-4
Visit www.hyperionteens.com
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
01. MAY HAVE SAVED MY LIFE
02. YOUTHRIVE® ACADEMY
03. ZAZZ®
04. FUN®
05. THE SHIT
06. TICKLE, TICKLE, BOOM!
07. PARTY™ TIME
08. A BOY AND HIS ROBOT
09. THE BIRD
10. SMÓKZ™
11. KING COWBOY
12. LUCKY PEDRO’S
13. GLITCH-OUT
14. MORNING WHEEL
15. AMAZING GRACE
16. THE DOG
17. SPARKL*JUICE™
18. SHOES
19. HEART TO HEART™
20. THE FREEZER
21. AS SEEN ON
22. LITTLE BAGGIE
23. TAMING OF THE SHREW
24. SO SOFT
25. SHE WAS A SPACE AMAZON
26. BONUSES
27. …BOOM!
28. BUNNY_LUVR21
29. OSO
30. INFINITE WEIGHT
31. LOOT
32. ZAZZ® II
33. DARKSIGHT®
34. EVIL, HAIRLESS RABBIT OF TRUTH
35. ROMEO AND JULIET
36. PRIDE ≠ COURAGE
37. MORNINGSUN™
38. VINTAGESHACK™
39. FLASHLIGHT
40. BUCKET MOUSE
41. RMS MARY
42. LOAD ALL
43. COYOTE HEIGHTS
44. LIGHT IS LIGHT
45. PENCIL VS. FUN®
46. CODECRACKER™
47. ANSWER CRANE
48. KOMBUCHA
49. SUNFLOWERS AND STARS
50. BOO! FOR MATH
51. BLISTERS
52. HAZMAT
53. ASS MOUNTAIN
54. LATHAM SISTER ARCHETYPE DILEMMA
55. DAILY INTELLIGENCER
56. PIZZAZILLA™
57. MEG WIG
58. EC0G33K
59. FOREIGN LANGUAGES
60. PURE RADIANCE
61. ARSE
62. ♥LESS™
63. THE CHEESE
64. INTERACTIVE CHEMISTRY
65. THE SOFTEST ROLL
66. NANOBUBBLE
67. DECODER
68. HAPPYTIMES™
69. INTELLIGENCER AGAIN
70. DANGER IN SLOW MOTION
71. FLAMEPROOF
72. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
73. NO ESCAPE
74. THE OTHER BIRTHDAY PARTY
75. BEST CHOICE
76. THE PART THAT SUCKED
77. THE PART THAT CONTINUED TO SUCK
78. WACKER
79. BACKHOE
80. GOOSE
81. PRIMALTRAVEL™
82. FEVER DREAM
83. BARBECUE?
84. JOLLY RANCHERS™
85. REVELATIONS
86. THE LAST COWBOY
87. LOCK
88. LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER
89. A HUNDRED WAYS TO SAY ADVENTURE
90. THE PINES
91. IT DOES NOT DIE UNDER ANY CONDITION
92. THE LAND OF THE LOST
93. ACE DEFENDER PETER JULIET
94. FROM THE HEART
95. TRUE
96. DUMP TRUCKS
97. OSMOS™IV
98. YAY!
99. TRUE TALES OF BURIED TREASURE
100. AND THEN HE TURNS INTO A BIRD
(THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP ALONG THE WAY)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tara & Cedar
My continuous word of warning is that you should never be discouraged by failure, and never expect success. Then if you don’t find the treasure, you will not be too disappointed, and if you are successful, you’ll be able to stand it more gracefully.
—Edward Rowe Snow
Dear To Whom It May Concern Or Whatever,
This is Aaron O’Faolain and I’ve got some Issues. The directions say I’m supposed to briefly discuss reasons for Application for Termination of FUN®. But in order to briefly discuss one reason, first I have to explain something else, and before I get to that there’s another thing, and in order to cut through the crap and get it all straight in my head, it’s going to take a little more space than the space provided provides. Which is why I’m doing it here in the YAY!log. I hope you don’t mind.
But if you are checking this out and you do mind, please understand that I’m not here to troll or anything. I just got a little behind on my FUN®—and that’s my second issue. To even be allowed to file an Application for Termination, I have to get my YAY!s back up to +100. Which is crazy, but what can you do? So here I am. And if you feel like throwing me a YAY!, that’s awesome. Please feel free to YAY! me so hard, and I will YAY! you so hard right back, and we can live out our lives together in peace and harmony forever with eagles and rainbows amen.
OK, here’s my rundown:
name: already told you
username: original boy_2
age: 17
region: america
mood: sleep depraved
status: fail
history: (see below)
So as for History, that’s where it gets kind of complicated. A lot has happened, and it’s going to take some explaining. Before I get to the part about the werewolf pills, or the hidden treasure, or the amazing holy wonder, I should probably go back to where it all started, aka my childhood, aka what it was like to grow up in a craphole town in the middle of nowhere, aka Antello, Nevada.
At first it was OK, I guess. Lots of bike riding in the brush. Blue belly lizards. Abandoned trailers. That kind of stuff. The main bad thing that happened was when I was 10 and my mom left town to be with this guy named Hawk. Seriously, that’s what his name was. Hawk. Mom met Hawk on a dating site, and they bonded over their deep affinity for being irresponsible asswipes and therefore moved to Sacramento, California. The rest of us handled it in our own ways. Dad drank box wine, Evie wrote sad poetry, and I tried to kill myself, which first of all I do NOT endorse, and second of all *** spoiler alert *** I did not accomplish.
Pro tip: do not try to kill yourself at age 10—or any age, really—and especially not by knocking back a bottle of liquid sleep aid and then tossing yourself off the roof of a garage in the middle of a snowstorm. Which, by the way: YAY! for Doze+® SleepStrong™ liquid sleep, and a big shout-out to its gag-inducing harvest apple flavor, which may have saved my life that day, seeing as right after I chugged it, I barfed it all back up on the carpet. Instead of cleaning the mess (a fate worse than death), I decided, Why not jump off the garage?
So I climbed the crab apple tree to the roof of the garage and stood there in my jammies with the snow whipping round. And as I gazed down from those lofty heights, I knew—I mean, I just couldn’t deny it—those heights weren’t even remotely lofty enough to kill me. Still, I did in that moment exhibit perseverance and follow-through. I mean, I did jump.
But right after I jumped I had this thought—or more like a series of thoughts: What up, A-dog? Whatcha doin’? You think this is a wise decision? This is not a wise decision at all.
I swear I was out there for a good ten seconds, just floating in midair with my thoughts, car
toon-style. But then gravity kicked in and I began to fall, and as I fell I managed to make a grab for the rain gutter, which is how I sliced open my hand, and also how I got distracted from my very imminent landing. And as I very imminently hit the snowy concrete, I did detect with my ears a most terrible POP! emanating from the general vicinity of my left anklebone area.
Pro tip #2: when your sister finds you on the driveway with blood all over and a foot pointing in the wrong direction, and when she asks what happened, do NOT tell her you tried to kill yourself. If you tell her you tried to kill yourself, she’ll freak and tell your dad, and he’ll send you to some doctors, and those doctors will medicate you to within an inch of a lobotomy, and you’ll lose the next six years of your life in a slightly damp, slightly bitter lavender-flavored brain fog.
Don’t do it.
I’m telling you.
Just say you fell.
So that part sucked, and I’m going to fast-forward to my junior year of high school, aka last year, which is the year I finally made the decision to get off the pills, which I’m not necessarily recommending (check with a medical professional and all that), but for me I think it was a good decision—and then, on the other hand, quitting the pills is probably what got me expelled.
The problem was that once the fog was gone, all the feelings came back. Anger mostly. It was like, What the hell happened to the last six years? Who the hell am I anyway? What the hell am I doing wasting my life in this craphole of a town?
And I ended up having this “discussion,” I guess you could call it, with a certain teacher of mine in a public arena, i.e., classroom. His name was Mr. Danielson, and I asked him in so many words to why not self-administer a paper enema using preferably a nearby rolled-up map of North America (he was my geography teacher). That suggestion resulted in a week’s suspension, but what got me booted for permanent was later that same month, on the eve of my seventeenth birthday, when I burned down the gymnasium.
I didn’t actually burn down the gymnasium—though if you read the way they put it in the police report, you’d think I did. But I didn’t. What happened was me and my best friend, Oso, were out in the fields trying to smoke some fake weed he’d got me as a birthday present. It was supposed to be real weed, but it was fake. Once we figured that out, we were like, In our bored pursuit of cheap fun let us now play with incendiaries. We had two bottle rockets. Mine was a dud, fizzling out like the saddest candle. So Oso—this is the kind of friend he is—he offered me his.
“Make a wish, bro.”
I can’t even remember what I wished for, but here’s what I do remember: the hiss of the rocket, the silence afterwards, and then a little while after that, Oso tapping me on the shoulder.
“Hey. You see that?”
“See what?”
“The smoke, bro. Where the rocket landed.”
And as we stood there watching, the whole place just went up. I’m serious. One second there was this thin plume of smoke, and the next it was like the whole field was on fire. The wind came on all howling from the east and blew the flames toward the school, scorching, yes, somewhat the steps of the gymnasium—which are concrete by the way, so totally nonflammable—and, long story short, eventually attracting the attention of some police officers and a couple fire trucks and for some reason an ambulance.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: all this was recorded by three separate security cameras.
My dad was not happy. Neither was my sister, Evie. They were even less happy when they got the letter about me being expelled. I’ll skip that moment and just say that after they were done murdering me for a while, they informed me that, aside from my mandatory community service, I could not leave my room until I had selected one of two options:
1. Take and pass the GED test
2. Homelessness
I had some time to think about it and in the end decided to lobby for a third alternative:
3. Go live with Mom in Sactown and finish school there
So I applied to this year-round charter school in Sacramento, YouThrive®Academy (YAY!)…and guess what? I got in. I’m not a dummy or anything. After I was accepted, I called my mom. We hadn’t talked in months, her preference being a more hands-off parenting approach. I presented my plan like it was some prize, like I’d won a scholarship or something.
“Wonderful!” she said. “I can come visit you at the school.”
“I wouldn’t actually live at the school.”
“Where would you live?”
“With you.”
“Me? Oh, you wouldn’t want to do that, Aaron. This house is built on a fault line. And don’t even get me started on the heat. It’s been unbearable!”
“I don’t mind if it’s hot.”
“You say that now, but it’s just awful. When that sun hits the south end of the house, you may as well just die.”
“I could bring a fan.”
“Oh, I really don’t know, Aaron….How’s Evie, by the way? Did you know she got me a subscription to her newspaper? It comes in the mail. Tell her I read her articles every day. It sounds like she’s having fun as a reporter.”
“Yeah, she’s fine. She’s excited for me to go to Sacramento. She and Dad are really excited….”
I let it hang there like that, waiting for her to make an offer, but she never did. She never flat-out said no, either. She just kept dancing around the answer, talking about a bunch of other meaningless stuff until finally I was like, “OK, thanks. I’ll talk to you soon, then. Loveyoubye.”
But later, when I saw my dad in the hall, I was like, “Mom said yes.”
And I remember the next Tuesday just before I got on the bus, Evie pulled me aside. She put her face right in front of mine and spoke to me that way she does, all slow and enunciated like I was just learning English.
“Aaron…for the love of God…try to stay out of trouble, OK?”
“You bet.”
But for the love of God what my sister didn’t know was I was already in trouble for lying to her about going to Mom’s. I wasn’t going to Mom’s. I was going somewhere else. Somewhere far away. I was initiating my plan of thievery and deception. And this—me getting on the bus—this was phase one: Escape from Craphole.
I figured I could make a clean break without anyone knowing anything. Mom never communicated with anyone—it would be forever before anyone had any contact. In the meantime I’d just tell Dad and Evie what they wanted to hear: that I was doing fine in school and hanging with Mom. But what I would really be doing—what I was doing—was running away to San Francisco with my tuition payment for YouThrive®Academy.
Getting the money was phase two, and it was surprisingly easy. I actually accomplished it on the bus ride to San Francisco. I logged in to my student profile on YouThrive®’s Web site and filed for a cancellation/tuition return. Where it asked for a reason, I wavered between STUDENT HAS BEEN ACCEPTED AT ANOTHER SCHOOL and STUDENT IS DECEASED, and finally selected OTHER. In the part that asked where to send the reimbursement (minus 15% processing fee), I put the routing number to my checking account.
And it worked! The next time I looked, the money was there. This was during the Currency Transition—everyone switching from the dollar to amero—and with all those extra zeros in my account, it felt like I was pretty loaded.
But I wasn’t gonna spend it—I’d justified the theft by telling myself that I wouldn’t spend it, or not much of it anyway—and whatever I did spend I’d make back by panhandling, i.e., phase three of my plan: profit. I’d seen this movie once about some bratty street kids panhandling in San Francisco, and it looked like a cool way to pass the time, but as I stepped out of the BART station on Market Street, I found myself facing a grim reality.
I’d arrived in California just after the first wave of the Avis Mortem, and it was pretty awful. There were dead pigeons all over the sidewalk, plus seagulls and some other birds I couldn’t identify. Rotting corpses everywhere, everyone in surgical masks, eyes watering from the funk
y death clouds wafting up from the gutters. It was BAD. And where were all the cool kids? They’d mostly split. Now that currency was digital, the only thing you could panhandle for was food. That hadn’t occurred to me earlier.
So now what? I couldn’t live on the streets. I needed a place to stay. Maybe I’d just dip a little into the money.
But here’s the thing: turns out you can’t rent a closet shelf in San Francisco for under a600,000. I couldn’t even cover the first and last month’s rent. I looked around for the day and was just about ready to give up—and that’s when I learned about hivehouses. Most of the street kids had ended up there—to keep them off the streets. There were a couple openings in a hivehouse on Lombard Street, in the basement of a recommissioned McDonald’s, and they said I could have a spot, so I moved in that evening.
I’ll say this: pretty much everything you hear about hivehouses is true. There were a hundred of us down there, double-stacked like shipping crates, and aside from my sister’s occasional MathOlympics competitions, I’d never witnessed such a dense concentration of assholes. Even with all the disinfectant, the entire place still smelled like french fries, and I was hungry all the time. I mean ravenous. We weren’t allowed to bring in outside food, but I kept a stash of Zazz® bars (YAY!) in my cube, and that’s how I got my first warning.
The thing about hivehouses is this: as long as they get their money, they don’t care who you are or what you do. The warnings are a joke. They really are. You’d pretty much have to murder a resident to get evicted, and even then…they might just give you a warning.
As a result of this lax policy, residents were supposed to work out disputes on their own. What this meant IRL was everyone just ignoring everyone else, silent and alone in our individual cubes. Or sometimes not so silent. Take, for example, when Dulah moved into the cube under mine. He moved in about a week after I’d moved in, right around the time I got snitched on for having Zazz® in my cube, and although the warning didn’t mean anything, and although I knew Dulah wasn’t the snitch, I was still kind of steamed.
The reason I knew it wasn’t Dulah was because Dulah was a drug dealer, so why would he snitch on me for food? The reason I was steamed was because of the reggae. When Dulah moved in, I thought it would be cool to live above a drug dealer, but I hadn’t counted on the reggae. Supposedly the units were soundproof, but actually they weren’t, and Dulah had a pair of Blastbeats™ going on in his, and let me tell you, he played that shit CONSTANTLY.
