Laugh Out Loud

by James Patterson

  “They say the California State Lottery’s mission is, and I quote, because I memorized it, Mrs. Delvecchio, they say the mission is to ‘maximize supplemental funding for public education,’ and yet they won’t let anyone under the age of eighteen, who’re almost all students, play it! How are we supposed to pay for college if we don’t win the lottery? Why should we be forced to take out loans that will take years to pay off when all we really need to do is win at SuperLotto Plus or MEGA Millions?”

  “Or,” Chris continued, “how about that Set For Life scratch-off game? You give me twenty thousand dollars a month for twenty-five years, I could get a PhD degree! Maybe. Sometimes those things take twenty-six years.”

  It was a good speech. Mrs. Delvecchio gave Chris a B-minus because, even though it was filled with facts and well argued, she didn’t want to “condone underage gambling.”

  “It’s not gambling!” Chris protested. “It’s all about kids and schools!”

  “Would you like me to change that B-minus to a C, Mr. Grabbetts?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Hearing Chris’s speech gave me a great idea.

  “I know how we’re going to fund Laugh Out Loud Books,” I told everybody after school.

  “How?” asked all my buddies.

  I waved my Hamilton in the air. (A Hamilton is like ten percent of a Benjamin.)

  “I’m going to win the lottery!”

  “Huh?”

  “The Powerball jackpot is now one hundred and forty-eight million dollars,” I said. “All I have to do is match the numbers on five white balls and the red Powerball. I do that—BOOM! We’re in business.”

  “You realize,” said Pierce, our resident brainiac, “that the odds of you winning are one in two hundred and ninety-two million, two hundred and one thousand, three hundred and thirty-eight?”

  “Okay. But what are the odds of someone else winning it?”

  Pierce blinked. “Um, one in two hundred and ninety-two million, two hundred and one thousand, three hundred and thirty-eight.”

  “See? They have terrible odds, so I have a shot.”

  “Small problem,” said Maxine. “How are you going to buy the ticket? You’re not eighteen.”

  “Easy,” I said with a grin. “Tailspin Tommy.”

  Chapter 37

  Tommy Time

  Thomas Kipplemeyer is the big brother of Bob and Abby Kipplemeyer, the twins who live down the street from me.

  Thomas is nineteen, which means he can buy a Powerball ticket in the state of California. The twins call Thomas Tailspin Tommy because, well, let’s just say he’s always falling helplessly in love with every pretty girl he meets. Even the ones he meets in perfume ads. He spends most of his time flirting with girls or scrunching his hair (so he can flirt with girls). I figured he could buy my Powerball ticket for me.

  Especially if I take him to Pizza 1, the convenience store over on First Street.

  The cashier who sells the Powerball tickets is a very pretty girl named Angelika.

  The instant Tommy saw Angelika behind the pizza counter, he agreed to help me out. I also promised to pay him one percent of my winnings as a service fee.

  The Powerball tickets cost two dollars each. With my ten dollars, I had five chances to win!

  “Here you go, Jimmy,” said Tailspin Tommy as he strolled out of Pizza 1 and handed me my ticket to becoming a multimillionaire. “I gave her your numbers. And guess what?”

  “What?”

  He winked at me. “She gave me her number, too! I think it’s my new body spray. The ladies can’t resist it.”

  Score! I had my winning lottery ticket! Laugh Out Loud Books’ future was secure.

  Okay, that was dumb, right?

  I mean, who actually wins Powerball?

  But then I started thinking about Holes by Louis Sachar. It’s one of my favorite books. I love how Stanley Yelnats and his new friend Zero (spoiler alert) find the Kissing Bandit’s treasure at the end of the book. Stanley’s family has been cursed with bad luck ever since his great-great-grandfather stole a pig from Madame Zeroni. Stanley breaks the curse and his luck changes.

  I had a feeling my luck was about to change, too!

  The next Powerball drawing would be televised live on Saturday night at 10:59 p.m. At 11 p.m., I planned on being a newly minted multimillionaire who could self-finance my book business.

  When I showed the gang my tickets, they all chanted, “Jimmy’s gonna win! Jimmy’s gonna win! Jimmy’s gonna win!”

  “If I win,” I told them, “you guys win, too! I’ll use all the money to build the Laugh Out Loud Book Company’s first factory and warehouse.”

  “Will it have a Ferris wheel?” asked Rafe.

  “You bet. The jackpot this week just went up to one hundred and seventy-five million dollars. We can have two Ferris wheels!”

  My bold prediction earned me more cheers and chants.

  Hey, you never know, as they used to say in Lotto commercials.

  I mean, technically, I had a chance at winning.

  Dreams do come true, especially in books. Especially the ones filled with fairy tales.

  Jiminy Cricket even sings about it happening to Pinocchio. Okay, that’s a movie, not a book, but you know, “When You Wish Upon a Star” and all that.

  I just hoped it wouldn’t be cloudy Saturday night.

  I needed to find a star to wish on around 10:58 p.m.

  Chapter 38

  My Lucky Night?

  Okay, I knew it was a long shot, but I was starting to get excited about winning Powerball!

  So were my friends.

  “You’re living my dream, man,” said Chris Grabbetts.

  “Hey,” I said to him. “You’re the one who gave me the idea. With your speech.”

  “Guess you’ll have to send Tommy Kipplemeyer in to collect your prize. You probably have to be eighteen or older to win, too.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  And then I started thinking about all the detective books I’ve read where greed turns people into “dirty double-crossers.”

  Would Tailspin Tommy do that to me?

  My lottery tickets were getting kind of grubby and crinkly because I kept taking them out of my pocket to stare at them. I was so nervous, I was afraid I might rub all the numbers off.

  Meanwhile, since it was a Saturday, Mom and Dad were actually home. But instead of doing paperwork like they did most weekends, Mom was jamming on her electric guitar again and Dad was drawing more ninja warriors on his sketchpad.

  Neither of them knew, but I was peeking at them through a crack in the garage door.

  What are they up to? I wondered. Have they finally found time to have their midlife crises?

  For the longest time, my parents didn’t have hobbies or interests. They had jobs.

  I was about to barge in and ask them what the heck was going on. But I was too nervous.

  It was Powerball day!

  Hailey had invited everybody to her house to watch the big drawing. Her parents have a TV the size of a minivan. Seriously. It takes up an entire wall. They also have a popcorn cart. Have I mentioned that they’re bajillionaires?

  (Yes, I had thought about asking Hailey’s mom and dad for a loan to start my book company, but Hailey advised against it. “They’d want total control,” she said. “Plus, they’d force you to write books about algorithms and nanocircuits.”)

  My parents didn’t mind that I was heading down the block at ten thirty at night to watch TV with my friends. It wasn’t a school night and they were still in the garage doing secret weird stuff with guitars and sketchpads.

  “This is it,” said Kenny, his mouth full of popcorn. “Your last day as a nonmillionaire.”

  “You’ll be as rich as Steve Grates,” joked Maxine.

  “Hardly,” I said. “Besides—I don’t really want to be rich. I just want to open up my book company!”

  “Quiet, you guys,” said Chris. “Here it comes!”


  At exactly 10:59, a guy in a tuxedo started reading numbered Ping-Pong balls as they popped out of a clear hopper and into what looked like a gerbil tube.

  Finally, one red ball shot out of a second hopper and rolled into the Powerball gerbil tube.

  The whole thing was over in thirty seconds.

  Aaaaand…

  Drumroll, please!

  I didn’t win.

  In fact, not a single one of the numbers on my tickets ended up in the gerbil tubes.

  What are the odds of that?

  (I didn’t say it out loud or Pierce would’ve told me.)

  Well, that’s what happened. My numbers were totally unlucky.

  So I didn’t start my book company by winning Powerball.

  Chapter 39

  Web Browsing

  Whatever was going on in the garage was having a strange effect on both of my parents.

  They were starting to pay attention to me (when they weren’t rehearsing guitar riffs or sketching ninja avengers).

  I was in my bedroom, searching the Web on my computer, when my dad knocked on my open door and asked me, “What are you doing, Jimmy?”

  “Not giving up,” I answered, because I was still searching for a way to financially kick-start my dream.

  “You do that a lot, don’t you?” said Dad.

  “I have a dream,” I told him. “You should never give up on your dreams.”

  Dad looked like I’d just given him something to think about. Or gas. Then he strolled away.

  I realized I needed my own rags-to-riches story. Something like Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which takes place in 2045 and is all about an incredible, hyperrealistic, 3-D online gaming world called the OASIS and a race to win billions. I needed to become teenager Wade Watts and hunt down the Easter egg hidden inside the OASIS by its whackaloon creator so I could become the richest kid on the planet.

  Somehow, some way, I was going to launch my book company.

  I started a new Google search: “NEED MONEY FOR START-UP.”

  The second hit was an interesting ad:

  “Money for Start Up!

  $5,000–$500,000. 2-Hour Approval.”

  Whoa!

  The Internet wanted to give me half a million dollars and it would only take two hours? I was all in!

  I clicked on the link.

  A testimonial video opened on my screen. It was a young woman, maybe twenty-five.

  “Hi! I would, like, so totally recommend this amazing Internet company to anyone in the start-up phase of building their business. I was approved in two hours and received all the funding I needed in just two weeks.”

  Okay, I thought. I could wait two weeks.

  “Now,” the video clip lady continued, “my business is up and running and booming. I would totally recommend Startup Loan Sharks to anyone like me who never reads the fine print and doesn’t realize that the Sharks will be charging me fifty percent interest compounded every fourteen hours for the next thirty years, whatever the heck that means.”

  I didn’t understand what it meant either, so I started filling in the boxes.

  Name. Address. Date of birth.

  When I entered my birthday information, my computer made a funny BLOOP-BLOOP-BLOOP squiggly noise, like I’d just lost a video game.

  My screen went blank.

  Then type scrolled across my screen:

  THIS SITE ISN’T FOR KIDS, KID.

  CONTACT US AGAIN WHEN YOU TURN 21.

  NOW GO EAT YOUR VEGETABLES AND LEAVE US ALONE.

  YOU REALLY THOUGHT SOMEONE WOULD LOAN SERIOUS MONEY TO A GOOFY KID LIKE YOU?

  HA! HA!

  The scrolling type disappeared and emoticons danced across my computer.

  You guessed it.

  Some more grown-ups were laughing out loud at me.

  Chapter 40

  Money Man to the Rescue!

  There were 38,400,000 other results for my Google search of “need money for start-up.”

  I checked out a few more. They all laughed out loud at me, too.

  I started scribbling “Ha, Ha” on a notepad.

  Then I wrote Jimmy Ha-Ha, which I thought might make a good title for a book someday—if I ever found someone to give me money for my start-up. I tore the Jimmy Ha-Ha page off the pad and stuffed it into my bulging idea folder.

  I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m feeling kind of weak and powerless, I reach for my pile of comic books. I imagine myself as one of the heroes. Maybe I’m the Flash and can run really fast. Maybe I’m Superman and I can fly. Maybe I’m the Incredible Hulk and all I have to do is get mad to become super strong.

  But what if…

  Yes, I was having another brainstorm.

  What if I could become Money Man?

  I would be a new kind of superhero. All the bullies at school would think I was a mild-mannered chess-playing nerd. But then I’d slip into my locker and change into my green superhero outfit and become Money Man. My cape would be a hundred-dollar bill the size of a beach towel. The eyeholes in my mask would be silver dollars with the centers cut out. And instead of sticky spiderwebs, streams of cash would come shooting out of my wrists! I’d be a superpowered ATM, dispensing money wherever it was needed. First I’d start up my business with a mountain of moola and then I’d fly around like an airborne Robin Hood raining cash on poor people around the globe. And I wouldn’t have to rob from the rich because, like I said, Money Man can make money with a flick of his wrist.

  Too bad I didn’t have a secret identity as a moneymaking superhero. I stayed up super late brainstorming, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t imagine my way into a book company.

  Once again, around midnight, I was serenaded by a wailing guitar solo. Only this time, it sounded closer.

  The living room.

  Quixote was definitely interested. Probably because Mom was practicing her high notes. I’m sure they hurt the dog’s ears even worse than they hurt mine.

  We both hurried out of the bedroom to see what was going on.

  “I’m not sleepwalking,” I announced when I entered the room where Mom was strumming her guitar and Dad was drawing more ninjas. “I’m not sleep–dog-walking, either. What the heck is going on around here?”

  Mom smiled. Dad, too.

  “We’re giving you the garage, Jimmy,” said Mom.

  “It’s yours,” added Dad. “For your dream. Your book company.”

  Quixote cocked his head and gave a questioning whine.

  Me too, Quixote.

  “You inspire us, Jimmy,” explained Dad. “Your perseverance in the face of overwhelming disappointment, disaster, failure—”

  “Not to mention ridicule,” said Mom.

  “Right,” said Dad. “That too. Your grit, determination, and stick-to-itiveness—”

  “Is that a word, Jimmy?” asked Mom. “Stick-to-itiveness.”

  “It’s in the dictionary,” I said.

  “See?” said Dad. “You’re a natural-born wordsmith. So never, never, never give up, son. Follow your dream. The way you have inspired others to follow theirs.”

  “Others?” I said. “Like who?”

  “Us,” said Mom.

  “The garage is yours, Jimmy,” said Dad. “We’re parking the cars on the street. Do whatever you need to make your dream come true!”

  “Um, okay.”

  “But,” Mom added, “I’ll need the garage for a couple of hours every Wednesday.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s when my new band is going to rehearse.”

  Chapter 41

  Garage Bands

  Well, that was a nice surprise.

  Not just that Mom and Dad were letting me have the garage for Laugh Out Loud Books (except for Wednesdays between 6 and 8 p.m.). I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that Mom and Dad still had dreams of their own.

  Seems Dad had always wanted to illustrate graphic novels and manga comics. So he went to the art store and bought a drawing board,
a gooseneck lamp, some fancy paper, and a ton of markers.

  Mom, it turns out, had wanted to play lead guitar in a rock band since she was twelve. Maybe someday, her dream will come true. Maybe on Wednesdays. Although I heard Mom and her friends rehearsing once. Their band doesn’t have a name yet but I have a suggestion: the Pretty Awful But Not Completely Terribly Bad Band.

  “This is so cool,” said Chris Grabbetts when he came over to check out the Laugh Out Loud Book Company setup in my garage. “We’re going to be like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. They started Apple Computer in a garage, way back in 1975. You can call me Woz.”

  “How about I call you Grabs instead?”

  “Perfect!”

  Our book-making factory/warehouse wasn’t much, but it was a start. We had a computer, a printer, and a carton of copy paper that Dad picked up at the office supplies store and wrapped with a big red ribbon and bow.

  “Fill these pages with your dreams, son!” he said when he gave me the gift, which, by the way, weighed a ton.

  Hailey, with the help of the whole gang, wheeled those books we’d been storing in her garage over to my garage.

  “Um, the mouse flipped through the pages and pooped on the last chapters of both books, too.”

  “I guess you can’t please everyone,” I muttered.

  “No,” said Hailey. “I think, with mice, pooping all over your work is considered a compliment. It’s like they’re marking their territory. Claiming and acclaiming your work.”

  “Huh,” I said with a shrug. “Works for me.”

  With everything in place and my bulging idea folder practically bursting at the seams, I started imagining that my life would soon turn into a rags-to-riches story, like something out of a Charles Dickens novel!