When we enter the cafeteria, we can see Coach Ball and his two musclehead friends in flashy jackets with Meathead logos on them. They’re addressing Mrs. Lexi Critchett and the rest of the school board, who are seated at two tables. And, yes, they all have corn dogs. Tater Tots, too. Ms. Bumgarten is standing behind one of the tables, consulting her watch and making notes on a clipboard.
“Ms. Denning?” snarls Coach Ball as our parade fans out to fill the cafeteria. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Hit me, Gus!” I say, rolling to the center of the room.
“You got it, Jamie!”
The janitor tosses me that cordless mic again. I’m on.
“A very good question, Principal Ball,” I say.
Gaynor thumps on the projector—our improvised spotlight. I roll into the circle of bright-white illumination. I can tell the school board members are confused, so I jump right in.
“However,” I say, “if you’re really searching for the meaning of this—not to mention the truth of this—you should be in the library, not the cafeteria. That place has dictionaries full of meanings and books full of truths. That’s why all of us were in the library today, doing research. Isn’t that right, Ms. Bumgarten?”
“Yes. All five hundred and thirty-two of you.”
Coach Ball whirls around to stare at his vice principal. He seems stunned by that statistic.
“I did a quick head count,” says Ms. Bumgarten, brandishing a shiny silver hand clicker. She glances at the digital readout. “Sorry. Five hundred and thirty-three. I forgot to count myself. I found a very interesting recipe for banana cream pie in the cookbook section.”
“You see, ladies and gentlemen,” I tell the board, “this school needs a library. It’s the one place we can explore whatever we want to explore, learn whatever we want to learn—even if some people don’t want us learning it.”
“It’s a great place for making up jokes, too,” adds Vincent O’Neil.
“That’s right,” I say. “How can you make up new material if you don’t discover new information? Like this article right here.”
I show everybody that business magazine I found.
“Jamie?” hollers Pierce, running into the cafeteria. “I found a ton more.”
“Can you cite your sources?” I ask.
“Yep!”
“Good work, Mr. Pierce,” says Ms. Denning.
Pierce hands me a stack of printouts, a newspaper ad, and a couple of magazines.
I scan them all as fast as I can.
“Mr. Grimm?” says Mrs. Critchett. “You know I’m a big fan of your show—”
“Me too,” says another board member, shooting me a thumbs-up. “You funny!”
“But,” says Mrs. Critchett, “we have some urgent business to attend to this afternoon. The wrestling season is about to start and—”
“I know!” I tell her. “But this is urgent, too! Maybe more important than anything else on your agenda.”
There’s no time for me to write up a new bit from all the library material Pierce and I found.
I’m going to have to improvise.
Again!
Chapter 53
DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE COACH WHO MIGHT BE A CROOK?
Any of you folks read Biz Wiz Weekly?” I ask my crowd.
“That’s a magazine for children,” says a member of the school board.
“I know. Must be why it’s in our library. Lots of children in this school, every day. Lots in the library, too. Especially now that Ms. Denning has turned it into a real information commons, with collaboration stations, a makerspace, and lots of good books and informative magazines.”
I hold up the Biz Wiz Weekly magazine with the Meathead logo on the cover. “Now, even though this is a business magazine, there’s some pretty funny stuff in here. In fact, some of it’s hysterical. Especially this article about Meathead protein shakes.”
Behind me, I hear Stevie urp again. It’s an instant gag reflex whenever anybody even mentions the shakes he’s been chugging.
“I thought youse burned all them magazines,” one of Coach Ball’s muscleheads says to the other.
“I thought youse was going to do that!” says the other. He turns to Coach Ball. “Al? What’s that magazine doing in your library?”
“I don’t know,” says Coach Ball. “I never go into the library.…”
“But we all do,” I say. I open the magazine to the article.
“That article is full of lies!” shouts one of the muscleheads.
“You mean this bit here,” I say, “where it talks about how you guys bombed in the college and high school markets, so you decided to go after—and I quote—‘dumb middle school kids who will do whatever their even dumber coaches and school-yard bullies tell them to do’?”
Coach Ball stands up, glares at the muscleheads. “You two saying I’m dumber than these numskull kids?”
“So, Jamie?” says Stevie, stepping up to join me in the spotlight.
“Yeah, Stevie?”
Suddenly we’re a comedy team like Abbott and Costello, Frick and Frack, Cheech and Chong, Key and Peele.
“How does Meathead get a dumb coach to tell us dumb kids to drink the dumb stuff?” asks Stevie.
“They pay him,” I say.
“Money?”
I smile widely at the crowd. “Nope. They give him a Maserati.”
“Is that a type of pasta?” says Stevie, playing dumb. (Or maybe he isn’t playing. Hard to tell with my cousin.)
“No. A Maserati is an Italian sports car, Stevie. In this case, a red convertible.”
“Wait a second,” says Stevie, looking surprised. “I saw one of those out in the parking lot. Somebody parked it in Coach Ball’s space.”
“Yep. That would be Coach Ball.”
Stevie hams up his part by putting his hands on his cheeks. “No way! It looked too expensive for a coach’s car.”
“You’re right,” I say, digging out the newspaper clipping Pierce handed me. “Looks like Coach Ball’s Maserati GranTurismo convertible out there in the parking lot has a list price of between one hundred forty-five thousand and one hundred eighty thousand dollars.”
Stevie whistles.
“I can explain!” says Coach Ball. “That car was a gift. From, uh, my mother.”
“Really?” I say. “Is she the one who asked you to put the Meathead decals on the doors?”
Stevie takes over. “And is your mother the one who told you to make me and Lars beat up any kids who weren’t buying Meathead shakes on a regular basis? Because that doesn’t sound too motherly to me.”
“Hey, Stevie?” I say.
“Yeah, Jamie?”
“Know what Coach Ball’s motto is?”
“If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again!”
Stevie and I take a bow while our classmates applaud and the school board stares at us in shock.
That’s a wrap!
Chapter 54
HYSTERIA IN THE CAFETERIA
So this is when Coach Ball goes a little nutsy.
His eyes turn into bulging, bloodshot Ping-Pong balls.
I think he’s been chugging those Meathead protein shakes right along with Stevie and Lars. I also think there might be some kind of chemical in them that short-circuits your brain and makes you kind of cray-cray. The same kind of stuff that turns mild-mannered physicist Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk, or Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde.
Whatever it is, Coach Ball goes from annoyed middle school principal to enraged maniac monster in under five seconds.
“Kosgrov, you big, fat dummy!” he screams. “You let the team down! You broke your sacred athlete’s oath by ratting me out and telling these wimpy eggheads about my Maserati! Your big, fat mouth needs to be shut before you destroy me and my mighty wrestling-team dreams!”
He leaps across the room and pounces on Stevie.
But Stevie, who’s been off the shakes for about a week, isn’t as shaky as
he used to be. In fact, he’s pretty nimble.
He jukes sideways, catches one of Coach Ball’s arms, and flips him onto his back.
Coach Ball tumbles into a roll, springs back to his feet, spins around, and charges at Stevie, locking him in a bear hug. The two of them dance around the floor, legs tangling, each one trying to trip up the other.
Uncle Frankie charges up to pull Coach Ball off Stevie, but the wrestling pair bumps into him and knocks him down to the floor. Ms. Denning runs to make sure he’s all right and to stop him from trying again. His bad heart means that he can’t exert himself too much.
The school board members are gasping in horror.
I’ve never felt so helpless or useless in my life. I’m stuck in my wheelchair. There is absolutely nothing I can do to help Stevie outwrestle his wrestling coach.
I’m pretty sure fighting with a student immediately after basically admitting that you took bribes from shady protein shake dealers is considered conduct unbecoming to a middle school principal, maybe even grounds for dismissal. But the adults in the room can’t do anything to help Stevie, either. None of them look like they work out on a regular basis. All they can do is wring their hands and say, “My goodness!”
The two muscleheads from Meathead, who are probably the only ones who can yank Coach Ball off Stevie, run out of the cafeteria the instant their top salesman goes ballistic.
That means there’s not a single person in the cafeteria who can do anything to help Stevie or stop Coach Ball.
But wait a second.
What if we all worked together?
“E pluribus unum!” I shout, because I read it on a dollar bill. “Out of many, one!”
“Huh?” shouts everybody else in the cafeteria.
“If we all work together, we can pin Coach Ball to the mat!”
“There is no mat!” cries Gilda.
“So we’ll pin him to the gross cafeteria floor!”
Gilda gives a thumbs-up. “Works for me!”
“Cowabunga!” shouts Gaynor, who’s always the first to dive into anything.
“Chaaarge!” cries Pierce. “Leap into the fray! ‘Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war’!”
In a flash, 530 kids storm to the center of the room, hop on Coach Ball’s back, trip him up, and wrestle him to the ground.
Mrs. Critchett, the school board president, calls the cops.
While we wait for them to arrive, Stevie yanks up on Coach Ball’s pants to give him an atomic wedgie.
“It’s the last wedgie of my bullying career, Jamie,” he says, raising his right hand. “I promise! No more swirly whirlies, either!”
So today marks the end of two lifelong bullies, in two very different ways!
Chapter 55
LIBRARY HOURS
The following week, the library is still humming.
It’s like the whole school has rediscovered a buried treasure. Or maybe Ms. Denning just took that treasure and polished it up a little so it could shine. There are new book displays. Cool collaboration stations—computer desks where teams can work together on class projects. A makerspace room filled with electronic bits and LEGOs. Two chess games are taking place. Bookworms are curled up on beanbag chairs, lost in novels. Vincent O’Neil is in the stacks, checking out more joke books.
Best of all, there is no more talk of turning the library into a sweat room for the wrestling team.
In fact, Long Beach Middle School won’t have a wrestling team this year. And Lars Johannsen is moving back to Minnesota with his family. His parents think the water on Long Island doesn’t agree with Lars’s delicate digestive tract. Thanks to the Meathead shakes, he’s been spending way too much time on the toilet since they moved here.
So, we did it, folks. The library will remain the school’s number one information resource center, where everybody is free to study anything and everything they want.
And there are all sorts of new classes being taught—during free periods and after school. Stuff like coding, Photoshop 101, iMovie editing, and how to bake a banana cream pie.
That one was Principal Bumgarten’s idea.
That’s right. The vice principal took over for Coach Ball on Friday night—right after the police arrested him for assaulting a student and taking kickbacks from a shady protein shake company. (His next move was going to be to change our school mascot from the minnow to an amino acid.)
The police towed away Coach Ball’s Maserati, too. Ms. Bumgarten’s vehicle is now parked in the principal’s space. She drives a very sensible Prius. Her stomach is feeling much better, too. Surprise, surprise—it really helps your stress level not to have someone yelling at you all day long.
The library is so much fun now, it’s totally crammed.
Ms. Denning says she might need to hire a student assistant. Since Gilda, Gaynor, Pierce, and I are all going back to shooting Jamie Funnie next week, Vincent O’Neil desperately wants Ms. Denning to pick him. He’s trying to joke his way to the head of the line.
Note to self: Bring Ms. Denning some earplugs.
One week after Coach Ball was hauled out of the cafeteria in handcuffs, Uncle Frankie pops in after his lunch rush with a set of yo-yo manuals. Yep, he’s going to teach an after-school class, too: You and Your Yo.
When he looks around the packed library, he’s thrilled. “You did it, kiddo. You saved the library and Flora’s—I mean Ms. Denning’s—job.”
“We all did,” I say.
Frankie grins. “Teamwork. It’s what makes the world go ’round.”
“Actually,” says Pierce, popping his head up over an astronomy book, “what makes Earth go ’round is conservation of angular momentum.”
“Whaa?” says Uncle Frankie.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I don’t understand him very often, either.”
“Guess we both need to check out a few more books, huh?”
“Totally.”
After wrapping up his yo-yo class, Uncle Frankie checks his wristwatch. “You ready to roll?”
“Always.”
Uncle Frankie grins. “How about Stevie and Gilda?”
“They’ll meet us out front.”
“Great.” Uncle Frankie sets his yo-yo manuals down on a counter. “We better hit the road. We don’t want to keep your new students waiting.”
Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention…
I have one more class to teach.
And it’s a two-hour drive north.
Chapter 56
THERE’S ALWAYS HOPE
The Hope Trust Children’s Rehabilitation Center is where I lived after the car wreck that made me who I am today: an orphan in a wheelchair.
Yep. I was feeling pretty hopeless when I first arrived on its leafy campus in upstate New York. In fact, a lot of us patients called it the Hopeless Hotel. But at Hope Trust, the doctors and nurses and orderlies refused to give up on any of us, even when we’d all sort of given up on ourselves.
My doc, Dr. David Sherman, told me that “laughter is the best medicine,” so he’d always bring me a couple of joke books or comedy videos from the hospital library. Every day I’d read everything I could about comedians and jokes and comedy sketches. Even when I was in a full body cast, I kept studying comedy.
I think all that laughing is what kept me alive.
Which is why Gilda, Stevie, Uncle Frankie, and I have come back. If anybody could benefit from the School of Laughs, it’s these guys. Kids who are exactly where I was a few years ago. Scared. In pain. Feeling hopeless.
We set up in the hospital cafeteria.
The new Long Beach Middle School principal, Ms. Bumgarten, and her after-school class in the library made us the props we need for the comedy bit we’re about to do. They baked us two dozen banana cream pies.
The place is packed. It’s wall-to-wall wheelchairs and walkers and medical people dressed in pastel-colored scrubs. I scan the tables and all I see are tired medical workers, scared parents, and sad kids.
I see myself when I was here.
“You ready, cuz?” I ask Stevie.
He’s sweating like crazy. The way I sometimes did (and still do) before a big show.
“I guess,” says Stevie, sounding semiterrified (instead of his usual totally terrifying).
“Just have fun with it,” coaches Gilda, our ace director.
“And make sure you make a mess!” adds Uncle Frankie with a wink.
Stevie finally smiles. “That I can do!”
Chapter 57
PI R FUNNY
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” I announce. “I am Professor Jamie Grimm from the School of Laughs.”
“And,” says Stevie, “I am Stevie Kosgrov, Jamie’s cousin and number one star student.”
“Today’s lesson?” I say. “The history of slapstick.”
“You want me to slap you with a stick?” says Stevie. “No problem, Jamie. Bend over!”
“No can do, Stevie,” I say. “If I bend over, I’ll fall out of my chair. In fact, for this lesson, you should be seated, too.”
“Why?”
“It’ll make things easier. Trust me.”
Stevie shrugs. And sits down in a chair next to me.
I turn to the crowd. “Now, I could give you guys a boring lecture about how the silent-movie greats like Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton all became famous comedians because they showed their jokes instead of telling them.”
“Borrrring!” bellows Stevie.
“You’re right. So instead of telling you about slapstick, I will show you.”
I pick up a pie box. Open it. Pull out a banana cream pie.
And slam it into Stevie’s face.
The crowd goes crazy with laughter. Yep. The classic bit still works.
“My, that was very funny,” says Stevie, his face covered with whipped cream and gloppy banana goop. “I wonder if it would be funny if I did it, too!”