About the Book
About the Authors
Also by James Patterson
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Copyright
Rafe Khatchadorian is getting the Hollywood treatment in a film version of Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life starring Griffin Gluck, Lauren Graham, Rob Riggle and Thomas Barbusca.
Rafe Khatchadorian has enough problems at home without throwing his first year of middle school into the mix. Luckily, he’s got an ace plan for the best year ever, if only he can pull it off. With his best friend Leonardo the Silent awarding him points, Rafe tries to break every rule in his school’s oppressive Code of Conduct. Chewing gum in class – 5,000 points! Running in the hallway – 10,000 points! Pulling the fire alarm – 50,000 points! But when Rafe’s game starts to catch up with him, he’ll have to decide if winning is all that matters, or if he’s finally ready to face the rules, bullies, and truths he’s been avoiding.
JAMES PATTERSON is the internationally bestselling author of the highly praised Middle School books, Homeroom Diaries, Kenny Wright: Superhero, Jacky Ha-Ha, and the I Funny, Treasure Hunters, House of Robots, Confessions, Maximum Ride, Witch & Wizard and Daniel X series. James Patterson has been the most borrowed author in UK libraries for the past ten years in a row and his books have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide, making him one of the biggest-selling authors of all time. He lives in Florida.
CHRIS TEBBETTS is the author of several books for young readers including The Viking, a fantasy adventure series.
LAURA PARK, a cartoonist and an illustrator, drew the pictures for this book. She lives in Chicago with her pet pigeon.
THE WORST YEARS OF MY LIFE
(with Chris Tebbetts)
This is the insane story of my first year at middle school, when I, Rafe Khatchadorian, took on a real-life bear (sort of), sold my soul to the school bully, and fell for the most popular girl in school. Come join me, if you dare …
GET ME OUT OF HERE!
(with Chris Tebbetts)
We’ve moved to the big city, where I’m going to a super-fancy art school. The first project is to create something based on our exciting lives. But I have a BIG problem: my life is TOTALLY BORING. It’s time for Operation Get a Life.
MY BROTHER IS A BIG, FAT LIAR
(with Lisa Papademetriou)
So you’ve heard all about my big brother, Rafe, and now it’s time to set the record straight. I’m NOTHING like my brother. (Almost) EVERYTHING he says is a Big Fat Lie. And my book is 100 times better than Rafe’s. I’m Georgia, and it’s time for some payback … Khatchadorian style.
HOW I SURVIVED BULLIES, BROCCOLI, AND SNAKE HILL
(with Chris Tebbetts)
I’m excited for a fun summer at camp—until I find out it’s a summer school camp. There’s no fun and games here, I have a bunk mate called Booger Eater (it’s pretty self-explanatory), and we’re up against the kids from the “Cool Cabin” … there’s gonna be a whole lotta trouble!
ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN
(with Julia Bergen)
Who would have thought that we—Rafe and Georgia—would ever agree on anything? That’s right—we’re writing a book together. Discover: Who has the best advice on BULLIES? Who’s got all the right DANCE MOVES? Who’s the cleverest Khatchadorian in town? And the best part? We want you to be part of the fun too!
SAVE RAFE!
(with Chris Tebbetts)
I’m in worse trouble than ever! I need to survive a gut-bustingly impossible outdoor excursion so I can return to school next year. Watch me as I become “buddies” with the scariest girl on the planet, raft down the rapids on a deadly river, and ultimately learn the most important lesson of my life.
JUST MY ROTTEN LUCK
(with Chris Tebbetts)
I’m heading back to the place it all began: Hills Village
Middle School, but only if I take “special” classes… If that
wasn’t bad enough, when I somehow land a place on the
school football team, I find myself playing alongside none
other than the biggest bully in school, Miller the Killer!
DOG’S BEST FRIEND
(with Chris Tebbetts)
It’s a dog-eat-dog world. When I start my own dogwalking
empire, I didn’t think it could go so horribly wrong!
Somehow, I always seem to end up in deep doo-doo…
I FUNNY
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Join Jamie Grimm at middle school where he’s on an
unforgettable mission to win the Planet’s Funniest Kid
Comic Contest. Dealing with the school bully (who he also
happens to live with) and coping with a disability are no
trouble for Jamie when he has laughter on his side.
I EVEN FUNNIER
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Jamie’s one step closer to achieving his dream!
This time, be amazed as he fends off the attention of
thousands of star-struck girls, watch in awe as he reduces
the school bully to a quivering mess, and join the masses as
he becomes the most popular kid in school.
Or something like that…
I TOTALLY FUNNIEST
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Jamie’s heading to Hollywood for his biggest challenge yet.
There’s only the small matter of the national finals and eight
other laugh-a-minute competitors between him and the
trophy—oh, and a hurricane!
I FUNNY TV
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Jamie has achieved his dream of becoming the Planet’s
Funniest Kid Comic, and now the sky’s the limit! Enter a
couple of TV executives with an offer for Jamie to star
in his very own show…
TREASURE HUNTERS
(with Chris Grabenstein)
The Kidds are not your normal family, traveling the world
on crazy adventures to recover lost treasure. But when their
parents disappear, Bick and his brothers and sisters are
thrown into the biggest (and most dangerous) treasure hunt
of their lives. Evil pirates, tough guys and gangsters stand in
their way, but can they work together to find
mom and dad?
DANGER DOWN THE NILE
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Bick, Beck, Storm and Tommy are navigating their way
down the Nile, from a hot and dusty Cairo to deep dark
jungles, past some seriously bad guys along the way.
SECRET OF THE FORBIDDEN CITY
(with Chris Grabenstein)
The Kidds are desperately trying to secure the ancient
Chinese artefact that will buy their mother’s freedom from
kidnapping pirates.
PERIL AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD
(with Chris Grabenstein)
When the biggest heist in history takes place in Moscow, the
Kidds rush in to save the day—but instead, they’re accused of
being the thieves themselves!
HOUSE OF ROBOTS
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Sammy is just your average kid… except he lives in a
house full of robots! Most of the time it’s pretty cool. But then
there’s E, the worst robot ever. He’s a know-it-all, thinks he’s
Sammy’s brother, AND he’s about to go to the same school!
Come see if Sammy ever manages to make any friends with
a loser robot tagging along…
ROBOTS GO WILD!
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Sammy and E are finally making some friends at school.
But disaster strikes when E malfunctions just in time to be
upstaged by the super-cool new robot on the block.
ROBOT REVOLUTION
(with Chris Grabenstein)
When Sammy’s inventor mom becomes distracted by a
top-secret project, the robots soon begin to fall into disrepair.
Cue a robot revolution!
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Kenny is the life-saving, world-famous superhero
otherwise known as Stainlezz Steel. He’s taken down
General Zod twice, beaten Darth Vader at chess… and lives
with his grandma. Ok, sometimes he gets a bit carried away.
But G-ma really does need his help now—and he’s going to
have to be a superhero to save the day.
(with Chris Grabenstein)
With her irresistable urge to tell a joke in every
situation—even when she really shouldn’t—twelve-yearold
Jacky Ha-Ha loves to make people laugh. And cracking
wise helps distract her from thinking about not-so-funny
things in her life, like her mom serving in a dangerous,
faraway war, and a dad who’s hardly ever home.
(with Chris Grabenstein)
Raised in a laboratory, Isaiah is extremely smart, but
scared of everything. One day, he manages to escape and
is forced to leave his family behind. All alone now, Isaiah
has to quickly learn to survive in the outside world. When
he meets a girl who is as unusual as he is, Isaiah soon sees
that even someone as small and as frightened as he is can
have the power to change the world.
IT FEELS AS honest as the day is crummy that I begin this tale of total desperation and woe with me, my pukey sister, Georgia, and Leonardo the Silent sitting like rotting sardines in the back of a Hills Village Police Department cruiser.
Now, there’s a pathetic family portrait you don’t want to be a part of, believe me. More on the unfortunate Village Police incident later. I need to work myself up to tell you that disaster story.
So anyway, ta-da, here it is, book fans, and all of you in need of merit points at school, the true autobio of my life so far. The dreaded middle school years. If you’ve ever been a middle schooler, you understand already. If you’re not in middle school yet, you’ll understand soon enough.
But let’s face it: Understanding me—I mean, really understanding me and my nutty life—isn’t so easy. That’s why it’s so hard for me to find people I can trust. The truth is, I don’t know who I can trust. So mostly I don’t trust anybody. Except my mom, Jules. (Most of the time, anyway.)
So . . . let’s see if I can trust you. First, some background.
That’s me, by the way, arriving at “prison”—also known as Hills Village Middle School—in Jules’s four-by-four. The picture credit goes to Leonardo the Silent.
Getting back to the story, though, I do trust one other person. That would actually be Leonardo. Leo is capital C Crazy, and capital O Off-the-Wall, but he keeps things real.
Here are some other people I don’t trust as far as I can throw a truckload of pianos.
There’s Ms. Ruthless Donatello, but you can just call her the Dragon Lady. She teaches English and also handles my favorite subject in sixth grade—after-school detention.
Also, Mrs. Ida Stricker, the vice principal. Ida’s pretty much in charge of every breath anybody takes at HVMS.
That’s Georgia, my super-nosy, super-obnoxious, super-brat sister, whose only good quality is that she looks like Jules might have looked when she was in fourth grade.
There are more on my list, and we’ll get to them eventually. Or maybe not. I’m not exactly sure how this is going to work out. As you can probably tell, this is my first full-length book.
But let’s stay on the subject of us for a little bit.
I kind of want to, but how do I know I can trust you with all my embarrassing personal stuff—like the police car disaster story? What are you like? Inside, what are you like?
Are you basically a pretty good, pretty decent person? Says who? Says you? Says your ’rents? Says your sibs?
Okay, in the spirit of a possible friendship between us—and this is a huge big deal for me—here’s another true confession.
This is what I actually looked like when I got to school that first morning of sixth grade. We still friends, or are you out of here?
Hey—don’t go—all right? I kind of like you. Seriously. You know how to listen, at least. And believe me, I’ve got quite the story to tell you.
OKAY, SO IMAGINE the day your great-great-grandmother was born. Got it? Now go back another hundred years or so. And then another hundred. That’s about when they built Hills Village Middle School. Of course, I think it was a prison for Pilgrims back then, but not too much has changed. Now it’s a prison for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.
I’ve seen enough movies that I know when you first get to prison, you basically have two choices: (1) pound the living daylights out of someone so that everyone else will think you’re insane and stay out of your way, or (2) keep your head down, try to blend in, and don’t get on anyone’s bad side.
You’ve already seen what I look like, so you can probably guess which one I chose. As soon as I got to homeroom, I went straight for the back row and sat as far from the teacher’s desk as possible.
There was just one problem with that plan, and his name was Miller. Miller the Killer, to be exact. It’s impossible to stay off this kid’s bad side, because it’s the only one he’s got.
But I didn’t know any of that yet.
“Sitting in the back, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” I told him.
“Are you one of those troublemakers or something?” he said.
I just shrugged. “I don’t know. Not really.”
“’Cause this is where all the juvies sit,” he said, and took a step closer. “In fact, you’re in my seat.”
“I don’t see your name on it,” I told him, and I was just starting to think maybe that was the wrong thing to say when Miller put one of his XXXL paws around my neck and started lifting me like a hundred-pound dumbbell.
I usually like to keep my head attached to my body, so I went ahead and stood up like he wanted me to.
“Let’s try that again,” he said. “This is my seat. Understand?”
I understood, all right. I’d been in sixth grade for about four and a half minutes, and I already had a fluorescent orange target on my back. So much for blending in.
And don’t get me wrong. I’m not a total wimp. Give me a few more chapters, and I’ll show you what I’m capable of. In the meantime, though, I decided to move to some other part of the room. Like maybe somewhere a little less hazardous to my health.
But then, when I went to sit down again, Miller called over. “Uh-uh,” he said. “That one’s mine too.”
Can you see where this is going?
By the time our homeroom teacher, Mr. Rourke, rolled in, I was just standing there wondering what it might be like to spend the next nine months without sitting down.
Rourke looked over the top of his glasses at me. “Excuse me, Mr. Khatch . . . Khatch-a . . . Khatch-a-dor—”
“Khatchadorian,” I told him.
“Gesundheit!” someone shouted, and the entire class started laughing.
“Quiet!” Mr. Rourke snapped as he checked his attendance book for my name. “And how are you today, Rafe?” he said, smiling like there were cookies on the way.
“Fine, thanks,” I answered.
“Do you find our seating uncomfortable?” he asked me.
“Not exactly,” I said, because I couldn’t really go into details.
“Then SIT. DOWN. NOW!”
Unlike Miller the Killer, Mr. Rourke definitely has two sides, and I’d already met both of them.
Since nobody else was stupid enough to sit right in front of Miller, that was the only seat left in the room.
And because I’m the world’s biggest idiot sometimes, I didn’t look back when I went to sit in my chair. Which is why I hit the dirt as I went down—all the way down—to the floor.
The good news? Given the way things had started off, I figured middle school could only get better from here.
The bad news? I was wrong about the good news.
DO YOU REMEMBER that nursery rhyme about Jack Sprat and his wife? How neither of them ate the same thing, but between the two of them they got the job done? Same deal with me and Leo, except the fat and the lean are words and pictures. Make sense? I do the talking, and Leo takes care of the drawing.
Leo speaks to me sometimes, but that’s about it. Conversation just isn’t his thing. If Leo wanted to tell you your house was on fire, he’d probably draw you a picture to let you know. The guy is about as talkative as a giraffe. (Oh, I’ve got a thousand of them, ladies and gentlemen.)
Say hi, Leo.
See what I mean?