Adam Selzer Read online

  Starting right about October 1, we kicked things into high gear. Dustin wrote up lyrics for a bunch of songs based on Christmas carols that were changed around to be about ghosts and witches and other Halloween stuff. Stuff like “People Roasting on an Open Fire,” “Zombie the Snowman,” and my personal favorite, to the tune of “Away in a Manger”:

  Away in a graveyard, no crypt for a bed,

  The ghosts and the zombies

  All want to be fed.

  They took all the teachers

  And sucked out their brains,

  But in no time at all

  They were hungry again!

  We printed up a few dozen copies of the lyrics and scattered them in various places around the school where people would be sure to find them. Dustin and I both got called into the office and questioned about them, since they had a pretty good idea that we were behind it, but they couldn’t prove anything, so we got off.

  Closer to the end of the month, several of the other films made in the class were shown to the sixth and seventh graders. Anna’s was a huge hit, especially because a couple of teachers objected to the subject matter. Dustin’s went over well, because he had an awful lot of blood and gore in it. He said that he’d used about ten bottles of ketchup, which is enough to provide blood for quite a few action figures, which he used as the crash victims. I was a little annoyed that they let something so violent be shown, but not something that dealt with sex. But it didn’t really matter; everyone had already seen La Dolce Pubert anyway. I got the feeling that this would be the only time they assigned kids the task of making health and safety films to show to younger kids.

  In light of the fact that the school would have no power over us after the end of the year, we’d made plans to steal some of the actual health, safety, and science films from the back room of the school and replace them with copies of La Dolce Pubert. By the time anyone found out about it, we’d all be safely in ninth grade, and, since so many kids had copies, they’d never be able to prove that we were behind the whole thing, anyway.

  Mr. Streich took over the gifted pool, and the whole thing got a lot better. We actually started having discussions and doing real projects instead of just crossword puzzles and brain teasers, though we still had to do the thing where we researched someone from the past. I picked Thomas Edison and found out that my dad was right—the guy really was sort of a jerk. He was selfish, greedy, and sneaky, and he took credit for inventing things when his staff had done all the work. He once even electrocuted a full-grown elephant just to prove a point, which was a hell of a mean thing to do. I still want to change my middle name the day I turn eighteen, though.

  Anna and I still aren’t exactly dating, but we kissed twice in the month after the scene was shot, once during a truth or dare game at Brian’s house and once when we acted out a scene from a Shakespeare play in English class, which was cool because no one actually expected us to do it; we were just supposed to fake it. I hoped we could do it more often, though I wasn’t brave enough to ask.

  My dad gave up on the idea of the self-lighting matches, on the grounds that they were simply too dangerous (my mother insisted), and decided to start working on a machine that would automatically get the seeds out of watermelons. So far he hadn’t done much besides make a huge mess, but at least this kind of mess isn’t likely to break anything other than a few vacuum cleaner engines. Personally, I hope he finishes it soon. Since he’s been working on it, we’ve had to eat an alarming number of watermelons, which has led my mother to dig deep into books like Watermelons for Health and How Famous Chefs Use Watermelon. I have to wonder exactly what these chefs were famous for.

  Speaking of food disasters, my parents started making plans to go to some convention for food disaster hobbyists that was going to be in Omaha around Christmas. I was surprised that such a convention existed; I was sort of under the impression that my parents were the only such hobbyists who hadn’t died of food poisoning by now.

  “They’re expecting a hotel full of people,” said my mother. “And we’re going to get to try some of the worst stuff ever made.”

  “One whole day is devoted to making things out of cookbooks from the Depression,” said my father, showing me the brochure, which was absolutely hideous. “Back then, they encouraged people to use every single part of the cow.” There was a picture in the brochure of something that looked about like snot and was labeled “Creamed Brains on Toast,” which practically made me want to become a vegetarian. Elsewhere in the brochure, it mentioned that the bar would be serving drinks that came out of a recipe book from the seventies for cocktails that mixed liquor with Tang.

  I wasn’t going, of course, which meant that I would have the house to myself on Halloween—except for my mother’s sister, Rachel, who’d be coming over to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn’t set the garage on fire again. But Aunt Rachel was pretty laid back, and I knew she wouldn’t mind me throwing a Halloween party. Dustin had the idea of asking everyone to dress up as a character out of an old book, and he’d be able to tell us all the characters we were sleeping with. I decided to dress up as Dr. Jekyll; I was pretty sure that he really got around. And given that my parents wouldn’t be home and Aunt Rachel would probably just be up in their bedroom watching TV, I figured I could actually manage to do some getting around myself. A game of truth or dare certainly didn’t seem out of the question.

  On Halloween night, in the early evening, about an hour before the party was supposed to start, I was in the kitchen trying to get my top hat to look just bent enough when I heard the doorbell ring. It was Anna, dressed up like Captain Hook (I could just imagine what Dustin would say he was doing with Smee) and holding some paper.

  “I have a script,” she said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “The next avant-garde movie.”

  I invited her in and she sat down at the table while I brewed a pot of coffee, something I was getting pretty good at doing by then. I had planned on making another movie at some point but hadn’t really had time to think about what I wanted to do. I wasn’t just going to rest on my laurels, though.

  When I sat down, she handed me the script, which was labeled The Rooster in the Skating Rink: A Musical (based on a true story).

  It was a much longer script than La Dolce Pubert, and actually seemed to have a plot of some sort. There were characters listed on the front page, including:

  Professor Earl Gray: an inspector from Scotland Yard with a wooden leg and a penchant for chamomile tea and kickboxing

  The Divine Miss Madeline Brooch: a time-traveling cabaret singer from 1890s Paris

  Arthur: a talking plant who speaks French and would also speak sign language if he had any hands

  “It looks like this actually has a plot,” I said, scanning it.

  “It sort of does,” she said, “though it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, so it’s still avant-garde. Or at least surreal. Anyway, I’m going to play the Divine Miss Madeline Brooch, and you can be Professor Earl Gray. Check it out. I thought maybe we could rehearse a scene or two before everyone else gets here.”

  As the coffee machine began making noise, indicating that the coffee would be ready in a few minutes, I flipped through the script, and a smile spread across my face.

  The Divine Miss Madeline Brooch and Professor Earl Gray were clearly the stars of the show.

  And they had kissing scenes on every page.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Adam Selzer grew up in the suburbs of Des Moines and now lives in downtown Chicago, where he can write in a different coffee shop every day without even leaving his neighborhood. In addition to his work as a tour guide and assistant ghost-buster (really), he moonlights as a rock star. How to Get Suspended and Influence People is his first novel. Check him out on the Web at www.adamselzer.com.

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  Published by Laurel-Leaf

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Adam Selzer

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Delacorte Press, New York, in 2007.

  This edition published by arrangement with Delacorte Press.

  Laurel-Leaf and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

  Selzer, Adam.

  How to get suspended and influence people / by Adam Selzer.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Gifted eighth-grader Leon Harris becomes an instant celebrity when the film he makes for a class project sends him to in-school suspension.

  [1. Motion pictures—Production and direction—Fiction. 2. Gifted children—Fiction. 3. Middle schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S4652How 2007

  [Fic]—dc22

  2006020438

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89214-1

  v3.0