Jeff Strand: A Bad Day for Voodoo

This book is dedicated to everybody who’s kind of weird.

FAQ

Q: Is this book any good?

A: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it’s not The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo good, but there are worse ways you could spend your time. It’s at least better than that one book you read that one time that totally sucked and you were all like “How did this ever get published?” and you shoved it into the garbage disposal and let out a primal roar as you listened to the metal blades grind it up.

Q: Is this book totally realistic?

A: Yes. No matter how silly things get, no matter how weird the characters act, and no matter how far somebody is able to walk with a severely injured foot and not bleed to death, rest assured that every single word in this book is exactly how things would happen in real life. When you find yourself saying, “C’mon, that’s so unrealistic!” just remember that you’re wrong.

Q: How many people were injured during the writing of this book?

A: We writers are dangerous. Everybody knows that. I’d say that maybe ten or eleven people got slapped around, and one of my assistants injured his back carrying my bags of money. The poor guy had to hold it for almost forty-five minutes while I tried to decide which room should be the “Wow, Look at All of My Money” room. I should have figured that out beforehand. My bad.

Q: Is any material in this book inappropriate for teenagers or those who wish to become teenagers someday?

A: Oh yeah. All of it. Teenagers, don’t let any responsible adults catch you reading this, because they will absolutely freak. They’ll flap their arms around and shout, “This is going to destroy society! Kids copy everything bad they read in books! All is lost, all is lost!”

(Note to librarians: I’m only kidding. It’s not that bad. I mean, it’s gorier than Winnie the Pooh, and the word “crap” is used fifteen times, but none of the major curse words are represented, and nobody gets nekkid.)

(Note to teenagers: Or DO they...?)

Q: Is this book going to be a series?

A: I don’t know. It depends on whether or not everybody dies at the end.

Q: Will this book scare me so badly that I'll wake up screaming from nightmares and need to sleep with the lights on for the next several weeks?

A: Nah.

Q: Does this novel send a positive message to readers?

A: Not really, but this FAQ does. Eat healthy foods. Get plenty of exercise. Study hard. Don’t talk or text during movies. Sing, even if it’s really bad singing. Give somebody you love a hug for no reason, so that they say, “What was that for? What have you done? Do I need to be worried? Tell me!” Don’t waste nitroglycerine. Do. Not. Talk. During. Movies. (Your grandparents never learned that lesson, but it’s not too late for you!)

Q: Anything else?

A: Enjoy the book!

Q: Anything else after that?

A: No, actually I thought the last one was a pretty good stopping point. It ended things on an upbeat note and got you all psyched up to enjoy the novel. Now I’m sort of rambling. Don’t worry, I’m not blaming you; I just wish we’d gone right from “Enjoy the book!” into the actual book instead of continuing this FAQ, because I think people are going to start to skim.

Q: Did you?

A: Did I what? I’m not sure what you’re asking.

Q: Sorry. I forgot my question. Do you own any pets?

A: I feel like we’re drifting off topic here. Let’s try to get back to—

Q: Answer the question!

A: Two cats.

Q: How much cottage cheese do you think you could eat in one sitting? Let's say that somebody offered you $1,000 to eat twelve tubs of cottage cheese. Not bathtubs—those plastic tubs that cottage cheese comes in. Could you do it?

A: Enjoy the book!

CHAPTER 1

“So what if we let the air out of his tires, and then we rig the car so it crushes his arms when he goes to check? He can’t give you another F if he doesn’t have arms.”

“Seems extreme,” I said.

“Well...maybe his arms don’t actually have to come off. We could just make it so they don’t work anymore.”

Here’s the thing about Adam: I knew he was only kidding, but a small part of me suspected that he really would help me rig Mr. Click’s car to crush his arms if I asked. Does it make me look bad to admit that my best friend might be a tiny bit psychotic? I hope not.

“I don’t want to do anything destructive,” I said. “And nothing that could get me suspended. I’ll be in enough trouble for the F.” For most of my life, I’d had pretty good luck with my teachers. There were only three of them that I didn’t like. Mrs. Teeser, in third grade, was a yeller. She yelled about everything. “Finish your assignment!” “Line up for recess!” “Stop gluing your fingernails together!” My friends and I suspected that she had some sort of medical condition where her head gradually inflated throughout the day, and yelling was the only way to release the pressure. If she didn’t yell, her head would pop. We cut her some slack for that.

In seventh grade biology, Mr. Greg was unbelievably strict. He didn’t much appreciate jokes that his last name was really a first name, which is understandable, but he treated every moment of every class as if we were discovering a cure for cancer that we could totally screw up and lose forever if we lost concentration for a split millisecond. I have to admit that once the school year ended, I stopped disliking him quite so much, but he certainly wasn’t one of my favorites.

Most of my other teachers were pretty cool, and I’d go so far as to say that Mrs. Rowell in fifth grade was a genuine life- changing inspiration.

But not Mr. Click.

Mr. Click, who taught my sophomore-year world history class, was just plain mean. Not in an ultra-strict “I want you to achieve excellence!” way like Mr. Greg, but in a “Kids suck!” way. I don’t think he liked any of us. He didn’t even like my girlfriend, Kelley, who got straight A’s, always sat up front, and asked intelligent questions, all without being a smarmy, teacher’s pet creep.

Maybe if I taught high school history for thirty years, I’d become mean and bitter too. He was a small man, short and thin, with a bushy black mustache and a large haircut-with-a- hole-in-it bald spot. He wore glasses but probably needed a new prescription, because he was always squinting.

Some teachers, when they give you a bad grade, seem like they’re mad at you. Sometimes they’re disappointed. Sometimes they’re a little disgusted. Mr. Click always seemed delighted to hand out a bad grade, and he’d call kids out right in front of everybody. He wouldn’t announce, “Hey, Kelley, here’s your A-plus!” to the class, but he’d sure say, “Another D, Seth. That doesn’t surprise me.”

(I’m not Seth. I was just using him as an example.)

I’m Tyler Churchill. My report card was usually pretty good—A’s and B’s, but they didn’t come easy. Except for art, which was a natural talent, I had to study for every test until my butt literally fell off.

(Kelley hated, hated, hated it when people used the word “literally” wrong, so I’ll clarify: My butt did not actually detach itself from the rest of my body from the intensity of my studying.)

I wasn’t mad at Mr. Click simply because he was pure evil. I was mad because we had a vicious test, the second of five tests that were each worth 10 percent of our grade, and I studied until my eyes figuratively dropped out of my head. And I don’t mean that I was a total slacker until the night before and then did a desperate all-night, coffee-fueled cram session. I mean that I studied for that thing for a week. I mean that Kelley said, “Wanna hang out?” and I said no. And when she asked if I wanted to study together, I still said no because I knew we’d just end up making out.