The Big One-Oh Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  DAD’S TEN WORDS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  THE BIRTHDAY NOTEBOOK

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  MY THEME, MY CAKE AND OTHER MISTAKES

  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

  A HOUSE OF HORRORS

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  THE PARTY’S OVER

  Chapter 34

  THE GUEST LIST

  Two.

  I had two invitations left, and I intended to be very choosy about who was going to get them.

  I could tell that word was spreading. As I stood at the door of the cafeteria at lunchtime, holding those two invitations and gazing out over the wide sea of possible party-goers, I felt that I, too, was being studied by hundreds of eyes, all eager to see my next move.

  Then I heard: “Hi, Charley,” and my stomach dropped.

  Jennifer Mobley was suddenly standing next to me, and her eyes were darting between me and the pieces of paper in my hand.

  This was awkward.

  But while I stood there, unable to think of what to say to Jennifer, the last two invitations were suddenly snatched from my hand!

  “We checked our schedules, and we are free to party!” Cougar cackled. “I don’t like onions on my hamburgers. And this guy,” he said as he handed the last invitation to Scottie, “this guy’s allergic to ice cream.”

  Cougar clapped me on the back. “But don’t worry; we know how to have a good time!” Then they ran off, hooting.

  And just like that, my party list was complete.

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  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2009

  Copyright © Dean Pitchford, 2007

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Pitchford, Dean.

  The big one-oh / Dean Pitchford.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Determined not to be weird all his life like his neighbor, Charley Maplewood decides to throw himself a tenth birthday party, complete with a “house of horrors” theme, but first he will have to make some friends to invite.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-05778-0

  [1. Birthdays—Fiction. 2. Parties—Fiction. 3. Single-parent families—Fiction.

  4. Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P644Big 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006014266

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  TO PATRICIA,

  WHO WAS THE LIFE OF EVERY PARTY

  My name is Charley Maplewood, and I’m 10.

  Ten years old.

  Today.

  You’d think it would be a truly awesome event. An exciting turning point. I mean, come on!

  TEN YEARS OLD!

  That’s a monumental moment in the life of a kid, right?!

  Ha ha.

  I mean, just look at what I’ve done in the last few weeks: I’ve shocked and embarrassed my family. I’ve left a trail of destruction and chaos in my path. And I’ve ruined what was left of my pathetic little life.

  I’ve made such a big, rotten stinking mess of everything that I’ll bet some people are surprised I even lived to see this day.

  But I’ve got good reasons for everything I did.

  I can explain.

  Really.

  But to do that, I have to tell you about a package I got a month ago. From my dad.

  And I’m not blaming him, but I swear that, if it weren’t for that package, none of this would have ever happened.

  DAD’S TEN WORDS

  1

  The day Dad’s package came, I skateboarded home from school as usual. I could probably get home faster if I walked, because I always fall off my skateboard about five hundred times on the way; but, when I started skateboarding at the beginning of this school year, I used to fall off about a thousand times, so that’s progress, isn’t it?

  I slid and skidded up our driveway and finally crashed on the front lawn, and then I let my dog Boing Boing out of the side yard where he sleeps and scratches himself all day.

  Boing Boing is a big mutt. I would never have named him—or any dog—Boing Boing, but he started out as Mom’s dog. He sleeps in my bed, so he’s really more my dog now, but Mom won’t change his name. So guess who gets stuck running around the neighborhood, yelling, “Boing Boing! C’mere, Boing Boing!”?

  I sound like a video game.

  That day Boing Boing flew out of the side
yard gate like he always does, and he knocked me down with his wet kisses and huge paws. That’s why I didn’t hear Mrs. Cleveland coming, and why I jumped when she suddenly snapped, “Child?!”

  Mrs. Cleveland is the plump, old, African-American lady who lives next door. She wears black socks with white tennis shoes, and she spends her days walking up and down the block jiggling other people’s doorknobs and making sure that garages and mailboxes are firmly shut.

  I sat up on the lawn and squinted up at her.

  “Huh?”

  “Is your daddy still overseas?” she demanded.

  “I, uhhhh . . . he’s in Scotland. Glasgow, Scotland. It’s the capital,” I stammered.

  “Well, that’s overseas,” she sniffed. “You’re gonna wanna check your mail, then,” she said before she turned and marched off, using one of her late husband’s golf clubs as a walking stick.

  As usual, Mrs. Cleveland was right: I had gotten a large envelope from Dad, covered with lots of colorful Scottish stamps.

  Whenever Dad sends a letter or something, I always spend a moment studying the stamps, trying to imagine what the post office looked like where Dad bought them and licked them and stuck them on. I try to picture what the weather might be like over there and where Dad goes after he drops my package into the mail slot.

  Most days, I know, he goes to the restaurant where he cooks, because he’s a chef. A really good one, too. My dad can cook anything. The place he works in Glasgow, Scotland, is a Mexican café, and, even though he’s not Mexican, he told me that the Scottish people are starved for good Mexican food.

  At least that’s what he said when he left home three years ago. I try not to think about that day.

  In my bedroom, Boing Boing sniffed and licked at Dad’s package until I opened up the big, puffy envelope. Inside, wrapped in blue paper that said “Happy Birthday!!” all over was a flat parcel that I figured out was supposed to be my birthday present.

  Four weeks early.

  Dad’s usually within a month or two. He never remembers my exact birth day, but that’s okay. I bet he’s got a lot on his mind.

  I immediately knew what was in the wrapping paper because Dad always sends me the same present: two issues of Monsters & Maniacs.

  What?!

  You’ve never heard of Monsters & Maniacs? What planet did you grow up on? It’s only the greatest literature in the history of the world!

  Monsters & Maniacs is a comic book all about zombies and vampires and madmen and stuff. It’s got demons (like in Issue 113: “The Gates of Hell Are UNDER MY BED!!”), giant spiders (Issue 49: “Six Hairy Legs and SIX FEET TALL!!”), aliens (Issue 85: “On My Planet YOU’D BE LUNCH!!”), and the occasional headless babysitter (Issue 136: “What Have You Done WITH MY CHILDREN?!”).

  I loved them even before I could read the words, because the pictures were just so cool. Then, when we learned the alphabet in first grade, I’d run home from school every day and practice reading them.

  My happiest memories always involve Monsters & Maniacs. Back when Dad was still living here, for instance, I used to grab a stack of issues and read that stack from top to bottom. Afterward I’d go downstairs, and Dad would grill me a cheese sandwich. And he’d let me flip it on the griddle.

  Those were good times.

  I wasn’t in any hurry to open up Dad’s issues of Monster & Maniacs, because I knew I had them already. I get every issue the moment it hits the racks at The Comic Soup, the store where I spend all my allowance.

  Instead I opened the card that was taped to the present. On the cover, above a picture of a boy sailing a boat, it said, “Oh, good heaven! You’re going to be eleven!”

  “Ten, Dad. I’m going to be ten,” I groaned as if he were in the room with me. Then I opened the card and read where he had written, “Happy Birthday, Charley!”

  And below that he had scribbled the ten words that kicked off this whole horrible chain of events:

  “What are you going to do for your big day?”

  2

  As soon as I read Dad’s words, my heart flipped over in my chest. My hands started to shake. I could feel myself growing short of breath. Because thinking about what people do on birthdays—mine or anyone else’s—always makes me remember something that happened three and a half years ago.

  Something that scarred me for life and still causes me to wake up screaming.

  I was invited to my first birthday party ever.

  I was six.

  We had just moved onto Apple Core Circle because my dad got hired to be the chef at the nearby Wagon Wheel Family-Style Restaurant. Dad and Mom argued a lot where we lived before, so I guess maybe they thought that a change of location might help them get along. Or a new job would help. Or something like that. I didn’t pay a lot of attention then.

  Soon after we’d moved in, I got invited to this kid Jamie Wiggerty’s birthday party; I’d never even met the guy. One day Mom stopped to chat with his mother in the middle of the Pic ’n’ Save, and the next thing I know, Mom’s gushing, “Charley would love to come!”

  She didn’t even consult me.

  When I pointed that out to Mom on the way home, she laughed, “C’mon, Charley! This’ll help you make some new friends.”

  “That’s so totally lame,” sneered my sister Lorena once she heard the news. Lorena was twelve at the time, and she thought that everything everybody ever did anywhere at any time was totally lame.

  She still thinks that.

  Dad was more enthusiastic. “You’ll have a blast,” he assured me.

  So I went.

  Dad walked me to Jamie Wiggerty’s house that terrible Saturday morning. The backyard was filled with lots of parents and kids, and when Dad saw some adults he knew, I was left alone to look around.

  In the center of the lawn, on a gigantic picnic table, sat the biggest cake I’d ever seen, a humongous bowl of pink punch and piles of presents. There were streamers draped between all the trees, and kids were all running around, blowing noisemakers and swatting at balloons.

  There was even a man giving all the kids pony rides, but the pony clip-clopped around his temporary corral so slowly that it looked like about as much fun as watching paint dry.

  And, just as I’d figured, I didn’t know anyone. So it was a good thing I had smuggled in some comic books.

  “Geez, Charley! Can’t you go one day without Monsters & Maniacs?” Dad groaned when he found me by myself, reading under a tree. “And your mother wonders why you have no friends.”

  Now, I had never heard it put that way before. First of all, I had never really stopped to think about it, but, yeah, I had no friends. But, hey, I was six; I figured I had time.

  And second, I never realized that it was something Mom and Dad would even notice—me not having friends. I thought they had plenty of other things to worry about.

  Dad stuck a curly party-favor noisemaker in my mouth, took me by the hand and led me across the lawn to the corral as Jamie and his friends watched.

  The Pony Man squinted through the smoke of his stinky cigar as Dad lifted me up and set me down in the saddle. “You’re the last one to ride the pony, Kiddo,” Dad said.

  I got the feeling that the pony wasn’t too happy to have yet another squirming kid on his back. I totally sympathized; I wasn’t thrilled to be there, either. But it seemed important to Dad that I give it a shot.

  “See?” said Dad. “Nice horsie. Hang on, Charley.”

  He didn’t have to tell me that; I gripped those reins so tightly my hands turned white.

  “Say ‘Giddyap!’ ” Dad urged. “The horsie won’t go until you say, ‘Giddyap, horsie.’ ”

  Thanks, Dad. That was all Jamie and his friends needed to hear. They began to shout, “Giddyap!” “Say ‘Giddyap, horsie! ’ ” “Make the horsie giddyap, giddyap, GIDDYAP!!”

  They got louder and louder, stomping their feet and screeching like chimpanzees. While the Pony Man was blowing cigar smoke my way, Dad kept urging, “Say ‘
Giddyap!,’ Charley! ‘Giddyap!’ ” and trying to yank the noisemaker from between my clamped, gritting teeth.

  Can you understand how I could get confused?

  I took a deep breath which I fully intended to use to say, “Giddyap!” Instead, I blew powerfully into the noisemaker, which made an awfully loud honk.

  Which the pony didn’t like one bit.

  Not only that, but the curled-up party-favor uncurled, and the little feather at the end of it must’ve tickled him in a place that he didn’t like to be tickled. Because that pony threw back his head, whinnied like he was being poked with a burning torch, reared back on his hind legs and then, while I hung on for dear life, he—I mean, we—took off like a shot.

  BAM!

  That pony and I plowed through his flimsy little corral. We rocketed across the lawn—with Dad and the Pony Man chasing us—and we trampled Mrs. Wiggerty’s perfect flower beds. We zigged this way, and we zagged over there, galloping straight for clumps of kids, who ran, shrieking, in every direction.

  Parents began chasing us, too. They were slipping on the grass, crashing into chairs and smashing into each other. They were waving their arms and screaming out suggestions: “Say, ‘Whoa!’ ” “Pull his reins!” “Grab his bridle!”