For Michael Bourret,
who would not allow me to quit.
First published in the USA in 2014 by Dutton Books,
a division of the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
First published in Great Britain in 2014
by Electric Monkey – an imprint of Egmont UK Limited
The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text copyright © 2014 Andrew Smith
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First e-book edition 2013
ISBN 978 1 4052 7341 1
eISBN 978 1 7803 1621 5
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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EGMONT
Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street. He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment.
The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.
Ealing, Iowa, is a fictional town. None of the characters and places in this book actually exist. Any similarities between events and characters to actual history only occur in the true portions of this book, which aren’t that many.
Contents
Kimber Drive • Fixing Feet • Louis Asks a Rhetorical Question • There’s Blood on Your Spam • Grant Wallace Murdered Me • What Made This Country Great • Shann’s New Old House • Going Somewhere You Shouldn’t Go • Robby’s Volcano • Doors That Go Somewhere; Doors That Go Nowhere • Curfew • Stupid People Should Never Read Books • The Death-Ray Gun • Robby Could Have Been a Preacher • Never Name a Pizza Joint Stan’s • If You Ever Want to Get Shot in Ealing • The Trapdoor • Hungry Jack • Johnny’s Things • Two-Headed Boy • Blue Light • Priorities • Hell Breaks Loose • History Is Full of Shit
Palindromes • A Bath, a Shave, and Modesty • Johnny and Ollie • The Patch Job • Say Please • A Snapshot • Haggled • The Boy in the Glass • Skating and Kayaking • Eden Five Needs You • An Awful Lot of Math • Tally-Ho! • The Inner Tomb • And Here’s Number Five • Taking Drags • A Visitor Comes and Goes • The Thing in the Cornfield
A Tough Day at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy • Bugs Do Two Things • A Gift from Johnny McKeon • Shann Calls • My Mom’s Little Blue Kayaks • Pages from History • School Prayers • The Vice President’s Balls • Modern-Day Nightingales • Shann, the Horny Polish Kid, and Satan • Four Photographs • The President’s Sperm • The Virgin Saint and His Ward • The Diving Bell • The Popular Girl • Welcome to Eden • Some Kind of Sign • Gimme Shelter • The Dragon Parade • Soup from Paint Cans • Gideon’s Breeding Rights • The Queen of the Universe • The Library and the New Tally-Ho! • Ventilator Blues • Something Always Happens While Someone Else Dances • Lucky, in Polish Boy Names • Movie Night in Eden • The Good Doctor Accounts for History • Unstoppable Corn! Unstoppable Corn! • Three of Five • The Orphan Felek
PART FOUR: THE END OF THE WORLD