Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything

  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.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Stephen L. Cotler

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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

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

  Visit Cheesie at CheesieMack.com!

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cotler, Stephen L.

  Cheesie Mack is not a genius or anything / Stephen L. Cotler ; illustrated by Adam McCauley.

  —1st ed.

  p. cm. —(#1)

  Summary: Ronald “Cheesie” Mack relates events he and his best friend, Georgie, experience as fifth grade comes to an end and their summer plans are drastically changed, due in part to an old, possibly valuable coin that may belong to the mysterious inhabitant of a place they call The Haunted Toad.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89570-8

  [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Coins—Fiction. 3. Lost and found possessions—Fiction. 4. Conduct of life—Fiction. 5. Recluses—Fiction. 6. Family life—Massachusetts—Fiction. 7. Massachusetts—Fiction.] I. McCauley, Adam, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.C82862Che 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009033329

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

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 0 The Story Is Over!

  Chapter 1 My Boring Graduation Ceremony

  Chapter 2 My Best Friend Screams

  Chapter 3 Really Bad News

  Chapter 4 The Mouse Plot

  Chapter 4α Chee and the Taug

  Chapter 5 The Haunted Toad and the Runaway Rodents

  Chapter 6 Partially Expelled

  Chapter 7 The Most Bloodthirsty Vampire in Massachusetts

  Chapter 8 A Butt-Banging Escape

  Chapter 8§ The Labyrinthine Torture Chamber Dungeon

  Chapter 9 Busted by the Cops

  Chapter 10 Class Party Trickery

  Chapter 11 Stubs

  Chapter 12 A Face in the Window … and the Evidence

  Chapter 13 A Silhouette in the Dark

  Chapter 14 Entering The Haunted Toad

  Chapter 15 How Much Is One Cent Worth?

  Chapter 16 Cheesie Tells Everything

  Chapter 17 After the Story Is Over

  This Is Not a Chapter.

  Visit CheesieMack.com If…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Story Is Over!

  This is the end of the book.

  It was about a mysterious old coin, an evil sister (mine), a dead sister (not mine), runaway rodents, a super-best friend, a fifth-grade graduation disaster, some really unusual words (including a few I made up), and The Haunted Toad.

  I wrote it. I’m Ronald Mack. People call me Cheesie. You can probably guess why.

  I love mac ’n’ cheese, but I almost never eat it anymore, because if I do, someone always says, “Cheesie Mack eats mac ’n’ cheese!” And I’ve heard that two million times.

  My name is in the title of this book because it’s about stuff that happened to me, Cheesie Mack.

  You probably noticed that this is Chapter 0. That’s because I already wrote the whole story that comes after this. It begins in Chapter 1. I started writing a couple of days after fifth grade ended and have been at it nonstop ever since. And now I am writing this chapter last even though you’re reading it first.

  Everything in this book is true. I did not make anything up. I’m definitely not a genius or anything, but I remember all the details because I was there when everything happened. And if you’re a kid like me who has adventures, there are going to be lots of details to remember. Details about stuff like:

  Abraham Lincoln’s head

  The Point Battle

  The Mouse Plot

  Lawbreaking zoom chucklers

  Ee-Gorg and Doctor Cheez

  The letters V, D, and B

  This adventure started the day before the last day of fifth grade. I hope you like it. If you don’t or do or whatever, please go to my website and tell me.

  Signed:

  Ronald “Cheesie” Mack (age 10 years and 10 months) CheesieMack.com

  My Boring Graduation Ceremony

  “I shall now scrape the burnt flesh,” I said.

  “Gross!” said my older sister, June.

  We were in my backyard finishing dinner. My dad, my mom, and my grandfather were relaxing at the picnic table. I was cleaning the barbecue. That’s one of my chores. Cleaning charred chicken chunks off the grill is greasy work, but I don’t mind, especially if I can bug my sister while I do it.

  I scraped the wire brush back and forth across the grill while sipping my second can of cream soda, which IMO does not taste a bit like cream.

  “We should not cook anything that has a face,” June said, piling dishes on a tray. She’s a vegetarian. “So that means that we could cook you because the ugly blob on the top of your neck is definitely not a face.”

  My mother gave June a stop-it look, but June continued. “There are, however, those huge flappers sticking out from the side of the blob—”

  “Enough!” Mom said.

  Okay, so my ears stick out. I don’t care. I won that one. One point for Cheesie. And that is the last time I am going to talk about my ears in this book.

  My mother is an air-traffic controller. Her job is to keep track of airplanes and tell them where to fly. She works in the control tower at Logan Airport in Boston. She always brags that she can keep planes far enough apart so they don’t crash into each other, but complains that she can’t do the same with her kids. And when June and I fight, I usually get the worst of it because she’s two years older and much bigger than me.

  And meaner.

  But I’m pretty sure I will be bigger than her when we’re both in high school. I don’t know if I will be meaner.

  Mom walked over to the driveway, carrying a plate of meat and gristle and skin that she had torn off the leftover chicken bones. “Ronald’s graduation ceremony begins at ten-thirty sharp tomorrow morning,” she said, tossing the leftover chicken bits to my dog, Deeb, who is a very good jumper and midair scraps-grabber. “I don’t want anyone to be late.”

  “When I was a boy,” Dad said as I plopped down at the picnic table next to Granpa, “there was no such thing as fifth-grade graduation.”

  “When I was a boy,” my grandfather added, “there was no such thing as fifth grade.” He tried to poke me in the ribs, but I saw it coming and quickly slid away from him.

  “When I was a boy …,” I said, pausing to take another sip of soda. But getting away from Granpa had moved me too close to my sister’s cleanup work. She poked me much harder than Granpa ever would have, then scooted into the house grinning wickedly because no one saw her do it.

  Drops of soda dribbled down my neck. One point for my sister.

  I hooked my sneakers on the wood boards under the picnic table, leaned wa-a-ay back on the bench, and looked sideways at Dad and Granpa.

  “When I was a boy, I—” But two cans of cream soda bubbles churning around inside me, along
with the back bend stretching out my belly, wouldn’t let me finish my sentence. I burped long and loud.

  “Riddle-dee.” That’s exactly what it sounded like … sort of.

  An instant later, my father rattled out a longer one.

  “Riddle-dee-diddle.”

  Almost immediately Granpa topped us both.

  “Riddle-dee-diddle-dee-dee.”

  We all sighed. “Ahhhhh!”

  From the driveway, Mom shouted, “I heard that!”

  “You’re still the greatest, Pop,” Dad said to Granpa.

  “You should be in the opera,” I told him.

  We always say that to Granpa. He once burped the opening to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Musical burping is a Mack Family Tradition.

  Mom thinks it’s crude and rude.

  Dad says she’s a prude.

  Granpa says it improves his mood.

  I think it’s dude.

  It was the middle of June. Tomorrow morning I had to go to my boring fifth-grade graduation ceremony.

  How did I know it would be boring? We had been rehearsing for three days, and here’re all the boring things that we had to do for everyone’s parents and grandparents:

  Recite the Pledge of Allegiance. (Georgie Sinkoff, my best friend, said he was going to do it with his eyes crossed.)

  Sing “This Land Is Your Land.” (Georgie said he could hold his breath through the whole song—even while opening and closing his mouth like he was singing—and turn bright red.)

  Sit quietly while our principal, Mrs. Crespo, gives a speech. (The school nurse told Georgie it’s about healthy eating habits, so he’s going to pretend to throw up on Lana Shen, the girl sitting next to him.)

  Listen to Francine Binki, who has perfect attendance, recite a poem she wrote called “Growing Up.” (Georgie said he’ll “grow down” by sliding out of his chair so slowly that no one will notice him moving at all. By the end of Francine’s poem, he’ll be totally out of sight.)

  March up to the stage one at a time to get our diplomas. (When Alex Welch, who is last in our class alphabetically, walks past, Georgie said he is going to trip him because he is sure Alex is the kid who dog-pooped his bike seat.)

  Georgie lots of times has terrific ideas, and if I’d maybe believed that he was going to do even one of these, I would have been happy to go. But there would be tons of grown-ups there, so I knew nothing would happen, and it would be very, very boring.

  “I feel kinda sick,” I said weakly, looking around at everything in the backyard except Mom, who had just sat down next to Dad. “I’m probably getting the flu.”

  “Cut the con job,” Mom said. “You are going to graduation. My parents are driving up from New Haven, and there’s no way you’re—”

  “Okay,” I muttered, “just for Gumpy and Meemo.”

  I know those are really stupid names for grandparents, but don’t blame me. My sister was born first. She made them up. But I invented Granpa’s name. It used to be Grandpa, with a d, but when I was little, G-R-A-N-P-A was how I spelled it, and he liked it that way … which was surprising because Granpa disagrees with almost everything. He once told me, “If I don’t get hot and contrary about something every single day, my blood’ll probably just cool down, thicken up, and clot me to death.”

  The name Granpa isn’t so rare, but I have never met anyone who has a Gumpy or a Meemo. I am collecting grandparent nicknames on my website, CheesieMack.com. You can put yours in if you want.

  “I don’t think Granpa can come to Ronnie’s graduation,” Dad said.

  Mom looked at Granpa in disbelief. Granpa was looking up at the sky. She looked at Dad. He had his head down, pretending to brush crumbs off his fake foot. (When Dad was twenty, he was a sailor on a Navy aircraft carrier, and some guy dropped a bomb on his shoe. It didn’t explode or anything, but it squashed his foot, so he straps on a fake one. It even has fake toenails.)

  “Granpa’s going to be busy,” Dad finally said. “There’s too much red in my taillights.”

  I must have looked confused.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dad went on. “He’ll be down at the garage draining the color.”

  My father owns four limousines. Those are very big and fancy cars. They’re used for driving people places. He’s the boss of his company. But he also drives the limos sometimes.

  “Messy job. Probably take me all day,” Granpa grumbled.

  Mom got up and walked away without saying anything.

  I knew they were kidding, so I squinted one eye shut and gave my father an evil pirate look … which he gave right back. Then I suddenly turned my head and squinty-evil-eyed at Granpa, who instantly squinty-evil-eyed back at both of us. As you probably guessed, this is another Mack Family Tradition.

  We probably would have kept squinty-evil-eyeing each other for a lot longer if the phone hadn’t rung. My sister yelled from inside.

  “Hey, Runt! Phone!”

  I know her tricks. She gets no points if I ignore her. That’s one of the rules of the Point Battle, which was 615 to 592. My sister was leading, but recently I’ve been gaining on her. I’ve been keeping track since the beginning of fourth grade.

  So I walked into the house, paying no attention to my sister and total attention to Deeb, who was running back and forth between my legs.

  June almost never calls me Ronald or Ronnie or Ron. She mostly uses Runt, which I hate because I am actually the second-shortest kid in my class. Only Glenn Philips is smaller. And he has some kind of growth-hormone shortage in his brain that he’s getting shots for. But he’s also the smartest kid in the fifth grade and can tell you the names of all of Jupiter’s larger moons. (I put a diagram here, but I included only the four largest moons because there isn’t enough room for the rest. There’s plenty of room in space, however.)

  “Runt!”

  I hate when she does this. Probably one of my friends is calling, but if I answer her, she’ll just smirk and say, “I see you finally know your real name.”

  I am a ten-year-old boy with big sister problems.

  When my parents aren’t around, I call her Goon. In my opinion, Goon is an excellent description of June’s personality.

  If I think up any new Goonish insults, they will be in my next book.

  My Best Friend Screams

  The phone call was from Georgie Sinkoff, my best friend.

  “GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!” he screamed into my ear before I could finish saying hello. And then he hung up on me.

  I ran outside, yelled to Mom where I was going, and sprinted into the gully behind my house, which is in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where I have lived my whole life.

  If you don’t know where Massachusetts is, look in the upper right-hand corner of the United States. Turn the page for a map.

  I left Alaska out because it’s too big.

  Mass (sometimes we call it that) is a small state. Only six states are smaller. Even Hawaii is bigger, but it’s kind of cheating because lots of Hawaii is ocean. I have a U.S. map on my bedroom wall, and because I look at it every night before I turn out my light, I have almost memorized it.

  Gloucester (people here say GLAH-stah … weird, huh?) is the oldest fishing port in America. It was founded in 1623, only three years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, which is also in Massachusetts somewhere. I have never seen Plymouth Rock, but rocks last almost forever, so I guess it’s still there.

  Georgie and I live less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, in a neighborhood of big, old houses. Not old like Pilgrims, but Granpa says our house is older than he is, and I know he is way more than seventy. (He does not celebrate his birthday, and I don’t even know when it is. He won’t tell.)

  Our houses are three blocks apart if you use the streets, but Georgie and I only go that way if we’re on our bikes. There’s a scrawny little stream in a scrawny little gully that separates our backyards, and it is so narrow that last year Georgie launched a balloon filled with chocolate pudding all the way from his bedroom
window over the trees and the gully into my backyard, where my sister was playing with her friends.

  I told you he has terrific ideas!

  Of course I was in Georgie’s bedroom at the time, but on purpose here’s what I did not do:

  I did not fill the balloon with pudding.

  I did not touch Georgie’s huge slingshot.

  I did not help pull back the rubber part.

  I did not do any of these things so that if Mom or someone asked, I would not have to lie. I did help aim it, kind of. When the pudding bomb landed and splashed chocolate on you-know-who, the girls screamed like the universe was exploding—and even though we got yelled at, it was cool.

  I trotted through the gully on the path that Georgie and I made, then up the other side and through the won’t-close-gate into his backyard. Once inside his back door—I never have to knock—I yelled for him. He yelled back from the basement.

  I walked down the stairs. They creaked and squeaked like in horror movies. (I’m not trying to scare you—it’s just one of the details I remember.)

  His house, like mine, is really old. The basement and stairs are made out of wood, and the floor is mostly dirt except for the concrete part where Mr. Sinkoff keeps his tools.

  I could see a shadow moving on the basement floor, so I knew Georgie was directly beneath me, under the stairs. When I reached the bottom, Georgie stepped out and grabbed me, talking real fast.

  “I found something big! Really big!”

  There were cobwebs in his hair. He had one hand behind his back.

  I have known Georgie my whole life. We have always been best friends … except for the time in third grade when he called me Dumbo Ears. (This is really the last time I am going to mention my ears!)

  Georgie has reddish-brown hair, greenish-brown eyes, braces, and really cool glasses with bright red rims. He is already eleven and is almost twice my size. He is good at games where being big is an advantage, like basketball and football. My best sports are soccer and baseball because I am wicked fast and very excellent at catching flies.