Chub and his group of misfit friends—including some new recruits—try to track down the school’s missing mascot in the hilarious and heartwarming sequel to I Am Fartacus . It’s a new year, and a chance for Chub to make a fresh start at Alanmoore Middle School. After all, he now has a “cadre” of misfits behind him, and his feud with Archer “The Arch” Norris seems to have cooled off over the summer. Could seventh grade be the year that Chub keeps his nose out of trouble? One thing Chub didn’t count on? The new principal “Mizzz Lockhart”—a steely-eyed disciplinary maniac with a zero-tolerance policy for mischief who is just waiting to make an example out of Chub. When Lockhart’s precious sculpture—a hideous modern-art rendering of the school mascot that Chub dubbed “The Boogerloo”—disappears, both Chub and Archer are blamed for the theft. Worse still, they’re faced with expulsion (which for Chub means being shipped off to Poland) unless they can produce the Boogerloo in forty-eight hours. It’s up to Chub, Archer, Shelby, Moby, and Megumi (the new student whom both Chub and Archer are crushing on) to find the Boogerloo before Chub gets kicked out of school—and maybe the country—for good. Like Chub, Mark Maciejewski was one of the “usual suspects” throughout his grade school years. Mark’s hair, however, didn’t fall out until much later in life. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, gardening, watching movies, and napping. His love of comics and graphic novels is a major influence on his work. He lives in Seattle with his wife, four kids, two dogs, two frogs, six glow-in-the-dark fish, and a borrowed cat. He is the author of I Am Fartacus and Electric Boogerloo . You can find Mark online at MarkMaciejewski.com or on Twitter at @Magicjetski. Electric Boogerloo CHAPTER 1 It’s almost impossible to do a move called Repulse Monkey without giggling, but a summer of tai chi has taught me this: if I want to harness the strength hidden within me, I can’t laugh every time something sounds like the name of a Norwegian rock band. Last spring, after I got into (and back out of) some trouble at school, my dad made me take up a sport to burn off all my extra energy and build my character. My parents and I moved to the U.S. from Poland when I was little, and they don’t get out much, so when I suggested tai chi my dad didn’t think martial arts qualified as a sport. But when he found out it was free, he instantly became a fan. My dad likes tai chi because it’s economical. I like it because it helps me focus the energy I used to use plotting against the Arch. Also because I’m as athletic as a three-legged turtle. I meet my group every weekday morning at the park a few blocks from my house. I’m the youngest person there by sixty years, which is fine with me. Kids my age like to do a lot of running and jumping and throwing, which means sweating. Who needs that when I can keep my dad off my back and never get my heart rate over seventy-five? The next move after Repulse Monkey is Grasp the Bird’s Tail, but you can’t go right into it. First you have to do a transition move called Hold the Ball. If I can get through that one, I’m usually fine for the rest of my practice. Mrs. Cheung gives me a kind smile while demonstrating perfect form. Tai chi is basically martial arts in superslow motion; I smile back, imagining her kicking a mugger’s butt with her moves sped up ten times. All this meditation has given me plenty of time to ponder the last school year. Last spring my friends and I formed a Cadre, kind of like our own personal Justice League, to take down my former best friend turned nemesis, Archer Norris. After he stopped hanging out with me in second grade, he started acting like a totally different person. Suddenly he became Mr. Popular at school. He got taller quickly and became a hero because he was awesome at every sport he tried. He even gave himself the stupid nickname “the Arch,” like he was some sort of celebrity or something. And the reason he dumped our friendship? I used some chemicals from my dad’s dry cleaning shop to kill the head lice we’d both gotten—and it ended up leaving me a bald second grader. The hair still hasn’t grown back. When all was said and done last year, my Cadre and I ended up exposing the Arch’s illegal poker career and stopping a major embezzling scheme he was running to pay for it all. Obviously, the final months of the school year were awkward between us, to say the least. The problem is, once it was all out on the table, we didn’t have anything to antagonize each other about. It’s not like we instantly became best friends or anything, but our old archenemy spark definitely cooled, and neither of us seemed to know if we should trust each other again. We saw each other a couple times over the summer; once at the Clairmont, the old-fashioned movie theater my cousin Jarek manages, on the opening night of League of Honor, and once at this very park. Archer, Troy, Nate, and a b