Jordan Jones and the Bureau of Ridiculous Missions

By Dustin Gross

Saving the world was NOT on today's to-do list.

Fourteen-year-old Jordan Jones just wanted to finish gym class without breaking anything. Instead, he threw a football into a vending machine and landed inside the Bureau of Ridiculous Missions—a top-secret agency buried beneath his middle school.

Armed with a juice-box walkie-talkie, a rollerblading tech genius, and zero clue what he's doing, Jordan is thrown into missions involving haunted mascots, cafeteria meat monsters, cursed band instruments, and whatever else oozes out of the walls when the grown-ups aren't looking.

Fast-paced, hilarious, and totally bonkers in the best way, this middle-grade novel is perfect for fans of Percy Jackson, Spy School, and Men in Black—if they were run by sarcastic teenagers and powered by nachos.

If you like wild gadgets, weird mysteries, and heroes who survive by the seat of their gym shorts, Jordan Jones is your guy.

Welcome to the Bureau of Ridiculous Missions. Try not to die.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dustin Gross
• Release date: Jul 31, 2025
• ISBN: 9798231792139

Dustin Gross

Dustin Gross is a genre-hopping indie author with a taste for the hilarious, the brutal, and the brutally hilarious. His books range from satirical animal epics and absurd sci-fi comedies to raw, honest nonfiction and faith-soaked reflections. Known for long, flowing chapters and a voice that balances grit with wit, Dustin creates stories that entertain, challenge, and sometimes make readers spit their coffee. Whether he's skewering TikTok culture, digging through forgotten history, or dragging flawed heroes toward redemption, his work refuses to sit neatly on a shelf—and that's exactly the point.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Spiral That Changed Everything

There are exactly three things I’m really good at: throwing tight spirals, eating an entire pizza without breathing between slices, and pretending I didn’t do the thing I obviously just did. That last one is more of a survival skill than a talent, especially at Gristle Creek Middle School, where the teachers have a sixth sense for blame and a seventh sense for disappointment. On this particular Thursday, I wasn’t trying to get noticed. I was trying to not pull a hamstring during our tragically supervised gym class—which was basically organized chaos inside a building that smelled like old sneakers and mopped-up shame. Coach Tallman had rolled out a couple of crusty footballs, barked something about airing it out, and then wandered off to do paperwork, which I’m pretty sure meant watch cat videos in his office with the door cracked just enough to hear if we were setting anything on fire. I wasn’t trying to show off, either. That’s what makes this whole mess even worse. I was trying to hit Jamal on a quick slant—standard backyard stuff—and I might have overthrown it. By like, fifteen feet. It’s not my fault the guy runs routes like a shopping cart with a flat wheel. So I adjusted, stepped into it, let the ball rip, and boom. Perfect spiral. Tight enough to hum. The kind of throw that makes your fingers buzz when it leaves your hand, like it knows it was born to fly. Except it didn’t hit Jamal. It didn’t even hit anybody. It soared past the half-hearted defense, curved like it was being guided by an invisible quarterback coach, and slammed—dead center—into the ancient vending machine in the corner of the gym.

Now, let me explain something about that vending machine.

No one used it. Not because it didn’t work, but because nobody remembered it existed. It had no labels on the buttons, no prices, and no snacks behind the dusty glass. Just rows of mystery coils, a single faded sticker that read PROPERTY OF HALL B— (the rest had peeled off), and a weird hum that sounded like a cat purring in reverse. I don’t even know why it was in the gym. It wasn’t bolted down, and every janitor since the Truman administration had probably ignored it out of some deep, unspoken fear. All I know is my football hit it with a loud CLANG, bounced off the glass, and the machine tipped forward. Not a wobble. Not a little lean. I’m talking full-on Titanic’s going down, get off the deck kind of tip. There was a moment—one holy, suspended second—where gravity hesitated, like it was asking me, You sure about this? And then, down it went.

Straight forward.

Onto the floor.

Right in front of everybody.

You ever hear the sound a vending machine makes when it hits a basketball court from three feet up? No? It sounds like doom. Like metal meeting wood with the kind of crunch that makes everyone instinctively suck in their breath and look around for an adult. And inside, it wasn’t just a thud. It was a shudder, like something deep under the court woke up. The lights flickered. The scoreboard reset to 00:00. And then... the floor opened.

No joke. The hardwood cracked. A line split beneath the vending machine like someone had drawn it with a lightning bolt. And then the whole thing—machine, ball, snackless mystery—sank into the floor on a metal platform with a quiet hydraulic hiss. Underneath it? A staircase. Old. Stone. Lit with flickering green lights and lined with weird pipes that hissed and rattled like they had secrets. I did what any responsible, rational, safety-conscious kid would do in that moment: I walked straight toward it.

Now before you say, Jordan, maybe tell someone, let me explain something else about me: I have an allergic reaction to boredom. If a teacher drones on too long, I start twitching. If a classmate tells a story without punchlines, I mentally check out. So when a vending machine vanishes and reveals a secret staircase? Yeah. I’m gonna investigate. I’m not wired to walk away from plot twists. Plus, the ball was gone. My ball. The one I borrowed from Coach’s personal stash, the one he claims is regulation even though it’s obviously slightly deflated. If I don’t get that back, I get detention and the Stink Eye of Shame, which lasts longer than the actual punishment. So I jogged over, peered down the stairs, and felt the temperature drop about ten degrees. The air smelled like copper and dust and whatever they use to clean surgery rooms in horror movies. There was a soft humming sound—like electricity thinking evil thoughts—and just enough light to make the shadows feel deliberate.

Behind me, nobody noticed. Coach was still AWOL. The class had moved on to arguing about who got to be quarterback next. A few kids looked at the spot where the vending machine used to be, shrugged, and went back to half-jogging like limp penguins. Apparently, I was the only one who saw a mystery worth chasing. So I took one last glance around, then slipped down the stairs before the opening could change its mind.

What I found under Gristle Creek Middle School should not exist. Not in a school built in the ‘70s. Not in a town best known for its annual lawnmower parade. And definitely not beneath a vending machine filled with nothing.

The stairway opened into a tunnel—steel walls, flickering lights, signs that read things like AUTHORIZED MISCHIEF ONLY and IF YOU TOUCH THE RED BUTTON, TELL YOUR FAMILY YOU LOVE THEM. My footsteps echoed, and the air got weirder with each step, like breathing in microwaved science fiction. At the end of the hall, there was a giant metal door. No handle. Just a retinal scanner and a keypad.

I blinked. The scanner blinked back. Then it beeped.

The keypad flashed a message:

WELCOME, JONES. CLEARANCE: TEMPORARY. PROBATIONARY. POSSIBLY ACCIDENTAL.

ENTER. AND DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING STUPID.

The door hissed open.

Now, I’ve seen secret bases in movies—sleek ones with glowing walls and computer banks the size of refrigerators. This was not that. This was like someone tried to build a spy base inside a basement supply closet during a caffeine bender. There were wires hanging like jungle vines, ceiling fans held up by duct tape and hope, and a giant map of the school covered in blinking lights and Post-it notes. A couch sat in one corner with a sign that said TIME OUT ZONE—FOR AGENTS ONLY, and beside it, a fish tank full of what I think were jellybeans. Floating. Still wiggling. I chose not to investigate.

And standing in the middle of it all, eating nachos out of a tactical helmet, was a man in Crocs. Lime green. With little superhero pins on them.

Ah, he said, not looking up. You found the elevator. I was starting to think the ball plan wouldn’t work. But here you are. Jones, right?

...Yeah, I said, because I was starting to doubt everything about my life and needed a second to catch up.

Good hands. Better arm. Questionable aim, but hey—results are results.

He finally looked up. Balding, glasses, beard that hadn’t decided what shape it wanted to be. He had a BRM patch on his hoodie, which was zipped halfway and read: AGENT GOOSE. Underneath was a faded T-shirt with a cartoon goat saying, I REGRET NOTHING.

Uh, I said, eloquently. Hi.

Welcome to the Bureau of Ridiculous Missions, he said, tossing a nacho in the air and catching it in his mouth like he’d done this introduction fifty times today. Or BRM, if you’re lazy. We handle the stuff too weird, too dumb, or too ‘not worth the paperwork’ for the real agencies. You ever seen a haunted kazoo? A meatloaf that bites back? A ghost that only haunts the Wi-Fi?

I blinked.

He nodded. Yeah, that’s us. And you, Mr. Jones, are our latest accidental recruit. Congratulations. Don’t touch the glowing orb. Seriously. It bites.

...Why me?

Agent Goose shrugged and pointed to a nearby screen. It showed footage of me dodging kids during gym class, juking like I had cleats on, spinning out of tackles, and launching that spiral like my life depended on it.

You’re fast. You’re reactive. You adapt midair. And most importantly... He tapped a button. The screen changed to me standing over the vending machine stairwell, looking completely baffled but