Croak

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Map

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

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26

About the Author

More Morbid Reads

Copyright © 2012 by Gina Damico

Map illustration copyright © 2012 by Carol Chu

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

Graphia and the Graphia logo are trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

www.hmhbooks.com

Text set in Garamond Premier Pro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Damico, Gina. Croak / by Gina Damico. p. cm. Summary: A delinquent sixteen-year-old girl is sent to live with her uncle for the summer, only to learn that he is a Grim Reaper who wants to teach her the ISBN: 978-0-547-60832-7 [1. Death—Fiction. 2. Future life—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.D1838Cr 2012 [Fic]—dc23 2011017125

Manufactured in the United States of America

DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

4500341976

For Mom, Dad, and Lisa.

In exchange for years upon years of supporting my nincompoopery, I offer you this simple, heartfelt dedication.

Call it even?

Let’s kick off this shindig with a
Titanic
-size thank-you to my rocktastic agent, Tina Wexler. Simply put, none of this would exist without you and your steadfast kickassery. You’ve breathed life into my work, loved my characters as if they were family, and read more emails, drafts, and misguided tangents than I can shake a scythe at. Thank you so, so much for seeing a spark and sticking it out with me.

To my editor Julie Tibbott, who finds the humor in board games, gentlemanly named roosters, and death-related puns and is therefore a rare, treasured find. Thank you for your encouragement, collaboration, and adoption of my merry band of misfits. Thanks also to Michael Neff and the New York Pitch Conference for giving me the kick in the pants I so dearly needed.

To my parents, for their unflagging love in all its forms (encouragement, money, eye-rolling). Mom, thank you for reading to me from day one—it made all the difference. Dad, thank you for keeping bookstores in business.

To my sister, Lisa, whose refusal to be killed by the Lego I fed her when she was a baby made me rather angry at the time but now pleases me greatly, as I can’t imagine life without her.

To my big, awesome Italian family for always sending good thoughts and good eggplant parm my way. And to the in-law clan, for coming with a pre-established YA fan club.

To every single member of the Committee for Creative Enactments at Boston College between 2001 and 2005: You are the reason I started writing. Hands down. I adore you more than any drunken Baggo words can say, and I thank you dearly. Profigliano!

To Brittany “Hotpants” Wilcox, for the countless Red Lobster dinners, and Allison “Nickname Unprintable” D’Orazio, for agreeing with me in thinking—nay, knowing—that sad trombones are the funniest things on earth.

To the Onondaga County Public Library for publishing my very first work when I was five years old, a story about dead rabbits that, in retrospect, makes a hell of a lot more sense now. Also, huge thanks to all libraries and librarians everywhere. Keep at it.

Other invaluable contributors include Azadeh Ariatabar Brown and her bitchin’ website skills, TVGasm, and everyone at all the jobs I’ve ever had, even that crappy temp one. Thanks also to milk, Australia, whoever invented the DVR,
The Simpsons,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Bauer, Toby the wee computer, and, finally, Utz Cheese Balls, for being both delicious
and
packaged in massive, heart-disease-inducing buckets.

To Big Fat Lenny Cat: your unconditional enthusiasm for anything having to do with me is so appreciated, even if you are roughly the same weight and shape of a bowling ball. To Carl, the other cat: you’re okay too.

To my husband, Will, whose adamant insistence that I not get a real job and instead pursue these writing shenanigans is the very reason this is an actual book and not some forgotten, scribbled notes on the back of a crossword puzzle. Thank you for not hurling me out of the house every time I’ve asked you to read the newest revision. Sooo much.

And finally, to you, dear reader, for picking up this book! There’s no way you could have known that it was rigged with explosives, but since it would be disastrous to put it down now, enjoy!

Lex wondered, for a fleeting moment, what her principal’s head might look like if it were stabbed atop a giant wooden spear.

“I can’t imagine why you’re smiling, young lady,” Mr. Truitt said from behind his desk, “but I can assure you that there is nothing funny about this situation. How many of your classmates must end up in the emergency room before you get it through that head of yours that fighting on school property is strictly forbidden?”

Lex yawned and pulled the hood of her black sweatshirt even farther over her face.

“Stop that.” Her mother pushed it back to reveal a messy head of long black hair. “You’re being rude.”

“I’m in an awkward position here,” the principal continued, running a hand through his greasy comb-over. “I don’t
want
to expel Lex. I know you two are good parents; Cordy is practically a model student!” He paused and eyed Lex for a moment to let this sink in, hoping to maybe guilt the wicked girl into obedience. Her face, however, remained stony.

“But when it comes to Lex, I don’t see any other choice in the matter,” he went on, frowning. “I’m sorry, but the list of scars that my students have sustained at the hand of your daughter grows longer each week. Poor Logan Hochspring’s arm will forever carry an imprint of her dental records!”

“You
bit
him?” Lex’s father said.

“He called me a wannabe vampire,” she said. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know—maybe
not
bite him?”

Lex zoned out as her parents once again launched into the traditional practice of begging Mr. Truitt for just one more chance. She had heard it so many times by now that she could even mouth the words in certain places, with a little “She’s just troubled, you see” sprinkled with a dollop of “It’s probably just a phase” and closing, of course, with the ever-popular “It’ll be different this time, you have our word.” Lex stuck a slender finger into her mouth and fished around until she found a small blond hair. She pulled it out of her teeth with a quick snap, the memory of Logan Hochspring’s startled cries of pain ringing through her ears.

“Very well,” Mr. Truitt finally said, standing up. “One more chance. With only a week left in the school year, I can hardly justify an expulsion.” He shook her parents’ hands with a meaty paw, then regarded Lex with a smile. “Perhaps a summer away will do you some good.”

Lex hissed.

As she was yanked out to the parking lot, however, the principal’s cryptic farewell began to trouble her. And something about the way he had smiled—the way doctors beam at children right before jabbing them with tetanus shots—felt very ominous.

“What did he mean, a summer away?” she asked.

“I
knew
you weren’t listening,” said her mother. “We’ll talk about it over dinner.”

“Can’t wait,” Lex said as her father shoved her into the back seat, taking note of the adorable way he attempted to engage the child safety lock without her noticing.

***

Lexington Bartleby, age sixteen, had spent the last two years transforming her squeaky-clean, straight-A life into that of a hooligan. A delinquent. A naughty little rapscallion, as it were.

To the untrained eye, it appeared as though Lex had simply grown bored. She had begun acting out in every way that a frustrated bundle of pubescence possibly could: she stole things, she swore like a drunken pirate, and she punched people. A lot of people. Nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, goths, gays, straights, blacks, whites, that kid in the wheelchair—no one was safe. Her peers had to admire her for that, at least—Tyrannosaurus Lex, as they called her, was an equal opportunity predator.

But something about this transformation didn’t quite add up. Her outbursts were triggered by the smallest of annoyances, bubbling up from nowhere, no matter how hard she tried to resist them. And worse still, they seemed to grow stronger as time went on. By the end of Lex’s junior year, every swear word was reverberating at a deafening volume, and each human punching bag lost at least one of his or her permanent bicuspids.

Parents, teachers, and classmates were stymied by the atrocious behavior of the menace in the black hoodie. These crime sprees simply did not fit with the bright, affable Lex everyone had known and loved for fourteen years prior. Even her twin sister, Concord, who knew her better than anyone, could not come up with a way to unravel this massive conspiracy. Lex was furious at
something,
and no one could figure out what.

But the truth was, Lex didn’t know either. It was as if her psyche had been infected with an insidious pathogen, like the viruses in all those zombie movies that turn otherwise decent human beings into bloodthirsty, unkempt maniacs who are powerless to stop themselves from unleashing their wrath upon the woefully underprepared masses. She just felt angry, all the time, at absolutely nothing. And whenever she tried to pinpoint the reason why, no matter how hard she tried, she was never able to come up with a single, solitary explanation.

***

The Bartleby house was a modest abode, squeezed and cramped onto a crowded neighborhood street in Queens, New York. One got the impression that the city planners, when making room for the slender pile of wood that the Bartlebys would one day call home, simply shoved the adjacent houses to either side, dumped a truckload of floorboards and piping and electrical wires into the empty space, and let nature take its course.

The dining room was at the rear of the house, overlooking a small backyard that contained the following items: a rusty swing set, a faded plastic turtle sandbox, a charcoal grill still crusty with the forgotten remains of last summer’s cookouts, and a once-beloved tree house now inhabited by a family of raccoons.

Lex looked out the sliding glass door at the remnants of her childhood and wondered if the tree house’s new tenants were rabid. Maybe she could train them as her minions.