Croak by Gina Damico

Author:Gina Damico
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: David_James Mobilism.org
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2012-03-20T06:00:00+00:00

14

A lot can happen in a month. Hideous caterpillars morph into beautiful butterflies. Christmas trees go from symbols of holiday cheer to naked, shriveled cadavers doomed to the woodchipper. And one month after arriving in Croak, Lex too had undergone a curious transformation. She had delved into a state hitherto unknown, been introduced to a foreign territory, and changed into something she never could have imagined.

Lex had become popular.

In fact, she had risen so quickly through the social ranks of Croak’s Junior Grim population that it seemed as though no one could remember a time when she hadn’t been at the top.

“So we’re at this really nice restaurant for our birthday, and Cordy takes the biggest bite of steak I’ve ever seen,” she told the group, sitting outside around the fountain as they ate lunch. “It’s roughly the size and shape of a golf ball, I kid you not. Unsurprisingly, she starts choking. So my dad grabs her around the waist and does the Heimlich, the wad of beef soars out of her mouth, and bam—I catch it midair! But Cordy was too busy dealing with the asphyxiation and all to notice. So I hid it in a napkin, took it home, then wrapped it up and gave it to her as a birthday present later that night. We laughed so hard, the neighbors complained.”

The Juniors laughed too. “Classic,” said Kloo, wiping tears from her eyes. “Classic.”

“Yeah. She almost died.” Lex grabbed a near-empty ketchup bottle and shook it vigorously over the onion rings that had been given to her. When nothing came out, she ran to the door of the diner and stuck her head in. “Dora!” she yelled across the restaurant. “Would it kill you to replace these ketchups once in a while? I know you treasure your relics from the Stone Age, but it might be time to let go!”

The elderly proprietor hobbled over. “What a mouth on this one,” she grumbled to herself, practically throwing a new bottle at Lex. “Whatever happened to respecting your elders?”

“Isn’t that what paleontologists are for?”

Pandora scowled, her wrinkles like crags. “Young lady, you are the rudest, most despicable hellion ever to disgrace the grounds of this establishment.” Her frown transformed into a hideous gaping grin. “You remind me of me.”

Lex smiled. “Thanks, Dora. Oh, this morning’s weirdest was a guy choking on a hamster.”

“Sweet sassy molassy,” Pandora said in awe.

A couple of weeks before, Lex had naïvely bragged to Dora that she had already witnessed every single way a human being could possibly bite the big one. Dora, a former Killer herself, promptly smacked Lex upside the head and informed her of her error. “I once Killed a gentleman who had fallen into a swimming pool full of porcupines,” she said. “Some deaths defy all reason. There’ll always be a few humdingers, mark my word.”

The endless cavalcade of inconceivable deaths soon forced Lex to concede. There was the woman who tried to use a hair dryer in the shower. The airport runway attendant overrun by a rogue luggage cart.

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