Dead Kid Detective Agency

Evan Munday

Description

13-year-old October Schwartz is new in town, short on friends and the child of a clinically depressed science teacher. Naturally she spends most of her time in the Sticksville Cemetery, which happens to border her back garden. And that back garden just happens to be the home of five dead teenagers, each from a different era of the past! Soon October befriends the five kids and together - using October's smarts and the dead kids' ability to walk through walls - they form The Dead Kid Detective Agency, committed to solving Sticksville's most mysterious mysteries.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770900820
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Only The Good Die Young
– Billy Joel




October Schwartz, Zombie Tramp
October Schwartz is not dead.
Now, there are plenty of dead folks in this book (you read the title before starting the book, right?), it’s just that October Schwartz does not happen to be one of them. That said, it was her first day at Sticksville Central High School, and she sort of wished she were dead.
October had moved to Sticksville only a month earlier, and she didn’t know anyone yet, unless you counted her dad and maybe the Korean lady who sold her gum at the convenience store. She’d spent the month of August reading in the cemetery behind their house and working on writing her own book. So her first day of high school was even more nerve-wracking than it was for most of the students at Sticksville Central. The way she figured it, everybody was going to hate her. They certainly had in her old town. Why should this one be any different?
There were plenty of reasons for the average high school student to hate her: she wasn’t chubby, but she wasn’t not chubby, which, to those naturally inclined to be unpleasant people, meant she was fat. Also, she wore more black eyeliner than most — barring only silent film actresses, really. Add to that the natural black hair she’d inherited from her mom and her affinity for black clothing, and she was like a walking teen vampire joke waiting to happen.
Plus, she was a little kid. Due to the advanced state of middle school in her former town, a futuristic utopia of almost 40,000 citizens — most of them employed by the town’s snowmobile factory — she’d been allowed to skip grade eight altogether in Sticksville (only three hours away geographically), straight into the teenage Thunderdome of high school before she even reached her teens. She was twelve and headed into grade nine, where most of her classmates were well on their way to fourteen if they weren’t there already. This part was to remain a secret from everyone, if she had her way. But even if her classmates didn’t know, October was sure they could smell the tween on her — the stench of Sour Keys and Saturday morning cartoons.
As October pulled on a black T-shirt, she began to imagine burgeoning extracurricular clubs founded on the members’ communal hatred of October Schwartz, its members wearing T-shirts emblazoned with hilarious anti-October slogans.
October’s dad — Mr. Schwartz to you — taught grade eleven and grade twelve biology, as well as auto repair at Sticksville Central, so it was sort of his first day, too. But somehow, October doubted her dad was anxious about what people would think of his clothes and hair.
She left for school early that morning, because she was cautious about that sort of thing. About other sorts of things, she wasn’t very cautious at all, as you’ll see. She shouted goodbye to her dad, who was still busy shaving in the washroom. He didn’t respond, but he was kind of concentrating, blaring music by Fleetwood Mac or some other band from the 1970s.
She walked into the backyard and out to Riverside Drive using the cemetery that bordered their backyard as a shortcut. Mr. Schwartz had been uncertain at first about purchasing a house so close to the town’s lowly cemetery. Not that he believed in ghosts, but there was something unseemly about it to him. However, the price was good and he wanted to find a home before the school year started, so he dismissed his uncertainties. October liked it. She smiled crookedly as she passed through the wide expanse of decaying stone and forgotten names on her way to the first day of the rest of her life.
The air was crisp and a bit cold for early September, like a Granny Smith apple left in the freezer by accident. October lived only about twenty minutes from Sticksville Central, so it wasn’t long before she pushed her way through the double doors of the school’s entrance. She opened her bag and unfolded her schedule.
Evidently, October wasn’t the only student concerned with arriving early. A veritable gaggle of other kids could already be seen congregating, conversing, and giggling inside the main corridor of the school.
One of these students — a tall one with auburn hair and a belt the width of a small diving board, who was standing with some friends beside the vending machines outside the cafeteria (spoiler alert: she’s a witch) — caught sight of October Schwartz and pursued her like a fashionable, but very silent homing missile. October, who was attempting to avoid contact with anyone and everyone, hurried past her. But she wasn’t quick enough to avoid the belt enthusiast’s loud slur:
“Zombie Tramp!”
Mortified, October made a sensible, strategic retreat to the girls’ washroom, which was thankfully empty. She gripped a porcelain sink and stared dolefully at herself in the mirror. Two minutes into high school and things were off to a horrible start. But, above all else, October was determined not to cry at high school. Ever. She was still twelve, but she wasn’t a baby.
She tried to fill her mind with thoughts different from her new “Zombie Tramp” status: her birthday, her dad, and her new classes. What did Zombie Tramp even mean? Why Tramp? Why not Zombie Floozy? Yet, because she was staring into a mirror, her mind kept drifting back to her big, stupid face.
Her dad often told her she was “darn cute,” because he was related to her, but October never believed him. Her dad was no prize himself; how would he know what cute was? October did a quick self-analysis in the mirror. She might have overdone it with the eyeliner today, and maybe she should have taken more effort with her hair. Around her neck, she wore a gift left behind by her mom, a silver ankh necklace. It was probably the eyeliner and all the black that was encouraging the Zombie Tramp comparison.
A short girl with a ponytail entered the washroom and October turned on the taps, pretending she was washing her hands, then hastily exited, wiping her hands on her black jeans. French class would start soon, and October wasn’t sure where her classroom was yet. Or her locker.
When October found her locker, at the top of the arts corridor, she also found another bit of unpleasantness. That very same tall, trendily dressed girl, the one who played so fast and loose with the term Zombie Tramp, was standing right beside her locker. The girl faced the other direction, chatting with a group of similarly attired compatriots who had formed a semicircle that blocked most of the hallway.
“Did you see what she was wearing?” the pointy-faced ringleader asked. Rhetorically, it would appear. “Uh, hello , Janet. Last year called. They want their boots back.”
“And their hair! Haw! ” added a little wisp of a girl with a very large laugh. Other girls chimed in; a girl with a goose neck and blonde hair, and a shorter girl with a shirt that read, “So many boys, so little time!”
As the symposium continued, October quietly opened her locker, slid her knapsack inside, and extracted her binder and pencil case, hoping none of the girls would notice her. She felt a little like she was playing Operation, trying to remove the patient’s bread basket without touching the metal edges. Tragically, she was never any good at that game.
“Hey! Zombie Tramp is back!”
Oh, piss right off , October thought.
“You’re new in town, right?” her tormentor with the prodigious belt asked, whipping around to face her. October stood, silent as a tomb — well, not some of the tombs encountered later in this book, but as silent as tombs usually are.
“Well, you can go back to wherever you came from. We’ve already got a couple of goth skeezebags here. Don’t require any more . . . ’specially not the extra-large variety.”
Her minions stared at October, waiting for her to spontaneously combust from the insult.
“That means you’re fat,” whispered the girl who apparently fretted about the ratio of time to boys.
“Ashlie Salmons,” said an authoritative voice behind October. “Don’t you have some class to be at?”
When October turned to identify the speaker, she saw an older man with glasses and thinning white hair standing in the hallway. His arms were folded across his pudgy torso, strangulating his tie. October guessed he was a teacher at the school; otherwise, he was, like, the worst student ever. He frowned at Ashlie Salmons (who, dear readers, is that auburn-haired super-creep we all hate now). The older man arched a bushy, white eyebrow.
“Ms. Salmons, class is about to start. Wouldn’t it be great to begin the school year by arriving on time?” A smirk split the older man’s face.
Ashlie and her friends scattered like cockroaches in a lit room. Well, perhaps not that quickly. They scattered like cockroaches with some sense of decorum.
“Thank you . . . uh, sir,” October stammered.
The older man’s smirk made a subtle transition into a smile. “Not a problem, young lady,” he said. “You look new. Ashlie Salmons began attending Sticksville Central last year, and certainly made an impression on her classmates. But I’ve figured out how she operates. She can smell fear.” He chuckled a bit as he sniffed the air like a dog, then turned on this heel. He continued to speak to October as he walked away. “Don’t worry too much. Their bark is worse than their bite . . . Actually, I think their bark is their bite. Either way, have a good first day.”
He left October stunned outside her open locker. It certainly didn’t seem like a teacher should talk that way about other students. But maybe she was naive about what high school teachers were like. She had French class in two minutes, so she’d soon find out.

The remainder of October’s morning wasn’t nearly as eventful as her pre-class locker encounter. French class wasn’t particularly scary or dread-inducing. It was, to the contrary, October’s best subject. She was, how you say, un connoisseur