The Dragon in the Library

Chapter 1

Do you seriously want to spend the first day of summer vacation with a bunch of dead people?” Josh asked. He was a tall, skinny boy with brown skin and tight curls. If you had to pick one word to describe him, he’d be very disappointed in you, because Josh believed that a wide vocabulary was very important.
   “They’re buried!” Kit said. “It’s not like they’re zombies. It’s just a cemetery. And it’s so overgrown it’s basically a park.” Kit was stocky, pale, and red-haired. If you had to pick one word to describe her, it would probably be muddy.
 
   “A park full of dead bodies,” Josh said with a shudder. “I don’t care if they’re buried. I’ll still know they’re there.”
   It was the beginning of summer vacation, and Kit and her friends were sitting on Kit’s bedroom floor, arguing about what to do that day.
 
   “Let’s go to the library instead,” said Alita. “There are absolutely no dead bodies anywhere in the library.”
   “Yet,” said Kit darkly. “What if I die of boredom?”
   Alita was about half Kit’s size in every direction. Her eyes were dark, her skin was brown, and her thick black hair was divided into two perfect braids. If you had to pick one word to describe her, it would probably be intense. Her eyes looked as if they could bore through solid concrete.
   Josh sat upright, making excited gestures with his long, skinny arms. “You won’t die of boredom. There are so many books at the library!”
   “But I don’t like books,” protested Kit. “They have words in them.”
   “You don’t have to read them,” said Alita. “But I need to get a book. Urgently. It’s basically a matter of life and death.”
   “But it’s so . . . bluuuuurrrgh in the library,” complained Kit.
   “Pleeeease,” Alita went on. “I need the new Danny Fandango, and if we’re not quick, all the copies will be gone. I’ve been waiting a year to find out what happens next.”
   It was a beautiful sunny day. Kit, Josh, and Alita were allowed to walk anywhere within a mile as long as they stuck together. Freedom was theirs. But for some baffling reason, Kit’s friends wanted to go somewhere you had to be quiet and behave. Sometimes her friends made no sense. And not just when they used really long words.
   “If we go to the cemetery instead of the library, we can climb trees!” said Kit. This, she felt, was a powerful argument.
   “Or, to put it another way,” said Josh, “if we go to the cemetery, we’ll have to climb trees. And get mud on ourselves.” He gestured down at his pristine sneakers. Kit didn’t understand how it was possible for shoes to stay that clean.
   “And maybe, if we climb trees,” Josh went on, “we’ll fall from a great height and die.”
   “We won’t die,” said Kit.
   “OK, we’ll be maimed, then,” said Josh. “I don’t want to be maimed. I want to read Danny Fandango.”
 
   “Come on, Kit. We can go to the cemetery afterward. We promise,” said Alita. She gave a pleading look, opening her dark eyes wide and fluttering her long eyelashes. Kit knew that trick—Alita was the baby of her family, and she always got her own way.
   “Yes, we promise. I swear on my signed copy of Danny Fandango and the Cauldron of Poison,” said Josh.
   This was a serious oath, Kit knew. Josh kept the book in his bedroom in a glass case like it was a museum exhibit. Kit wouldn’t be surprised if he had set up lasers and alarms all around it.
   “Come on, Kit,” repeated Alita, who was almost as big a Danny Fandango fan as Josh, although not as into lasers. She was more likely to have trained her dog to guard her copy. Alita’s dog scared most people. It was big enough to ride like a horse. But Alita treated it like a cute little kitten and had named it Fluffy. She’d insisted they adopt it from a dog shelter. Kit wondered how the dog shelter people had stopped it from eating all the other dogs.
 
   “I suppose we could go to the library first . . . ” said Kit, thinking longingly about the overgrown cemetery with its spooky stone angels and matted undergrowth full of cool insects and—one blissful day—a rat. “But just quickly, all right?”
   “Quick as Danny Fandango casting a Lightning Spell!” said Josh.
   “Quick as Lara Fandango casting an even faster one!” said Alita.
   Kit hadn’t read any of the Danny Fandango books because reading required sitting still, and sitting still was against everything she stood for. But from what Kit had picked up from her friends, Lara was Danny’s sister, and she was better at magic, but he was the Chosen One so got to do all the fun stuff.
   That sounded familiar. Kit’s older brother and sister always got to do the fun stuff. Kit’s Perfect Older Sister was Perfect in All Ways, according to her parents. Kit’s Wicked Older Brother was a Bad Boy and therefore required a lot of shouting and attention, and when he did even the slightest thing right, he got presents. Kit’s younger sister was only a toddler, and her job was to be Adorable and Covered in Jam. And her baby brother had a tiny scrunched-up face, cried a lot, and was Precious and Good Enough to Eat.
   Kit was . . . nothing in particular. She was average. Not incredibly smart, but not unintelligent. Not especially sporty, but not unable to catch, either. When people were picking teams, she was usually picked second or third. Never first. Never last.
   The only non-average thing about her was her size. Growing out of her sister’s hand-me-downs at an unnatural rate was her most remarkable skill, according to her parents. She was in the last year of elementary school now, but she had grown out of all of Perfect Older Sister’s school uniforms, so they’d had to buy a new one in the spring. That had led to a lot of tutting, but Kit didn’t see how it was her fault. She wasn’t growing on purpose. It just happened.
   “Let’s get this over with, then,” said Kit. “We’re going out!” she called as she passed her parents and her two younger siblings in the living room.