A Cup of Normal by Devon Monk Read Free Book Online Page A

being too loud. Jugg and I crouched down next to it. The head was just a head again, the eyes blank, and not moving. Instead of a scream, it was smiling. I didn’t see any teeth, but a red bloodstain smeared the corner of its lips. My blood.
    Stupid rock.
    I pushed the side of my blankets up on top of my mattress so we could see under the bed.
    That was when I remembered the secret I kept under my bed. A secret I hadn’t told Jugg about because I’d figured he’d rat me out. A secret that wasn’t a secret any more. My very own raised dead.
    “Holy crap!” Jugg yelled. “Dickie’s under there!” Jugg shook his head. “Too cool! Didn’t you bury him last week?”
    I shrugged one shoulder. “I got lonely.”
    “But Boads — he’s dead, dude.”
    Here I smiled and the old excitement came out and some of my tired went away.
    “He used to be dead.”
    Jugg’s eyes got huge. He stopped chewing the Pixie Stick paper and swallowed it.
    “No.”
    “Oh yeah,” I said. “Watch.” I tucked my legs in criss-cross style and tapped my good hand on my knee. “Come here, Dickie. Come on. Come on. That’s a good boy. Who’s a good boy? Dickie’s a good boy.”
    The sound of tail thumping started up. Then a shadow under the bed inched toward us, toward light, and Jugg and I scooted back so Dickie had room to get out. He belly crawled and used his front legs to push up so he was sitting, more or less on his back legs that didn’t work too good anymore. Other than the busted legs and the kind of weird glowing green goo where his eyes should be, he looked almost like he had in life. Even dead, he was the best dog ever.
    But Jugg said, “Isn’t he kind of flat in the middle?”
    “Duh! He was run over by a car.” I scratched behind Dickie’s ear with my good hand. “He’s a good dead dog, yes he is.”
    “Does your mom know?”
    “No, Jugg. And I want to keep it that way. Help me roll the head under here and then we’ll push Dickie back under with it.”
    Dickie’s tail tapped the floor like a slow, hollow heartbeat. He didn’t pant like he used to, which made sense, since he didn’t need to breathe anymore, but still, there was a look to him tonight that was a little creepy. He kept staring at me and staring at me and wouldn’t stop.
    “Here, we need to put a t-shirt under the rock before we push it so it doesn’t scratch the floor — Mom would notice that,” I said.
    Jugg got up and pulled a t-shirt off my chair, then we put the shirt under as much of the rock as we could. Jugg gave the rock a push, and so did I, with my good hand. I was so busy thinking about the rock, and Mom waking up, that I wasn’t paying much attention to my bloody hand. Until I felt something tug on it. I looked over and Dickie had his jaws sunk into the sock around my hand.
    “Hey! Dickie — let go!” I said.
    I reached over with my other hand, but Dickie pushed himself to the side, taking my hand along with him so I was kind of stretched out.
    “Bad Dickie,” I said. “Let go, let go.” I slid a little across the floor in my blue jeans.
    Dickie shook his head. It made my hand sting so hard I felt tears in the corners of my eyes.
    “Crap, Dickie, that hurt! Let go.”
    Jugg jumped up and stood behind me. “Should I, you know, kill him again or something Boady?”
    “No!” Okay, maybe that was a weird thing to say, but Dickie was the last gift my dad had ever given me. Dickie was my dog and the first undead I’d ever raised. I felt a weird love for him. “Just try to distract him.”
    “With what?”
    That was a good question. Dickie had only been undead for a few days, and since he didn’t seem interested in eating or drinking, or really doing much more than lying like an undead rug under my bed, I wasn’t sure what he’d be interested in. Dickie shook his head again and tugged — his sharp teeth tearing all the way through the sock.
    I snatched my hand back and the sock came off. I thought Dickie would go for