By the Grace of Todd Read online

  Louise Galveston

  Illustrated by Patrick Faricy

  Special thanks to

  Michelle Brown

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA)

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

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  Penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2014 Working Partners Ltd.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61096-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For Bobby and all our gracious little people.

  PROLOGUE

  THE TODDLIANS

  “Little ones, have I ever told you the legend of how the Great and Powerful Todd rescued your granny and me and all of our people from slavery to the demonic being called ‘Max’?”

  “Yes, yes, but tell us again!” Little Andromeda begged as the other children cooed with excitement.

  Persephone, my beloved wife, smacked my arm with the cowboy hat she’d fashioned from leaves. A bit crumpled off, and I dusted it away. “Tarnation, Lewie, I’ve told you not to call me ‘Granny’! Makes me sound so old.”

  “Ah, well,” I sighed. “It seems my memory isn’t what it once was.”

  “But you remember the science fair and the pit of fiery dooooom, right, Grandpa Lewis?” Andromeda implored, her voice panicked. Her long purple hair fanned out into the soft fibers of a fluffy pink slipper where she and the other Grandlings were enjoying a bedtime snack of dandruff flakes.

  “Of course I do, Andy. I—”

  “Tell us about Max, Grandpa Lewis! Tell us about the time he created an earthquake that nearly killed you all!” chorused the other Grandlings.

  “Well, I guess some of you may have heard this one before”—I smiled at their tiny freckled faces and climbed atop Mount Gym Clothes so they could all hear me—“but listen closely, and I imagine Granny—er—your grandmother will make you some of her famous dead skin cell and toe jam sandwiches.”

  “Yummm!” purred the Grandlings.

  “Now children,” I began. “It all started when—” I stopped midsentence and turned to Persephone, who’d set to work making the sandwiches. “Don’t forget to cut the ragged edges off mine, dear.”

  Persephone scoffed, shaking her head. “Been married all this time an’ thet dodgery codger thinks I’m gonna forget to cut his galdurn crusts off,” she muttered to herself.

  I smiled at her, winking, and turned back to the children. “In the days before Todd had proved his power by vanquishing his enemies, the ferocious and foul Giants of Newton Elementary, our people lived precariously in Toddlandia of old in primitive huts upon a filthy sport sock—”

  “You young ones have no notion of how good you have it now!” A familiar voice interrupted me, and I turned to see Herman the Learned approaching from the library. “Why, when I was your age, if we wanted a dead skin cell sandwich, we had to go out and dig up toe jam from the dirt-filled fibers with our bare hands. And if we wanted—”

  “You mean you didn’t have heaps of ripe gym clothes to eat from?” Lyle asked, his voice cracking slightly. Lyle was the oldest Grandling and loved to show off his knowledge to the younger children. “I thought our people had always lived in Todd’s bedroom.”

  “That’s right, tenderfoot,” Persephone said as she slathered the golden toe-butter across a piece of dead skin. “But in the olden days, we had to fend for ourselves. The Great Todd didn’t even know we were alive.”

  The Grandlings gasped.

  “She speaks the truth. In those days we lived in complete darkness under Todd’s bed, and he had no idea of the existence of your grandmother or Herman the Learned”—I nodded at our old friend—“or any of our people.”

  “In fact,” added Herman, “we’d barely figured out how to rub two sticks together to make fire when His Greatness yanked us out from under the bed and brought us into the light.”

  Persephone snorted. “That’s right. And there’s a whole bunch of hair-raisin’ stuff that happened before the Ol’ Hairy Eyebrows got hold of us. Maybe you jest better tell it from the get-go, Pa.”

  “Perhaps you are right, my love. Children, would you like to hear how your grandmother and I met the Great and Powerful Todd?”

  The Grandlings cheered.

  I swallowed the rest of the sweat juice that was in my cup and cleared my throat. “Our history begins on the first day that Todd entered the kingdom of Wakefield Middle School—a fearsome place ruled by enormous and crude creatures called ‘the Zoo Crew’ . . .”

  CHAPTER 1

  My best friend, Duddy, looked up at the cloudless September sky and spoke. “Leonardo da Pinchy, we are so sorry that you died and stuff. You were a wicked awesome hermit crab, and we’ll really, really miss you.”

  He paused and looked over at me.

  I bit my lip, then muttered, “Keep going.”

  Duddy shrugged. “Okay.” He spread his arms and spoke in a loud, clear voice. “Anyway, Pinchy, thank you for letting us paint Koi Boy from Dragon Sensei on your shell with my sister’s nail polish. That was really cool of you. And it was also really cool of you to let go that one time you pinched my hand with your big claw, even if we did have to stick you under the faucet for you to do it. I mean, I’m sure it was scary for you too. And the bruise went away in a week or so.” He stopped and glanced at me again.

  I’m sure he was thinking I’d have more to add to Pinchy’s eulogy. After all, he was my pet. But it was Duddy who’d really cared about Pinchy. In fact, it was Duddy who’d realized he was even dead.

  “Hey, how’s Pinchy?” he’d asked just ten minutes earlier, looking up from my laptop. We were in my room, watching my latest download of Dragon Sensei to unwind from a way-too-long first day at Wakefield Middle School.

  “Who?” I grabbed the mouse,
pausing the video.

  “Duh, Todd! Leonardo da Pinchy, your only pet! Can I get him out?”

  Oh right. That Pinchy. “Uh, sure,” I replied. My stomach began to tense up. I had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

  Duddy picked up the crabitat from the shelf over my bed and shook it. “Huh. He’s not moving.”

  Uh-oh. I looked back longingly at my computer screen. “I haven’t had Pinchy out in a couple of days, so he might be shy . . .”

  Duddy lifted the lid off the aquarium and leaned over the open tank. “Whew!” he said, pulling his head back. “That stinks! Did you say a couple of days, Todd, or a couple of weeks?”

  My face reddened as Duddy reached down to get Pinchy. “I’m not sure you should do that—”

  Too late. As soon as Duddy touched him, Pinchy’s body fell right out of his shell. Even from a distance I could see how pasty and shriveled he looked.

  “I think he’s dead,” Duddy said, his mouth agape.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

  “Do you think he got sick?” Duddy asked me, wide-eyed as he gently set Pinchy’s body down on my desk. “Can hermit crabs get cancer?”

  “Uh . . .” I felt a pang of guilt trying to remember the last time I’d given him food or water. Saturday, maybe? But this past Saturday or the one before—who knew?

  “Hold on—I’ll be right back.” Duddy walked out of my room, his footsteps clomping as he headed toward the kitchen. A few seconds later, he reappeared, holding a plastic bag and a matchbox. “For the funeral.”

  Now we were standing outside in my backyard looking at a hole we’d dug under a big tree. Inside the hole was the matchbox we’d buried . . . and inside the matchbox was Pinchy.

  I felt Duddy’s earnest stare urging me to speak.

  “Uh, Pinchy, I’m really sorry. Decompose in peace, little buddy. Amen.”

  Duddy nodded, satisfied. If he’d figured out I was guilty of crabicide, he didn’t let on. “Leonardo da Pinchy, may you go—”

  But Duddy was cut off by a guffaw coming from the yard next door.

  A familiar guffaw.

  “HAW HAW HAW HAW! HAW HAW HAW! Thhhhhhhbbt.”

  The lispy part at the end was new. Over the summer, our nemesis, Ernie Buchenwald, had gotten the World’s Largest Retainer. He was clearly still figuring out how to handle the spit discharge.

  Duddy paled as Ernie’s huge, pink, orange-Brillo-topped head appeared over the fence. Ernie jabbed a thick finger in our direction and laughed some more. “HAW HAW HAW! HAW HAW HAW HAW! Are youth having a thuneral thor a crab?”

  Duddy glanced quickly at me, then inhaled, steeling his shoulders. He kicked some dirt over Pinchy’s matchbox, and I heard him whisper something that ended in Amen as he very sneakily did the sign of the cross under his jacket.

  “Yourth not going to say hi, dweebths?” Ernie cajoled.

  “Hi,” I mumbled, staring down at my feet. All summer I had hoped that the start of middle school would bring with it a new era, free of torment. But obviously that was wishing for too much.

  “We’re just trying to pay our respects,” Duddy explained. He stood with his arms crossed as if he was going to singlehandedly protect Pinchy’s grave.

  “Oh really?” Ernie replied. “Leth juth thee about that.” He had already heaved a huge ham-hock leg over the fence and was currently lifting himself after it. Fortunately for Pinchy, it wasn’t hermit crabs he was interested in. He dropped to the ground and focused his greedy eyes on me. “Hey, Todd, where’th that thkateboard of yourths?”

  “Skateboard?” I whispered. After a few months of begging, my parents had finally gotten me one for my birthday. It was barely a month old.

  “Yeth, your thkateboard. I think you thould loan it to me.”

  I stiffened. Ernie’s idea of a “loan” meant for the next hundred years. “Um, my dad took it to work.”

  Ernie sneered as he headed over to us, clenching and unclenching his fists. He was huge and mean, but he wasn’t stupid. “At the hothpital?”

  My dad was an ER nurse. He practically lived at the hospital these days, picking up extra shifts to cover our bills since my mom got laid off from her teaching job. “He, um, he wanted to show it to this kid who was admitted for smallpox.”

  Ernie raised his orange eyebrows so high they kissed his block of stiff curls. “Thmallpox?”

  Shoot. People still get smallpox, don’t they?

  A huge pink finger suddenly poked me between the eyes, nearly knocking off my glasses. “Lithen here, you little cockroach. I want that thkateboard and I want it now, or I’ll thend Max Loving after you tomorrow.”

  I froze. Max Loving was the only person at Wakefield Middle School more terrifying than Ernie. His name was a cruel cosmic joke. He was just as big as Ernie but three times as mean, and he didn’t have the same grudging affection that I liked to imagine Ernie had for me and Duddy after going through five years of Roosevelt Elementary School together.

  Max had gone to Newton Elementary, the huge elementary school across town. It was rumored that something in the cafeteria made all the students huge and mean. Or maybe that was just a dream I had.

  My arm quivered with purpose. I knew what I had to do. I was just about to point toward our garage, where my new skateboard was resting on a custom-made shelf my dad had built in the middle of the night, when suddenly—

  “Todd Galveston Butroche!”

  The screen door banged open and my mom appeared on the top step, hair wild and her face smeared with some kind of purple substance. On her hip she balanced the Toddling Terror, my one-year-old sister, Daisy, who was cackling maniacally and wiggling her same-weird-shade-of-purple fingers.

  “Hello, Mrs. Butroche!” Duddy exclaimed.

  “I thertainly hope thith weather keepth up, don’t you?” Ernie added, grinning obnoxiously.

  “Oh, hello, Duddy. Ernie,” Mom replied through her teeth, only now registering that we had company. “Would you boys mind going home and excusing Todd? I need to see him for a minute, please.”

  I took one last glance at Duddy. The look of intense sympathy he shot back confirmed my suspicions—I’d just been delivered from one bully into the hands of another. “See you later,” he whispered, and scampered off through the gate to the driveway, Ernie right behind him.

  I frowned, watching them go. I hoped Ernie wouldn’t give Duddy any trouble, but at least Duddy wasn’t carrying anything much to steal. Still, Duddy surviving Ernie without me did seem like a tall order. Maybe I could walk right behind them and . . .

  My thoughts ground to a halt as I noticed the silence. I looked at my mom.

  “Get inside,” she barked. Flames seemed to shoot out of her brown eyes, just like the SharkTreuse from Dragon Sensei. “You have a room to clean.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “Did I or did I not specifically tell you to put your paints away last night before you went to bed?” my mother snapped. I’d followed her and the Terror back into the house and was now trying my best to avert my eyes and look sorry.

  “And did I or did I not tell you Daisy would get into them?”

  “Daisy got into my paints?!” I echoed, realizing the full implications of what my mom was saying. If Daisy had gotten into my paints, that meant that the model of Oora, a Dragon Sensei character, that I’d been working on in my room was probably destroyed. I ran down the hallway, threw open my bedroom door, and found that . . .

  Everything was fine.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked my mom. I glanced around my room, wondering what had her so upset. Sure, thanks to my little sister, there was a trail of purple, green, and gold that led from my desk, where I’d left my Oora painting, but my room looked pretty much the same as I had left it that morning. “It all seems okay to me.”

  “Okay? Okay? You call this okay?! Look a
t it, Todd Galveston! There are heaps of clothes all over the floor. There are more junk food wrappers here than in all of the grocery store. And those aren’t the only leftovers you couldn’t be bothered to clean up.” She motioned with disgust toward a half-eaten piece of pizza on my dresser. “I mean . . . this is what I found when I opened your bedroom door to see where your sister had gotten the paint. It’s not a room . . . it’s a pigsty!”

  “OUCH!!!!” I screamed. I looked down at the source of the pain—the one that wasn’t my mom. Princess VanderPuff, my mother’s horrible little poodle, had launched herself at me and dug her teeth deep into my ankle. It was VanderPuff’s usual greeting, but her timing couldn’t have been worse. I tried to pry Needle Teeth off my sock as my mom prattled on, thrusting out her arm and waving it around.

  “This is why I called you in and sent your friends home.” She poked a pile of festering laundry with her tennis shoe. “Who knows what kind of vermin you’re harboring? Rats or . . . or . . . roaches! Daisy could have been buried alive in here. Or eaten!”

  Daisy shrieked in agreement, then crawled out, probably in search of something else to destroy.

  “Look at your carpet, covered in paint. And . . . is that Pinchy’s shell?” She gestured at my bed. “What happened to him?”

  I gulped. “Um . . . he kind of . . . met his untimely demise.”

  That’s what the bad guy on Dragon Sensei always said when he killed someone.

  Mom’s eyes bugged. “What does that mean? Todd, you were feeding him and giving him water, right? You remember the lady at the pet store said you had to wet his gills every so often.”

  I just stared at her. I knew I should lie to save myself, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Mom drew her hands to her head, shaking like she was suffering from an earthquake only she could feel. “I just . . . Todd! It’s no wonder you couldn’t remember to take care of him. How could you even find him in this mess?” She looked around, her eyes tired.