CHAPTER SAMPLER

Alfred A. Knopf

M O J O
TIM THARP

New York

Keep Reading for a Sneak Peek . . .

CHAPTER 1

never set out to look for Hector Maldonado. I was just minding my own business, walking home from my parttime grocery-sacking job. This was fall of my junior year, and I was one of the carless crew. So my skinny little work buddy Randy Skivens and I were plodding down the side of one of the busier streets in our Oklahoma City suburb, not far from the high school, having our usual conversation about nothing. Randys like, In my opinion Death Race is the best racing video game of all time. I wasnt exactly the worlds biggest fan of racing games, but just for the sake of argument, I told him I thought Adrenaline Monster was the all-time best. He gaped at me for a second. Are you kidding, Dylan? Even Supercharger Pro is better than Adrenaline Monster. Im like, No way. That red car in Adrenaline Monster is the coolest car ever. You mean that classic 69 Mustang? Yeah, I love that car. Matter of fact, as soon as I get enough paychecks put away, Im going to buy one just like it. No youre not. Sure I am. Its going to be the fastest thing anybodys ever 1

seen. Ill pull into the high school parking lot and everybodyll be like, Check that out. Ive never seen anything so awesome. No they wont. You dont think people are going to be impressed by a 69 Mustang? Oh, theyd be impressed all right, but youre never going to get one. Why do you say that? Because you dont know anything about cars, and youre never going to save enough money to aord a 69 Mustang. And that was when these two ape men in an orange Camaro drove by, and the guy on the passenger side unloaded a half-full beer can that hit Randy right in the crotch. Randy wasnt a big guy, but he did have a big mouth and wasnt exactly a genius, so he screamed one of his favorite obscenities and, in the direction of the Camaro, launched the single-nger salute, a.k.a. the F sign. As in F for fool. Because thats what you have to be to ip o a couple of nineteen- or twenty-year-old vo-tech-dropout gearheads on a weeknight bender. The Camaro squealed to a stop. Randy and I looked at each other, bug-eyed. You are an idiot, I informed him. And Randys like, Ruuuuuun! So away we ran. Over the curb. Around our high school eld house. Past the practice eld. Onto the senior parking lot. Here, I have to admit I carry a few extra pounds, so Im not exactly a track star. And it didnt help when Randy stopped all of a sudden. Wait a second, he said. What the hell are you doing? 2

He bent over and plucked something up from the ground. I found a dollar. He held up the bill like it was a winning lottery ticket or something. Are you kidding me? I said. Come on! Luckily, the Camaro couldnt follow us directly but had to take the road to the east. Still, theyd hit the entrance to the parking lot just ahead of us, and doom would hammer us straight in the face if we didnt do something. Split up, I hollered. They cant follow us both. Without bothering to check which direction Randy took, I headed west and around the high school to the back of the buildingbehind the cafeteria where they dump the spoiled milk and the leftover rubbery Salisbury steaks. The slamming of car doors echoed through the cool fall-ofjunior-year evening, so I knew the ape men were close at hand. There was nothing to do but hide, and with the streetlight glaring down, I didnt have any shadows to duck into. So, reluctantly, I ipped back the lid of the nearest Dumpster, hoisted myself over the side, and plummeted into the dank refuse of high school. With the lid closed, it was pretty much pitch black, and the stench was enough to cause a dude to almost puke. But thats not all. As I tried to make myself at least a little comfortable, I leaned against what, for all the world, felt like somebodys arm. Im like, Jesus, Randy, how did you get in here already? No reply. Randy? I gave the arm a nudge, but still no response. I was like, Hmmm, this is strange. Maybe its just a garbage bag or something. But I never knew a garbage bag to have arms. I reached over and gave whatever it was a squeeze. It felt like an arm all right, though it was somewhat on the rigid side. Not 3

good. Either this guy was frozen sti with fear or he was frozen sti with a whole bunch of dead. Outside the Dumpster, the voices of the ape men piped up. Hey, you little high school wussies, come out and face the music. Yeah, added the other one. Were gonna play the bongos on your skulls, thats what kind of music were gonna play. Heh, heh, the other one snickered. Bongos. Thats good. That was the IQ level of what I was dealing with here. Stephen Hawking they were not. But cuddling up to what might be a corpse wasnt so cool either. Unlessan idea suddenly hit memaybe this wasnt a corpse after all. Maybe it was a dummy, like the kind they practice CPR on. Sure, I told myself, that had to be it. Somebody got a little too rambunctious during rst-aid lessons and busted the dummy, and the Dumpster was now its nal resting place. I reached up toward the head area and copped a feel. Hair. That was strange. Since when did they start making CPR dummies with hair? But it wasnt impossible, you know? If they can make bomb-detecting robots these days, why not a dummy with lifelike hair? A wonder of modern technology. And now here it was hiding in the Dumpster with me so Ape Man 1 and Ape Man 2 couldnt get their paws on us. You aint got a chance, said Ape Man 1. You might as well give up. We saw you run back here. And then Ape Man 2s like, Hey, I got an idea. An idea? That seemed unlikely coming from one of these knuckleheads, but there was always a rst time for everything. Their footsteps headed in my direction. Loud footsteps. These guys must be wearing boots. All the better to kick my butt with. 4

One of them banged on the side of the Dumpster. Come on, little wussies. Dont make us come in there and get you. Youre just gonna make it worse on yourself, the other one said. At this point, my choices were severely limited: 1. I could try to scrunch down in the trash, but that was likely to make too much noise. 2. I could try to hide behind the CPR dummy, but it probably wasnt big enough. Like I say, I carry a little extra weight. 3. I could sit there as quietly as possible and hope they went away. But of course they werent going anywhere. The lid to the Dumpster sprang open and the streetlights glare ooded in. Gotcha, said Ape Man 1. You aint gonna have any ngers left to ip people o with now, boys, added Ape Man 2. Their fat white faces loomed over me like two evil moons. Then something happenedtheir snarling mouths went horrorstruck. Ape Man 1s like, What the hell? And Ape Man 2 goes, Jesus, what did you do, kid? They looked at each other, and then it was like, both at the same time, they go, Shiiiiiiiittt! And bolted. I stood up just in time to see them ghting for the inside lane as they galloped around the corner of the building. Im like, Wow. What got into them? Then I looked down. It was no CPR dummy stowed away with me in that pile of trash. No. It was Hector Maldonado. 5

CHAPTER 2

ector Maldonado. Dead as a plank. You better believe I couldnt clamber out of that Dumpster fast enough. It was like just touching the same trash might make me catch whatever it was that killed him. But once I was out, despite a case of the cold shivers, I couldnt help gawking back in. I dont know why, but theres something about death that makes you want to stare at it. Maybe its just because youre glad its not you. Hector was my age. I had him in Western Cultures. His father laid tile or something like that. I didnt know about his mother. Hector and I werent friends, but he seemed like an okay guy. Smart, didnt play sports, not in a bunch of clubs, didnt crack jokes in class or bully anyone in the halls. I guess he was kind of a good-looking guynot to sound gay or anythingbut he was really quiet. Maybe in some other universe, he couldve been cool, but not in the one at our high school. At our school he was just kind of there. Like desks, and water fountains, and vice principals. Now here he was, stiy leaning against one side of the Dumpster, chest-deep in garbage, his eyes staring blankly at the sky, a candy-bar wrapper sticking to the side of his face. A 6

strange coldness seeped into my stomach, my elbows, my knees, like some kind of poison. This was real. Final. Foreclosed on. Whats going on? It was Randy sauntering up from the east side of the building. Are those guys gone? Theyre gone. What are you looking at? You have your cell phone on you? Yeah, why? We have to call the police. What for? Look. I nodded toward the Dumpster. Randy had to stand on his tiptoes. Holy crap. Dudes dead. An argument about whether we should actually call the police followed. Randy was against it. Finally I persuaded him that we might nd ourselves in plenty of hot water if the cops discovered wed been here and didnt report Hectors condition. Okay, he said. But call on your own phone. Things got involved from there. The cops dont want you calling in about a dead body and then leaving the scene. We had to stay and answer a bunch of questions: Name? Dylan Jones. Age? Sixteen and a half. Occupation? Grocery-sacker-slash-student. Relationship with the deceased? We go to the same school. And why were you enemies with the deceased? What? We werent enemies. I hardly knew him. 7

Just a routine question. I couldnt believe it. Apparently, we were actually suspects, which was really a pisser. I was like, Look, Im on the school newspaper. My dads a teacher and my moms a nurse, but they didnt care. Somehow we still looked unsavory to them. At rst, it was just a uniformed cop, but then a couple of detectives showed up along with some forensics people. The detectives were even bigger assholes than the uniforms. There was a huge one with a forehead like a cinder block and then a wiry cool-guy type who was too in love with his hair gel. It wasnt hard to see what their routine was. Detective Foreheads job was to intimidate you physically, and Detective Hair Gel was there to throw in a few zingers to deate your self-esteem. They were convinced Hector had ODd on some drug or other and seemed to have their minds made up that Randy and I were involved somehow. Which was stupidwe obviously werent on drugs at the momentbut once a cop gets an idea in his head, he has a hard time shaking it out. Well need you to come down to the station, Detective Forehead told us. Just routine, added Detective Hair Gel. Just routine. Im thinking, What? Is that the cop rationale for everything? At the station house, they split me and Randy up, I guess so they could try to poke holes in our stories. Relieved us of our phones too. Just routine. Lucky meI was the rst one they decided to mess with. They took me into an ocenot one of those cop-show interrogation rooms where they beam the bright light in your faceand I ran through the story about the ape men again, but it didnt take long to nd out I wasnt there to ll in some minor details. 8

Dylan, we see this kind of thing all the time, Detective Hair Gel started out. Kids out partying, trying new ways to get a buzz. Next thing you know, one guy goes too far, and then thats it. He snapped his ngers, his way of summing up the death of Hector Maldonado. We can tell youre a party boy, said Detective Forehead. He was standing behind his partners chair, looming you could say, so as to keep up the intimidation. I was like, What? Im not a party boy. But Detective Hair Gel was unconvinced. Sure you are. You got the hipster-style glasses, the baggy jeans, the rocker-boy black T-shirt. Shaggy hair. Id say you probably like a taste of the ecstasy. For the record, my jeans were baggy because I dont like pants pinching my gut too much, and the shirt was a retro Black Sabbath T-shirt that I only wear because I think Ozzy Osbourne is hilarious. Anyway, Im like, Ecstasy? Is that still a drug? I dont even know anyone whos done ecstasy. Detective Forehead leaned forward and glowered. Oh, its still a drug all right. And you know it. This was getting ridiculous. You can live your whole life a certain way and what good does it do when the law clamps down on you? I mean, Im no goody-goody, but I probably hadnt missed a day of school since I had the u in seventh grade. Made mostly low Bs but couldve bagged some As if I really cared that much and turned all my stu in. The only time I ever got sent to the principals oce since I got to high school was for wearing a T-shirt that said F***K BIGOTS on the front. Now, just because I happened to stumble over a dead body, all of a sudden the cops were treating me like I was 9

some kind of terrorist with a bomb in my underwear or something. They kept at me for about an hour. Didnt matter that I told them Id better call my parents so theyd know where I was. They just said it was early yet and I could call them in a little bit. Then they came back at me, wanting me to tell the story again and again until nally they got sick of hearing the same answer over and over. Why dont you call the place where I work? Theyll tell you I was there and not out snorting crystal meth and ecstasy or whatever. Hey, said Detective Forehead. You dont make the rules around here. We do. Dylan, just sit here and think about your predicament for a while, Detective Hair Gel said. Well see what your buddy has to say. And itll be too bad for you if he rolls over rst. Then they swaggered out the door to put the screws to Randy. So now I was alone, but it wasnt much of a relief. Hanging at the police station is weird. Theres this air about the place that makes you feel guilty even if you didnt do anything. Its like you cant move or even think the way you normally do. Chances are, they have a camera trained on you and are analyzing every move you make. There was a phone right there on the desk. I couldve called my parents, but I didnt. It was stupid, but it was like even doing that might make me look bad, like I was a criminal because the powers that be thought I was. So I just sat there staring at the oor. I dont even know how long it was before the dynamic duo waltzed back in to tell me how Randy just confessed. Usually, I would nd that funny. After all, I was the king of watching 10

TV crime shows, true-life and ctional, so I knew it was pretty much standard procedure to trick one guy into spilling the beans by saying his partner already did. But knowing Randy, I wasnt so sure he wouldnt cough out a confession. I could just imagine the exchange: Detective Hair Gel: Ill bet youd like a Coke right about now, huh? Randy: I wouldnt mind a Dr Pepper. Detective Hair Gel: Well, you tell us what we need to know, and Ill see you get one. Randy (unable to sacrice immediate satisfaction in order to keep out of the big house ): Okay, yeah, we did it. We pumped Hector Maldonado full of ecstasy, heroin, and a little jet fuel just to see what would happen. Now, how about that Dr Pepper? No, I didnt feel so good about my chances. I want to call my parents, I said. Dylan wants to call his parents, Detective Forehead told his partner, in a mocking, playground-bully way. Do you really? Detective Hair Gel asked. I doubt that. I mean, what are you going to tell them, that youre down at the police station because you were out doing drugs and killed your best buddy? Because thats what weve got on you right now. The only question is whether it was an accident or intentional. And let me tell you, were a lot more likely to lean toward the accidental side of the situation if you just come clean about what you were up to tonight. It was starting to look like Id never get home. At least not until Id served a good twenty years in maximum security. I 11

wondered what Id done to deserve this kind of trouble. Obviously, I didnt kill Hector, but maybe Id done something else the universe was paying me back for. Just then, the door opened and a lady cop motioned for the detectives to come into the hall. Sit tight, kid, Detective Forehead told me. Well be back to have you sign a confession in a minute. They didnt have anything for me to sign when they came back, though. Instead, they did something I never wouldve expected in a million years. They told me to go home. Im like, What? Just like that? Just like that, Detective Forehead said as he studied the contents of some kind of paperwork. Dont worry, Dylan, added Detective Hair Gel. Well be in touch. Dont leave the city. Dont leave the city. Like maybe I had a private jet waiting to y me o to Acapulco.

12

CHAPTER 3

aiting for my parents to come pick us up, Randy and I sat on the edge of the concrete planter in front of the station trading interrogation stories as we simultaneously texted the news to whoever came to mind. Turned out Randy didnt crack under pressure after all. In fact, he had a better strategy than I didplaying dumb ass. He acted like he couldnt even understand the questions, getting the cops to restate them over and over, then acting like he understood, only to come up with an answer that made no sense at all. I think those guys chasing us might have been Wiccans, he told them when they asked him how long hed known Hector. Not bad. Maybe Randy was some kind of weird genius after all. He wore them out way before they could wear him out, so they came back at me. But why do you think they let us go all of a sudden like that? he asked, the streetlight shining on his oily brown hair. Simple, I said. They probably nally called the grocery store and found out we were at work all evening. Idiots. Yeah, he said. Kind of hard to get loaded up on ecstasy with your buddies when youre standing around catching salami 13

coming down a conveyor belt and packing it into paper or plastic. They shouldve called the store before hauling us to the station. Nazis. Driving us home, my parents also got pissed about the cops giving us the third degree, but did they do anything about it? No. They just rattled on about civil rights until it nally dawned on my mom that nding a dead kid in a Dumpster might be traumatic for our tender teenage minds. Then she and Dad both started in with their TV-talk-show psychotherapy. Randy and I traded exasperated looks like, Parents how can they be so clueless? At home, I passed on their oer to sit around the kitchen table with some cold leftovers and discuss my feelings about what happened. They meant well, but how could I talk about Hector Maldonado while Mom and Dad stared back at me like I was still their ve-year-old little teddy bear? No, I accepted the cold meat loaf all right, but I took it back to my room, where I could call my all-time best friend and condante, Audrey Homan. Id known Audrey since the days of the little inatable backyard swimming poolme in my Tiki-head swim trunks and her in the frilly pink one-piece that I never let her forget. I mean, you should see her nowshes denitely not frilly or pink. Mostly she does her hair in pigtails and wears plaid shirts, baggy black pants, and some kind of hat, mainly a black Kangol 504. Artsy garb. Shes the photographer on the school paper but plans on doing high-art photography later on. Audrey used to live across the street, so we did everything together. We read the same books, watched horror movies on late-summer nights, even shot two-character videos in the 14

backyard. The best had to be the one about two Martians trying to gure out how to eat spaghetti. It was pretty hilarious. When she found out her parents were getting divorced and she would have to move across town with her mother, she came straight to me. Same with when she decided she was a lesbian in seventh grade. Turned out we had similar tastes in girls. Not that either one of us was exactly successful in that department. At least not by the start of junior year. So, anyway, there was no way I could go to bed without talking to her voice-to-voice about this latest ordeal. In a way, she was kind of like my conscience sometimes. I could talk to her, and shed help me gure out what was really important. This time she didnt seem to totally get what I was going through, though. I tried to explain how the cops had hammered away at me, making me feel like a total nobody loser, but she kept pulling the conversation back in Hectors direction. Why didnt I haul him out of the Dumpster? she wanted to know. Give him a little dignity. And she couldnt understand how the cops could be so sure Hector had ODd. Guys like Hector dont OD, not in her opinion. She even wanted to know when his funeral was going to be. Like I could possibly know that already. Im like, Look, Im trying to explain how these cops go at you like everything you ever were doesnt matter. And she goes, Well, I just thought youd care a little more about Hector. I care, but nobody can do anything to him anymore. Me, Im not so sure about. Maybe talking about the thing wasnt such a good idea after all. When I got into bed, every time I closed my eyes I saw Hectors face, staring blankly, the candy-bar wrapper stuck to 15

his cheek. I felt his arm next to mine and his hair against my ngers. Dead-kid hair. And in the background I heard Detectives Forehead and Hair Gel drilling me with questions, trying to beat me down. What if I hadnt had an alibi? Would I be in jail right now? It was enough to make you feel like a beetle on the sidewalk with a boot raised right over your head.

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CHAPTER 4

he next morning there wasnt much in the news about Hector, just the basics about where he went to school and who his family was. Body in the Dumpster. Cause of death: suspected drug overdose. Discovered by two teenagers. Names not released because of their ages. Really? It was okay to tell Hectors name but not Randys and mine? No wonder the local news wasnt barraging us with phone calls. My parents oered to let me stay home, like nding a dead body was some kind of stomach bug. I passed. No, I had to go somewhere. If the newspapers werent going to call, I could hang with Audrey and rehash the ordeal with Randy. Funny thing, though. As I walked down the hall to rst hour, kids started calling to me. Hey, dude! Way to go! Dylan! That is, like, so surreal, man! Hey, Dylan, what was it like? Some of these people I didnt even think knew my name. Obviously, the story had blazed its way across the text-message universe like a renegade asteroid. Nothing so perfect to prick up the curiosity of the high school populace like the death of a classmate. 17

So there I was, surrounded by eager faces, some of them even belonging to some pretty decent-looking girls. They all wanted to know what it was like, sitting in a Dumpster with a dead body. Hector and I were suddenly famous. Too bad Hector wasnt there to enjoy it. I dont know how many times I told the story that day. First in one hall, then another. At the beginning of class, at the end of class. In the cafeteria, the library, the parking lot. Everybody wanted to hear it. This one guy, the baggy-black-clothes-andsilver-chain-wearing Corman Rogers, kept coming back for more. Im like, Dude, morbid much? I got better with each telling. By lunch, it started to seem more like a movie Id seen than something real thatd happened to me. And Hector, I guess, became more like a movie character than a kid who had walked those same high school halls. Maybe that was what I needed him to be at the time. After lunch, my teacher sent me to the front oce to have a talk with this special grief counselor they called in to deal with the student populations feelings about the death. There wasnt exactly a line waiting to get in. Apparently, Principal Chrome Dome, or whoever, thought if anyone needed to talk about it, Randy and I were it. But I didnt have much to say. Nobody likes having someone they dont know picking at their brain. I was okay, I told the counselor lady, but she insisted I had some feelings I needed to sort through. Maybe she was right. Later, at night, when I was in bed in the dark, Hectors face came back again, and the detectives came back, and it wasnt like a movie. It was like doom itself had inltrated my brain.

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CHAPTER 5

couple days later, Hectors family threw him a funeral. I thought it would be weird to gomaybe they didnt want to be reminded of the condition Id found him inbut Audrey was like, No, you have to go. Well both go. Itd just be too sad for his family if, like, nobody from school shows up. Besides, dont you want to remember him at peace instead of how you found him? So there we were on Thursday afternoon at St. Andrew Avellino, and what do you knowthe place was actually pretty full. Sure, there were only a couple of kids from schoolthats all the friends Hector hadbut apparently he had a pretty big extended family. By far most of the people there looked Hispanic to some degree. Audrey and I had to grab a seat in back, which was ne. I didnt want to stick out as the guy who only spent time with Hector in the Dumpster after he was already dead. Id never been to a Catholic funeral before. My parents arent exactly into organized religion. On Facebook, under Religion, they entered spiritual. But I have to say this for the Catholicsthey really know how to put on a show. And I dont mean that in any kind of disrespectful way. I dont usually call clothes garments, but the priest running the program had some 19

mega-cool garments going on. The hat alone made you feel like, This is going to be serious. And then there was the light ltering through the stainedglass saints, and the praying, and the Latin, and the rituals. Even some Mexican songs. And on top of that, this huge crucix staring down at you from the front of the sanctuary, all kind of sad and beat and worn out with humanity but forgiving you anyway. Im telling youas the thing wound down, I couldnt help but feel Hectors ghost or spirit or whatever was a long way from the high school trash bin. It made me wonder what my funeral might be like. Id probably have about the same number of friends from school show up but a whole lot less family, since I was an only child and our nearest relatives lived in Dallas. No fancy garments or elaborate rituals either. No big accomplishments to reel o in the eulogy. After all, my most noteworthy act so far was nding Hector. That wasnt exactly eulogy material. Id be lucky to get a half-dozen owers around my casket. The school probably wouldnt even hire a special grief counselor to come in. Outside of Audrey and Randy, my other socalled friends would probably forget me in a week. I felt like Scrooge from A Christmas Carol when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed him his own gravestone. The good thing was Scrooge had a second chance to do something, so maybe I did too. After the service, we hung around so Audrey could snap some photos of the church and the crowd coming out for the school paper. I should mention that I submitted a story about Hector in the Dumpster to the paper, but Ms. Jansen, my journalism teacher, wouldnt accept it. She said my writing style was too informal and the Dumpster stu was too undignied. She thought a simple obituary would do. 20

Anyway, several of the mourners were standing around staring in our direction. I didnt know whether they were staring at Audrey, this picture-taking chick with pink, blue, and green streaks wound into her brown pigtails, or if they gured out I was the guy whod found Hector. Then, on the way to the parking lot, this minivan of a guy in a black suit and a black hat with a red feather tucked into the hatband walked up and grabbed my arm. Your name is Dylan Jones? he asked. He was probably nineteen or sohis goatee made it hard to tell. He was a good couple inches shorter than me but was so square and solid, you knew he could run you over and leave nothing but a dark spot on the road. Thats my name, I said. Do you know the North Side Monarchs? he asked, his eyes digging deep into mine. Im like, The what? One of my boys told me youre the one who found Hector when he died. Uh, yeah. And you dont know who the North Side Monarchs are? No, I dont have any idea. His face relaxed, and he almost smiled. I guess it was just fate, then, that you found him. Fate, yeah, thats right. He put out his hand for me to shake. My names Alberto Hernandez. Everyone calls me Beto. Im Hectors cousin. Thanks for coming to the funeral. Im like, Thats all right, and introduced him to Audrey. You know, he said, its not like the cops and the news saidHector didnt take no overdose. If he had drugs in him, someone else mustve dosed him. 21

I never thought he took any drugs, Audrey said, and I go, Me either, though truthfully I wasnt so sure. I mean, yes, he didnt seem like a druggie type, but then you cant really be sure what goes on with people after the last school bell rings. Beto stared into my eyes again. You be careful. Never anything but. As he walked away, Audrey goes, Wow, that guy was goodlooking. I mean, if I liked guys, thats the kind of guy Id like. I dont know, I said. He kind of weirded me out the way he just came up out of the blue like that. Audrey nudged her shoulder against my arm. Well, thats just the cost of being famous, I guess.

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this is a borzoi book published by alfred a. knopf This is a work of ction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used ctitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Text copyright 2013 by Tim Tharp Jacket art copyright Yakov Stavchansky for Shutterstock Grateful acknowledgment is made to Hal Leonard for permission to reprint lyrics from Peggy Sue, words and music by Jerry Allison, Norman Petty, and Buddy Holly, copyright 1957 (Renewed) by MPL Music Publishing, Inc., and Wren Music Co. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission of Hal Leonard Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/teens Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tharp, Tim. Mojo / Tim Tharp. p. cm. Summary: A boy who feels powerless in his own life sets out to investigate the mystery of a missing high school girl in his town, who attends an elite private high school very unlike his own. ISBN 978-0-375-86445-2 (trade) ISBN 978-0-375-96445-9 (lib. bdg.) ISBN 978-0-375-89580-7 (ebook) [1. Self-realizationFiction. 2. Missing childrenFiction. 3. High schoolsFiction. 4. SchoolsFiction. 5. Secret societiesFiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title. PZ7.T32724Moj 2013 [Fic]dc23 2012023886 The text of this book is set in 15.5-point Adobe Garamond Pro. Printed in the United States of America April 2013 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Random House Childrens Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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