RITA WILLIAMS-GARCIA is the New York Times best-selling author of nine novels for young adults and middle-grade readers. Her recent novels Jumped and One Crazy Summer were named National Book Award Finalists, and One Crazy Summer was also named a Coretta Scott King Author Award winner, a Newbery Honor Book, and a Scott O’Dell Award winner. Her short stories have appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, and she sponsors an annual short-story writing contest for teens. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, New York; has two adult daughters; and is on faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA Program.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Compilation copyright © 2014 by Marc Aronson and Charles R. Smith Jr.
“Down Below” copyright © 2014 by Rita Williams-Garcia
“Initiation” copyright © 2014 by Ellen Hopkins
“Just Once” copyright © 2014 by A.S. King
“The Next NEXT Level” copyright © 2014 by Torrey Maldonado
“Running Man” copyright © 2014 by Charles R. Smith Jr.
“Making Up the Dead” copyright © 2014 by Nora Raleigh Baskin
“Two-a-Days” copyright © 2014 by Chris Barton
“I Have a Gun” copyright © 2014 by Will Weaver
“Connections” copyright © 2014 by Marina Budhos
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2013957275
ISBN 978-0-7636-5285-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7636-7083-2 (electronic)
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
visit us at www.candlewick.com