Going Bovine

CHAPTER ONE
In Which I Introduce Myself

The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.

I m sixteen now, so you can imagine that s left me with quite a few days of major suckage.

Like Career Day? Really? Do we need to devote an entire six hours out of the high school year to having life counselors tell you all the jobs you could potentially blow at? Is there a reason for dodgeball? Pep rallies? Rad soda commercials featuring Parker Day s smug, fake-tanned face? I ask you.

But back to the best day of my life, Disney, and my near-death experience.

I know what you re thinking: WTF? Who dies at Disney World? It s full of spinning teacups and magical princesses and big-assed chipmunks walking around waving like it s absolutely normal for jumbo-sized stuffed animals to come to life and pose for photo ops. Like, seriously.

I don t remember a whole lot about it. Like I said, I was five. I do remember that it was hot. Surreal hot. The kind of hot that makes people shell out their life savings for a bottle of water without even bitching about it. Even the stuffed animals started looking less like smiling, playful woodland creatures and more like furry POWs on a forced march through Toonland. That s how we ended up on the subterranean It s a Small World ride and how I nearly bit it at the place where America goes for fun.

I don t know if you ve ever experienced the Small World ride. If so, you can skip this next part. Honestly, you won t hurt my feelings, and I won t tell the other people reading this what an asshole you are the minute you go into the other room.

Where was I?

Oh, right so much we share, time aware, small world. After all.

So. Small World ride, brief sum-up: Long-ass wait in incredibly slow-moving line. Then you re put into this floating barge and set adrift on a river that winds through a smiling underworld of animatronic kids from every country on the planet singing along in their various

Libba Bray is the New York Times bestselling author of the Gemma Doyle trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing); the Michael L. Printz Award-winning Going Bovine; Beauty Queens, an L.A. Times Book Prize finalist; and The Diviners series. She is originally from Texas but makes her home in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, son, and two sociopathic cats. Visit her at www.libbabray.com and at @libbabray on Twitter and Instagram.

"Libba Bray not only breaks the mold of the ubiquitous dying-teenager genre she smashes it and grinds the tiny pieces into the sidewalk. For the record, I'd go anywhere she wanted to take me." The New York Times

"Offer this to fans of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy seeking more inspired lunacy." Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"An unforgettable, nearly indefinable fantasy . . . wholly unique, ambitious, tender, thought-provoking, and often fall-off-the-chair funny." Booklist, Starred Review

"Readers will have a great time." The Horn Book

"It's a trip worth taking." SLJ

"Here's one book about dying that has a wicked sense of humor." The Denver Post

"A laugh-out-loud tear-jerking fantastical voyage into the meaning of what is real in life." VOYA

"A very messed-up book, but in a good way. . . .Hilarious, random, surreal and thought-provoking." Guys Lit Wire

One of Entertainment Weekly's 8 Great Road-Trip Books
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Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award 
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
An Indie Next Pick
A Booklist Books for Youth Editors' Choice
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best book
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age