Gabriel King was a born chicken. He’s afraid of spiders, corpses, loose cows, and just about everything related to the fifth grade. Gabe’s best friend, Frita Wilson, thinks Gabe needs some liberating from his fears. Frita knows something about being brave— she’s the only black kid in school in a town with an active Ku Klux Klan. Together Gabe and Frita are going to spend the summer of 1976 facing down the fears on Gabe’s list. But it turns out that Frita has her own list, and while she’s helping Gabe confront his fears, she’s avoiding the thing that scares her the most. Exquisitely drawn. (Publishers Weekly, starred review) Strong voice, lively dialogue, humor and important themes make this a winner. (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) K. L. Going lives with her family in the Hudson Valley area of New York State. Since graduating from college she has worked as an adult literacy tutor, a ticket agent for a major airline, a front desk clerk at a resort hotel, and an assistant in a Manhattan literary agency. She has lived in Maine, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and New York. K.L. is the author of many books, including Fat Kid Rules The World , The Liberation of Gabriel King , and Dog in Charge . Her first novel, Fat Kid Rules the World , was a YALSA Michael L. Printz honor book. Chapter 1 Under the Picnic Table My best friend, Frita Wilson, once told me that some people were born chicken. “Ain’t nothing gonna make them brave,” she’d said. “But others, they just need a little liberatin’, that’s all.” Least that’s how Frita told it. If you’d asked me before the summer of 1976, I would have told you I was one of the chicken ones. If you could count on anything, it was that I, Gabriel Allen King, didn’t do anything scary. I didn’t climb out too far on the branches of the pecan trees or ride my bike on the same dirt road the truckers used. I didn’t pick up ugly-looking bugs that might have pinchers or walk too close to the cotton fields if anyone even hinted that the cows might be loose. Most of all, I didn’t intend on going to the fifth grade, ever.But things don’t always work out the way you plan, and what I didn’t count on was Frita. I didn’t expect she’d decide I was one of the ones needed liberatin’, or that the best way to do it would be to overcome all our fears. I didn’t expect a lot of things, and I guess if I’m going to tell you about them, I best start at the beginning. It was the morning of our fourth-grade Moving-Up Day, and me and Frita were under the picnic table beside the elementary school. That’s where we used to hide out during recess so nobody could find us. Only today wasn’t a school day. It was a graduation day.We could hear all the noise coming from the school yard just around the corner. Hollowell Elementary ain’t that big, but the yard was packed with a stage, rows of folding chairs, extra-tall bleachers we used for special occasions, and lots of folks who were crowding in. But all that commotion was a distant buzz because me and Frita were lying on our backs in the shade, listing all the things that made the day great.“Number one,” Frita said, “today is a momentous occasion.”Frita liked to use big words like that. Most of the time I could figure them out by how she was talking, but other times I just pretended to know. I said, “Mmm-hmm. Mooo-men-tus.”“We’re fourth-grade graduates,” Frita said. “That’s pretty great.”“Yup,” I agreed, “because now we’ve got no more school for the whole summer.”Frita pretended to write no school on the bottom of the picnic table. Then she took a big bite of a chocolate sprinkly cookie she’d gotten from the party table. The cookie crumbled all over her chin, but you could hardly notice. Frita’s got dark chocolate skin, so the cookie crumbs blended right in.“Starting today,” Frita said with her mouth full, “we’ll be upperclassmen. No more East Wing with the babies. We’ll be West Wing fifth-graders.” Frita pretended to write west wing on the bottom of the picnic table, but I made an imaginary line through it. “Now, why’d you go and cross that off?” Frita asked, pretending to write it back on again. Then she gave me that look she saved for when she was trying to be all innocent. Frita knew dang well that moving to the West Wing wasn’t on my list of great things. “You’re going to love it,” she told me. “You’ll see. We’ll have our own playing field and we won’t have to eat in the cafeteria with the kindergarteners. We’ll have outside gym every day—” “Yeah,” I said. “Outside gym with the sixth-graders. Cafeteria time with the sixth-graders and recess with the sixth-graders.”Sixth-graders meant Duke Evans and Frankie Carmen. I’d had a whole year free from torment since they’d moved to the West Wing ahead of us, but one year was definitely not enough. “All the teachers in the West Wing are super mean,” I added, settling myself into being stubborn. “Everybody says it, so you know it’s true. And I’ll be the shortest kid there.” “I won’t let anyone get y