Excerpt from Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Thankfully, the helper simply pulls out a checkbook and writes a check for the entire amount. I accept it gratefully, my head ducked in humility. Thank you so much, Mrs. Nerwinski. I can assure you the entire student body really appreciates this. We'll definitely think of you every time we have an assembly in our new multipurpose room.

They stand, and I stand. We shake hands. I step outside to watch them drive away past the Manderleys. In the pond the ducks glide, carving dark paths through moss clinging to water lilies. The sky is a million shades of deepening blue.

No one else comes in the rest of the afternoon, alive or dead. Not even close to being six, but the office is getting me down today. Could be the Emily-not-Emily girl. Or the tissue box. Or the dead ten-year-old. I drop Ovid into my backpack, unwrap two or ten Yorks for the walk to the house, and lock the door. If Wade docks my pay, I'll throw him a parade. The stupid icing-on-the-cake money mortifies me. It only encourages the lie that my being here is an actual choice, but he insists I take the money, says he'll get in trouble if I don't. Likely. Every Friday I toss the cash into a shoe box beneath my bed. I hate it. Even though secretly I am beginning to appreciate the fact that it could eliminate the need to ever ask him and Meredith for things like school lunch money or field trip fees, conversations routinely more painful than asking a client if they'd prefer to be on top or beneath their loved one in the event of a double-depth grave.

I hurry, eyes down, over the graves, through the trees—

"Leigh!"

Nearly to the house—

"Hey!"

Crap.

"Who's chasing you?" Wade sticks his head out a window of the single-wide he keeps behind the mausoleum and the toolshed, metal siding glowing orange beneath the pines in the late-afternoon sun. This Shangri-la is being prepared for the arrival of an actual employee to replace contracted Jimmy, some unwitting person Wade plans on drugging or otherwise tricking into digging graves under the guise of "park maintenance." He hopes to Arnold Palmer the situation by having the person live here, in the trailer: on hand for maintenance emergencies and providing what Wade refers to as "an extra measure of security." Two in one!

Security against what, I'd like to know.

Wade is only resorting to this expense because after months of half-assing the running of the place with only my indentured servitude, he's admitted at last that he's going to need more help to half-ass it properly. All this time he's been learning the lessons of: customers do not cotton well to graves dug in the wrong plots, or funerals double-booked or not booked at all even though families have shown up, grieving and bearing huge, expensive flower arrangements.

"How was it?" he calls from the trailer.

I shrug.

"Some guy called before—they come in for a kid?"

I nod.

"Where'd they put him?"

"Sunny Hill."

"Aw, jeez! You sure you're pushing Poppy?"

All the sensitivity of a frying pan to the head. He's really into this Poppy Hill/Sunny Hill rivalry; there's more space in Sunny, but he wants to get Poppy completely filled. I've dutifully avoided Sunny as best I can, but sometimes people want what they want. I don't know.

"Well, there's always tomorrow."

I sigh. "Monday, Wednesday, Friday."

He smiles. "Can't blame me for trying."

Oh, really? I want to say. Because I think I can. I can go ahead and blame you for trying to trick your kid into selling graves more days a week than you promised she had to, and for thinking you could do it by betting I won't remember what day of the week it is.

I wish I was the kind of person who could look his shenanigans in the face and just be all, No. A smart person. A brave person. An Emily person.

Excerpted from Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo. Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Longo. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.