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  CRAVE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events

  or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First paperback edition September 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Laura J. Burns and Melinda Metz

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949

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  Book design by Chloë Foglia

  The text for this book is set in Jenson.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-0816-6

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4424-0817-3

  ISBN 1-4424-0817-0 (eBook)

  “… your soul holds on to them.”

  To the memory of our fathers,

  Thomas F. Burns and Richard J. Metz

  CRAVE

  PART

  ONE

  DREAMS

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  SPECIAL [SPEH-SHUL]: distinguished by some unusual quality; being in some way superior.

  Here’s what it really means: It means you’re the kid that nobody wanted to play jump rope with at recess because if you fell and scraped your knee, you’d have to miss three days of school. It means you’re the girl nobody wanted in the sixth-grade fashion show because your arms and legs were always covered with bruises. It means you’re that kid that the teachers gave a lecture about at the start of every school year, a boring and annoying lecture saying that you had to be treated like some kind of fragile glass figurine.

  It means you’re the freak.

  But nobody is allowed to say so. Nobody is allowed to make fun of you, or bully you, or write nasty notes about you. Because you’re special.

  So instead they treat you like a pet or a mascot or something. You get invited to all the birthday parties. You get elected president of all the clubs. You always have a seat in the cafeteria. People like to be seen with you—it makes them feel all saintly and generous. Plus it gets them noticed by teachers and parents and potential make-out buddies. They must be good people if they’re nice to the Sick Girl, right?

  “Shay! What is up, girlfriend?”

  Shay McGuire slammed her journal closed. Case in point, she thought as she turned to Olivia. Olivia Willett was Shay’s best friend. In Shay’s head, the phrase always had quote marks around it. “Best friend.” The one you hung out with the most. The one who shared all your secrets and your dreams. The one who was there for you no matter what.

  Shay gave a mental eye roll. Olivia didn’t really care about her. Olivia hadn’t listened to a word Shay had said since seventh grade. Sure, she thought she knew everything about Shay—and she did know all about the rare blood disorder Shay had been born with, the disease with a diagnosis that changed every time Shay saw a new specialist. As far as Olivia was concerned, that was what Shay was. Sick. Not creative or strong-willed or addicted to bad reality television. Just sick. As if the disease had robbed Shay of the kind of interior life that everybody else had. That Olivia had.

  “I think the phrase what is up, girlfriend was officially retired fifteen years ago,” Shay told her, leaning back in the cafeteria chair. Around her, the place was emptying. The second bell would ring in two minutes, signaling the start of next period.

  “I know.” Olivia shrugged, her perfect strawberry blond hair sliding along her perfect almost-too-skinny shoulder. “I’m being retro.”

  Shay inched her arm over the journal, hoping Olivia wouldn’t think to ask what she’d been writing.

  “You’re coming with me. I booked the big study room in the library for you and me and Kaz,” Olivia informed her.

  Shay almost laughed at her own worry. As if Olivia would ask about the journal. As if it would even occur to her that Shay might have secrets of her own. “Sounds like a party,” she said dryly.

  “Bonetto said we could skip class and spend the time helping you prep for the test on Friday,” Olivia explained. “Since you missed so many days this month.”

  Translation: I want to spend the next hour with my boyfriend’s tongue down my throat, so I conned Mr. Bonetto into letting me and Kaz out of class under the pretense that we’re helping poor little you. Oh, and am I not the best person?

  “Cool,” Shay answered. It’s not like she particularly wanted to listen to Mr. Bonetto ramble for an hour anyway. Bio was a joke, even AP Bio. She’d learned more about biology by the time she was ten than Bonetto knew even now. That’s what growing up in hospitals did for you.

  Shay pushed a loose strand of her long dark hair out of her eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly stood up. She picked up her stack of books, wincing at the weight.

  “You okay?” Olivia asked automatically.

  “Yeah.” She wasn’t okay. She was as weak as an infant. But she didn’t want help. As soon as it got to the point when she needed help, it was only another few hours before the total collapse. Before the extended bed rest. Before the next transfusion. And it was only Wednesday. Usually she could make it through a week at school at least. When she was younger, it had been even longer, sometimes three weeks at a stretch.

  But now …

  I’m getting worse, a voice inside her whispered. She knew it was true. Nobody ever said it out loud. Her mother and her stepfather still acted as if the cure was only a few days from being found. But there was no cure. And she was getting worse.

  Olivia led the way down the hall toward the library, running one perfectly manicured fingernail across the long mural showing the dark waters of the river that their town, Black River, Massachusetts, was named for. “Did you hear about Jacey?” Olivia asked.

  Shay shook her head, sending a snowstorm of cold dizziness through her body.

  “You won’t believe this. She let Brian use Saran Wrap for protection. And the girl is in the honor society. How stupid is that?” Olivia snorted.

  “Pretty stupid,” Shay said. She had to concentrate to get the words out. Her brain felt like it had started to ice over.

  “I know. So of course it came off. And now she’s in the bathroom between every class peeing on a stick,” Olivia yammered on. Her voice sounded far away, distorted by the rushing sound in Shay’s head. She stared down at the tile of the hallway, willing herself to put one foot forward. Then the other. No point in thinking about how far it was to the library.

  “There’s my woman.” Kaz’s voice startled her. Shay jerked her head up, and the hall swam around her. Kaz and Olivia were kissing. It was a good excuse to stop walking.

  By the time she caught her breath, they were done. Kaz was grinning at her. “Shay Stadium!” he crowed, holding up his hand for a high five.

  “Moron, that nickname doesn’t even make any sense,” Olivia grumbled.

  “I don’t mind.” Shay summoned all her strength and high-fived him. Her other arm buckled from b
earing the entire weight of her books.

  Kaz grabbed her Bio text before she dropped it, his dark eyes immediately serious. “You all right?”

  Shay nodded.

  “She needs to sit down,” Olivia said. “Let’s just get to the library.”

  Without a word, Kaz took the other books from Shay. Olivia looped her arm through Shay’s and they kept walking. She couldn’t manage to keep up a conversation, but they didn’t seem to care. They were busy talking about Kaz’s birthday party that weekend. He was the first one of Shay’s friends to turn eighteen. She wanted to be there.

  She would be there, she decided. The blood transfusion would wait. She didn’t need bed rest; she needed a party … and a beer … and a boy who wasn’t too afraid of her to kiss her. Maybe she could ask Kaz to invite some guys who didn’t go to Black River High.

  I have to be strong. Shay shook off Olivia’s arm and stood on her own, letting the rush of students push past her in the hallway. She willed the dizziness to subside. Her stepfather, Martin, was always telling her that a positive attitude was the best medicine. And he should know, he had about six different medical degrees.

  “Shay, what are you doing?” Olivia sounded annoyed.

  “Sorry … I thought I heard my cell,” Shay lied. “I guess not. Let’s go.” She pasted a smile on her face and started toward the library. The door was only twenty feet away. She could make it, and she could make it without Olivia helping her.

  One foot forward. Then the other.

  “I need to …” Shay couldn’t finish the thought. It was too late. She’d waited too long. She should know better. She should know by now.

  The floor lurched under her feet. Her knees buckled. And the whole world went white around her.

  Shay rested her head against the cool glass of the Range Rover’s passenger-side window, pretending that the row of average suburban houses going by was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. Don’t try to talk to me, she silently willed her stepdad. I’m very busy here. Looking at the identical houses.

  But Dr. Martin Kuffner was not easy to fool. He’d been dealing with sick kids since before Shay was born, and he knew how to manage them, as her mother said.

  “How were you feeling this morning before school?” Martin asked casually.

  I was feeling psyched to see Chris Briglia because he winked at me yesterday and his new haircut looks incredibly hot, Shay thought. But her stepdad didn’t want to hear that. He wanted her vital statistics. He wanted facts, numbers, data—was her heart rate a little fast, or had one of those headaches started behind her eyes, or was her temperature up a fraction of a degree?

  “I was okay, I think,” she mumbled.

  “You think? You need to know, Shay. You always have to be on top of it. Every two hours, you need to do a self-check,” Martin told her.

  God, she hated this. She hated having to analyze the workings of her body every single second. Shay let out a sigh that felt like it started at the tips of her toes. Martin reached over and squeezed her shoulder. She forced herself to look at him.

  “It’s not always going to be this way, sweetheart,” he said.

  No, pretty soon I’m going to be dead. Shay couldn’t stop the thought from worming its way through her brain. And does it really matter? I’m only half-alive now. I go to school; I go home; I rest; I do my homework; I watch some TV; I go to bed. And that’s on a good day, when I’m feeling basically okay. Okay for Shay.

  “Trust me,” Martin continued. “I’m going to tweak your next transfusion a little. I’m trying something new. It could be the thing that does it for you.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Shay murmured. She was afraid if she actually talked, she might start bawling. And nobody needed that. Sick girls were supposed to be strong, an inspiration to everybody.

  And mostly Shay was. Or at least she managed to put on a pretty good act. She didn’t have much choice. Her so-called bravery was the glue that held her entire family together. Her mother’s life was almost as much about Shay’s illness as Shay’s was—being a single mother with a sick baby hadn’t left her time to do anything else with her life. And Martin’s career was all about Shay now too. He had stopped writing papers about his specialty, leukemia. He’d stopped researching anything but Shay’s disease. He’d staked his entire professional reputation on her. If he didn’t manage to find a cure, he’d look like a failure. And failure was something that Martin did not allow.

  “Do you ever miss it?” she asked suddenly.

  He shot her a confused look. “Miss what?”

  “Your life. Your superstar-doctor status. All that.” It had never occurred to her to ask before. “I mean, you were on Oprah and everything. You were Mr. Leukemia Crusader.”

  Martin was quiet for a while. Had she offended him? “I’m sorry—” Shay started.

  “Don’t be. It’s a fair question.” Martin’s voice was even and calm, the way it always was. His bedside-manner voice, that’s how Shay had always thought of it. “Are you thinking you need a different doctor?”

  “No.” Definitely, no. She’d seen other doctors. Too many of them. Her mom had dragged her all over the country until they’d finally found Martin, the only one who actually seemed to listen. The only one who didn’t try to force her blood disorder into some easy, popular diagnosis, regardless of whether her symptoms actually matched. Martin was the only one who was willing to admit that he had no clue what was wrong with Shay, that her disease was unique, one of a kind. Maybe I am special, after all, she thought.

  “I don’t miss it,” Martin told her. “I’ll be back there soon enough.”

  Shay raised her eyebrows, and Martin smiled.

  “After I’ve isolated a treatment for your disorder, I mean,” he said. “There are plenty of people working on leukemia. There’s no one helping you.”

  “You help me,” she replied. “You always have.” And not just as her doctor. Martin had been like a Disney fairy godmother—a six-foot-four, 230-pound male one who used money instead of a magic wand. As soon as he and her mother got married—poof!—a little apartment became a McMansion. Poof!—a beat-up Toyota Corolla with a broken CD player became a fully loaded Mercedes S-Class sedan.

  Shay wondered if that’s what had made her mother fall in love with him. Not the money, her mom didn’t care about stuff like that. But Mom definitely loved what the money bought for Shay—absolutely anything that could help fight her disease, from organic produce to a lap pool. And she really loved that Shay now had a brilliant doctor as her personal physician.

  Martin was a great guy and all. He was just sort of serious, all work all the time. Every once in a while he attempted a stupid pun. But nobody—no-body—but him thought they were at all humorous. Would her mother have ended up with somebody completely different if Shay hadn’t been so sick? Would she have found somebody closer to her own age? Or somebody a little more … fun? Shay had no idea if her stepfather was at all like her real father. She’d never even met the guy. Mom didn’t talk about him, and whenever Shay had tried to force it, her mother’s obvious pain had always made her back off.

  “Are you strong enough to hit the smoothie place?” Martin asked. “You could use some glucose and calories before your transfusion.”

  “We’re doing one today?” Shay had known it the instant she hit the floor at school. Hell, she’d known it half an hour before that. But she’d still been hoping it was all just a fluke. Her last transfusion had been only a week ago.

  “I think we’d better, don’t you?” Martin replied.

  Like that was an actual question. “I guess. Yeah.”

  “So … smoothie?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll just grab juice or something from the fridge,” Shay answered. She knew the Jamba Juice on the way home would be jammed with kids from school. She hated the idea of sitting in the Range Rover while her stepdad went in, everyone watching her from inside and pretending not to. Or, even worse, going in there with Martin’s arm around
her, propping her up.

  Martin nodded, and a few minutes later they were turning into the cul-de-sac where they lived. He hit the garage door opener at just the right moment for him to pull in without a beat of hesitation. Shay’s mother was at the car door a second later, studying her face with frightened eyes. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go to school today,” she said in a rush. “You looked off.”

  “I’m fine, Mom.” Shay tried not to let any of the impatience she felt sneak into her voice. Sometimes the overwhelming mother concern made Shay feel like all the air was being sucked from her lungs. It had gotten worse in the three years since Mom and Martin had gotten married. Her mother’s worry level hadn’t gone up. That was impossible. But before she had married Martin, her mom had had to work like a dog to pay even the minimums on Shay’s medical expenses—not to mention stuff like rent and food. She’d been exhausted most of the time. Now she didn’t have to work. She could devote all her energy to taking care of Shay.

  It was like having a personal assistant and a nurse and a babysitter all at the same time. At first Shay had been psyched to have Mom around so much. But these days it felt like a burden. Practically the only time she could have a private thought was when she was writing in her journal.

  “Why don’t you get Shay some juice while I take her upstairs,” Martin suggested. “Do we have any pomegranate?”

  It was Shay’s favorite. She knew they were out of it, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “No …” Her mother looked slightly panicked. “I’ll go get some from the market.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to—” Shay began.

  “Nonsense. It’s a five-minute drive. And all those anti-oxidants will fix you right up.” Her mom pulled the Mercedes keys out of her pocket and opened the door. She was gone in seconds.

  Martin climbed out of the car and made it over to Shay’s side before she had her door all the way open. He stepped back as Shay swung her feet onto the ground, letting her get out by herself. The good thing about Martin was that he always knew when she didn’t want to be hovered over. Mom was a hoverer—no matter what.