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I’ll be feeling almost normal (well, normal for me, at least, which Dr. Steele says is probably how most people feel when they have a seriously bad case of food poisoning), and out of nowhere, I think, Okay, this is it. These are my last breaths. I try to have meaningful thoughts, to wish for world peace and the end to childhood famine and Miss America-y things like that, but usually, like now, I think about how I wish I could have a bowlful of chocolate gelato just one more time. I wish I could lie on the beach and get a sunburn, listening to the waves crash against the shore. I wish I wasn’t going to die a virgin.
    Mom rushes over to my bed. “Are you okay?” she asks, placing a cool hand against my forehead. I know I have a fever—my skin crackles beneath her touch. In the last year, there has only been a total of about a week that I haven’t had a fever.
    “I’m in a hospital, Mom,” I say with a weak smile. “So, no. Not so much okay.” I force my eyes open. “Thanks for asking, though.”
    “Sassy.” Mom shakes her head, but smiles, too.
    I pat the top of her hand. “These stupid pain meds are making me dizzy. I feel like shit.” Mom is quiet, worried lines etched in deep parentheses around her mouth. I jiggle her arm gently. “What, no ‘watch your language’? I must really be going to die this time.”
    Seeing the look of horror that takes over her face, I want toreel the words back the second they tumble out of my mouth. “Madelyn Bell, ” Mom says. Tears gloss her pretty hazel eyes. “Don’t you talk like that.”
    “Sorry,” I say, with a guilty shrug. She hates it when I joke about death, but for me, it’s the easiest way to deal. Plus, the way I figure it, if I’m happy and laughing, I can’t die. God would have to be a total asshole to strike me down in the middle of a giggle.
    Mom looks like she’s going to say something, but then Dr. Steele rushes into the room, practically tripping over his long legs. I consider briefly that he and Tiffani, with their superextended, alienlike limbs, might make an excellent couple.
    “We got it!” he says, and my mother starts to cry. I must look confused, because then he says, “She hasn’t told you?”
    I throw my gaze back and forth between them. “Told me what?”
    He smiles, a wide motion that shows his gums, top and bottom, and his big Chiclet teeth. “We need to get you prepped for surgery,” he says. “This is it, kiddo. Your whole world is about to change.”

One Year Later . . .

Hannah
    There is a moment—only a moment, right when she wakes up—when sunlight streams in through the streaked windows of her new apartment and the world is still too fuzzy to tell dream from sleep, that Hannah doesn’t remember. She doesn’t see the shell of Emily’s body as it lay hooked up to machines in the ICU; she doesn’t hear the steady beep . . . beep . . . beep of the EKG monitor. Dr. Wilder told her that this was the machine’s heartbeat, not Emily’s. Emily— Hannah’s Emily, whom she fed strawberry waffles that morning—was already gone.
    Emily is gone. The weight of this truth lands like a boulder on Hannah’s chest, and suddenly, everything falls clear. She remembers it all, a scene stuck on replay in her head, no matter how hard she tries to stop it. She sees Sophie standing next to her, crying softly as Hannah leans over to kiss Emily’s forehead.
    Her daughter’s skin was taut and cool; her head had been shaved for the surgery that didn’t save her. Her eyes wereclosed, and there was a black-stitched, horseshoe-shaped incision on her scalp.
    “Baby girl,” Hannah whispered. “Oh, sweetie . I love you so much.” Her jaw trembled, her entire body jittered. She looked at Dr. Wilder. “Please . . . are you sure there’s nothing you can do?” The words caught in her throat like jagged bits of metal.
    Dr. Wilder pressed his lips together and shook his head before speaking. “I’m so sorry. I wish there