Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider

Author:Robyn Schneider [Schneider, Robyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-03-12T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SADIE

I COULDN’T SLEEP after we got back from the woods. I lay awake under the too-warm covers, my whole body thrumming in the aftermath of that kiss. I felt the ghost of where his lips had been, and remembered the pressure of his hand on my back, the smell of his soap, the way his mouth had tasted faintly of apples.

I didn’t care that I’d promised myself I’d stay away from Latham boys, that I’d rolled my eyes whenever I saw other couples sneak off toward the woods or duck behind buildings to engage in Latham’s favorite pastime. I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted to tiptoe over to Cottage 6 in my pajamas, and push open the door to Lane’s room, and crawl under the covers with him so the feeling of our lips touching never had to end.

Kissing Lane was like the first time you hear a song that you’ll listen to on repeat a hundred times. It was like the first spoonful of ice cream of the whole cup. But mostly, it was the strange and lovely experience of something being even better than I’d imagined.

What were the odds that out of the 150 of us at Latham, there’d be a boy whose smile did flippy things to my stomach, and who liked me back, and who made jokes about Harry Potter? And what were the odds that it would be a boy I’d known, and had wrongly despised, for years?

I’d been at Latham long enough that I no longer quite believed in second chances, but in the moments before I drifted off to sleep that night, I wondered if maybe Lane was the miracle Latham had promised, and if that miracle would be big enough.

Lane was waiting on the porch the next morning. He bounded out of the glider when he saw me, this big, goofy grin on his face. His hair was wet from the shower, and he was wearing these horrible athletic shorts with a giant Aeropostale logo on the leg.

“Really?” I said, making a face at the shorts.

“Hey, you already kissed me. No take-backs,” he joked, and then he leaped down the porch steps two at a time.

It was just a small thing, but it struck me how much healthier he looked than when he’d arrived. How the nurse never seemed to stay in his room very long when we hid our phones during lights-out, and how he rolled his eyes after a coughing fit, instead of struggling to catch his breath.

I wondered what I’d do if he left, when he left, without me. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to him, since I never seemed that sick. And I wasn’t. Month after month, my X-rays and blood tests came back the same. And I didn’t know which change would be more terrifying, the death sentence I’d been dreading since sophomore year, or the ticket home to a life I’d missed far too much of to ever fully recover, and a world that would always treat me as an outsider if they knew.

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