Everything on my body hurts. I can’t even lift my head, the pain is so severe.
There’s an IV in my hand.
I’m in a hospital, I realize. A hospital in some country that is not America (which is why it doesn’t smell like a hospital).
“Tom,” I croak. My throat is dry and scratchy. “Tom.”
No one can hear me. I need to know if he is alive. And no one is coming.
I lift my head (agony) to see if there’s a nurse call-button thingy. There’s none.
“Tom,” I repeat. “Somebody!”
The walls are painted a mint green and the equipment is mismatched new and old.
There’s a TV. On it I see the news. The anchors are a Latino man and a Latino woman. The sound is off.
I wonder where I am. (Will anyone ever come?)
I hear a fuss in the hallway. The sound of people talking in Spanish. And Tom! I hear his voice!
“Tom!” I call.
And he bursts in.
He’s dragging his leg, which is in a plaster cast, and he staggers to my bed.
“Laurel!” he cries and we’re kissing and trying to embrace and I forget the pain I’m in because it feels so good to touch him.
Two small nurses are tutting and fussing in Spanish. They demand that Tom return to his room. (Fat chance, nurses.)
“El canal Americano!” he says, pointing to the TV. “Por favor, el sonido! Por favor!”
One of them shakes her head in disapproval but marches over to the TV, changes the channel, and cranks up the volume. The two nurses argue for a moment, pointing at us, and they must decide to leave us alone for a minute because they turn and go.
“Look,” Tom says, as if I need to be told.
It’s one of the networks and two news anchors are reporting, a gray-haired man and a pretty black woman.
“Search-and-rescue teams from Honduras and Nicaragua have been combing the seas for survivors. We have word that at least seventy-five people have been rescued, but no crews have been able to speak to any of the survivors yet,” the man says.
Footage of helicopter rescues show on screen. There’s our raft—I think it’s our raft. And a shot of a stretcher being airlifted off. I think it’s me on the stretcher!
The anchorwoman takes over.
“Thanks, Jim. Now, the authorities have not confirmed this, but we have received an e-mail from a Private Amos Lancaster, formerly of the U.S Marine Corps, claiming responsibility for the attack. He wrote to us—”
An excerpt from his e-mail shows on the screen.
Timothy Almstead is dead now and he deserved it! I blame Pipop for the downfall of America. No one can resist it and all that sugar has poisoned us all. I look around and see poison everywhere. Every store, every second of the day we’re surrounded by it. It has to end somewhere! I blew up that ship to fight back! Everyone should join me and fight back!
The man, Jim, talks: “Wow, Sabrina, what a tragedy for Timothy Almstead, the president and heir of the Pipop empire, to have worked to bring Solu to the market and have this happen on the day the product is launched!”
“I agree, Jim,” Sabrina says. “Stores across the country sold out in a matter of hours.”
They cut to a Greenway Superstore. Happy, smiling shoppers with arms full of lavender boxes wave and mug for the camera.
“Now we’re getting word of a new development,” Sabrina says. She’s reading from a piece of paper that’s just been handed to her. “The authorities are asking people to temporarily refrain from taking Solu. Huh. Apparently, the passengers from one of the lifeboats are claiming it is not safe.”
“Solu is not safe?” Jim repeats.
Sabrina makes a little embarrassed face.
“Uh-oh!” the anchorwoman says. “That’s a little late for a lot of us. I’m already on my third packet of the day, and I have to say…” She winks. “I’m feeling fantastic.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
What a pleasure it is to collaborate with the smart and talented people at Feiwel & Friends, Macmillan, and the Einstein Literary Management. I feel an enormous debt to the editorial, design, publicity, marketing, and sales departments for all the hard work that went into this book, as well as to my savvy and hardworking agents.
A brief laundry list of gratitude:
Holly, Jean, and Dave! Anne Heausler!
Susanna, Sandy, and Molly R-L.!
Molly Brouillette! Mary, Allison, Ksenia, Nicole B., and Brittany!
Liz F.! Kathryn!
Rich Deas and KB!
Angus!
Vannessa, the other Holly, Jenn, Mark, Claire, and Jennifer!
Lauren! Nicole L.M, Anna, and Christine!
I really mean those exclamation points. Those are sincere and exuberant exclams from the heart!
Another set of earnest exclamation points to my extraordinary and generous beta readers, Kristin Bair and Wendy Shanker. Thank you!
I dedicated this book to my father, Kit Laybourne. Dad, you have an irrepressible creative zeal and I’m so glad it rubbed off on me. Thank you for taking me on a luxury cruise to the Caribbean to do research. Wow—was that fun! (And a shout-out to all the friends we made on the cruise, crew and passengers alike.) Also, thanks for taking me to all those B movies over the years. They rubbed off on me, too.
Now, Sweet is hardly an issue book, but there are some important subjects that come into play. Just to be very clear, I, Emmy Laybourne, am a believer in fat acceptance and shame-free body love. I also have personal experience with food addiction (sugar, to be specific). You can read more about my personal feelings on these subjects on the page for SWEET at emmylaybourne.com. There, you’ll also find links to articles I find relevant, as well as information on the books and tools I use to combat my sugar addiction.
Lastly, I want to thank my beloved children, Elinor and Rex. I feel so unbelievably lucky to be your mom. And thank you to my husband, Greg, for taking such good care of me and making me laugh and letting me love you so much. I kicked sugar and now you are my sweetener of choice.
Thank you for reading this FEIWEL AND FRIENDS book. The Friends who made
SWEET
possible are:
JEAN FEIWEL, Publisher
LIZ SZABLA, Editor in Chief
RICH DEAS, Senior Creative Director
HOLLY WEST, Associate Editor
DAVE BARRETT, Executive Managing Editor
NICOLE LIEBOWITZ MOULAISON, Production Manager
LAUREN A. BURNIAC, Editor
ANNA ROBERTO, Associate Editor
CHRISTINE BARCELLONA, Editorial Assistant
Follow us on Facebook or visit us online at MACKIDS.COM.
OUR BOOKS ARE FRIENDS FOR LIFE.
CHAPTER ONE
TINKS
DAY 1
Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
But the bus was barreling down our street so I ran.
* * *
As I raced down the driveway I heard my mom yell for my brother, Alex. His bus was coming down Park Trail Drive, right behind mine. His bus came at 7:09 on the dot. Mine was supposed to come at 6:57 but was almost always late, as if the driver agreed it wasn’t fair to pick me up before 7:00.
Alex ran out behind me and our feet pounded the sidewalk in a dual sneaker-slap rhythm.
“Don’t forget,” he called. “We’re going to the Salvation Army after school.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
My bus driver laid on the horn.
Sometimes we went over to rummage for old electronics after school. I used to drive him before the gas shortage. But now we took
our bikes.
I used to drive him to school, too. But since the shortage everyone in our school, everyone, even the seniors, took the bus. It was the law, actually.
I vaulted up the bus steps.
Behind me I heard Mrs. Wooly, who has been driving the elementary–middle school bus since forever, thank Alex sarcastically for gracing them with his presence.
Mrs. Wooly, she was an institution in our town. A grizzled, wiry-haired, ashtray-scented, tough-talking institution. Notorious and totally devoted to bus driving, which you can’t say about everyone.
On the other hand, the driver of my bus, the high school bus, was morbidly obese and entirely forgettable. Mr. Reed. The only thing he was known for was that he drank his morning coffee out of an old jelly jar.
Even though it was early in the route, Jake Simonsen, football hero and all-around champion of the popular, was already holding court in the back. Jake had moved to our school from Texas a year ago. He was a real big shot back in Texas, where football is king, and upon transfer to our school had retained and perhaps even increased his stature.
“I’m telling y’all—concessions!” Jake said. “At my old high school a bunch of girls sold pop and cookies and these baked potatoes they used to cook on a grill. Every game. They made, like, a million dollars.”
“A million dollars?” Astrid said.
Astrid Heyman, champion diver on the swim team, scornful goddess, girl of my dreams.
“Even if I could make a million dollars, I wouldn’t give up playing my own sport to be a booster for the football team,” she said.
Jake flashed her one of his golden smiles.
“Not a booster, baby, an entrepreneur!”
Astrid punched Jake on the arm.
“Ow!” he complained, grinning. “God, you’re strong. You should box.”
“I have four younger brothers,” she answered. “I do.”
I hunkered down in my seat and tried to get my breath back. The backs of the forest green pleather seats were tall enough that if you slouched, you could sort of disappear for a moment.
I ducked down. I was hoping no one would comment on my sprint to catch the bus. Astrid hadn’t noticed me get on the bus at all, which was both good and bad.
Behind me, Josie Miller and Trish Greenstein were going over plans for some kind of animal rights demonstration. They were kind of hippie-activists. I wouldn’t really know them at all, except once in sixth grade I’d volunteered to go door to door with them campaigning for Cory Booker. We’d had a pretty fun time, actually, but now we didn’t even say hi to each other.
I don’t know why. High school seemed to do that to people.
The only person who acknowledged my arrival at all was Niko Mills. He leaned over and pointed to my shoe—like, “I’m too cool to talk”—he just points. And I looked down, and of course, it was untied. I tied it. Said thanks. But then I immediately put in my earbuds and focused on my minitab. I didn’t have anything to say to Niko, and judging from his pointing at my shoe, he didn’t have anything to say to me either.
From what I’d heard, Niko lived in a cabin with his grandfather, up in the foothills near Mount Herman, and they hunted for their own food and had no electricity and used wild mushrooms for toilet paper. That kind of thing. People called Niko “Brave Hunter Man,” a nickname that fit him just right with his perfect posture, his thin, wiry frame, and his whole brown-skin-brown-eyes-brown-hair combo. He carried himself with that kind of stiff pride you get when no one will talk to you.
So I ignored Brave Hunter Man and tried to power up my minitab. It was dead and that was really weird because I’d just grabbed it off the charging plate before I left the house.
Then came this little tink, tink, tink sound. I took out my buds to hear better. The tinks were like rain, only metallic.
And the tinks turned to TINKS and the TINKS turned to Mr. Reed’s screaming “Holy Christ!” And suddenly the roof of the bus started denting—BAM, BAM, BAM—and a cobweb crack spread over the windshield. With each BAM the windshield changed like a slide show, growing more and more white as the cracks shot through the surface.
I looked out the side window next to me.
Hail in all different sizes from little to that-can’t-be-hail was pelting the street.
Cars swerved all over the road. Mr. Reed, always a lead foot, slammed on the gas instead of the brake, which is what the other cars seemed to be doing.
Our bus hurdled through an intersection, over the median, and into the parking lot of our local Greenway superstore. It was fairly deserted because it was maybe 7:15 by this point.
I turned around to look back in the bus toward Astrid, and everything went in slow motion and fast motion at the same time as our bus slid on the ice, swerving into a spin. We went faster and faster, and my stomach was in my mouth. My back was pressed to the window, like in some carnival ride, for maybe three seconds and then we hit a lamppost and there was a sick metallic shriek.
I grabbed on to the back of the seat in front of me but then I was jumbling through the air. Other kids went flying, too. There was no screaming, just grunts and impact sounds.
I flew sideways but hit, somehow, the roof of the bus. Then I understood that our bus had turned onto its side. It was screaming along the asphalt on its side. It shuddered to a stop.
The hail, which had merely been denting the hell out of our roof, started denting the hell out of us.
Now that the bus was on its side, hail was hammering down through the row of windows above us. Some of my classmates were getting clobbered by the hail and the window glass that was raining down.
I was lucky. A seat near me had come loose, and I pulled it over me. I had a little roof.
The rocks of ice were all different sizes. Some little round marbles and some big knotty lumps with gray parts and gravel stuck inside them.
There were screams and shouts as everyone scrambled to get under any loose seats or to stand up, pressed to the roof, which was now the wall.
It sounded as if we were caught in a riptide of stones and rocks, crashing over and over. It felt like someone was beating the seat I was under with a baseball bat.
I tilted my head down and looked out what was left of the windshield. Through the white spray outside I saw that the grammar school bus, Alex’s bus, was somehow still going. Mrs. Wooly hadn’t skidded or lost control like Mr. Reed.
Her bus was cutting through the parking lot, headed right for the main entrance to the Greenway.
Mrs. Wooly’s going to drive right into the building, I thought. And I knew that she would get those kids out of the hail. And she did. She smashed the bus right through the glass doors of the Greenway.
Alex was safe, I thought. Good.
Then I heard this sad, whimpering sound. I edged forward and peered around the driver’s seat. The front of the bus was caved in, from where it had hit the lamppost.
It was Mr. Reed making that sound. He was pinned behind the wheel and blood was spilling out of his head like milk out of a carton. Soon he stopped making that sound. But I couldn’t think about that.
Instead, I was looking at the door to the bus, which was now facing the pavement. How will we get out? I was thinking. We can’t get out. The windshield was all crunched up against the hood of the engine.
It was all a crumpled jam. We were trapped in the demolished sideways bus.
Josie Miller screamed. The rest of the kids had instinctively scrambled to get out of the hail but Josie was just sitting, wailing, getting pelted by the ice balls.
She was covered in blood, but not her own, I realized, because she was trying to pull on someone’s arm from between two mangled seats and I remembered Trish had been sitting next to her. The arm was limp, like a noodle, and kept slipping down out of Josie’s grip. Trish was definitely dead but Josie didn’t seem to be getting it.
From a safe spot under an overturned seat, this jerk Brayden, who is always going on about his dad working at NORAD, took out his
minitab and started trying to shoot a video of Josie screaming and grabbing at the slippery arm.
A monster hailstone hit Josie on the forehead and a big pink gash opened on her dark forehead. Blood started streaming down over her face.
I knew that the hail was going to kill Josie if she kept sitting there out in the open.
“Christ.” Brayden cursed at his minitab. “Come on!”
I knew I should move. Help her. Move. Help.
But my body was not responding to my conscience.
Then Niko reached out and grabbed Josie by the legs and pulled her under a twisted seat. Just like that. He reached out and pulled her two legs toward him and brought her in to his body. He held her and she sobbed. They looked like a couple out of a horror film.
Somehow Niko’s action had broken the spell. Kids were trying to get out and Astrid crawled to the front. She tried to kick through the windshield. She saw me on the ground, under my seat, and she shouted, “Help me!”
I just looked at her mouth. And her nose ring. And her lips moving and making words. I wanted to say, “No. We can’t go out there. We have to stay where there is shelter.” But I couldn’t quite piece the words together.
She stood up and screamed to Jake and his people, “We’ve got to get into the store!”
Finally I croaked out, “We can’t go out! The hail will kill us.” But Astrid was at the back of the bus by then.
“Try the emergency exit!” someone shouted. At the back of the bus Jake was already pulling and pulling at the door, but he couldn’t get it open. There was mayhem for a few minutes; I don’t know how long. I started to feel very strange. Like my head was on a long balloon string, floating above everything.
And then I heard such a funny sound. It was the beep-beep-beep sound of a school bus backing up. It was crazy to hear it through the hammering hail and the screaming.
Beep-beep-beep, like we were at the parking lot on a field trip to Mesa Verde and the bus was backing up.
Beep-beep-beep, like everything was normal.
I squinted out, and sure enough, Mrs. Wooly was backing up the elementary–middle school bus toward us. It was listing to the right pretty bad and I could see where it was dented in the front from smashing into the store. But it was coming.