“Huh,” Milo said.
“The love of my life. The mother of my child. Are you getting my point?”
“Huh?” Milo was back on the roses and caviar and stinky French cheese. He was thinking about grand romantic gestures. He was thinking about Hayley Christenson.
“My point,” Frankie said, reaching out for Milo’s hand, “is that sometimes … when you take a great emotional risk … when you put yourself out there and make yourself most vulnerable … you hit pay dirt. It just may not be the pay dirt you expected to hit.”
Milo nodded—he got it. Then he swallowed the lump in the back of his throat, wondering why it was there. The answer was obvious, of course: he was still dehydrated and Frankie was being cheesy.
“Are you ready to get out of here?” she said.
“You have no idea.”
HOLLIS
Milo looked okay. By nine o’clock that night he was sitting on the couch in Hollis’s living room, and JJ was making him laugh. Noah was texting Josh. Abby was writing in her notebook. There was so much to write about. They’d seen their father today. His wife was having a baby. Milo could have died. Whenever Hollis thought about Milo lying on the floor of the coffee shop, barely breathing, she wanted to barf. Milo drove through life without a seat belt—without a crash helmet. The worst part was that it could happen again. He could eat the wrong thing. He could—
No. Hollis shivered. She wasn’t going to think about that now. She was going to put this bowl of popcorn that her mother had asked her to make on the coffee table, in front of Frankie and Suzanne, who were flipping through Hollis’s baby album. God, that thing was so embarrassing. She was naked in half the pictures. Naked and wearing a Kleenex box. Naked and riding a tricycle.
“You were adorable,” Suzanne said, looking up at Hollis and beaming.
It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. “Thanks.”
She perched on the arm of the couch next to JJ. He squeezed her knee. “Hello, Hollis Darby-Barnes.”
“Hello, JJ Rabinowitz.”
He grabbed her thumb.
She felt herself smile. She couldn’t help it.
Hollis looked around the room and thought, Everyone is here. In my house. She felt an odd sense of calm. But she felt something else, too. An almost panicky feeling underneath. Don’t leave!
They had only one day left. By Monday afternoon, everyone would be gone. Milo and Frankie and Suzanne. JJ. Abby and Noah. What was Hollis supposed to do then? Just go back to her stupid life? Homework? Quiet lunches with Shay and Gianna? She was no longer hooking up with Gunnar. She was no longer receiving slut mail. Ever since that day in the bathroom with Malory, everything had stopped. The texts. The voice mails. The posts. It wasn’t that Hollis missed being called a slutbag ho—she wasn’t that messed up—but still. School was dullsville. Maybe she needed some new friends.
An image popped into her head then, of Milo and JJ and Abby and Noah walking down the hall with her—all in a row the way Malory and her friends walked—taking up all the space in the world. The image twinged Hollis’s heart.
“This sucks,” she announced.
“What sucks?” Milo said.
“We only have one full day left.”
“I know. It’s a bummer.”
Move to Saint Paul, Hollis thought. Go to my school! JJ and I can hook up in the janitor’s closet! Everyone can live in my basement!
“We’ll just have to come back,” Abby said.
“You’re welcome anytime,” Hollis’s mom said.
And Noah said, “If we do this again, Josh wants to come.”
Everyone looked at Noah.
“Seriously?” Hollis said.
“I texted him so many pictures, I think I wore him down.”
“I know,” Abby said, closing her notebook and sticking her pen behind her ear. “You should all come to Sheboygan this summer. We have a lake house.”
“Or Brooklyn,” Milo said. “We could sit around sweating and wishing we had a lake house.”
“Or Chicago,” Noah said. “We could go to a Cubs game.”
It wasn’t until later, when everyone was asleep, and JJ lay heavy and warm beside her on the basement floor, that Hollis thought about Will Bardo. In all the drama surrounding Milo, they’d forgotten to debrief.
“You guys?” Hollis said.
There was no response.
“Anyone awake?”
Nothing. Breaths and sighs and gentle snores. Hollis didn’t have the heart to wake them.
MILO
At breakfast, Suzanne hugged Milo for an embarrassingly long time. When she finally released him, she said, “We are going to figure this out, with or without Will Bardo.”
“Figure what out?” Milo said.
“Your allergies,” Suzanne said.
She had talked to one of the doctors yesterday, when Milo was in the hospital. There was a new therapy they might consider when they got back to New York. Immunotherapy. By introducing each of Milo’s allergens into his system in very small increments—over the course of many months—the hope was that his immune system could begin to create antibodies to fight the allergens.
“One allergen at a time?” Milo said.
“One allergen at a time,” Suzanne said.
“Several months for each one?”
“Or more. It can take up to a year.”
“I’ll be Rip Van Winkle by the time I’m allergy free!”
“You want your beard back, Rip?” Abby said. “You rocked that look yesterday.”
Milo laughed. “I am never wearing that thing again.”
* * *
They decided to go to the Mall of America to ride the roller coasters. This was Milo’s idea, and since he had defied death and everyone was freshly, poignantly aware of the tenuousness of life, this is what they did.
They took two cars. Frankie and Leigh drove. They wasted half an hour searching for parking spots. They walked through the food court and past the shops and up and up and down escalators while Hollis spouted random facts: “Did you know you could fit seven Yankee Stadiums inside the Mall of America? Did you know the Mall of America has its own counterterrorism unit?”
When they got to the bottom of Rock Bottom Plunge, JJ insisted on taking a picture. “Everyone get together. Moms, too.”
They got together in a wobbly line.
JJ lifted his camera. “Say sperm.”
“Sperm!” Milo said.
“Sperm!” Abby said.
“Sperm!” Noah said.
“Sperm!” the moms said.
JJ lowered his camera. “Hollis?”
“Seriously?”
“Humor the event photographer.”
“Sperm,” Hollis said.
JJ snapped the picture.
“That,” he said, “is one good-looking family.”
The moms opted out of the roller coaster ride, but the rest of them filed into the first car of the Rock Bottom Plunge. Milo and Hollis. Abby and Noah. JJ.
“Crap,” Milo said, as they began to move. “I forgot how much I hate roller coasters.”
Hollis looked at him. “You’re the one who suggested it. You wanted to sit in the front.”
“I know,” Milo said, shaking his head incredulously. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Staring death in the face after your near-death experience?”
“Something like that,” Milo said, squeezing the restraint bar. “I don’t know. It was either this or eat a peanut.”
Hollis shot him a look. “Don’t joke about that.”
Milo shrugged. “Gallows humor.”
The car jerked forward, beginning its ascent.
“So,” Abby called out behind them, over the squeak of metal, “I need to tell you guys something!”
“What?” Hollis said.
“Last night, when you were all asleep, I posted another message to Will!”
“What?” Milo said.
The car jerked some more.
The squeaking got louder.
“I told him we were here until tomorrow! I gave him my cell number! He could call at any second!”
“And you waited until now to tell us?” Noah said.
“Dramatic tension!” Abby said. “Building to a climax!”
They were ticking their way straight up, lying flat on their backs, gazing through the skylights at the staggeringly blue sky.
Milo squeezed the restraint bar so hard his knuckles were turning white.
“Just in case!” Abby yelled. “You know—we all have heart attacks on the way down! At least he’ll know we tried!”
“Again with the heart attacks!” Noah yelled.
Milo’s back was braced against the seat. His heart was leaping.
“Hollis Darby-Barnes!” JJ called from two rows back.
“Yeah?”
“Come sit with me!”
“I’ll be right there! Let me just take off my seat belt!”
“Don’t joke,” Milo murmured through clenched teeth. Then, “Oh, shit.” The car peaked, pausing at the very top.
He looked at Hollis.
“It’s okay.” She was laughing. “Just wait. It’s kind of a rush.”
He couldn’t see what came next, but he could sense it: the air below them, charged with possibility.
“Ready?” Hollis said.
They plunged.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I’d like to thank Jon Yaged, president of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, for entrusting me with his story seed; and Joy Peskin, my exceptional editor/literary doula, for helping me birth this baby.
Thank you to Morgan Dubin, my publicist, for her enthusiasm and hard work.
Thank you to Elizabeth H. Clark, designer of this spectacular cover; to Maya Packard and Katie Cicatelli-Kuc, copy editors extraordinaire; and to Johanna Kirby, my wonderful marketing manager.
I am grateful to Rebecca Sherman, my agent at Writers House, for her advocacy and continued support.
A special thank you to Dr. Jonathan Stein, for helping with my allergy and genetics research, most of which took place on the Little League sidelines.
Thanks to Taco Pacifico, for providing dinner for my kids when I was too busy writing to cook.
A big hug to David Wick, who gave me Sheboygan. A shout-out to the real, live Tania Kosiewicz, who does not work at Macalester College, nor does she date Hollis Darby-Barnes’s mother, but I am happy to call her my friend and the inspiration behind “Tania Kosiewicz, Alumni Relations.”
Last, but certainly not least, enduring love and gratitude to my other f-word: Jack, Ben, Emma, Kuj, Beckett, Bobo, and Swish. And to my parents, Beebo and Geo, who believed in me from the very beginning, when all I wrote about was rainbows.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natasha Friend is the award-winning author of Where You’ll Find Me, Perfect, Lush, Bounce, For Keeps, and My Life in Black and White. She lives in Madison, Connecticut, with her family. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
HOLLIS
MILO
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010
Text copyright © 2017 by Natasha Friend
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2017
eBook edition, March 2017
fiercereads.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Friend, Natasha, 1972–, author.
Title: The other F-word / Natasha Friend.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. | Summary: “A teen girl who was conceived via in vitro fertilization goes off in search of answers about her past”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016009256 (print) | LCCN 2016036127 (ebook) | ISBN 9780374302344 (hardback) | ISBN 9780374302351 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Test tube babies—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.F91535 Ot 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.F91535 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009256
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at
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eISBN 9780374302351
Natasha Friend, The Other F-Word
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