This is the last YASH! Let’s go out with a bang!

Welcome to YA Scavenger Hunt! This bi-annual event was first organized by author Colleen Houck as a way to give readers a chance to gain access to exclusive bonus material from their favorite authors…and a chance to win some awesome prizes! On this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, but you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one book from each author on the hunt in my team! But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for a short amount of time!

Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are THREE contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the RED TEAM–but there is also a blue team,  and a purple team for a chance to win a whole different set of books!

If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page.

SCAVENGER HUNT PUZZLE

Directions: Below, you’ll notice that I’ve listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the red team, and then add them up (don’t worry, you can use a calculator!).

Entry Form: Once you’ve added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday, Oct 4th, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.

   Today, I am hosting Stacie Ramey. Stacie Ramey is the award winning author of The Sister Pact, The Homecoming, The Secrets We Bury, and It’s My Life. When she’s not writing, she engages in Netflix Wars with her grown children or beats her husband in Scrabble. You can delve into everything Stacie by heading over to her website: www.stacieramey.net

  Stacie’s book It’s My Life  

While facing disturbing revelations about the cause of her disability, a high school junior with cerebral palsy is on the verge of giving up on herself until she learns that her childhood crush has moved back into town. You can purchase this amazing book here: It’s My Life

 And before you read her EXCLUSIVE CH 1,  don’t forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a book or 2 by me, Stacie, and more! Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the red team and you’ll have the secret code to enter for the grand prize!    

CONTINUE THE HUNT

 To keep going on your quest for the hunt, you need to check out the next author here! You can follow and tweet YASH @yascavengerhunt and the same on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/yascavengerhunt  

Dont forget to give Goodreads a look too at: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/152968.YASH_FALL_2020

Happy Hunting 🙂

Chapter 1 below: 

Everything’s different for girls like me.

My younger sister, Rena, would say I’m being dramatic. As in, “Stop being so dramatic, Jenna. Having CP doesn’t make you the

star of a telethon.”

I always laugh when she says it, which is the whole point.

But right now, Rena and my best friend, Ben, are both at school,

living their lives, while I’m lying on a cold MRI table, bare-assed and covered in a skimpy hospital gown. See? Different.

And also maybe a little dramatic. I get that.

The door swings open. I hold my breath, hoping for Gary as my nurse today. I cannot deal with my yearly MRI with anyone else.

“How’s my favorite girl?” Gary’s voice reaches me, and I let my breath go, turning my head to shoot him my best I’m-not-feeling- too-sorry-for-myself smile.

Gary’s tall and lean. Muscular, though. I can see those peeking out of his scrubs. He’s always changing his overall look, but now he’s blonde with a soul patch under his lip. He is dressed in his usual blue-grey hospital scrubs—no dorky Disney scrubs for him, despite this being the pediatric wing. We’ve known each other far too long, Gary and me. He was there for most of my surgeries and even the time I smashed Mom’s Waterford glass into my forehead

during a muscle spasm, effectively ruining Passover. So, all the good times.

He’s wearing a Tree of Life necklace on a silver beaded chain and some other charm I can’t make out. They clink together as he leans over me to prepare the straps they need to hold me in place. The sound is comforting like church bells or something. I’ve always been a sucker for spiritual stuff. “You need anything?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t turn down a trip to Florida and a good book,” I joke.

“Let’s run away. We can leave out the back door,” Gary says. This is one of our things. “I’m thinking North Carolina. I’m sort of into mountains these days.”

“Good plan. I’m pretty sure my body would terrify the beachgo- ers.” I smooth my gown that’s ridden up from all of his fiddling with the table, uncovering the most recent scars from my surgeries. If I was here with anyone but Gary, I’d feel pretty exposed. With him I don’t have to worry.

Gary scoffs. “Girl, scars are sexy now. Totally in. Like tattoos and body piercings.”

I laugh so hard I snort. “Are snorts sexy now, too?”

My left leg starts to spasm, pulling away from the straps. Gary launches into a story about his current boyfriend, Bryan, as he runs my leg through its range of motion, massages it, and puts it back into place.

“Bryan is very pretty to look at, but is a diva of the nth degree,” Gary tells me as he adjusts a pillow under my arm and cleans the area for the needle. I barely feel the IV line going in.

“It’s bad enough he’s into all that new-age, no caffeine lifestyle

for himself.” Gary pauses for effect, his hand over his heart. “But when he buys me coffee, it’s decaf!”

I fake a gasp.

“I know. You don’t mess with a person’s caffeine.” Gary tapes my IV line in place. “I’m just going to inject the sedative now, then the contrast; it may feel a little cold.”

This is just one of the reasons I don’t want these stupid tests. For normal people, it doesn’t even hurt. For me, it’s liquid ice snaking through my veins, slow enough that the rebound pain is there at the same time as the first burn. I tense, and Gary squeezes my hand. I do not want to cry. It’s a deal I made with myself years ago, back when I pretended I was Daddy’s little warrior.

Gary loads up a new playlist that Rena made for me called Songs for Enduring Stupid Pain, and he catches my gaze. “Going to start now. You just close your eyes and go someplace better than this, baby girl. See you on the other side.”

He pushes the button, and I slide into the tube. I close my eyes and try to breathe easy. The drugs in the IV help my muscles relax, but they aren’t enough to make me sleep—which would make this entire deal easier.

As I wait for the first song to play, I try to guess which one Rena started with. Let’s see, pain as the motif? So many choices. But instead of a song, her voice pipes in. “Stay cool, Jenna. It’s going to be fine.”

That’s my sister being all Zen like usual.

Then my big brother Eric chimes in, “Go get it!” I’ve got no idea how they managed that with him away at college.

“Kick its ass,” Rena says.

“Stay out of the woods,” Eric adds. It’s an inside joke from when we were little—the three of us and our neighbor Julian used to go to the nearby woods to look for animals and trees and mythical things, because I convinced them all if they were around us, that’s where they’d be.

Rena laughs, and then the soulful sound of Michael Stipe singing “Everybody Hurts” fills my ears. I can’t help but appreciate Rena’s choice on so many levels. The MRI clicks and thrums as the sedatives start to unclench the muscles in my head. Everything feels softer. Gary told me to leave my body, and in this tube I feel like I can. And I do. Soon I’m flying through the air, through the clouds, feeling what it’s like to move free and easy, way above the hurt. Away from this body, to someplace better.

A familiar voice inside my head whispers, “It’s so easy.” It’s me, but it’s not—I call her Jennifer, the person I could have been. Free. Easy. Strong. Clear. I want to be her someday, and that pos- sibility fills me until my head feels all light and my mind expands until I’m flying even higher. And higher. And then I get a little queasy. My stomach backs up in my throat, and I swallow to get rid of the taste.

“Jenna?” Gary calls through the speakers. “Stay with us, okay? A few more minutes.”

More clicks. More gongs. More time in the tube. I close my eyes and slow my breathing.

I wonder how he knows I feel sick—how he always knows. The rational part of me realizes it’s because of the monitors I’m hooked

to, but I also partly believe it’s because of our bond. A bond I wish I had with a boy.

And just like that, my focus shifts again. To Julian. Julian Van Beck. The kid I’ve had a thing for since kindergarten.

Almost like the universe hears me, the next song is “Fix You” by Coldplay. The first time I heard this song was at one of Eric’s rec hockey games. Eric was twelve. I was ten, but a very cool ten. Or at least I thought I was. I was sitting on the bench next to the hockey players—a perk of being Eric’s sister, since he was the captain of the team. I had one earbud in, and as the song started, Julian came off the ice and sat down next to me. The little smoke of breath that sprouted from his lips in the icy rink air was so soft, like a flower petal. If I closed my eyes now, I could still feel the puff of breath, could reach out and touch it with my fingertips, just before it dissipated.

“Try to stay still, Jenna.” Gary’s voice reminds me I am not on the bench at a hockey game. I am here, stuck inside this tube. Stuck inside my body.

A tear rolls down my face, but secretly I’m glad. Even if it’s pain, it’s wonderful anguish. I am, simply, a girl who loves a boy. A boy who will never know, since Julian moved away in middle school. But, the point is, all of this longing is so strong and, in some way, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt.

Right now, in this electric cage, I let my mind ride the waves of sedatives. The song shifts and I’m floating again. Flying over a lush field. The grass under me looks spongy and fresh and so real that it makes me want to walk on it. Want to feel it spring up under my bare feet.

Hold still, hon. Just a few minutes more. You’re doing great.”

I hold still. A breeze blows my hair back, which I know is impos- sible, but it still feels so real. And I’ve got that voice hovering next to me again, a small breath in my ear, like how I saw Julian’s breath that day on the bench. “It’s so easy,” the voice says. Only the e part is stretched so it sounds like eeeeasy.

A strand of hair comes loose and tickles my cheek. I wish I could move it. I try not to think about it, try not to obsess, but it’s kill- ing me. Then it’s blown back, off my face. “You’re okay now. It’s all done,” Jennifer tells me.

“All done,” Gary says. “Be right there.”

And, just like that, I have to prepare myself for reentry. Into the harsh light of the room. Into the harsh vibe of this life. I leave that other version of me, the one that could move freely and easily, in that MRI tube. And I wonder if I could have been that girl all along, if only Dr. Jacoby hadn’t screwed up