Read Online Sharing Sam by Katherine Applegate - Free Book Online Page A

dead in the next five minutes. I’m surprised Rosa doesn’t have a priest on call to give me the last rites.”
    “Everybody’ll settle down. Give it a few days. You’ll be old news.”
    Izzy tugged at the knot in her bandanna. “Wanna see?” she whispered.
    I nodded, because I knew she wanted me to.
    It wasn’t the baldness that shocked me, it was the ugly truth of the dark red incision. Until that moment, Izzy’s diseasehad been an abstraction. All of a sudden it was real. I made myself look at it the way she had to look at it every morning in the mirror.
    “Gross, huh? Sorry. Bad idea.” She retied her scarf.
    “No, really,” I said quickly. “You look like … sort of like a white Shaquille O’Neal. With boobs.”
    Izzy laughed. “God, I missed you. I knew you’d treat me like me.” She leaned down to sniff Sam’s already-wilting daisies. “I hope this isn’t an omen,” she said, cupping a drooping flower. “Sweet, though, wasn’t it?”
    “Very.”
    “It was brilliant of you to invite him, Al. I need a diversion. I’ve been thinking I need a hobby, anyway. I was going to take up stamp collecting, but maybe I’ll collect guys instead.” Izzy peered down the hall. “Ah, there’s a fine-looking specimen now.” She glanced back at me. “Has Sam said anything useful? Like, you know, he’s always had a hankering for sick chicks?”
    “Actually …” I searched for words and couldn’t find any. “Actually, he’s asked about you several times,” I said. It was the truth, at least.
    “Close enough. Wish me luck.”
    I watched her race off. Lauren came into the kitchen. Her short, dark hair was flat and shapeless, her tailored navy dress wrinkled. She wasn’t her usual elegant self. She draped an arm around me. “Thanks, Alison, for this. She needed a pick-me-up.”
    “She looks good,” I said.
    Lauren chewed on her lower lip, where her coral lipstick was smudged and flaked. She motioned for me to follow her tothe master bedroom. As we walked down the hall I noticed Izzy talking to Sam. Briefly she touched his arm, leaning close.
    The pristine bedroom was very tropical, with wicker furniture and a colorful spread. I stood by the large windows overlooking the gray-blue Gulf.
    “She hasn’t asked. Isn’t that odd?” Lauren’s voice was a whisper. “I was ready to lie after the surgery, but she never asked. The doctor came in and said everything looked good, they had done what they could, and she left it at that. I was so relieved. It was so …”
    “Not like Izzy.”
    “Yes.” She came over, squeezed my shoulder. “You understand, right? That we’re telling everyone they got it all, and everything’s going to be fine.”
    “I understand.”
    There was a soft knock. Miguel entered the room and closed the door behind him. He was tall, like Iz. She had gotten her dark, thickly lashed eyes from him. “You told Alison?” he asked.
    Lauren nodded.
    “We want every moment to be happy, you see,” he said to me, but also to himself, I think. “That’s the right thing. It is.”
    “Of course it is,” Lauren said crisply.
    I heard Izzy’s melodic, up-the-scale laugh from all the way down the hall.
    “What good would there be in telling her the truth?” Miguel asked.
    “What if she figures it out herself?” I asked gently. “You know how Izzy is. She can’t let things alone. She’ll be digging through medical textbooks again and will be on the Internet all night. What if she already suspects?”
    Lauren rubbed her eyes. She leaned close to me. Her fingers tightened on my shoulder. I could feel her nails through my shirt; I could smell her perfume, the Chanel Izzy sometimes borrowed when her mom wasn’t looking.
    “She has only two or three months, Alison,” she whispered. She pulled away, and I could see in the intense heat of her eyes that there were no tears left. “Maybe less, they don’t know. The tumor was more advanced than they’d expected. For that