Serena put the cat down and stepped forward. She read both bracelets out loud and laughed.
“What does that even mean?” asked Phoebe.
“Come on, Phoebe,” said Izzy. “I know you can figure it out.”
Phoebe stuck out her lower lip. She looked from the bracelets to Daphne.
Daphne hesitated. She flipped her hair. Then she opened her mouth to speak. “It means that . . .”
But Izzy didn’t let Daphne finish. “It means that you can do whatever you want with my drawing. I know who you are and so does everyone else. Come on, Wren. Let’s go.”
Izzy grabbed Wren’s hand and they ran to Nate’s waiting car. It was just like the night they chased after Row, how they’d sprinted together through the dark, laughing at nothing except the thrilling combination of excitement and fear and hope.
Maybe Nate had been right when he said that her drawings were missing something.
Maybe what they were missing was not one superhero, but two.
Two Weeks Later
24
Wren’s Key Chain
Wren shook out her legs. She stretched her hands over her head.
There was one skater left. Then it would be her turn to take the ice at sectionals.
Wren glanced up several rows to where Hannah, her dad, and her mom sat in small plastic seats. Hannah waved her stuffed unicorn in the air. She wore a pink fuzzy hat that protected the stitches on her head. She looked just like any other healthy, unicorn-loving four-year-old. Which, thanks to the successful surgery, she was.
Wren’s dad mouthed, “You’ve got this, Bird.”
Her mom pulled her arms in tight, reminding Wren about what she’d been practicing that week with her double lutz.
Wren nodded. She wiggled her toes in her new skates. Her old ones, which were perfectly broken in, had been lost somewhere in the hospital. Probably stuffed in a trash can with all kinds of needles and bandages. Wren was bummed that she never got a chance to say good-bye.
It had taken a few days to get used to her new skates. She’d worn them around the house, even eating dinner with them on, and now they felt just right.
“Almost time,” said Nancy.
Wren got her water bottle from her skating bag and took a sip. Before Wren left, she and Izzy exchanged hospital bracelets. Wren had attached Izzy’s bracelet with the word TRY to the handle of her skating bag, like a key chain.
A reminder of a week that she never expected to want to remember.
The skater on the ice finished her program.
Wren’s name echoed across the empty stretch of ice.
Nancy lifted Wren’s chin. She looked Wren in the eyes. “Go out there and show them what you’ve got.”
Wren skated to center ice and got into her opening position. As she waited for her music to start, Wren glanced at the seats next to her family.
Izzy and her mom were sitting very straight, their arms linked. Izzy smiled and gave Wren a thumbs-up.
Wren would do this next part on her own.
But knowing they were all there watching gave Wren strength.
And when she landed her double lutz, she could hear them cheer.
25
Izzy Makes Room
Two days after Wren’s skating competition, Izzy stood in the front yard of her house. The blue car was still parked in the driveway. “No, Row,” said Izzy. “We can’t go inside yet.”
Her mom was meeting with the potential client who’d cancelled three weeks before, and Izzy was supposed to keep Row out of the house until she left. But then Row noticed a squirrel climbing up the maple tree in the front yard. Row lunged, and his leash slipped out of Izzy’s grip.
“Row!” yelled Izzy. She ran to the tree and grabbed the end of Row’s leash. “No, Row. Bad dog.”
Izzy led Row, his tail wagging with pride, to the back door. She sat down on the step. The sun was strong and Izzy closed her eyes. Flashes of tangerine orange and bright yellow appeared behind her eyelids. As soon as she got back inside, she’d practice mixing the different yellows of her new oil pastels. She liked how oil pastels blended on paper to create shadows, texture, and depth.
Her life was more complicated now than Sharpie stick figures shouting words trapped inside speech bubbles. It was opposites—good and bad, easy and hard, best friends and sworn enemies—and also everything in between.
“Hey, Izzy,” said a voice.
Izzy opened her eyes, surprised to see Serena standing in front of her.
“What are you doing here?”
“My mom’s meeting with your mom,” said Serena. “Your mom invited me in, but I told her I’d just wait in the car.”
“Your mom is Ms. Stallton?” asked Izzy. Serena’s last name was Tallis.
“She goes by her maiden name now,” said Serena. “My parents are getting divorced and my mom wants a totally clean start. With everything. And just so you know, I wasn’t avoiding you. I just didn’t feel like coming inside and listening to our moms talk about bathroom tiles and window curtains, like they’re going to magically fix everything.”
Izzy smiled. “Do not get my mom started on curtains.”
Serena laughed and kicked a pebble with her sneaker. “Hey, Izzy?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. About everything with Daphne. I didn’t know about the red bracelet trick until the day of the sleepover when you and Wren didn’t show up to theater camp. Daphne spent the entire day worrying that her plan would fall apart. So I thought there was a good chance that Wren wouldn’t even come to the sleepover. I probably shouldn’t have gone anyways, but my mom was home packing boxes and anything was better than doing that. And also, I just didn’t want to be left out.”
Izzy nodded. She remembered walking with Phoebe’s pink mitten in her hand, ringing the doorbell at Daphne’s house, and hoping that Daphne would invite her inside.
“I always knew Daphne was mean,” continued Serena. “But I didn’t know how much she liked being mean until that night.”
“It’s her specialty,” said Izzy. “She’s the queen of mean. That’s what Otto says.”
“Otto makes me laugh,” said Serena.
“Me, too,” said Izzy.
“Maybe we could all sit together at lunch or something?”
Izzy smiled. “Yeah.”
Serena’s mom opened the back door, bags of colorful fabric samples in her hand. Izzy brought Row inside and went up to her room. She pressed her forehead against the window, watching as Serena and her mom backed down the driveway. Her breath did not cloud the glass. There was no condensation heart to slice in half with her finger.
Izzy sat down at her desk and opened the drawer. Her jagged half-heart necklace was shoved in the back, the chain a tangled mess. Over the past two weeks, Izzy had been tempted to throw it out, but she never did. Instead, she put Wren’s hospital ID bracelet with the word NICE in the necklace’s old place.
The bracelet had wrinkled at the edges and curled in on itself. The opposite of the flat, shiny heart.
But Izzy didn’t care how the bracelet looked. She knew what the bracelet meant. And she also knew there was plenty of empty space beside it for whatever might come next.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my editor, Martha Mihalick, for being a true partner in shaping this story. It is a joy and an honor to write with you.
Thank you to my agent, Alex Slater, for believing in me every step of the way. I’m so grateful to be on your team.
Thank you to the incredible people at Greenwillow Books. To Virginia Duncan for the caring and insightful comments, Tim Smith for indulging my debates over comma placement, Sylvie Le Floc’h for the gorgeous pages, and the entire marketing, publicity, and sales teams for working so hard to get this book and so many others into the hands of readers. And to artist Celia Krampien for the beautiful cover and interior art.
There are so many wonderful pediatric doctors and nurses who have brightened my toughest days. Fo
r specific medical advice on this book, I was fortunate to rely on Dr. Ann McCarthy and Dr. Vishnu Cuddapah. Any mistakes are mine alone.
Thank you to the librarians who hand my books to readers, the teachers who recommend them to students, the booksellers who present them to customers, and the young readers who write to me. Hearing from you makes me smile for days.
To my brothers, Alex and Ben Ende, all the sibling love in these pages goes out to you.
Endless hugs and kisses to my daughters: Ella, Liv, and Aven. You girls are the heart of everything I write. And to Winnie, the real-life Row who we love so very much.
This book is dedicated to my husband, Jeff. As everything I write should be.
About the Author
JENNIFER BLECHER is the author of Out of Place. She lives outside of Boston with her husband, their three daughters, and a dog named Winnie in honor of her favorite bear in children’s literature.
WWW.JENNIFERBLECHER.COM
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
STICK WITH ME. Text copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Blecher. Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Celia Krampien. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2020 by Celia Krampien
Cover design by Sylvie Le Floc’h
Digital Edition NOVEMBER 2020 ISBN: 9780062748645
Print ISBN: 9780062748645
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Blecher, Jennifer, author.
Title: Stick with me / Jennifer Blecher.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Greenwillow Books, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2020] | Audience: Ages 8-12. | Audience: Grades 4-6.
Summary: When twelve-year-olds Izzy and Wren are thrown together by unusual circumstances, they find solace and solutions to nagging problems in their newly-formed friendship.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020017523 (print) | ISBN 9780062748645 (hardcover)
Subjects: CYAC: Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. |Theater—Fiction. | Ice skating—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.B61658 Sti 2020 (print) | DDC [Fic] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017523
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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