This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Mann Cover silhouette by Neil Swaab. Cover pill art © mecaleha/istockphoto.com. Cover hand-lettering and design by Karina Granda. Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc. Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104 Visit us at LBYR.com First Edition: May 2021 Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mann, J. Albert, author. Title: Fix / J. Albert Mann. Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2021. | Audience: Ages 14+. | Summary: In the aftermath of major surgery, sixteen-year-old Eve struggles with pain, grief, and guilt while becoming increasingly dependent on pain medication, revisiting memories of her best friend, and exploring a potential romance. Identifiers: LCCN 2020048433 | ISBN 9780316493499 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316493406 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316493437 (ebook other) Subjects: CYAC: Surgery—Fiction. | Scoliosis—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Drug addiction—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M36614 Fix 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048433 ISBNs: 978-0-316-49349-9 (hardcover), 978-0-316-49340-6 (ebook) E3-20210409-JV-NF-ORI Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Nineteen Degrees Red Rover, Red Rover Please, No God The Telescope Collage Lidia Returns Something I Don’t Know Just Like It Always Was Me and Lidia Your Decision Something I Already Knew Pain The Burger Hut “Lidia” The Hand The Real One Eve and the Serpent Lies, Lies, Lies Everything I Want The Real One Need The Surgery The Real One The Human Form The Happiest of Huts Minnesota Mirrors and Miracles Something We Both Knew The Real One Slow Motion The Real One Say Something Who You Want Me to Be The Real One A Shower The Real One Forced from the Realm A Kiss The Roxy Possibly. Hopefully. Probably. Anywhere but Here The Real One I’ll Be Waiting An Exact Replica The Real One Take Me Somewhere Trying Me and Lidia Dry The Real One Shame Lidia Banks Never Needed Two Hands Food Fight My Decision Author’s Note Acknowledgments Discover More About the Author For Kevin Mann The only lie I’ve ever told my children is that we make our own lives. You made my life. Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more. Tap here to learn more. Nineteen Degrees I’M COLD. Cold and confused. Do I feel the tube between my lips? The staples sunk deep into my torso? The bars and screws bolted to my spine? The pain? No. All I feel is cold. A warm shadow lingers over me. I hear her. Maybe. Then… nothing. I dream of soft blurry voices and distant bright lights. Slowly, so slowly, I realize these aren’t dreams at all, but reality flittering into focus. Colors. Sounds. Everything hazy and high-pitched and filled with beeping and clicking and the whooshing sounds of air. At some point, they pull the tube from my throat. I think about screaming but then forget. Nearby, I hear someone calling out over and over. I beg them to please stop—although only in my head—because my voice is off somewhere. Lost. I see the light of day coming in through a window. And I hear Dr. Sowah, talking, laughing. Where is my mother? “Eve!” Someone calls to me from a distance, as if I’m floating far away from them. “’Ey, lazy, open up those eyes. You can totally ’ear me.” It’s Dr. Sowah. His missing h so familiar. He always joked that he left that letter back in Ghana when he came over at age eighteen. I think I must have smiled because he chuckles. Dr. Sowah is always chuckling. “That’s right, I know you’re there.” Am I? Or am I on a river? Sliding along in the sunshine. Safe. Warm. Happy. Until he leans over me, blocking out the sun like a rain cloud. “Eve, I’m delighted to report that you are officially nineteen degrees.” Nineteen degrees? It’s easy to hear his pride in that number. Nineteen. But I can’t wrap my head around it.… This new Cobb angle measuring the tilty twist of my spine. Large progressive scoliosis meant my forever-collapsing spine was forever producing a new one. Forty-eight degrees… fifty-two… sixty-seven… who could keep track? Although, this one—nineteen—is now fixed to me. By titanium. The river spins me. Then stops flowing with a loud snap, sending a searing shudder all along that nineteen-degree angle. The beginning of the second week in Massachusetts General Hospital is filled with pain, needles, thirst, and screaming—mostly mine. I am pinned under cold wet skin and bones. I can’t breathe from the terrifying pain, the fear that this bloodied slab is forever on me, in me, is me. Then… there is the shuffle near my IV. The surge of air deeply entering my lungs. And me, grasping at the nearest scrubs—to let them know they saved me, they have to keep saving me—before I’m floating off again on that river, light as a duck feather. Sometimes I wake up screaming in the light. Sometimes I wake up screaming in the dark. Every time I open my eyes, and even when I don’t, I scramble for the button to my morphine pump and cry out to Martin, the nice nurse, regardless if it’s his shift. And there he is, bending over my arm with an extra dose. A rush of saliva. A sting. And I hear her again. “Martin,” I
