Excerpt from AFTER EVER AFTER
by Jordan Sonnenblick
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Hot Legs
The first week of school had at least one other huge highlight: I met the girl of my dreams. I mean, it’s not like we had some exclusive relationship or anything. She was probably the girl of just about everyone else’s dreams. But I’m the guy who made friends with her first.
Kind of.
It happened just before science class, first tyhing in the morning on the first day of school. I was trying to hustle through the crowded chaos of the hallway, which is hard to do with a limp. As I cam around a corner, I saw a girl crouched down on the floor, attempting to gather up a million papers, along with the contents of her entire backpack. People were stepping around her, and even right over her stuff, but nobody was stopping to help. I figured I’d be late to class if I stopped, but I also figured this girl was going to get stampeded if someone didn’t help her to pick up her stuff before the warning bell rang.
I knelt next to her and started grabbing lipsticks, packs of gum, and –uh- feminine items. Her dark hair totally covered her face, so I didn’t get a good look at her until we had gotten everything back together and stood up. When she looked sideways to me to say thank you, I felt my entire world shift violently on its axis. I’d heard people say that beauty can hit you suddenly, but I had thought it was a figure of speech. Uh-uh. This was like, Ka-POW!
From After Ever After. Copyright © 2009 by Jordan Sonnenblick. Reprinted with permission by Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved.
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Jeffrey isn’t a little boy with cancer anymore. He’s a teen in remission. Even though the cancer should be far behind him, life still feels fragile. The aftereffects of treatment have left Jeffrey with an inability to be a great student or to walk without limping. His parents still worry about him. His older brother, Steven, who has always been Jeffrey’s main support system and confidant, lost it and took off to Africa to be in a drumming circle and "find himself". Jeffrey has a little soul searching to do, too. He needs to tell Steven how he feels about basically being abandoned. His best friend, Tad, is hatching some kind of secretive, crazy plan, which is driving him bonkers. And there’s a girl who is way out of his league but who thinks he’s cute.
