Dasia (Forever)
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Dear Martin series comes a spin-off novel written in prose and letters-in-verse about a thirteen-year-old girl. As she navigates cancer, family challenges, and newfound friendship during her initial chemo treatment, she discovers that hope can bloom in the most unexpected places.
“Absolutely incredible—I read it in one sitting and finished in tears. Stone shows so much care and nuance here. Dasia will stay with me forever.” —Andrea Beatriz Arango, author of Newbery Honor book Iveliz Explains it All
“Unflinching, fearless, and strikingly original.” —Soman Chainani, author of the bestselling School for Good and Evil series and Young World
After nineteen days of “induction chemotherapy,” Dasia Monae Riley knows no one else should be in her hospital room . . .
But there she is: Jameson “Jimmy” Jeffs. Another cancer patient who’s seemingly everything Dasia is not: rich, well cared for, and a smidge childish (in Dasia’s opinion).
However, Dasia soon discovers that their commonalities go beyond a random, incurable disease . . . like older brothers who are gone, baby brothers who need them, and struggles with friends at school.
As Dasia and Jimmy chat, Dasia’s memories unfold in the unsent “letters” (read: poems) Dasia wrote to her incarcerated older brother. And over the course of one life-changing night, two girls who are at their lowest fight to keep each other uplifted. When you hit rock bottom, what does it take to survive and allow yourself to hope again?
In a spin-off to the Dear Martin series, New York Times bestselling author Nic Stone delivers a heart-wrenching story of resilience, connection, and the fight to stay alive when battling illness and bearing the weight of difficult circumstances.
An Excerpt fromDasia (Forever)
ONE
July 7, 9:12 p.m.
Dasia always stares at the bag on the IV pole.
The first time she saw one, she’d been in and out of consciousness with a fever so high, it felt like her body was cooking itself. She knew there had been a 911 call and two strangers wearing blue uniforms in her room. Mama crying, and Gabriel trying to console Mama (which was confusing because Gabe’s only eleven, so the whole thing seemed backward). A bunch of loud noises—thumps and bumps and the clang of metal on metal as the rolling bed Dasia was on slid into the ambulance.
It was her first time inside one of those.
She remembers the paramedics: A brown-skinned-but-not-Black man with straight, shiny hair the color of ink shot from a squid’s butt (she’d seen it on a documentary). And a pale-skinned lady with fire-colored hair in a thick braid and so many freckles, it looked like God had decided she didn’t need to be colored all the way in.
She was very pretty, the freckly lady. And Dasia wanted to tell her. But getting any of her muscles to move, jaw and tongue included, felt impossible.
She remembers the sharp pain in the back of her hand. The sound of tape being unstuck from its roll and ripped. A little device clamped at the tip of her index finger.
And then there was the bag. Rectangular along the edge but bulging at the center with a liquid that looked like water but couldn’t have been if they were sending it into her veins. Blood and water didn’t mix good. She’d learned that in her Probe Science class, which was supposedly for the gifted.
She let her eyes run down the tube hanging from the fluid-filled sack. And she thought, What the heck is that, and where’s it going?
“It’s a saline solution, sweetheart.” (Turned out the freckle lady had a voice that felt like Dasia’s favorite velvet blanket against her eardrums . . . also, had Dasia asked that out loud?) “You’re severely dehydrated. It’s dripping fluid straight into your bloodstream and will hopefully help bring your fever—”
But Dasia had blacked out again and didn’t hear the rest.
Every time she closed her eyes over the following couple of weeks, she would see that bag. It scared her at first. She even had a dream one night that the bag was chasing her . . . but when she saw the light at the end of the tunnel, something inside told her to stop running.
The bag wound up swallowing her whole, but instead of drowning in the liquid—which was sweet-smelling but salty-tasting—she felt good. Or really: right. It also helped to clear her vision: While floating in it, she could see that light she’d been running toward was a raging ball of fire.
That bag saved her life.
These days, though, there’s stuff other than saline in it. And that stuff is also supposed to be “saving her life.” But with the way that stuff makes her feel sometimes—heavy and dizzy and fuzzy and sleepy but nightmarey and drowny and queasy—Dasia’s not so sure that stuff is working the way it’s supposed to.
Come to think of it, she really hates that phrase: supposed to. Because what did it even mean? And who got to decide? Was her daddy supposed to die? Was her brother supposed to get locked up? Was her other brother—Gabriel, the sweet baby one—supposed to watch person after person (their dad, their brother, and now Dasia) disappear from his young life?
Was Dasia supposed to get sick?
Since she started INDUCTION CHEMOTHERAPY, all of the supposed tos feel upside down. Because what if the answer is yes? What if she’s supposed to be in this hospital room with a tube dripping what might be liquid death into a vein in the back of her hand?
What would it all mean?
She stares at the bag when the nurses come because if she watches them do what they sometimes come to do, she’ll throw up the way she did the morning after her first ambulance ride. She woke up dizzy and confused in a room with walls the ashy pale gray of rhinoceros hide (nature documentaries were truly the best thing). There was a TV on the opposite wall, but it was turned off.
She heard the rhythmic beeps that let everyone know her heart was working like it was supposed to, and though her brain felt like it might be full of cotton balls, she did notice the sack of liquid.
A short, round-middled lady came in the room dressed in orange from shoulders to ankles. SWISH! went a voice in Dasia’s head. Nothin’ but net from the three-point line—
“You like basketball?” the woman asked as she approached the bed. She had straight blond hair with ends so frizzy, they looked electrocuted. And there was lipstick on her teeth.
“Huh?” Dasia replied. Had Dasia said all that aloud?
“You made a sound like a basketball going through a net.”
(She had said it aloud!)
Dasia’s gaze locked onto a whiteboard opposite the foot of the bed. vicki was scribbled in the space beneath your nurse’s name is . . .
“My son’s the starting point guard on his high school team,” the nurse continued. There was a snap as she pulled on a stretchy glove. “And since you made that sound, I was asking if you like basketball.”
Dasia’s bleary-eyed gaze roamed over the woman—and it clicked why the noise had slipped from her mouth: Nurse Vicki’s orange scrubs had black stitching. It made Dasia feel strange to think she’d had a kind-of mean thought without realizing it. “I used to watch my big brother play with his friends,” she said, looking the woman in the eyes while trying to shake the basketball image from her mind.
“Used to, huh?” Nurse Vicki replied. “Is that because you don’t watch anymore, or because he stopped playing?”
Dasia looked out the window, surprised by the tears filling her eyes. (What the heck was in that bag of mystery liquid?) An image of her big brother’s face ghosted over the glass. He’s been gone for a while, Dasia didn’t say.
“I gotta get some blood from you, okay?” The woman took hold of Dasia’s wrist and repositioned her arm so the inside part of her elbow was aimed at the ceiling. An urge to snatch away reared up from somewhere deep inside, but no matter how loud she silently shouted at her muscles, they wouldn’t move.
“This is called a tourniquet,” the nurse said, holding up a stretch of purple rubber. Kind of reminded her of a Fruit by the Foot, though it didn’t look like it would taste very good. “I’m going to wrap it around your arm pretty tight, okay?” Nurse Vicki went on. “It’ll hurt a little bit but also help me to see your veins. That way this can go nice and quick.”
Hurt way more than a little bit, but Dasia didn’t flinch.
Dasia never flinched.
Not when the nurse smacked at the thin skin to get a vein to appear, and not when she inserted the needle.
The trouble came when Nurse Vicki clicked a vial into place and released Dasia’s upper arm from its purple rubber prison. No, Dasia didn’t flinch as the first vial filled red with a liquid that was supposed to stay inside her body. Nor the second vial. Nor the third.
But on the fourth, her head went even fuzzier . . .
And on the fifth, Dasia retched.
All over the front of the star point guard’s basketball-shaped mother.
SWISH.
Nurse Vicki looked down at her shirt.
“Ughhhh” was all Dasia could muster as her eyelids drifted shut.
It’d been far worse than flinching.
So now Dasia stares at the bag.
She’s not at that hospital anymore—they’d discharged her once her fever went down, and Mama cussed all the way to the car about All them tests and they send my baby home with some damn Tylenol? And she got sick two more times and slept in two more hospitals before she landed in this one.
But at every one, nurses came to take her blood. Always at night, and always right before Lights out! Which was all well and good (mostly): The draining of her life force made her sleepy, and she typically drifted off a minute or so after a cotton ball got taped to the newest little hole in her arm.
Sometimes she dreamed of vampires wearing Minecraft scrubs, leaping out of the dark at her, thirsting for blood. Maybe she will tonight.
Right now, though, as the clock goes from 21:11 to 21:12, Dasia breathes in a little deeper. Her nurse is late. They usually come right at 21:00.
Just like that, the door to her room creaks open, and her heart machine beats a little faster. She shuts her eyes.
“You awake, sweetie pie?”
Dasia exhales. She also smiles on the inside, though she knows it doesn’t quite make it to her face. No strength to smile.