Demanding Ransom Read Free Page B

don’t you think?”
    “I am a woman, Mikey. I’m just not a
girly-girl. But I’m not a dude, make no mistake of that.”
    Mikey shrugs. Seeing him sitting here is so ill
fitting. Nothing about him looks remotely sick. He’s a tall, hulking,
eighteen-year-old football player. His cheeks hold a healthy pink flush and a
golden tan glows across his skin. And his near-shoulder length, sandy blond
hair appears freshly washed. He’s the very picture of perfect health. At least
on the outside. But apparently we have machines that can see past that outward
picture—that can view what’s underneath, what’s growing and festering under
the surface without our knowledge of its silent existence.
    “Plus,” I continue, “you’ve got girl hair, so
there’s no room to talk.”
    “Sadie likes my hair,” Mikey defends, sweeping
several strands from his face. He really could be the envy of every high school
girl with those natural honey highlights and the slight wave that curls through
the length of it. “Actually, all the
chicks like my hair.”
    “Well, the dudes like my quick wit and ability
to deal with all things gross.”
    “Really, Mags. And what dudes would those be?”
    I bite back the sarcastic remark that wants to
fly out to verbally slap Mikey in the face. “Brian liked it for three years.
That’s gotta say something.”
    “Yeah.” Mikey brings a hand up to his square
jaw and drags his finger across the blond stubble forming there. “But he
dropped you the second he rushed that frat. Your lack of girly-girl sorority
status seemed to hurt you a bit in that department, Sis.”
    “Whatever.” I stare into the opening of my soda
can and rotate it side to side, sloshing the contents around just enough so
they creep to the mouth of it, but don’t spill over. “Brian is a tool.”
    “A colossal tool.”
    A tool that I’d given every single part of
myself to for the past three years. A tool that I’d willingly handed over my
time, my social life, and my body to, over and over again, like some track
stuck on repeat. Yeah, Brian was a tool, but I think I was the one who allowed
myself to be used. Maybe we’re both tools. Whatever. There isn’t any “us”
anymore to worry about, anyway.
    “Want anything to eat? I was going to go down
to the cafeteria to grab something.”
    “On those wheels?” Mike shifts in the bed and
looks down at my new mode of transportation. “That’s what they have these hot
nurses for—to get you food and junk.”
    “Hot nurses? We obviously don’t have the same
ones.”
    “All of mine have been hot. Like
Halloween-nurse-costume-fantasy hot.”
    I place the Diet Coke back onto the plastic
food tray. “I think that tumor is expanding at an unreasonably fast rate and
your vision is being affected. I have yet to see anyone in this hospital that
is even remotely attractive.”
    I take that back. Ran was attractive. Very
attractive. But that was in the ambulance and technically outside of the hospital, so I don’t feel the need to retract my
previous statement.
    “Knock, knock.” I twist in my chair toward the
door; five teenage guys all about Mikey’s size and age walk through its
opening. “Care for a little company?”
    Two girls dressed in cheerleading uniforms
trail behind them, Sadie the last to enter.
    “Mikey! Looks like you’ve got some babes taking
care of you up in here! What do I have to do to get a room?” the tallest of
them all, Eric, jokes raucously. He’s wearing a football jersey and blue jeans,
the same attire as the other four boys that followed him in.
    Eric and Mikey have been best friends since
they were five. We lived next door to the Tomlinson’s until Dad’s money ran out
and the mortgage became an impossible burden that his airplane mechanic job
couldn’t bear, and we had to transition from expansive country living to
cookie-cutter suburban life. It happened at the same time mom ran off with her
much younger, much wealthier, new