The Truth About Stacey Read Free Page A

could
die.
    Well,
I
practically died when I first heard that. But then the doctor explained that you can give yourself insulin every day to keep the right amount in your body. When you take insulin and control your diet, you can lead a normal life.
    It was a lot of responsibility. I would have to watch what I ate
and
make sure I was getting the right amount of insulin. As much as they wanted to, Mom or Dad couldn’t always do that for me. Still, I feel weird having to check (or sometimes inject) insulin in front of my friends. I don’t like the thought of them thinking I’m sick.
    Before I got diabetes, I really had it pretty easy. I’m an only child. For as long as I could remember, I’d lived in a large apartment in a nice, safe building with a doorman on the Upper West Side in New York City. I had my own bedroom with windows that looked out over Central Park. I went to a private school. I didn’t have any pets, and, of course, no brothers or sisters, but I wasn’t lonely. I had lots of friends at school and in my building, and my parents let me invite them over whenever I wanted. Mom and Dad seemed to be pretty cool parents—a little pushy, maybe, and more involved in my life than I liked, but thatwas it. They let me dress the way I wanted, go out with my friends after school, and play my stereo at top volume as long as the neighbors didn’t complain.
    Then, right before I began to get sick, Mom found out that she and Dad couldn’t have any more children. They’d been trying for a long time, but they hadn’t been able to have a brother or sister for me. It was unfortunate that they got that news just before I got the diabetes. What if I died? I’d be gone and they wouldn’t be able to have another child. Suddenly, they were faced with the possibility of
no
children—no children of their own, anyway.
    That was sad, but the upshot of it was that, practically overnight, Mom and Dad became the world’s two most overprotective parents—and not just where food and insulin were concerned. Suddenly, they began to worry about me when I wasn’t home. Mom would call me at my friends’ apartments after school to make sure I was all right. She even called me at school every noon until the headmistress suggested that it wasn’t very healthy for me, and reminded Mom about the nice, qualified school nurse.
    Then began the business with the doctors. My parents became convinced that they could findeither a miracle cure or a better treatment for me. They never doubted that I had diabetes; they just couldn’t leave it alone. They made Helping Stacey their new goal in life.
    Unfortunately, they weren’t helping me at all. I was losing friends fast, and being yanked out of school to see some new doctor every time I turned around didn’t make things any better. Laine Cummings began to hate me the night I wet the bed we were sharing. I didn’t blame her for being mad, but why did she have to be mad for so long? We’d been best friends since we were five. Laine said that the real reason she was mad was that I had spent a lot of time at the slumber party that night talking to Allison Ritz, a new girl. But I don’t know. Laine acted strange after I wet the bed, stranger still the first time I had to stay in the hospital, and even stranger after I started going to all those doctors. Maybe I should have told her about the diabetes, but for some reason, my parents kept the truth a secret from their friends, so I did the same. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone the truth until we left New York and started over again in Connecticut. I finally told Claudia, Kristy, and Mary Anne my secret. But Laine still doesn’t know, and even though her parents are my parents’ best friends, they don’tknow, either. I don’t see what the big deal is, but I guess it doesn’t matter now.
    At the beginning of my illness, hospital visits couldn’t