In ten years, Jessie will be twenty-seven—but her sister Helen will always be eighteen
Jessie’s not ready to move on. Everyone says she’s doing great, but she is drowning in grief and hiding it with her characteristic wisecracks. Why tell anyone? It’s not like it will bring Helen back. Jessie can see that her whole family is barely treading water: Her brother Lucas has completely shut down, and her parents are just going through the motions of life.
Then Jessie finds Helen’s diary, the one she was keeping up until her death. Desperate to feel close to her sister again, Jessie reads through the entries, discovering truths about Helen—and herself—that she never expected.
Cynthia D. Grant has published twelve young adult fiction novels since 1980. In 1991 she won the first PEN/Norma Klein Award, for “an emerging voice among American writers of children’s fiction.” Over the years, Grant has received numerous other distinctions. Unfortunately, her Massachusetts upbringing prohibits her from showing off. She lives in the mountains outside Cloverdale, California, and has one husband, Eric Neel; two sons, Morgan Heatley-Grant and Forest Neel-Grant; two cats, Kelsey, an orange tom, and Billie, a barn cat–barracuda mix; and Mike the Wonder Dog, who packs two-hundred-plus pounds of personality into a seven-pound body.