Free Dead to You by Lisa McMann

about ever, and I am feeling so sick I think I’m going to throw up right here, right in the bleachers, over the entire junior class of Belleville High.
    But then the film ends, the lights go up, people are cheering, and the announcer, shouting over the noise, calls me to come down to the floor where he stands. And that starts me off in hysterics. The laughing. I know I look like a freak, and I can’t catch my breath, and Cami’s pulling me to my feet and dragging me down the steps, and then slowly everything gets eerily quiet and things start swaying around me and getting dim, and I’m cackling like a lunatic, gasping for air, tripping down the steps, when my knees give out. I plunge forward, feel my bursting bladder let go and my head hit hard on the wooden step.
    Everything goes black.

CHAPTER 19
     
    When I come to, it’s chaos. There are people all crowding around me. I blink, and somebody’s mother, in a BHS hoodie, is looking down at me. “I’m a paramedic,” she says. “You fainted. Can you hear me?”
    “Yeah,” I say. I’m out of breath and my head hurts. And I feel it—the clammy, quickly cooling wetness all down my jeans. “Oh, shit,” I say. I close my eyes.
    “I called an ambulance when I saw you go down. Keep your eyes closed, try to relax, and we’ll get you out of here,” she says. “Here comes the stretcher.” She shields me from onlookers, and every once in a while she yells at them, “Stand back, we need room!”
    “I pissed my pants.”
    “It happens. Your jeans are dark. Nobody can tell. It’s okay. What the hell were they thinking springing this on you, anyway? Did your parents know about this? I wasn’t far away. You looked like you didn’t know this was going to happen.”
    I don’t answer. I don’t know about my parents. But I think they are in on it. Why else would they suddenly start going to games when they never have before? Cami, definitely. She knew it was coming. Hell, so did J-Dog, I bet. That’s why he forced me here. Plus, they probably tell each other everything. Jesus. I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see any of them.
    The other paramedics come. They put me on a stretcher and take me to the ambulance, and the woman with the sweatshirt stays by my side. I see Mama and Dad and Blake and Gracie fighting their way through the crowd, trying to get to me. Gracie’s bawling.
    The woman leans down and says in my ear, “You want anyone to come in the back here with you?”
    My throat hurts. “No,” I whisper. I turn my head, which is really pounding now.
    “Meet us at the hospital,” she barks at my family, and the other paramedics close the doors.

CHAPTER 20
     
    They examine me at the hospital. Concussion. Keep me there for observation overnight because they are worried about my brain bleeding, but it looks like I’m fine. Just a gigantic bump on my head. That, and my room smells like a urinal.
    I think about what I have to face at school Monday. Everybody will know. I’m sure there was piss on the floor that had to be cleaned up. God.
    Who does that to a person? I turn over onto my side, curl up, and stare at the wall, remembering it, how sick it made me feel. When I squeeze my eyes shut, the silent sobs come, and I have to grip my knees until it stops.
    I think about how it was with Ellen. No matter how much she neglected me, she never would have tried to humiliate me.
    My parents come in the room and I pretend I’m asleep. I don’t want to see anybody—I can’t. Later I hear that Cami’s there too, missing the end of J-Dog’s game. I hope they lose. Sons of bitches.
    The nurse comes in and shoos my parents out. She sits by the bed and asks how I feel.
    “I’m okay,” I say. “Headache.”
    “On a scale of one to ten, one being barely noticeable and ten being unbearable, how bad is it?”
    “Four or five.”
    “Okay,” she says. She writes it down. “Now, about the visitors.”
    “No more visitors. Just tell them I don’t want to