Bang

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SIMON & SCHUSTER CHILDREN’S PUBLISHING

ADVANCE READER’S COPY

TITLE:
Bang
Lisa McMann
AUTHOR:
IMPRINT:
Simon Pulse

10/8/13
ON-SALE DATE:
ISBN: 978-1-4424-6625-8
FORMAT: Hardcover
PRICE:
$16.99 US/$19.99 CAN
AGES:
14 up
PAGES:
256

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ALSO BY LISA MCMANN

THE WAKE TRILOGY
Wake
Fade
Gone
THE VISIONS SERIES
Crash
Cryer’s Cross
Dead to You
FOR YOUNGER READERS
The Unwanteds
Island of Silence
Island of Fire
VISIONS BOOK TWO

new york london toronto sydney new delhi
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,

or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events

are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

It’s been over a week since Sawyer kissed me

and told me
he
was seeing a vision now, and it’s all I can

think about. I can’t wait to get out of this apartment, which

I am tethered to until Monday—that’s when the doc said

my internal injuries will be healed enough so I can go to

school again. My older brother and best friend, Trey, has

been great, of course, slipping notes to Sawyer for me and

delivering replies back to me. But for some reason Sawyer

won’t explain his vision on paper. “It’s too . . . frightening.

Too gruesome. Too . . . everything,” he wrote.

And me? I’m sick about it.
Absolutely sick.
Because it’s my fault. I was so relieved when my vision

LISA M c MANN

ended—no more snowplow crashing and exploding into

Angotti’s restaurant, no more body bags in the snow, no

more Sawyer’s dead face. After weeks of that stupid vision

taunting me, and after nearly getting killed because of it,

I was naive enough to think it was all over and I’d get to

live a happy life. Relatively, anyway. Under the current

parental circumstances, that is.

But then, once I got home from the hospital, Sawyer

sent me that note. He had to see me, he said. That night,

2:00 a.m. And I wanted to see him, too. I eased my broken

body down the stairs and we stood in the snowdrift surrounded by breathy clouds and he kissed me, and I kissed him back, and it was the most weirdly amazing feeling. . . .

And then the amazingness of my first kiss was over.

He pulled away and looked at me, his gorgeous green eyes

filled with fear, and his voice shook.
You know that billboard?

Those words haunt me.
Obviously I was not only psychotic enough to
have
a

vision, but I managed to give the stupid vision disease to

the one person I was trying to save.
It’s beyond horrifying, sitting here knowing he must

be experiencing the worst kind of frustration and pressure

to act on the vision and—Did he say “gruesome”?
Let me say it one more time. Sick. That is what I am.
And so very sorry.
I rack my brain trying to figure out how this could

have happened. Was it because he hugged me on the street

the night before? Because he held my hand afterward in

the hospital? Maybe there’s some kind of physical transference going on. I have no idea.
I have done something horrible to the boy I love, and

I don’t know how to stop it.
All I know is that I need to get out of this hoardhole

before I
lose my mind
.
Oh, wait.

I get up a little earlier than Trey and my younger sister,

Rowan, partly because my eyes fly open at five thirty in

anticipation of seeing Sawyer, and partly because it takes

me a little longer to get my makeup on with the half-arm

cast wrapping around the base of my thumb.

I sneak out of the bedroom I share with Rowan, plasticwrap my cast, and grab a shower, then try to do something with my hair—the bedhead look was fun for a while but,

well, you know.

At six, like clockwork, I hear two doors open almost

simultaneously, and then the precarious race to the bathroom

as Trey and Rowan dodge my father’s hoards of junk that line

the hallway. I open the door a crack and Trey bursts in.

“Dang it,” Rowan mutters from somewhere behind him.

“Look at you, hot girl,” Trey says, keeping his frame in

the doorway so Rowan can’t sneak past.
“Yeah?” I say, biting my lip. I freaking love my brother.
Love him to death.
“You know you’re going to get mobbed, you big hero.”

Rowan pokes Trey in the back. “Come
on
,” she whispers, not wanting to wake our parents. “Either let me in or
get your own butt in there.”
“Whatever happened to sweet morning Rowan?” I ask
Trey like she’s not there.
He shrugs.
“Sweet morning Rowan died looking at your face,”
Rowan mutters. She gives up and goes to the kitchen.

I snicker and do a final inspection. My black eye has
healed, my various stitches have been removed, and my
hair actually does look kind of awesome. My arm doesn’t
hurt anymore. My insides are feeling pretty good too,
though I’m not allowed to drive quite yet after the surgery.
Only my stubborn left thigh remains a beastly mottled
yellow-green, having abandoned black, blue, and purple
as the weeks passed. It still hurts to press on it, but at least
no one can see the bruise under my clothes. And hopefully
I’ll have this arm cast off in a few weeks.
As I slip out of Trey’s way, I stop. “Any chance we can
leave a few minutes early?”
“If you get out of here already,” Trey says.
“I’m gone.” I step into the hallway with a grin and he
closes the door in my face.
In the kitchen, Rowan has her head in the sink and
the faucet extended. She’s washing her hair like it’s frisée
lettuce.
“Gross,” I say. “Getting your hair germs all over
Mom’s nice clean sink.”
“Listen, you wanna know what goes in here?” comes
her muffled reply as she turns the water off and replaces
the faucet. “The juice of meat. I’m telling you right now
this sink is freaking overjoyed to see my awesome hair
in it.”
Did I mention I adore my sister, too?
I grab breakfast while she wraps her head in a towel
and starts doing her makeup in the reflection of the
kitchen window. “We’re leaving a little early today,” I
tell her.
“I figured,” she says, the cap of her eyeliner pencil in
her mouth. Her head towel falls to the floor and her long,
auburn hair unfurls.
“You going to talk to Charlie today?” I bite a hunk off
some cardboard-tasting health bar rip-off, and wrinkle my
nose. Chew it anyway. I’m too nervous to eat but I know
I need something.
“Yep.” She starts working a wide-toothed comb

through her hair, and when it sticks, she looks around the

kitchen with a scowl until her eyes land on the carafe of

olive oil. “Aha,” she says, and puts a few drops into the
palm of her hand and works it into the knot.
“Resourceful,” I say.
Charlie is Rowan’s boyfriend. He lives in New York.
They met at soccer camp, and now they video chat every
day from school during Rowan’s study hall. “So everything
is good with you two?” I look around, unsettled. Anxious.
I got up way too early.
“Yep,” she says again, and then gets a hair dryer, plugs
it in, and turns it on.
I drum my fingers on a stack of crap on the table and
glance at the clock. “Okay, then.”
My stomach flips as I think about school. I don’t want
to be a hero. I don’t want to be noticed by anybody. It’s
embarrassing. And I’m so beyond what happened when
Trey and I barreled into that snowplow to keep it from
hitting Angotti’s Trattoria. Ever since Sawyer told me he’s
been having a vision now too, I haven’t been able to stop
worrying about him, and about what horrible thing he’s
going to be forced to go through.
My chest aches thinking about it. It was the worst time
of my life. I felt so alone. “Poor Sawyer,” I murmur.

“Yeah, poor guy. He’s really dreading seeing you,”
Trey says sarcastically from behind me.
Rowan catches sight of her bathroom opportunity,
yanks the hair dryer cord from the outlet, and runs for it.

I smirk at Trey. He is so awesome that he actually
believed me when I told him what was happening to me—
after a while, anyway. Like, thirty very important seconds
before the crash happened.
But he doesn’t know about Sawyer.

We all climb into the pizza delivery car since

there’s no longer a giant truck o’ balls—I totaled the

sucker.

Luckily, har har, the insurance money is going to provide us with a new one. Dad’s having the old balls fixed and mounted. Apparently they snapped off pretty cleanly

in the crash and didn’t get banged too hard (dot-com),

thanks to the snow.

Trey drives, Rowan’s in the back, and I’m riding

shotgun, peering out the windshield as a flurry of snow

buzzes around the car. I can’t concentrate on anything,

but I stare at a vocab worksheet for a test I’ve been told

we’re having today.

I glance up as we pass the infamous billboard, and

there’s Jose Cuervo, thank the dogs. I wonder for the millionth time what Sawyer sees.

As we near school, my right leg starts jiggling and

I put my vocab paper away. It’s useless to do anything.

Trey glances at me as we pull into the parking lot. “You

okay?” he asks.

I let out a little huff of breath. “I think so. It’s weird.”

“Nervous?”
“I—I guess. I’ve been gone a long time.” The truth is,

I’m nervous because Sawyer and I never talked about what

would happen at school. Like, are we a couple? Or are we

being secretive so nobody tells our parents? Or . . . am I

not cool enough for his friends?

I hate that I just had that last thought. What the crap

happened to turn me into an insecure loser? I was doing

so well there for a while, back when I accepted the fact

that I was a total psycho. Amazing how freeing that was. I

take a few deep breaths and find that old crazy confidence

as Trey parks and turns off the car, and then I ease out,

making sure I move carefully. I don’t want to overdo it or

anything, or I’ll get stuck back home again.

“Don’t worry, Jules,” Rowan says, surprising me

because I thought she was listening to her music all this

time. “We got your back.”

Trey takes my backpack since I’m not allowed to lift

more than like twenty pounds for another week or so,

and the backpack, with a few weeks worth of work in it,

officially weighs forty-seven tons. And then we walk into

school. The three of us together in a line, like we’re the

friggin’ Avengers, gonna take somebody down.

I stare straight ahead, Trey on my left, Rowan on my

right, feeling totally badass despite my nerves. We get a

few glances, a few people shrugging in our direction or

outright pointing at us. At me. We even get a smattering

of applause from some of Rowan’s ninth-grade friends at

their lockers, and everybody’s saying hi to Trey and me

like it’s opposite day here in Chicagoland. I ease my way

up the half-dozen steps to the sophomore hallway, not able

to take stairs at full stride quite yet, using the handrail to

help. And then we’re nearing my locker and I have to work

hard not to strain to look for Sawyer. I want
him
to look

for
me
. That’s how this is going to go. I just decided.

“That’s good, you guys,” I say, and I hate that I’m a

little winded. I think that’s the longest distance I’ve gone

in one stretch in a while. “I got this.”

Trey sets my overladen backpack inside my locker and

gives me a quick grin as he leaves. “See you at lunch.”
Rowan hangs around for a second like she doesn’t want

to leave. “You sure you’re good?”
I nod. “Sure. Say hey to Charlie for me and I’ll see you

after at the balls. Dot-com.” I pause, realizing what I just

said, and then we both make faces. “At the car, I mean.”
“Okay. See ya.” She heads back toward her hallway. I

turn to my locker to pull out a few books as the guy whose

locker is next to mine says, “Hey, Jules. Welcome back.”
We’ve barely spoken before. This is weird.
“Thanks,” I say, suddenly shy. I take my coat off and go

to hang it up, when I hear the voice that makes my thighs

quake.
“Catch you later, guys. Hey, Jules.”
Before I can turn around, he’s turning me around, and

then his gentle arms are hugging me, lifting my feet off

the ground. Holding me. Right here in public. I let my

coat fall from my fingers and I wrap my arms—cast and

all—around his neck like it’s the most natural thing for me

to do in the middle of a crowded high school hallway.
“I missed you so much,” he whispers into my hair,

and the world goes quiet around us. My body pulses with

energy and I can feel his warmth seeping into me.
I close my eyes and breathe, wishing everybody would

just disappear.
He sets me back down and I look at his face for the

first time in what seems like forever. He smooths my static

hair and keeps a hand on my shoulder. The corner of his

mouth turns up on one side, just the way I like it. But his

eyes are tired.
“I missed you too,” I say in a quiet voice, suddenly

hyperaware of people staring at us, my former friend

Roxie and her BFF Sarah among them. Which makes me

feel really awkward, so I try to pretend they’re not there.
He observes the cast on my arm and smooths a thumb

under the eye that used to be black. “Nice,” he says. He

glances over one shoulder, then the other, gets a goofy

smile on his face, and moistens his lips. “I really want to

kiss you,” he says quietly near my ear. But I think we’re

being cautious, or else he spotted a teacher, because

instead of kissing me he just runs his thumb across my lips

and looks at me so longingly it hurts.
“Dang,” I say, a little breathless. “Where’s a stupid

playground when you need one? This, uh, environment

feels . . . awkward.”
“I wanna be your playground,” he says in my ear, and I

feel the heat rushing to my face. I can see he’s just messing

around, flirting, but he stays close, like he can’t stand to

have much space between us, and I like him there.
“Rowr.” I grin, but I’m preoccupied, searching his

eyes, and the grin falls away. As he watches me watch him,

his face changes, like he can read the question in my mind.
“About that,” he says, as if we started the conversation already. “I desperately,
desperately
need to see you alone.” And even though his eyes are hungry, this is different.
“I know.” I’ve been thinking about this already. “Mr.

Polselli is on parking-lot duty during lunch on Mondays.

He’ll let me eat in his room. I’ll claim I need your help

because of the cast.”
“You’re brilliant,” he says with a breath that trickles

down my neck. “I’m sorry I haven’t told you—I’ll explain

everything, it’s just—”
I press a finger to his lips and watch his eyelids droop

halfway in response. “I get it,” I tell him, and reluctantly

pull my finger away when the bell rings.
His gaze lingers and burns. “See you at lunch,” he says.

“I’ll bring two trays and meet you there.”
When he disappears in the crowd, I turn back toward

my open locker and stare into it, dazed.
Holy big sizzle,

Demarco.
Is it hot in here or is it just my gorgeous boyfriend? At this rate, we’ll have like nine babies by the end of our senior year.