For Keeps (20 page)

Acknowledgments

Thank you first and foremost to the divine Joy Peskin, whose encouragement after the
Night Swimming
debacle kept me from taking a long leap off a short pier. Joy’s keen eye, her listening ear, and her smiley faces in the margins made her a pleasure to work with.

Thank you to Dr. Kornelia Keszler for keeping the devil Lyme disease at bay so I could write without seeing double.

To the boys of my youth (you know who you are), thanks for the memories, and for the primary source material, from which I borrowed mercilessly to write Paul Tucci’s letters.

Huge hugs to Kelsey Nickerson, who shared the minutiae of her soccer team experience (love those rubber bands) and whose diabetes research helped me to create Big Nick.

A shout-out to Party Cake and Rake Face for making me feel Sparky, even when I wasn’t.

To George, thank you for embracing you inner teenage girl, and for always wanting to read what I’ve written.

Love and gratitude to Beebo and G’Ma—grandmothers extraordinaire—and to Daddy Kuj, for manning the troops so I could write, uninterrupted, for more than five seconds.

To Jack and Ben, thank you for making me laugh and for reminding me of what really matters.

Last, but definitely not least, thank you to baby Emma, for having the good sense to arrive AFTER this book was finished.