Seventeen-year-old Aly Bennett has been in love with her friend Luke for years. She hasn't told him how she feels for two reasons. 1) She's the girl with HIV. 2) She lied about how she got it.
Aly never meant to lie. The words just slipped out on her first day of a support group for kids living with life-threatening conditions. It was the day she met Luke and Caroline, who would become her best friends and the closest thing she has to a family. After so many years, Aly doesnât know how to tell her friends the truth. So she paints and she runs and she tries not to think about the future she canât have.
But when a Boston prosecutor asks Aly to testify in a trialâand her relationship with Luke intensifiesâthings become complicated. If she testifies, Luke and Caroline will learn the truthâthat Aly has been lying to them for most of a decade. If she doesnât, a monster could go free, again.
Seventeen-year-old Aly Bennett has been in love with her friend Luke for years. She hasn't told him how she feels for two reasons. 1) She's the girl with HIV. 2) She lied about how she got it.
Aly never meant to lie. The words just slipped out on her first day of a support group for kids living with life-threatening conditions. It was the day she met Luke and Caroline, who would become her best friends and the closest thing she has to a family. After so many years, Aly doesnât know how to tell her friends the truth. So she paints and she runs and she tries not to think about the future she canât have.
But when a Boston prosecutor asks Aly to testify in a trialâand her relationship with Luke intensifiesâthings become complicated. If she testifies, Luke and Caroline will learn the truthâthat Aly has been lying to them for most of a decade. If she doesnât, a monster could go free, again.
My friend Caroline Reese lives in a hotel about five miles outside of town. Itâs a huge Victorian resort called the Ballentine. The first time I saw it, the Ballentine looked like Sleeping Beautyâs castle, all covered in vines and thorns. Parts of the roof had caved in, and the interior was scorched. But where everyone else saw a ruin, Carolineâs mother saw possibility. She bought the Ballentine and started the slow process of restoring it. The hotel reopened to guests two years ago. And this year, the renovations entered their final phase.Â
Caroline has taken advantage of the last of the construction chaos to commandeer a room in the north wing. She set up her espresso machine and dragged in some comfortable chairs. The space is eventually going to be repainted, so last month I decided to add some color to the walls. I painted bookcases full of leather volumes, curtains to frame the windows, and a ring of quotes about coffee just above the chair rail.
When Carolineâs mother saw what I had done to her hotel, I expected her to tell me to paint over it. Which she did. But she also hired me to paint a mural in a room down the hall from Carolineâs lair.
The mural room is huge. You can see where a chandelier used to hang and the remnants of crown molding. One wall clearly held a mural at some point. But the paint was so damaged by the fire that I couldnât make out the image. Another wall holds floor to ceiling windows. The last two make up one enormous canvas.
Mrs. Reese wants the whole north wing to house the childrenâs activities, like it did before the fire. So she asked me for a child-friendly mural. Standing there that first day, the images were already taking shape in my mind. Rapunzelâs tower would stand in the center, with Hogwarts off in the distance. Peter, from The Snowy Day, would need snowbanks to trek through, and Winnie-the-Pooh would want a honey tree.
Iâve spent the last two weeks planning and prepping the walls. And today after school, I finally got to add the first touches of color to my enormous canvas. I started with the night sky above Big Ben. Once itâs dry, Iâll be able to add the tiny figures of Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and the Darling siblings flying off towards Never Land.
âYou were smart to keep Harry Potter away from Peter Pan and Wendy,â Caroline said when she came into the room, her hands full of drinks. âA midair collision would have been unfortunate.â
âI thought so.â
I climbed down off the ladder, and Caroline handed me the metal water bottle with âAlyâ painted on the side. She kept the mug of espresso for herself.
âThanks,â I said.
She nodded and then closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of the espresso before she took her first, slow sip.
I just watched this ceremony. âMost people drink espresso from small cups.â
Caroline opened her eyes. âMost people lack dedication.â
I smiled at her.
âHave you decided what to put in the corner?â she asked.
âNot yet.â
âWhat about the gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel?â
I raised an eyebrow at her. âThe witch tries to eat them.â
âYou donât have to show that part.â
âTrue.â
If my foster mother, Mrs. Miller, were telling the story, Hansel and Gretel would have been walking happily through the woods and met a kind old woman who fed them candy without any ulterior motives.
âA gingerbread house would be fun to make.â
Carolineâs eyes gleamed. âAnd you could cover the roof with espresso beans.â
âYou have a problem.â
âI have many,â Caroline said. âBut I am not addicted. Coffee and I are in a committed relationship.â
âDoes Dylan know about this?â
âDylan is very open-minded.â
âI guess he would have to be, if heâs willing to share you with a caffeinated beverage,â I said seconds before my phone rang.
It was Mrs. Miller calling in a tight voice. Her tone wasnât that strange. Itâs the same voice she uses when something has spilled and sheâs trying to keep up her smile.
I hung up the phone and looked at Caroline. âI have to go.â
âWhat does she want now?â
âI donât know. She just told me to come back to the house.â
âBut we havenât had time to hide Lukeâs car yet.â
I hugged her. âIâll see you tomorrow.â
I left the mural room, ducking under a heavy piece of plastic and maneuvering around work crews to reach the back parking lot. Iâm not allowed to drive any of the Millersâ cars, and Caroline is grounded from driving for two weeks. Which left our friend Luke as my only way of getting to the hotel with paint supplies. He couldnât drive me himself â he was helping his dad today. But he loaned me his car. So I drove carefully down off Carolineâs mountain and into town.
Trinity, New Hampshire is a small town, barely the size of a Boston neighborhood. Instead of high-rises, weâre surrounded by mountains and forests and the occasional field of cows. Most of the homes here are old farmhouses with wide porches and steeply pitched rooves. When it snows, the whole place looks like a Norman Rockwell Christmas card.
I parked Lukeâs car outside his house and walked the three blocks to the Millersâ. A dark blue sedan with Massachusetts plates was parked out front. The car belongs to Mrs. Peters, my social worker. So when I walked into the living room, I was expecting her. It was the man who surprised me. He had graying hair and wore a wrinkled suit.
âHello, Alyson,â Mrs. Peters said. âDo you remember Mr. Raleigh, from the District Attorneyâs office?â
My body froze. But my thoughts started crashing into each other.
Mr. Raleigh promising me that they were going to put Rick in jail.
Mr. Raleigh asking me questions I didnât want to answer in front of cameras I didnât want to see.
Mr. Raleigh telling me that the case had been dropped. âIâm sorry, Alyson. We donât have enough evidence to take this to trial.â
My word hadnât been enough.
 âHave a seat,â Mr. Raleigh said, as if we were standing in his office, instead of my foster parentsâ living room.
The Millers were sitting tight mouthed on the love seat. There was an empty chair next to Mr. Raleigh and a place on the couch next to Mrs. Peters. I chose the couch. Mrs. Peters reached over and patted my hand as I sat down.
The Miller girls, Hattie and Gabby, are eight and six, and were nowhere to be seen. They were probably upstairs watching a princess movie. Mrs. Miller is always careful to keep them segregated from the messy parts of my life. I think she would ban messes of every kind if she could.
âRichard Wallace has been arrested, again,â Mr. Raleigh said.
I shouldnât have been surprised, not with Mr. Raleigh sitting there in the room with me. But it still took me a few seconds to manage a logical question. âFor my case?â
âNo. But weâre going to need you to testify.â
I shook my head. âI donât know anything about another case.â
âWe know. But weâre trying to establish that Richard Wallaceâs actions toward this girl were part of a pattern of behavior. Your experiences with him can help.âÂ
He wanted me to testify. And not just in depositions this time. He wanted me to go to court. To be cross-examined.
Mr. Raleigh leaned toward me. âI know that weâre asking a lot. But if we add your testimony to that of other witnesses, we wonât have to put the victim on the stand.â
He let those words sink in. If I testify, she wonât have to.
If the world was fair, I would never have to see Rick ever again. But if the world was fair, this never would have happened to her in the first place.
In the end, Mr. Raleigh didnât have to use the subpoena I saw in his briefcase. I agreed to testify, the way he knew I would. And he gave me a schedule instead. The trial starts in less than two months. My first deposition is a week from Monday.
Across the room, my foster parents had cornered Mrs. Peters.
âWe canât keep taking Alyson to Boston for depositions,â Mr. Miller said.
âWhat are we supposed to tell our children?â Mrs. Miller said.
Mrs. Petersâ expression was hard as she looked at my foster parents. âWhen the court gave you permission to take Alyson out of state, one of the conditions was that you would bring her back for all court-required activities. Testifying in a trial certainly meets that criteria.â Her eyes moved from one Miller to the other. âAs to what to tell your children, I would suggest the truth.â
As if that was ever going to happen.
The Millers havenât even told their girls that I have HIV. Mrs. Miller always shoos them out of the room before she watches me take my pills. I donât know how she explains the fact that she wonât let me touch anything sharp and makes me wash my hands three times before she lets me help in the kitchen. Maybe they just think Iâm clumsy and dirty.
Clumsy I can live with.
Dirty is harder.
Before they left, I asked Mr. Raleigh, âWhat is the girlâs name?â
âIâm sorry, Alyson. I canât tell you the victimâs name. We have to protect her privacy.â
I understand that. I do. But I also wonder how much our privacy leaves us isolated. This other girl could live next door to me, and I would never know. This isnât something people talk about. But thatâs what they want from me. They want me to talk about it, to tell the story.Â
The YA world of my adolescence was essentially divided into children's literature, adult fiction, and fantasy (which often bridged the gap between the two). Difficult topics were largely avoided except from a historical (and largely Anglocentric) context - who can forget Oliver's many trials in Oliver Twist? Or the heart-wrenching difficulties of Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare's eponymous play?
Fortunately for teens (and adult readers) everywhere, the YA scene has evolved dramatically, and thanks to boundary-breaking authors such as Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give, On the Come Up), Donna Everhart (The Education of Dixie Dupree, The Road to Bittersweet) and Laurie Halse Anderson (Shout, Chains, Fever 1793), standards for literature in this age group are higher than ever before. Teens and new adults have an embarrassment of riches in their reading choices, and the standards can only be expected to grow and thrive from here.
Into this group comes Mullaly and Life and Other Complications. In this first person narrative, Mullaly describes the life of a teen, Aly, who was molested as a young child by her mother's boyfriend. Rather than defend Aly, her mother supported her perpetrator boyfriend, leaving Aly in the care of social services with no family, no support - and with a diagnosis of a terminal disease.
Sadly, this is a story that is all too frequent, perhaps not in its particulars, but certainly in its generalities. Mullaly handles it with tact and honesty. In a plot that is neither saccharine nor grim, she gives Aly the tools she needs in realistic and identifiable ways. She works with both Aly's inner strength and a group of friends from a hospital terminal illness support group that readers will enjoy coming to know and root for. Mullaly's ability to balance personal challenges with humor in her writing is demonstrated in the following passage about Aly's social group at the hospital:
The three of us met in the kidsâ group. But at age 13, you move up to the Teens Living with Life Threatening Conditions Support Group. The chairs are taller for the teen version and the language is harsher. But otherwise, itâs the same. Kids still look like theyâve been blindsided the first time they come through the door. You donât have to be terminal to end up here, but something has to be working pretty hard to kill you. And you see it in their eyes, that hunted, desperate look. ...
âGo ahead and take your seats so we can get started,â Dr. Klein said this afternoon. So I sat down in my usual seat in the circle of blue plastic chairs. Luke sat on my right. The seat on my left has been empty since Caroline stopped coming.
âLuke, 18, inoperable brain aneurysm. I call it Larry.â
The plot covers many things about Aly's struggle - her life with HIV, her challenges as a foster child, and her social isolation. But the biggest issues really are the monstrous injustices that were perpetrated upon her as a small child and how she deals with those.
Mullaly handles the material beautifully, leaving the reader with a sense of both hope and the realistic futures of Aly and her companions. The plot structure is strong, and Mullaly's voice is her own, but along with the handling of the material, it is the character set that is truly compelling. Mullaly sets up a team of supporting characters that calls both Thomas and Stephanie Meyer (Twilight series) to mind.
Altogether, this is a novel that needed to be written, flows well, and absolutely meets the standards of today's YA literature. I would recommend it to libraries and to anyone with interests in gender / maltreatment awareness, HIV (esp pediatric HIV) lit, or simply to anyone in search of good YA fiction with the caveat that they should be aware of potential trigger scenarios.