The face staring back is that of a stranger, with sunken cheeks and corpselike skin and blue eyes that are way too huge and bright. My lips are split and peeling, my chin scaled with flakes of dry skin. Something brownish yellow crusts the edges of my right ear; strands of hair are stuck to it.

And god, my hair is a matted, oily mass, unrecognizable in any way as blond. Half of it is plastered into a towering wall—must have been the side I slept on.

I refuse to look at my reflection as I brush my teeth. My gums hurt, but the cool mint of the toothpaste is heavenly. I rinse and spit out an enormous gob of toothpaste and blood. There’s so much blood that I stick my finger into my mouth to check my teeth. My finger comes out blood-smeared, but my teeth seem to be okay.

My stomach clenches again, a little with revulsion and a lot with wrongness. I know I’ve been sick, but something . . . something about all of this is off.

A hot shower always clears my head. I reach in to test the water and jerk my hand back. Still ice-cold.

“Ryan!” I yell. My little brother is thirteen, exactly the age when boys start taking embarrassingly long showers. “You used all the hot water again!”

No response. He usually thumps the wall—we kind of have this code worked out between us, ever since he was five and I was nine, when we left the Sperm Donor and Ryan started having night terrors. He used to thump the wall when he was scared, and I would thump right back, to let him know that my ear was right next to his, that he was safe. Two thumps from Ryan meant I had to get over to his bedroom right away because he was too scared to deal.

We’re past that, and a gorgeous connecting tiled bathroom now separates our bedrooms, but we’ve never stopped thumping to let one another know, I hear you. I’m here. Irritates the crap out of our stepdad.

I rap the wall with a knuckle, but still no answer. Ryan is probably downstairs.

I have two choices: wait for the water to heat up again and miss practice, or grin and bear it. The state tournament is next week, so of course I’ll grin and bear it.

I shuck my clothes—khaki pants, underwear, black tank top, and sports bra. Everything reeks of the sharper end of the musty spectrum. I must have sweated out a fever while I slept.

Taking a deep breath, I plunge into the shower stall.