num_pages: 239
description: In The Girl Next Door two teens are forced to make some very grown-up decisions when one of them is diagnosed with terminal cancer.Seventeen year old Samantha has been best friends with seventeen year old Jesse since she moved into the New York high-rise apartment next door to his thirteen years ago. Jesse is their school's poster child for popularity: good-looking a star athlete even Romeo in the school play. On opening night he collapses on stage. That's when doctors discover the unthinkable: a tumor on his spine. His type of cancer is virtually incurable  97% of those diagnosed die within ten months.Jesse shuts down refusing to see most of his friends. He submits to treatments of chemo and radiation but he doesn't possess hope. Sam is the one person hell talk to. He convinces his mom to let her sleep in another bed in his room saying he's afraid to die alone.Thats when Jess and Sam make a startling bittersweet discovery: theyve been in love all along.The Girl Next Door addresses the universal question: In an unpredictable world how can we possibly feel safe?
language: English
title: The Girl Next Door
publisher: West Side Books