Sweet Sugar I Got Your Back

Independent, bright, and spunky, fifteen-year-old Shayla Anne Menash is glad to be leaving the Bronx and everything in it. In her new Long Island neighborhood and her new high school, she wishes for two things: to make one really good friend and to keep her diabetes diagnosis a secret.

Shayla meets Steven Palladino, a curious and unrelenting teenage boy; they become best friends. Unknowingly, she is embracing the friendship of a boy with the tenacity of a bulldog. Steven becomes suspicious when he overhears Shayla’s baby brother, Jared, offering her advice about “diabeeptease,” as he calls it. This encounter, coupled with Steven noticing Shayla wearing a medical alert–looking bracelet, sends him on a relentless inquiry about her health.

Steven pressures Shayla to confide in him. She doesn’t admit to having diabetes, but she makes him promise never to reveal any health-related information about her to anyone, or else.

Steven appears when Shayla’s secret is about to cause grave consequences. He is torn between keeping Shayla’s secret or betraying a friend and possibly saving her life.