Despite the loving intentions of her mother and boyfriend, sixteen-year-old Astrid wants to make the decisions about her life and death when her cancer returns, including exploring the possibility of cryopreservation.

"Maple Mehta-Cohen has been keeping a secret: she can't read all that well. She has an impressive vocabulary and loves dictating stories into her recorder--especially the adventures of a daring sleuth who's half Indian and half Jewish like Maple herself--but words on the page just don't seem to make sense to her. Despite all Maple's clever tricks to hide her troubles with reading, her teacher is on to her, and now Maple has to repeat fifth grade....