It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager
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| It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager | |
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| Author(s) | An Anonymous Teenager ("Nancy") |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Derek Beaty |
| Publication date | March 1994 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 259 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 9780380773152 |
| OCLC Number | 29862570 |
It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager is a book for young adults by Beatrice Sparks. It purports to be the actual diary, only edited by Sparks, of a teenage girl who gets AIDS through being raped. However, Sparks has released similar books where the authorship has been called into question.
[edit] Plot summary
Nancy is a fourteen-year-old girl who just wants to have fun while at a Garth Brooks concert with her friends. While there she has an asthma attack and an eighteen-year old boy named Collin helps her. He takes her outside and tells her to relax. From that day on she starts talking to him every day after school. One night, she invites him to her house when her mother is not home, and he rapes her in her mother's bed. After that night, when she begins to look for Collin, it turns out that he does not study in the college he told her. She begins feeling very sick later on, and easily exhausted. Then one day, when her mother takes her to the doctor, she has blood samples taken. She then learns that she has HIV and doesn't know what to do; she just wants to die and feels that she doesn't have anything on earth for her. She decides she wants to find Collin and have him go to jail for raping her. She describes his appearance to the police. Her closest friends do not know what is wrong with her, thinking her father is sick and that she has gone to Arizona because of it. She does not want to tell them that she was raped by a boy who she thought was the love of her life. While at school most of her fellow students do not know that she has HIV, but her friends support her the whole way. Nancy and her parents become closer even though her parents are divorced. Later she dies and wishes for her diary to be published so that other young teenagers like her can know the real truth.
[edit] Controversy
Nancy gets sick a week or two after being raped. Some people do experience flu-like symptoms a short time after being exposed to HIV, which is called "seroconversion". However, Nancy never gets better and her health takes a steep decline from there. The doctor then decides to test her for HIV without telling her or making her sign a waiver. In addition she gets the results a few days later. The book came out in 1994 and spans a couple of years so if the story takes place in 1992 it would have taken 2-3 weeks for her to get the results. Also, the doctor would have informed her of the test so that she would be aware she could be infected and not infect anyone else. They wouldn't have known if she was infected that quickly. Even now, if exposed to HIV, 3 months is the minimum wait to get tested and the patient usually must get tested again at the 6 month mark.
