Page 132 of The Glass Girl

“No, I’m not going to listen. After all that’s done, you and Mom are going to sit down and figure out how to tell Ricci the truth, by yourselves, before I come home, whenever that is, because I’m currently in a locked room for god knows how long. Do your job, goddammit.”

Before I hang up, I add, “Merry Christmas.”

I hand the phone back to Janet. My hands are shaking.

“Well done,” she murmurs. “I liked that sign-off.”

“Well,” I say, “he is my dad.”

She smiles.

“I don’t understand how she got that number,” I say. “She’s seven. How would she get the number if they told her I was on a school field trip?”

Janet hesitates. “Listen,” she says.

“What?”

“It sounds like there are some issues with your dad, and we don’t need to go into that? I kind of got the gist by your very one-sided conversation, but you should know…he calls here every day.”

“What?”

“Pretty much every day. He doesn’t ask to talk to you. He knows you probably won’t talk to him, I guess. But he justwants to know how you are. Good day, bad day, okay day, eating all right, that sort of stuff.”

My dad has been calling to check on me every day and I didn’t even know. Frustrated tears spring to my eyes.

“That’s probably how she got the number. She looked in his phone, and he saved it with your name. That’s my guess. I’ll bring you dinner in a little bit and take you to the restroom.”

Janet leaves.

My dad couldn’t reschedule a meeting to come see me, but he calls every day. My dad and mom lied to my little sister and she thought I was going to die. One friend did die, the other almost, and I think I punched Charlotte at least three times before Josh pulled me off her.

And I’m stuck in this room.

I pick up the beanbag and rip it to shreds.

Day Twenty-Five

Tracy is not happyabout the decimated beanbag. When she steps into the Seg room, she takes one glance at it, tucks her folder under one arm, and pulls out her phone to tap out a text. She slips her phone into her back pocket and looks me over.

“At least you didn’t hurt yourself. Did you?”

I’m sitting on the futon, wedged in the corner. I don’t answer her. I feel electrical, like wires are strung tight inside me and they’re malfunctioning, sending up random sparks every now and then.

She sits on the floor and pulls her knees up to her chest.

“Charlotte is fine,” she says quietly. “A few bruises, nothing more. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Holly.”

I feel like I might answer her, if I had words, but I don’t seem to have any left. Maybe I’ve said everything I had to say and I’ll be silent forever. Maybe I can just stay in this room until my time is done here, with whatever days they’ll add on for my outburst on Charlotte, and when I leave, it will be as an empty sort of human shell. Skin with nothing left inside. Maybe that would be better for everyone.

“It happens,” she says. “What Gideon did. Even here. Things aren’t linear in recovery. No straight lines. One day things are working out; the next day, a little fissure, a crack, and we goright back to where we started from. There isn’t any shame in that. We get up, we bandage ourselves as best we can, and we start over.”

She sighs.

“I don’t really like the sound of just my voice. It makes me feel lonely,” she says. She pulls some paper from her folder and rips off a piece, slides it across the floor and rolls a pen to me.

I wait a moment before grabbing it, then I do, and I scribble,is she dead?

I shove the paper across the floor at her.

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