Page 133 of The Glass Girl

“No,” she says after reading it. “Gideon is not dead. She’s getting care. She’ll recover.”

A little weight is lifted inside me. I didn’t want anyone else to die. I cannot have one more person die.

“There’s no way we could have known, Bella. Things creep in here sometimes. Addicts…and I am one, and always will be…the most interesting thing to me is how absolutely crafty we can be sometimes. Like, the things we’ll think of to get wrecked, do you know what I mean? It takes so much work, you know? If we could just put that amount of work into trying to take care of ourselves.”

She laughs. “I mean, honestly. We search people when they come in for visiting days. We do! But that was a new one for me, for sure. How long do you think they planned that? Her cousin buying the exact type of sneaker Gideon wears, ripping out the insole, slipping drugs in there, and then gluing it back down. And then the way they traded, just one shoe each, under the table? It’s impressive, truth be told.”

The sneakers. The matching sneakers. The way she held them so carefully in her hands that day in our room.

There’s a knock on the door. Tracy gets up and opens it.

Fran hands her a dustpan, a broom, a bag, and a little box, and then closes the door.

Tracy leans the broom and dustpan against a wall and sets the bag on the ground. She holds the box out to me.

“For you,” she says. “You’ve made a mess and you need to fix it. By yourself. When we make messes, we’re responsible for cleaning up the damage.”

I don’t take the box.

She puts the box down by me and sits back on the floor, cross-legged this time. She pulls out her phone again and begins scrolling.

“I have all day,” she says. “I get time and a half on holidays. We had a meeting and we won’t add days to your time here. The only person you hurt was yourself. Charlotte was equally responsible for egging you on, but you’ve put in some work here, and whatever you needed to get out of yourself, well, it sure did come out.”

I reach for the box and open it.

Inside are a needle, thread, and a small pair of scissors. I look over at the scattered white beans, the ripped fabric of the beanbag.

“Merry Christmas,” Tracy says.

—

I’m sleeping when I hear a soft tap on the door. It took me a long time to gather all the beans and sew and stuff the fabric of the bag, to sweep up the bean dust and loose threads. There was nothing to do after that except go back to sleep. If I didn’t, I’d just sit there and think about Gideon, and Holly, and Laurel, all lost to me now.

The door opens.

It’s Janet.

“I shouldn’t do this,” she says. “But for some reason, I am. Come on out.”

She motions to me. I wipe the sleep from my eyes and go to the door. Janet opens it a little wider.

Josh is standing in the hallway.

“Everybody made a Christmas party in the activity room,” he says. “It isn’t any fun without you.”

Janet closes the door to the Seg room and looks at us sternly.

“Ten minutes,” she says. “That’s it. And you stay here, where I can see you. Understand?”

We nod. Janet walks back down the hall to the desk and sits. She turns on some Christmas music, very low, on her computer.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say.

“You really did a number on Charlotte,” he says.

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