Page 5 of The Glass Girl

All my friends loved Laurel. Who wouldn’t? She was semi-famous in a way that they didn’t fully understand but that seemed cool. She took us to the mall and bought us earrings at Claire’s and makeup at Sephora and laughed at all the horny things in Spencer’s with us. She asked to listen to our playlists and she actuallydid.

They were all really nice to me after it happened. Of course they were, because they’re my friends, but after a bit, it kind of felt like they moved on, and I was somehow still standing in the barn at Agnes’s staring at my beautiful, cool grandmother in a black-and-white photograph on a table surrounded by candles and incense and sage and cameras and postcards and Polaroids and flower petals, my little sister’s hand tight in mine as our parents argued in the corner.

Those Polaroids. I took them from the barn. People sent them to us from around the world when they heard about Laurel. The test shots she’d do before a session, for lighting, angle, to get people loose.

I have a whole stack of photos of complete strangers in my dresser drawer. Some people wrote on the white borders.Laurel captured my soul. Laurel saw beauty in me when I saw none.Some of these people are incredibly famous, or were, and some people are just people, but Laurel made them seem like more than that.

The squeezing is starting and I hold my breath, shove my Sprodka bottle in my backpack so I don’t have to see Amber’s concerned eyes.

“No, I’ll be fine. Text me later? Tell me what you’re watching?” Am I slurring? I don’t think so. I bite my lip a little too hard. The sharpness helps me focus.

“Okay,” she says. “Hey, you know what?”

“What?”

“We should look at the map again soon, go over our savings. I’ve got fifteen hundred now. You?”

The trip. The map on Amber’s wall in her tiny room: red pins for weird attractions, like the World’s Largest Tin Family in North Dakota, constructed entirely out of empty oil drums; blue pins for natural landmarks, like the Grand Canyon, which neither of us has ever seen, even though we only live six hours away. We’ve been planning this since we were eleven and everything was locked down, like maybe someday when we could go out in the world again, we’d really make it worth it. Buy a car together when we were old enough, spend the summer after graduation driving around, sleeping in hostels and camping in tents, seeing weird things and beautiful things and meeting weird people and beautiful people, maybe people who are beautiful because they’re weird, just two girls in a car out in the world, before whatever comes after high school happens. Amber walks the dogs in her neighborhood to make money, scooping poop into bags while holding the leashes of barky terriers and lustrous retrievers. I bus tables at a place whose signature dish is a hamburger with three patties, six varieties of cheese, ten pickles, three habanero peppers, and a crunchy layer of batter-fried onions on top, and if you finish it, you get a bumper sticker that saysI Ate the Pepper Patty at Patty’s Place and Survived.

I hesitate. “I had a setback. Laptop went haywire. I just have eight hundred now, but I’m being careful with tips, so I’ll make it back. I will.”

That laptop is hidden under a pile of old clothes in my closet at my mom’s house, the screen shattered, half the keys missing. My mom refused to buy me a new one, so I used some of the tips I’d saved and went out and got a refurbished one, since it was cheaper.

It was a bad night, the night of Luis’s party. Like I said, the details are a little muddled. When I try to catch distinct memories of what happened, they float away from me, like fluff on a dandelion after you blow it. Usually, I remember everything. Well, almost everything; sometimes the memories are like a book with pages missing. But the night at Luis’s was different. It kind of felt like I had tipped over into a bottomless well, just falling, falling, falling, and no place to land. And then things just…disappeared at some point.

The laptop was a casualty. Obviously, I threw it or something, or hit it, and that’s what made my mother wake up and come to my room. The noise. And then she found me and that was that. I was too messed up to pretend I wasn’t messed up. So not only are Amber and my other friends keeping me on a tight leash, so is my mom.

Amber smiles. “No worries. We’ve got plenty of time. Hey, I found another cool place. It’s called Bubblegum Alley, and people have been sticking their gum there foryears,can you imagine? It’s in California. It’s, like, fifty feet long!”

“That’s disgusting and somehow fantastic at the same time,” I say. “Excellent addition. Good find.”

I step out of the car carefully.

“Bella!” Amber calls.

I turn back, lean down through the open passenger window.

“It’ll be okay. The Dylan stuff. You just need some time. Remember how long it took me to get over Caleb?”

I remember. There was a lot of crying, and Couching, and eventually Amber became Amber again: positive, clear-headed, focused.

But the big difference between Amber and Caleb and me and Dylan is that Amber broke up with Caleb. He didn’t dump her. She dumpedhim.She didn’t have to stand in a parking lot in front of half the high school while he told her she wastoo much,his friends flanked behind him, like a giant collective, protective squid.

Oh, shit, she’s crying.

Dude, we gotta get out of here.

Dylan, man, chill, it’s done, let’s go before she loses it.

Dylan’s Squid Squad had their phones out just in case, though, because there’s nothing better than posting a breakup meltdown. I had to stand there and take it, or my freak-out would be posted everywhere within seconds. I had to pretend I was nothing, a ghost, no feelings, no expression, just…Whatever okay be cool Dylan you know whatever have a nice life.

As I walked away, he said, “Take care of yourself, Bella,” unaware that inside, I was disintegrating, shattered by the casual tone in his voice.

“Yeah,” I tell Amber, trying to smile, biting my lip again to make sure I don’t slur or anything. “I know. I’m good. It’s cool.”

She hesitates. “Maybe take it easy tonight, okay?”

She means the Sprodka.DidI slur?

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