Page 83 of The Glass Girl

Ricci, her face pink with sunburn, smiling madly in the hot tub at Agnes’s farm.

And Laurel and me, playing Scrabble at her kitchen table, our faces creased in concentration, her hair a long black and white braid down her back, her fingers heavy with the silverrings she liked to wear. She was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt that Kurt Cobain made for her after she photographed him forRolling Stone.

There I am across from her, squinting at the board, dressed in my flannel and jeans. Was this last year? The year before? I can’t remember. My mother took the picture, one of the few times she came to Laurel’s when I was there.

I press the photo to my good cheek.

Then I slide the photograph back into the velvet pouch, my body swelling with grief. I relatch Laurel’s suitcase, walk out of our room, and keep walking until I reach the end of the hall, and then I turn around and go all the way down to the other end.

And then I do it again, and again, each time passing the person who sits at the desk, watching me curiously as I walk faster and faster. Eventually, she just puts some music on her laptop, something that sounds Broadway show tune–ish, and honestly I don’t care. I just want to walk and walk until I can’t feel anything anymore, and the sound of someone singing about seventy-six trombones is just fine with me. I’m a walking cartoon, a bobblehead doll, a mess of bruises and sore legs and failure.

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After dinner, they let us watch television. Billy chooses some crime show. Brandy picks at the polish on her toes, complaining that she’s bored. I try to focus on the show, but all I can think about is that worksheet and Fran’s question about if good grades make me happy. Well, it’s stressful to work for them and to worry about deadlines and doing things right andpresentations and all that, but I wouldn’t say I ever feel particularly accomplished when I’m done. I liked my tree, because that wasn’t like checking off a box or filling in a blank or remembering a specific historical term or something, but then that got ruined because Ms. Green said I wasn’t in it.

Billy changes the channel to a house show. People are complaining about countertops and kitchen cabinets and how they want two sinks and not just one in the bathroom.

Brandy perks up. “Oh, I love these shows. It’s like the pinnacle of selfishness. Have you ever noticed how if they have kids, they’re extremely concerned with making sure there are roomsonlyfor the kids? And their toys? ‘We need this third floor so Timmy can keep his toys here because I’m sick of stepping on them.’ These people should not have children. They do not understand childhood at all.”

“Shit, I would have died to have my own toy room,” Billy says. “My dad was always kicking all my toys around when he got mad.”

“Why didn’t you just keep them in your room?” Brandy asks.

“I didn’t have a room,” Billy says. “My brother and I slept on the pullout in the front room. My dad had the bedroom.”

His voice is tight.

He switches the channel.

“Gumball,”he says, relieved. “This is better. Much better.”

“Is that a talking cigarette in an elementary school?” Brandy asks. “What in the fresh hell?”

I can’t believe I’m going to spend thirty days with these people, and with a bunch of other kids soon. I wonder what Ricci’s doing. What my mom told her. How much she told her.What is Amber thinking right now? Did Kristen and Lemon get in trouble? That video. I hug myself tightly, leaning away from Brandy on the couch, close to the armrest.

How many people have seen it? It’s probably everywhere by now. School. I won’t be there. I’m going to miss so much work. Am I going to have to repeat fall semester? What’s going to happen to my grades? What are people saying about me? I was supposed to work at Patty’s this past weekend. I’m going to have so much homework to make up when I get back. Am I going to have to go to summer school? When I go back to school, who will even talk to me? Amber cut me off. I’m not talking to Kristen and Lemon ever again, and Cherie was mad at me. I’ll have no one. Why am I having these thoughts again, I’ve already had them, why won’t they just get out my head—

My mind is spinning. I’ll probably lose my job at Patty’s and then I can’t go on the trip with Amber but Amber won’t want to go now anyway—

I can’t breathe and I am breathing too fast, all at once.

I’m not going to have anything or anyone when I get out of here.

Jesus, I just want a drink. Something, anything, to make this go away.

My heart:thump­thump­thump­thump­thump.

“Hey, dude, what’s going on?” Billy says. “You okay?”

I’m pounding on my chest, trying to keep mythump­thump­thump­thumpheart inside my body.

“Shit,” Brandy says. She jumps off the couch and runs out of the room.

I miss Ricci. What if Ricci had been the one to find me? That would have killed her, seeing me bloody on the front stoop. Like, she’d remember that forever.Once, my sister got so drunk shebroke her cheek open on the front stoop of my house.Who’s taking care of her? My mom has no idea which cat videos work the best for calming her down (it’s the YouTube account with the tuxedo cat named, inexplicably, Justin Bieber); she doesn’t know it has to be three Oreos, not two, not one, not four, and how to say good night to the tree frog and mist the tree frog and arrange the Minecraft figurines just so and tap the goldfish tank—

How many people have seen my boob? How far did that go? I’ll have to see all of them again someday at school and somebody will probably write something about me on that one particular stall in that one particular bathroom and then what about the complete strangers, seeing me, drunk and pulling down my bra, laughing at me, reposting, reposting, endless, endless, endless, my tit forever out there, my eyes falling down my face, and I just wanted to feel better, you know, and my dad was so mad at Thanksgiving but who asked them to even get married in thefirstplace and school was shit, and I just wanted to feel better and did Tracy say I had liver damage what does the liverdoanyway what is itsfunctioncan I fix that somehow is that how I’m going to die—

I need, right now, to not feel, but my way of not feeling has been taken away from me, which seems like the cruelest thing in the world.

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