Page 100 of The Glass Girl

I know I’m there, too, but I know also wherenotto look for my pictures so I can avoid them: the far right-hand corner, where all the new kids are. It’s kind of funny to occupy a body that you actively avoid looking at.

The wall reminds me of the Polaroids Laurel took of people, the ones they sent to her service after she died. People caught quickly in time and then that time disappears and that person they were in the moment is gone in real life but kept forever on film. The color of Polaroid film is pretty: the skin tones slightly off, too bright or too murky, just a slight blurriness to everything, like paint has been applied in a gentle brushstroke and then smeared the tiniest bit.

Laurel would really like this. She would like this wall of moments immensely; she’d probably have a lot to say about each portrait. I like that my grandmother was full of words.Maybe I can be like that someday, if I can just figure out the right ones.

It’s a little scary and breathtaking, too, that there are so many kids on this wall. This place isn’t that big, and yet there are an awful lot of faces here.

And there will be more, and more, and more. How many of these faces are repeats? How many of these kids have come back here again and again?

I would like to not be one of them.

Day Eight

“You have a job,you had a boyfriend, you took care of your grandmother and then she died,” Tracy says during our session.

I pick at my nails and then stop, because she notices if I do it, and that makes me nervous. It hasn’t escaped me that for a person who doesn’t really like to be noticed, I have landed in a place where it is allaboutbeing noticed and observed.

“Wow, you must have interviewed my parents for hours to have all this information on me.”

“Something like that,” she says. “I just needed to piece you together. Tell me about it.”

I think quickly about what to parse out to her.

We’re having this session on two boulders outside. In the distance, I can see the goat pen and hear them fussing around among the chickens. Tracy has brought two coffees, because I can finally have coffee now. It feels good and warm in my mouth. She brought creamer and I added a lot.

“I bus tables at a diner. Well, I should say I used to, because I’m pretty sure I lost that job after what happened. I was supposed to work and, well, I ended up in the hospital. And now here.” I shrug, likeWhat are you gonna do? Oops.

“Maybe you haven’t lost it. Sometimes people can be pretty forgiving. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to give second and even third chances.”

“Maybe. I really only had it because I was saving money to go on a trip after graduation with my friend.”

“That’s a good goal.”

“Mmm,” I say, rubbing the toes of my sneakers together. “I guess. It was really Amber’s thing. She keeps maps of where we’ll go and stuff. I mostly was going just to be with her and to get away and do something. It doesn’t matter, though. We probably aren’t friends anymore, after this.”

It hurts to say that, so I take a big gulp of my coffee.

It feels really good to be able to drink coffee again. I can feel it perking me up for the first time in a long time.

“Were you worried about how you’d be able to drink on the trip?”

I practically spit out my latest sip of coffee. “Wow, you really just go for the jugular, don’t you?”

“I like to get to the point,” she says.

“I don’t know,” I answer. “I don’t think I ever thought about it, really. I was more worried about saving my part of the money, which I lost some of because I had to buy a new laptop after breaking my old one.”

Tracy is writing something down.

In the back of my mind, though, I realize Ididthink about that. Like, if it was just me and Amber, and we weren’t with Kristen and Cherie, would she get pissed with me if I wanted to drink or something? And how would I do that anyway, on the road? Away from Laurel’s house? What, was I going to shoulder-tap in some small town in the middle of nowhere while Amber watched television in a motel room?

Probably.

“Your mother said you were inebriated when you broke the laptop and that was the first time she realized things weregoing on with you, but she didn’t realize the extent at the time.”

Extent.What an odd word.Ex-tent.

I sigh, long and hard. “There was a dumb party and I saw my ex-boyfriend there with his new girlfriend and I went too far and I freaked out and when I went home, I broke my laptop for…reasons. It’s kind of a long story, but yeah, she could obviously see I was wrecked.”

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