Page 102 of The Glass Girl

Oh god. Was that apsychothing to do, like Charlotte says Gideon did?

Maybe Gideon isn’t really my friend after all, if this is funny to her.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean to do that. Please don’t give me a demerit. Please.”

I run over to the shed, the earthy smell of the goat pen enveloping me. The chickens are rooting around the legs of the goats. I drop to my knees and start gathering the pieces of the cup, my hands shaking.

Tracy kneels next to me. She puts her hand on my shoulder.

“Stop,” she says gently. “Breathe. I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

I’m trying to breathe, but something is sitting in my throat, blocking it. I’m choking a little. The bricks inside me weren’t smashed. They’re rising up.

Wren, sparrow, roadrunner, quail.

Is that the right order? Does it matter?

I close my eyes, even as my shaking hands are pawing around, feeling for the sharp pieces of broken mug.

“Bella,” Tracy says. “Let me help you clean this up. You don’t have to do it alone.”

—

What I do have to do, apparently, is go for another run with Chuck so that I don’t get a demerit for behavior.

“Let’s make this one count,” he said when we started. “Let’s rip it up.”

Neither of those are things I particularly wanted to do, but I followed him anyway.

Now we’re running up a hill, and even though it’s coldoutside, we’re sweating like dogs in the middle of the summer. Or, I am, anyway. Chuck seems unbothered.

At least he didn’t totally leave me behind. He’s only a little bit in front of me, occasionally tossing out things like “I don’t know why people live in cities, all cooped up. You miss all this, the air and the majesty” and “How you doing, Bella?”

I can only grunt in response.

Because this hill is hard. I think it might actually be more of a mountain than a hill, and I’m tripping-running my way up it, hoping I don’t slip and slide back down.

And suddenly, my chest aching and my throat dry, and whatever muscles are in my calves burning in pain, I get really mad at my mother and father.

Like, I am busting my ass on this hill, getting cactus spines in my hands, sweating through my sweatshirt, my stupid swollen face probably getting sunburned, because my mother and father were fuckups who fucked us up.

All I know is that things seemed okay until Ricci was born, and after that everything shifted. My mother was solely mine and then she wasn’t, because she had this little thing in a BabyBjörn on her chest all the time. A thing that screamed and cried and did not like to sleep. And she was so tired. So I did bits and pieces to help her. Put the dishes in the dishwasher. Made sure all my Legos were put away. Kept the television down very low in the rare instances she could get Ricci to sleep and take a nap herself. Got myself dressed in the morning and fixed my own cereal.

Because my dad changed. Or had he always been that way, but it got worse? Because it became…something. It was like abeforeand anafter.Before Ricci he worked, he came home, then he went out and my mother was always there to be with me.Except sometimes, when she had her classes at night. Those nights, he’d read to me and then sing. After Ricci, he didn’t do that so much, even though my mother had her hands full with a baby.

And there I was, suddenly. Something…he didn’t want to take care of. Or didn’t know how to. At least, that’s how I felt.

“What’s going on back there, Leahey?” Chuck calls over his shoulder. “We’re almost up to the peak.”

“I…” I grunt, slipping on a rock and nearly cracking my head on another one. I swear.

Chuck has reached the top. He’s grinning down at me.

I’m still scrambling to reach him, my thoughts tumbling in my head. Only, instead of guilty or anxious about all of them rushing around at once, I feel…good. It feels good to think these things.

Nothing I did was right. I didn’t clean up my toys quick enough. I wanted an extra story at night. I didn’t like seeing my dad’s face that way. Annoyed. I didn’t like seeing my mother so tired and sad. So I stopped being a bother and became better. I built a better Me.

Or so I thought.

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