Page 103 of The Glass Girl

And oh, how they fought.

I’m really doing it now, scrabbling up this mountain. I think I can make it, even though there are pinpricks of blood on the palms of my hands because I have so much…

…anger right now.

And just as I think I’m getting there, I stop short, sliding a little ways back.

I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to make it because I’m not a whole person. I’m just random flaps of flesh stapled together to resemble a person on the outside.

Chuck is clapping his hands. “Do it, Leahey. Fight. You can make it. Don’t give up now. You’re almost here. Almosthere.” He takes a deep breath and looks around. “And it’s beautiful up here. You don’t want to miss that, do you?”

I claw into the ground, get a good grip, dig the toes of my sneakers into the earth, and will myself to move up, move forward. Not backward.

When I’m close enough to touch the fabric of Chuck’s sneaker, he reaches down and pulls me to my feet. I fall against him, then steady myself.

Chuck is right. Itisbeautiful up here. The vista is golden with tinges of green, cocoa, and burnt yellow, everything below us studded with stately saguaros and organ pipes and prickly pears. In the distance, I can see the adobe and brick buildings of Sonoran Sunrise, the faint shapes of kids moving around outside. The prettiness makes me ache a little inside.

And it also makes me sad, all of a sudden.

If I was at home and none of this had ever happened, I’d be figuring out ways to drink myself to sleep right now. I’d be checking the level in my Sprodka bottle. Looking to see if there was NyQuil under the bathroom sink. Wondering if I could have just a little more or if that would be too much because I’d have to get up for school in a few hours. Thinking about going to Laurel’s to sit by myself and look at our last Scrabble game on the kitchen table and sip my lonely and my sad away. Checking my phone endlessly to see what great and enormous lives everyone else was living while I was making mine smaller, and fainter, by the day.

I would not know this existed.

“When I was coming up this hill, I hated my parents,” I tell Chuck. “Now I hate myself.”

“Yeah,” he says, gazing at the vista. “But plenty of people hate their parents and themselves and don’t try to drink themselves to death because of it. What’s your excuse?”

“You’re an asshole,” I answer.

I turn away from him and begin to run back down the hill, slipping and sliding in the sand, pebbles, and rock, skirting lizards and grazing saguaros with my arms.

I run all the way back to our dorm, where I start stripping off my socks and shoes the instant I get into the bathroom. I shove myself into one of the shower stalls and yank the curtain closed, turn on the water as hot as I think I can stand it and strip off the rest of my clothes and sit inside on the hot tile, the water pouring over me, making sounds I didn’t think could come out of me, biting my shoulder to make them not so loud.

I wonder what I might have been like if my parents could have gotten their shit together sooner and ditched each other.

I wonder what I’d be like if I’d never been asweet girland taken that first drink.

Day Nine

Dear Mom,

I’m writing this letter to you to get some things off my chest. I’m sorry if that sounds aggressive or angry, but I just don’t know any other way to say it. Tracy says it’s sometimes easier to write things down in a letter than it is to say them out loud, especially for me, since I seem to have a problem getting my brain and heart to work together. I’m wondering if my anxiousness started after Ricci was born, when you and Dad started to get really snippy with each other. Remember that? I guess I was so scared of that that I tried to be good and make sure everything was neat and clean and that I wasn’t being a bother to him and you, because you were really busy with Ricci and he was busy working. So I kind of learned to keep things inside. Did you even notice? Why didn’t you notice me? I was so relieved when Laurel moved out here.

Anyway. Sometimes I wonder why you stayed with Dad so long, because things were really not good. I’m blaming you and I’m also not blaming you because of course I have no idea what it’s like to be in a marriage, all the deals you maybe have to make with each other, but also, we were and are kids and it was obvious something was wrong and that you weren’t happy and didn’t you think that was going to affect us? Maybe someday we can talk about that, if you want. I do want to ask if you could not fight with Dad in front of me and Ricci, though. I feel like you have been fighting for a million years and I’m so tense inside waiting for it and then enduring it that I feel like I’mconstantly on the verge of shattering, just like this mug I threw against a shed yesterday. I’m broken and I’m breaking things. That’s my life now. I guess it actually has been for some time.

And if you and he could come to some sort of agreement not to use me as a conduit for communication because you don’t want to deal with each other, that would be great. You know, like when you text me to tell him something because you don’t want to text him yourself. That. That really stresses me out, because then you two just fight through me, if that makes sense, and that makes everything worse. I didn’t think I should ask you to do this, but Fran said in group that we need to tell parents our limits, like what we can and can’t handle, and that parents want us to tell them that so they know what’s going on, and somebody in group said, “No, they don’t want to know that, trust me, they’ll just tell you to grow up and deal with it” and Fran said, “Then you have to tell them you’re only a teenager and that you aren’t supposed to be a grown-up yet and their job is to help you,” and let me tell you, the room dissolved in laughter at that point.

I’m going to tell you something now that will probably upset you, and if I do decide to ever give you this letter, I reserve the right to cross this part out in permanent marker.

It was Grandma who gave me my first drink, when I was eleven. We were playing Scrabble in her kitchen, like we always did, and she had some in a cup, and I said it looked like melted candy, and she poured some in a cup for me and said, “Something sweet for my best girl.” And man, did I like it. It was like the best, most wonderful thing after a few minutes. It was like I turned into candy and everything was suddenly more colorful and happier. I know it’s a weird thing to say, but it felt like I had “arrived” somehow. Like I’d come home. Like I finally knew what normal felt like.

She didn’t do it all the time. Not at all. Only every once in a while. But she did let me do it on my own later on, maybe when I wasthirteen or so. And as you know, after she died, I would go drink there when I was checking on her house for you. I feel a lot of things about Laurel. I loved her so much, and I still do, and I will never not love her, but I do know that it was probably wrong for her to do that. But she was also a peaceful thing for me, since our house was so tense all the time. And she talked to me about a lot of things that you didn’t want to talk about with me, like art and photography. She took me seriously. She taught me how to use a tampon. Did you know that? Maybe you thought it was Amber, but it was Grandma, because you and Dad had that awful fight about my period.

Maybe you didn’t want to talk about art with me because you had grown up with that, with Grandma. You never want to talk about or see the photographs she took of you when you were young, and I think they are so beautiful. I don’t know why you don’t want to claim them and be proud of them or why you don’t call that curator back about Laurel’s archives. You must have your reasons. Maybe you didn’t like that your childhood was on display. I get that. But they were beautiful, and you were beautiful, and I hope you aren’t ashamed.

Anyway. I don’t want you to hate Grandma for what she did, so I will probably cross this out. She might have started it, but it was me who kept drinking. And I’m going to be honest and tell you that I love it. I love drinking. I feel so much inside me right now that is cutting me to shreds and I’d like nothing more than to be sitting in her house by myself, drinking.

I know I’m seeing you in six days. I can’t say I’m excited, even though that sounds mean. I do miss you and Dad, but I also don’t. This is the longest I’ve ever been away from you. I’m not angry that I’m here anymore, at least I don’t think so. It’s actually kind of nice to be away from you and Dad. You know how sometimes you get very frustrated with me and Ricci and you say “I need a break”? That’s how I feel. Sometimes kids need breaks from their parents, too.I’m sorry it had to happen this way. Sometimes I’m bored here, and sometimes I’m scared, and they ask way too many questions and make us do an awful lot of exercise, but it’s starting to feel okay. I work in the kitchen now, helping to actually cook the food. Everybody has to do their part. I burned some pancakes yesterday, but most of them turned out okay. That’s all for now.

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