Page 152 of The Glass Girl

“Can you blame me?” she says softly. “I mean, honestly, Bella, can you?”

She’s staring hard at the road.

I turn my face away to look out my window, my cheeks burning.

“I just need to keep you close right now, Bella,” she says finally. “Is that so wrong?”

I remember what the packet of aftercare instructions said:Some families may impose rules and structure that you find suffocating.

I pull on my headphones and slide down in the seat, staring straight ahead.

Wren, sparrow, roadrunner, quail…

Have You Gone to Your First Group Meeting Yet?

My mom and Ricciare down the street at a coffee shop. Mom said they’d be back in an hour. “A little early,” she said. “Just so you don’t have to stand outside alone.”

But I am standing outside alone. I’m standing outside a church alone. I’ve never even been inside a church before. The meeting is in the basement.

It’s cold. I clench my hands into fists inside my hoodie pockets. I look up one side of the street. Down the other. I don’t have a viable escape plan. I’m not a brave person.

I do want to go in, but I don’t want to go in.

My brain says:Too many people you don’t know, too scary.

My heart says:Do you want to die, Bella? Do you? Do you want to wake up in your own piss again?

My heart can be very harsh.

But I remember, too, what my mom said about her grief group, that she was surprised to feel comforted in a roomful of sad people, but she did. And I remember how Tracy and Phil and Fran said we need to take care of ourselves and live day by day and keep up with our work on the outside.

I force myself to walk to the double doors and open them. In the hallway, a sign with an arrow pointing left saysTeen Group, Room 15, basementin black marker. I turn left, go down the stairs, and find room 15.

Chairs set up in a circle. A table with cookies and soda andcoffee and water. Kind of like the cafeteria at Sonoran Sunrise. For a minute, I wonder if anyone from there is here. Brandy or Billy or Nick. Even Josh, who I still haven’t texted back.

All the faces are unfamiliar.

Kids just like me, milling around, taking seats.

A woman comes up to me. She’s about my mom’s age and wearing a shawl, her purple-streaked hair in braids.

“Hello,” she says. “I’m Beth. Are you here for the meeting?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I’m glad.” She studies me. “How many days do you have, if I may ask?”

“Thirty-four. Including rehab. I just got out a few days ago.” I wonder if I should tell her that the part including rehab was actually a second round.

“Well,” she says. “We’re about to get started. Why don’t you find a seat? We can talk after, if you like.”

“Okay.”

I find a seat between two girls. A sign on the wall says to turn off your phone, so I do.

My knees are jiggling and I press them to make them stop. These chairs are kind of uncomfortable. I miss the beanbags in group with Fran.

One of the girls says, “First meeting?”

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