Page 169 of The Glass Girl

“Hey,” I say as he gets closer.

“Hey.” He smiles.

Those blue eyes.

“I’m Diana,” my mother says. “This is Ricci.”

Ricci hides behind my leg.

He holds out his hand. “Josh.” He looks down. “Hey, Ricci.”

“There won’t be any drinking tonight, correct? Or anything else?” my mom asks.

Josh shakes his head. “Uh, no. Just a movie.”

“Mom,” I say. “I mean, honestly, I’m near death from embarrassment, here.”

“Fine. Text me when the movie’s out,” she says. “And here, Josh, put your number in my phone.”

She holds it out to him and he punches in his number.

“All good?” he asks.

My mother looks at me and then back at him.

“All good,” she says.

We watch as she and Ricci start walking toward the car, and then we head inside.

—

In the lobby, he stops and pulls out his phone. “We have a while yet. I got the start time wrong. Sorry.”

“That’s fine.” I look around. “We could go to the arcade. I’m pretty good at air hockey.”

“Eh,” he answers. He ducks his head, then looks at me, his eyes crinkling. “You wanna go see my friend? He lives right by here. We could hang out, come back.”

“Well,” I say. “I don’t know. I’m just supposed to do this.”

I twist my hands, nervous.

“It’s right across the parking lot. That one street where the houses start. We won’t stay long. I don’t really like arcades. Too noisy.”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

He leans closer to me. “No trouble, I promise. I’ll take care of you.”

—

As we walk across the lot he asks, “Your parents cool now that you’re back home?”

I put my hands in my hoodie pockets. “Not really. My dad wrote me a letter after that stuff I told you about. Well, I wrote him first, and then he answered. It’s complicated.”

He nods. “That’s very old-school, writing letters back and forth.”

“Did you write letters at Sonoran?” I ask. “The impact letters?”

“Nah,” he says. “I did that the first time around at another place. I feel like writing them again kind of takes the impact out of the impact, if you know what I mean? Like how many times can I say I’m sorry for impacting somebody’s life?”

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