Page 171 of The Glass Girl

My mouth is tingling. My whole body is tingling.

Josh comes back to me, his amazing blue eyes bright and a little wild.

“Bella? You cool?”

It’s hard to push the words out of my throat with the bottle in my hand. I feel my body splitting into a million little pieces. I’m flying everywhere, out of myself, disappearing cell by cell.

“You lied to me,” I whisper. “You said you weren’t doing this stuff.”

My voice seems very far away, even though it’s coming from inside the me that’s rapidly disintegrating.

He leans in close, his breath on my cheek. A shiver runs through my body. His mouth is so close to mine.

“I didn’t lie to you, Bella, I lied to yourmom.And parents lie tousall the time. They tell you they love you, then they mess with you, and then they say they’re sorry, then they do it again and again.”

His voice has hardened.

That’s right. In rehab he said “busted faces” when we were on the run and he asked about my face.

He presses his mouth to my neck, just like he did in the Star Pit.

“I told you in rehab that there’s not much to me, except I just really, really like getting high. And I really, really like you. It’s a shitty world. Let’s break it together.”

It is a shitty world, isn’t it?

A mountain of schoolwork and summer school. Awful kids at school. Getting suspended. My dad not caring enough to not drink in front of me. Laurel’s house gone, her things just piles of boxes in the corner of my room.

Holly and Gideon.

God, I’m lonely.

I’m slipping away.

—

It’s a thousand stars exploding in my mouth, slipping down my throat and carving a warm pool in my stomach, that firstsip.

—

It’s a million volts of shame shooting through my veins and then drowning them with the second.

—

And then

It is something else

Rising inside the me that used to be me

The me scattered in piles all over the floor

A boy’s mouth inching closer to mine

Something mad

And angry

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