Page 175 of The Glass Girl

“There,” she says. “He’s blocked.”

Then she calls my mom.

It doesn’t sound great.

When she gets off the phone, she hands it back to me.

“I’m sorry for what’s about to happen to you,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. “I knew someone like you. In the hospital. Holly. She died. But not from that.”

“A cutter?”

I nod.

“Well,” Dawn says, “there are a lot of girls like me. And like you. Just walking around the world not knowing about each other. A silent, sad army, I guess. Welcome.”

—

The first thing my mom says when we get in the car is “I’m so angry at you right now.”

The second thing she says is “I’m so angry atmyself.What was I thinking, letting you go out like that?”

The third thing she says is “We’re going to a meeting. I texted Tracy and that’s what she said to do.”

The only thing I say is “Okay.”

And then, “I’m sorry.”

It’s ten o’clock at night and there are at least seventy people in this church, only not in the basement this time. Up top, in the main part, spread out among the pews. It isn’t all kids, either. It’s mostly adults.

Someone is talking at the front of the church. My mother and I slide into a pew in the back.

I do not feel good. I feel sick and stupid and afraid and ashamed. I’m sweating, but I feel cold inside. I lost all my days.

I lost all my days.

No.

I threw all my days away.

It was me.

Because I’m not normal. I can’t do this like other people. I can’t drink. And now I’m sitting here with all these other un-normals late at night talking about how un-normal we are.

That girl in group, she said her life was microscopic.

I can see that now.

How your life has to get very small, somehow, before it can get bigger, and I probably won’t know when that time will be for a very, very long time.

I start to shudder with sobs, pressing a hand against my mouth.

My mother puts her arm around me and takes my hand with her other hand and squeezes hard.

Again and again and again and again and again and again and again how many times will I have to start over all my days?

Today You Will Rediscover Something You Used to Love.

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