Page 50 of The Glass Girl

I don’t want her to see my body. I’ve fucked everything up again and again and I’ve made my mother cry.

In the nurse’s hand I see a silver flash of scissors.

Oh, let me die.

—

“Bella.” My mother’s voice is silky with sadness.

I don’t want to open my eyes and look at her. I just want to keep my eyes closed forever.

Her voice floats to me, sinks down deep inside me. Makes a nest there.

“Bella,” she says again. “Bella, I love you and I’m going to take care of you.”

—

Lemon’s friend’s dirty car. The rotting fast-food wrappers. Lemon’s friend yelling. Don’t let her throw up in my car. A girl’s voice: You are messed up, Bella. Kristen? Red bows on brown ponytails, always. You guys I don’t think she’s breathing. Shit shit shit shit. Take her to the hospital. Shit no, we’ll get arrested. Where does she live? There. Take a left. That’s her mom’s. It’s closer. I’m sorry, Bella. I’m so sorry, Bella, but we can’t get in trouble.

That is what I dream, and when I wake up I am alone and there is just light from machines and a tube in my arm and something plastic in my nose and very heavy very warm scratchy blankets and my mother is gone and the weight of me is so much I sink back to the bottom of the water.

—

“Bella,” my mother says. “Can you hear me?”

I open my eyes.

Sunlight through the window sends thousands of sparksthrough my head. My mother is holding my hand. My body is so cold. How can it be so cold under this blanket. This blanket is as thick as bricks but I am still so cold. Shivering so hard my bones are clacking. Her hand is hot on my cold hand and shouldn’t I melt from that heat?

“They left me on the doorstep to die,” I say.

I remember this.

“Yes,” my mother says, touching my face. I flinch, because it hurts. Why does my face hurt so much?

“Yes,” she says again. “They did.”

—

My mother is gone again and now I am alone. I feel jittery and freezing and sick and hurt all at once. Hard to move under this blanket of bricks. The tube in my arm itches but the nurse says don’t pull, so I don’t. She says I need it to not get sick again, to rehydrate.

“You poisoned yourself by drinking too much,” she says, checking a bag of yellowy liquid that hangs above me. But she doesn’t sound angry or like she’s giving me a lecture.

“What your friends did was pretty crappy,” she tells me, feeling my face gently with her hand. Something must have happened to my face because it hurts so much, but I don’t want to know what. She sighs. “But I tell you what, you aren’t dead, and in my book, that’s a win. I’ve seen too many dead kids in my job.”

She sets the television remote on the tray in front of me. I look down at my hands. They feel separate from me. Too heavy to lift.

My fingernails are cracked. Blood in the tips.

Something happened to me. My brain is struggling, folding in on itself.

I was at Dad’s. Then with Kristen. Driving. Lemon’s friend. Party. Sick. Then nothing.

Until the stoop at my mother’s house.

Until my mother screaming.

My brain says:Not true.

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