Page 78 of The Glass Girl

I watch her run away, hair flopping against her pink back.

I sit on the boulder Chuck sat on. It’s still warm from his body. My legs hurt.

It’s really quiet out here.

I hate everything. I hate that stupid little bird peeking at me from a nest-hole in that saguaro. I hate that my face pulsates with pain. I hate that I’m coated in sweat. I hate that they left me here. Even Brandy left, despite that bullshit of “Never leave a man behind.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place this still. Usually I’m surrounded by noise. School. My sister. My parents. My phone. Music through my headphones or my own thoughts careening inside my brain. Only drinking quiets everything down.

Now there’s just…nothing.

And it’s kind of scary. I don’t know what to do in this quiet.

All of a sudden, my stomach rolls and I double over, coughing out leftover food from yesterday. I splutter out the last bits and wipe my chin with the hem of my sweatshirt.

The stupid little bird in the saguaro nest-hole cheeps at me.

“That’s right,” I say to it. “I’m disgusting. A disgusting, dirty thing.”

I look down at my pile of vomit. Red ants are already crawling over it. I use my sneaker to push some sand and stones and twigs over it. Cover it up.

That was weird, what Chuck said. About us being good at keeping secrets and lying.

Covering things up.

Maybe I lied sometimes. But I had to maintain, didn’t I? Everything has always been chaos around me. I just wanted to make it go away somehow. But I never cheated or stole.

Suddenly I remember what Amber said. How I lied at her mom’s just to have an excuse to get the NyQuil. I did finish itoff after Amber went to sleep. Sat in her green-tiled bathroom on the toilet and sucked the rest down, stuck the empty bottle way in the back of the bottom cabinet.

I guess that was stealing, in a way.

A swell of pain rises in me, but I push it down. I don’t want to cry. I’m sick of crying. I’m sick of all of it. Everything.

I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.

I slide off the boulder onto the ground and wedge my face between my knees. The darkness feels comforting.

“Jesus Christ, just get up.”

I look up.

Strands of hair stick to Brandy’s cheeks.

“I thought you were behind me,” she pants. “I ran all this way back, so the least you can do is get off your ass and come with me. I need a ride-or-die in this place, and it looks like you’re it, so get up and let’s go.”

She’s waiting, hips cocked.

“If we die in the desert, at least we’ll die together,” she says. “Also, you have puke on your sweatshirt. Extremely gross.”

She grimaces.

“Fine,” I say, reaching down and grabbing some sand. I smear it over the vomit on my sweatshirt.

I stand up.

I’ll need at least one friend here if I’m going to survive.

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