Page 81 of The Glass Girl

Brandy slams down her pencil. “Done!” she announces. She shoves her paper across the table to Fran. “What grade did I get?”

“It’s not a test like that, Brandy.” Fran scans the sheet. “You don’t have many disadvantages to drinking.”

“Nope,” Brandy says. “I like it. It makes me feelbetter.I have lots of friends. I go to parties. It helps me chill.”

“Hmm.” Fran puts Brandy’s paper down. “But you’re here.”

Brandy scowls. “So?”

“Well, somewhere, somehow, something happened that brought you here. And while yourbeinghere is positive, the reasonbehindit is not. Get what I’m saying?”

Brandy twists a strand of her dark hair. It’s still wet from her shower. She was irked that there wasn’t a blow-dryer. “I’m just here because my mother hates me, to be frank. She’ll do anything to get me out of the house so she can be alone with her boyfriend. So what?”

“What mom would want you out of the house so bad she’d pay all this money?” Billy asks.

I look over at him. “Wait, how much is this costing?”

Billy rubs his fingers together. “Probably mucho moolah.”

“Well, it doesn’tlooklike it,” Brandy says, and sniffs.

Howaremy parents paying for this? My dad works in a cubicle and my mom has insurance through her radio job, but it can’t be all that great. I think there was estate money from Laurel, but I don’t know how much. My mom kept pretty quiet about that stuff. That was something else my parents fought about after she died. Selling off some of Laurel’s photographs to museums. Auctioning them at special art houses. Some curator calls once every few months, but my mom gets really agitated and lets it go to voicemail.

Great. Now I’m costing my parents money they don’t even have, so I’ll feel guilty aboutthatforever.

“Listen,” Brandy says, raising her voice. “There is simply no limit to what my mother will spend to get me away from her, okay?”

Her face is flushed; her eyes have grown damp.

She stands up quickly, slamming her pencil back in the bucket. “I finished my homework. Can I go back to my room? This is lame.”

“Sure,” Fran says.

Brandy wraps her arms around herself and stomps out of the activity room.

“She just gets to leave?” Billy says. “That doesn’t seem cool. I’m not even done with my sheets!”

“I can’t force anyone to do anything they aren’t ready for, Billy. If somebody chooses to be here and not put in the work, well, that’s on them. You just need to worry about yourself. Do you want to put in the work? Do your advantages outweigh your disadvantages? Maybe by the time thirty days is up, you’ll have an answer.”

Billy sighs. “Thirty freakin’ days.”

He goes back to scribbling on his sheets.

Fran looks at me. “How are you doing with yours?”

I hand her my sheets.

“Interesting,” she says. She peers over her glasses at me. They’re pink with fake stones at the corners. Like something my boss, Patty, would wear.

“What do you mean, ‘the video’?” she asks.

“Video?” Billy says. “Do tell. Sounds saucy.” He leans forward, very interested.

“Shut up,” I tell him. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s none of your business.”

“That’s all right,” Fran says gently. She makes a note on her clipboard.

She inspects my packet again. “I see a lot of anxiety. Loneliness. You must be carrying a lot. Would you say that’s accurate?”

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