Page 97 of The Glass Girl

“Good for you,Josh.”

“I’ll stay with you. It’s cool. Isn’t that what they want here? For us to stick together?”

“Whatever,” I say. We’re almost at the red boulder Chuckmentioned. Gideon zips past us, Charlotte and Brandy behind her. Brandy looks at me and Josh and rolls her eyes.

I sit down on the boulder. “I have to rest for a second,” I tell Josh.

“Cool.” He sits on the ground a little away from me and brushes his damp hair out of his eyes.

We’re quiet for a bit. Then he asks me what school I go to, and when I tell him, he says, “Damn, that’s a big one.”

“Three thousand kids,” I say.

“I wish I had that,” he says. “My school’s pretty small. Hard to hide, you know?”

I’m staring at the ground, at a cluster of darkling beetles. I can feel his eyes on me. I drink a few sips from my water bottle.

“Can you not do that?” I ask finally. “Like, look at me for so long? I know it’s funny, my face and all, but it hurts, and I’m kind of embarrassed about it, okay?”

“I wasn’t…” He falters. “I wasn’t looking at that. I mean, thatpartof your face. I wasn’t…making fun of you.”

I keep my eyes on the ground. If he wasn’t looking at the bad part of my face, then he was looking at the okay part. The flutter that happens in my chest is swift and hot.

I glance up at him.

Our eyes meet.

“It’s not even that bad,” he says quietly. “I mean, I’ve seen a lot worse.”

“Really?” I say. “Like how? How could you have seen worse?”

He looks away from me, into the distance. “I have some experience with it, is all. Busted faces.” He abruptly stands. “We should go. I’m starving, aren’t you?”

I get up and we start running together. We’re quiet except for the sound of our breath. He keeps pace with me, which he doesn’t have to do, and which is kind of nice.

I can’t stop thinking, though, about what he meant by “busted faces.”

—

Tracy’s office is a lot nicer and cleaner than the rest of Sonoran Sunrise. She has tons of potted plants and tiny pincushion cacti in painted pots on her shelves, along with a lot of books:The Language of Letting Go; Breaking the Chains of Addiction; Refuge Recovery; The Courage to Heal.There aren’t any beanbags in here, though, like the group room. Just some comfortable-looking easy chairs. There’s a large window behind her desk, the desert stretching out beyond it.

“So,” she says, settling into her chair. “Tell me how it’s going. How do you feel?”

“It’s okay,” I mumble.

“Pretty good, pretty bad, horrible, awful, scary?”

“I guess all of that.”

“These sessions,” she says. “They’re for you. Whatever you want to talk about. I’m a sounding board.”

I nod. “Okay. Sure.”

She’s quiet for a minute; then she says, “I heard you had a moment the other day. You got very anxious. With Billy and Brandy. Janet helped you.”

“Yeah.”

“It sounds like you had an anxiety attack. Do you know what that is?”

---