Perfect Glass (A Young Adult Novel (sequel to Glass Girl)) (8 page)

Meg was quiet. Too quiet. I knew I’d said too much. “Meg, everything’s gonna be all right. You’re going to have to trust me.”

“I trust you.”

“I’ll know more after today, okay?”

“Okay.”

Okay, except she was crying, trying to keep me from hearing it. “Please don’t cry. I don’t want you to worry about this. I promise I’ll see you soon. I feel like I’m already home. I’m that close.”

“I’m just a spaz,” she said. “And I miss you so much. I feel like everyone else is having a normal senior year, but I’m running a marathon, trying to get to the finish line. And it’s been full of suck. Could I come visit you?”

“I want you to visit, but things aren’t good right now. Just be patient. Situations tend to change really fast.” And I planned to be with her in Chapin in twenty-four hours.

“I love you, Henry. Call when you can.”

I heard the smile in her voice and that made me feel better about saying goodbye. I stopped short of making a kissing noise into the phone—because I still had some self-respect—and headed toward the shower. Already a speech was forming in my head…the words that would attempt to explain to my sister and brother-in-law why I was leaving.

The barely lukewarm water only made it clearer. I was tired of being here. Maybe it was that simple. I was tired and needed to recharge at home.

Mornin’, Kate. Did you hear the one about the cowboy in Nicaragua? No? Probably ’cause he didn’t last long enough to make a difference.

meg

“H
oney, you’re not planning on going to school, are you?” My mom knocked on the bathroom door as soon as I turned the shower off. “Can’t you take a day off to rest?”

“I have a math test.” I wrapped in a towel and opened the door.

“I’m sorry I pushed you to work with Jo.” She leaned against the doorframe with her cup of coffee. “I just thought, with everything….” She waved her hand in the air so I’d know everything meant
everything
.

I put my arms around her. “It’s not your fault, Mom. Rejecting people is an art and Jo does it exceptionally well. I’ll find another volunteer job.”

There was the women’s shelter where Tennyson volunteered and the Pregnancy Assistance Center where Sara worked. I could replace one volunteer gig with another. What I couldn’t do was get over the fact that someone in the world really hated me. Enough to call the police.

“Do you think she’s safe there by herself?” Mom said. “I saw her in town last week and she’s lost so much weight. I’m not sure she’s eating.” She followed me to my room and watched me agonize over what to wear. After several minutes, she took out a fuzzy turquoise sweater and held it up. “This is good with your eyes.”

“Jo is skin and bones.” I pulled the sweater over my wet hair and began the process of trying to free my hair from where it got trapped in the fabric. “I assumed she’d always been frail like that.”

“No, seriously, you need to stop by the gallery today after school. I’ll show you a self-portrait she did years ago. You won’t recognize her. She looked like a young Vivien Leigh…with this intensely vulnerable thing happening in her eyes.”

“That’s okay,” I said, watching my mom morph into Adele Kavanagh, artist. I’ve known this distant look of hers all my life. It usually meant that as soon as I left the house, she’d sit at a canvas and produce a miracle. “I know she was beautiful. I’ve seen a picture of her. But I’ve had enough Jo Russell to last me a little while.”

“You would be wrong to take this personally, Meg.” Mom ran her finger along the edge of her coffee mug, a nervous gesture that told me how important this conversation was to her. “Jo’s mind is fading. She’s losing bits and pieces. Things from the past are mixing with the present. My grandmother went through this. I went through this.” She held up her hand, quietly counting family members who’d
been through this
.

I turned to my mirror to brush my hair and finish getting ready for school. Without Henry here, as long as I was clean, I felt okay about walking the halls of school. But I didn’t want to hear a defense of my accuser this morning, so pretending to primp signaled an end to the conversation.

My mom slipped out quietly to fix breakfast. When I joined her, she started the conversation where she’d left it. “I heard she marched over to a neighbor’s house last week and accused them of chopping down several of her trees.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice and stared out the window.

I looked up from my bagel in time to see her reach over and straighten a picture Wyatt had drawn in art class years ago. At our old house, that frame had been hanging on a wall. Here, she kept it in the window over the kitchen sink. I never noticed why until now. Wyatt had used chalk to draw trees that looked a lot like the pines we could see through this kitchen window. The juxtaposition jarred me.

“Had they?”

“Of course not. She broke down and cried on their porch and they had a hard time calming her down.”

“The last time I talked to her, she seemed to be really sad about something.” I poured a cup of coffee and mixed in cream and sugar. “It’s not that I don’t want to help her, Mom. It’s just that I don’t think I’m experienced enough. And she hates me.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you learn that she misses you. She just doesn’t know how to connect—if she’s supposed to push or pull. But you, my darling daughter, did nothing wrong and have nothing to be ashamed of.”

When I looked in the mirror this morning, I saw a girl accused of something bad. It really wasn’t all that surprising, to my mom or me, when tears started flowing.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Meg.” She dried her own cheeks with the backs of her hands and used a paper towel on mine, pushing it close to my lashes to keep my mascara in place.

“I think I sort of feel responsible for her now.” I pushed the towel away. “I wish I could turn that off like a light switch.”

“I know what you mean. I have some switches I’d turn off, too.”

I took a shaky breath and attempted a smile. “I’m okay. If Henry were here, he’d just drive over to Jo’s and she’d let him right in. He’d explain everything and she wouldn’t misunderstand him. He’s literally un-misunderstandable.”

“Be careful, Meg,” she said, turning back to her window. “No one’s perfect.”

***

It didn’t take long for me to see my secret had been leaked. When I walked through the front door of school, someone said, “Hey, Kavanagh, stalking is not love.” The hall erupted in laughter. Tennyson waited at my locker with a horrified look on her face.

“What?” I said when I got close enough.

She shifted slightly, exposing the pink, furry handcuffs attached to my lock.

“I tried to break them, but there’s metal under all that fluff.” She tugged at them to prove it. “I swear I only mentioned what happened to a couple of people and I have no idea why it’s so funny. I think you’re a victim of a slow news cycle.”

“It’s not a problem.” I pushed closer to my locker so I could try to open it. I just wanted to get my books and make it to English on time. Quinn picked that moment to walk by, doing a double take when he saw the handcuffs.

He stopped and reached for them, yanking hard in an attempt to open them. Then he took a mechanical pencil out of a pocket in his backpack and jerked off the metal clip, which he used to pick the lock of the handcuffs. They sprang free quickly enough that his lock-picking history seemed like an interesting future conversation.

“Thanks,” I said, reaching for them.

But Quinn held the fuzzy handcuffs in his hands, looking them over closely, and he smiled. “Oh, hey, did you want to keep these for when your invisible boyfriend returns from his fake vacation?”

“You’re a riot, O’Neill. You’re also late to English.” I turned the combination on my lock and finally opened my locker.

He tossed the handcuffs in and reached for my copy of
The Rose Tattoo
, the play we were studying. I had to jog a little to keep up with him when he headed down the hall, but it kept my mind off the stalker jokes being whispered around me. Quinn flipped through my copy of the play, pretending he didn’t hear what they were saying.

Nate Murray, one of Thanet’s friends, reached out to stop me. “Hold up, Meg,” he said. “How long have you been into old women?”

I shook my head and kept walking.

“I looked it up,” he said, following closely behind us. “It’s called gerontophilia and there’s a support group in Denver for you. I wrote it all down.”

Nate probably thought he was being cute, but Quinn had obviously heard enough. He shoved Nate. Hard. Into the wall. I had no idea Quinn was that fierce. Or quick. Or working a protection detail for me. He was on the thin side, more intellect than muscle.

“Dude,” Nate yelled, holding the shoulder that took most of the impact. “I’m a friend of hers. I was just kidding.”

“It wasn’t funny.” Quinn still hadn’t backed off.

I tugged on his arm and tried to get him away from Nate. “You should just go on to English, Quinn. It’s okay.”

Nate pushed Quinn back and started walking toward the bathroom. He opened the door and kicked it shut behind him. Quinn and I were staring at the door when it opened again and Nate stuck his head out and met my eyes. “I really was kidding, Meg. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

“It’s okay.” My face burned.

“Does Henry know about this clown?” He jerked his chin toward Quinn, who was scowling, and let the bathroom door close again.

“Are you making some good friends at school?” I said to Quinn, trying to sound like an interested mom.

He sighed and gave me a lopsided grin. “Crap. I might have overreacted. I’ll apologize.” He leaned into the bathroom and spoke to Nate, who must have been standing by the door. After a second of listening to Nate’s response, he stuck his hand through the half-open door. I caught a glimpse of a handshake/fist bump combination. Guys are so easy
.

“Let’s go before Mr. Landmann gets heated up,” Quinn said after he let the bathroom door close.

Mr. Landmann had started his lecture on Serafina, the main character in
The Rose Tattoo
. He barely glanced at us when we opened the door.

“‘A woman can be dignified in her grief, but when it’s carried too far it becomes a sort of self-indulgence,’” he read. “What’s Serafina grieving, Mr. O’Neill?” Usually Mr. Landmann’s punishment for tardiness was a barrage of direct questions about the homework.

“Her husband, at first,” Quinn said, stopping between two rows of seats and facing Mr. Landmann. His show of respect earned him a nod.

“And then,” Mr. Landmann prompted.

“And then she grieved everything.” Quinn began to look uncomfortable.

“Sit, Quinn, and tell me what you mean.” Mr. Landmann motioned for him to find his seat. “How does she grieve everything?”

Once Quinn was settled, he unzipped his backpack and took out his copy of the play. He might have been buying time. I raised my hand because I figured I owed Quinn for helping me with the handcuffs, as well as worrying about the jokes flying around about my character.

“Meg?” Mr. Landmann said. He seemed surprised I would willingly open myself up to the class about another case of literary grief.

“Serafina grieves the loss of things she hasn’t even lost yet. Some people don’t know what else to do except to grieve. They’ll make stuff up to mourn.”

“Go on, please,” Mr. Landmann said, tripping over the words lightly—half invitation, half release from obligation.

“She worshipped her husband and he died. It seems like that’s her trouble, but it was more. She’s grieving the idea of him and her own aging and her daughter’s separation. She grieves…everything.” I glanced at Quinn as I used his words. He nodded once, but it was barely perceptible.

“Class, was the priest right?” Mr. Landmann said. “Did her grief become self-indulgent?”

He called on other students as they raised their hands. Most of them agreed with the priest.

Quinn raised his hand and started talking before Mr. Landmann called on him. He literally vibrated in his seat, his opinion on the subject making his joints jump.

“Yeah,” he said. “But the play’s about unequal suffering. The priest shouldn’t have made such an insensitive remark to her. She’d just learned her husband had cheated on her. A lot. And he was a loser. And the priest harped on her about grieving for too long. Nobody was willing to admit Serafina deserved a little compassion because she got dealt a crap hand.”

“If you’d written it, what conversation would the priest have with her?” Mr. Landmann loved the
if you’d written it
questions.

“He would discuss theodicy instead. That would’ve been a better conversation to have.”

“Okay,” Mr. Landmann said. “That’s a big word, Quinn. Can you define theodicy?”

Quinn snorted softly and looked down. I felt for him because I knew what it meant. I’d looked it up when I was trying to figure out why a good God would let Wyatt die.

“It kind of rhymes with idiocy,” Quinn said. “But it deals with the concept of a God who hands out bad stuff arbitrarily.”

Mr. Landmann blinked once, twice, three times. Then he moved on. “Did Tennessee Williams pull Serafina’s character out of thin air? Could we all be guilty of living in denial about areas of our life to the extent we push society away completely. Do we live with self-imposed isolation and unhappiness?”

The classroom grew quiet. Either they all thought Mr. Landmann was full of it or they were really considering what we do to ourselves and how life pinches and hurts so much that we throw up fences and walls and lock our doors. We become pearls—products of the intense need for protection. We become Jo Russell.

Or we just decide it’s time to walk away.

henry

“H
ey, Uncle Henry,” Whit called when I finally walked through the dining room door, my memorized exit speech bouncing through my brain. “Where do numbers go to do their homework?”

“I have no idea, little man.” I struggled to come up with a punch line that would satisfy Whit. The kids—all but Raf—were tucked up to the tables cleaning their plates, smiling and happy. They didn’t know anything had gone down yesterday or that someone dangerous lived in their midst. They only knew they’d get three squares a day and that Kate and John loved them.