Glass Girl (A Young Adult Novel) (2 page)

She turned back to her notebook, thumbed to a page in the middle, and read quietly for a minute. Maybe she was waiting for me to say something. I cracked my knuckles, trying to stop myself from filling the dead air with more words. Words don’t change anything.

A smile flickered at the corner of her mouth and her eyes softened. I flipped my hair out of my face so I could see her better.

“When we first met,” she said, “I asked you to tell me about the Meg before Wyatt’s death.”

“I remember.”

“You told me about how she wore her skin inside out. I found it interesting that the people in your life have always treated you like you’re breakable. What was it Wyatt called you? A glass girl?”

The familiar protective impulse snagged the threads of my mind. Wyatt hadn’t meant any harm. He hadn’t known how sharp I’d be when I broke…how I’d cut someone if they got too close. My eyes burned with the effort of staying dry.

In an unprecedented move, Robin stood, letting her throw fall to the ground with a soft whisper of cotton and fringe and air. She knelt next to my chair and touched my arm like she meant it.

“Meg…you have to let that go. You’re tougher than you think. For goodness’ sake, you are not responsible for Wyatt’s death. Your mother doesn’t wish it had been you. And the woman in the truck? She was trying to make you comfortable, not the other way around. You were the child, Meg…she was the adult.”

I shifted away from the invasion. It was uncalled for, really, so I studied the black-and-white print on her wall, a picture meant to inspire her clients. The girl in the print had just reached the top of a mountain. She stood peacefully and looked at the sky. It said, “Gratitude” under it.

Robin followed my gaze, sighed, and backed into her chair again, like a film editor had suddenly rewound her.

“We all have a gap after we lose someone,” she said. “We think that we will always have this hole that’s obvious to everyone around us. We won’t. The hole will be filled with life. It will be something entirely different, but at least it won’t let the wind in anymore.”

“You say all this like you think I should move on.” I leaned over, curling into myself. “So I’m failing therapy now, too?”

Robin stood again and paced. She seemed at loose ends today. “Here’s what I’m saying. Your whole life is a much bigger story than this terrible thing that’s happened.” She stretched her arms out wide in illustration. “Yes, your story will be shaped by that moment, but you were already well on your way to living a profoundly meaningful life. Wyatt’s death gave you even more perspective. You get to see the world more clearly than the rest of us.” She stopped and mumbled something to herself that I didn’t catch.

“What?” I said. Her burst of passion intrigued me. In my recently extensive experience with therapists, they preferred equilibrium to passion.

“I said I think you’ve always seen the world more clearly.” Hands on her hips, she stared at me for a minute, lost in thought.

I could tell, then, that she believed there was hope for me. I sat up a little straighter.

Robin nodded. “It’s just like when you chose to tell me the story about being in Nashville on vacation. That story had nothing to do with Wyatt’s death. But in choosing to tell me, you showed your hand.”

“What hand?” I squirmed under her scrutiny.

“The hand you have to play,” she said. “You see things that others miss. That is who you are and it’s what consumes your time and energy. It’s not a bad thing but it’s a tool that you’ll have to figure out how to use. Your story is bigger than a mentally ill kid with a gun.”

“There’s nothing on earth bigger than that.”

“Right now it seems that way, I know.” She sighed. I think she struggled with her own
non sequitur
.

“Think of it this way,” Robin said. “You’re different. You’ve got an advantage over others your age because you know how precious life and relationships are. But—here’s where I give you my professional opinion—you had that knowledge, that wisdom, before Wyatt died.”

“Yes,” I said. “Hence the glass girl thing we previously discussed.” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. I knew what Robin was trying to say and the part that scared me was that it kind of made sense.

She shook her head. “No, the nickname is off the table. I’m not talking about that. One of these days, you’ll find that someone recognizes your strength and wisdom and loves how very big your spirit is. That person will want to be part of your story because it will be beautiful.”

Dear Wyatt—

We’re leaving Pittsburgh. This was Dad’s idea. He doesn’t like living with memories. You know I’ve never handled change well, so I’m not sure how to do this
…
to leave you and our home.

I want to say this to you—when you look for us, don’t look here. But do keep looking, Wyatt.

I wish you were here to make this okay. I write that and realize that it doesn’t even come close to what I wish. You know, though.

Love always,

Meg

T
he cloud I’d been watching for several miles finally burst and steel gray rain fell in sheets. August is a wet month in Pennsylvania. This trip marked my introduction to highway driving in a blinding rainstorm. Nice.

I drove my brother’s black and silver Jeep west out of Pittsburgh on I70. Since turning sixteen, I’d followed the same rules that Wyatt had—no passengers that aren’t family, no texting, no eighties hair bands. That last rule had more to do with Wyatt’s fondness for Poison. “Talk Dirty to Me” at high volume probably contributed to distracted driving.

My mom drove ahead of me in her sedan and, ahead of her, my dad led us in his truck. Our little caravan raced to make it to Chapin, Wyoming before the moving truck hit town. In the rain, an unwelcome complication, I slowed to forty and flipped on my headlights. Dad caught my lagging position and slowed down, too. My mom’s head turned to check me in the rearview.
Yeah, I’m here. I’m here
.

I couldn’t blame them for worrying. Their eighteen-year-old son had died a year and three months ago. It didn’t really matter how it happened. It only mattered that it happened.

I remember a picture of the two of us taken the day they brought me home as a newborn. He was three and sitting in an enormous green corduroy chair. His head looked too big for his body and his hair appeared combed into place, maybe for the first and last time. My parents always said that, when they laid me in his lap, all pink and tiny, he put his palm on my cheek and said, “Sweet baby.”

I’d have gladly followed Wyatt off the nearest cliff. And I wasn’t alone in that because he was a magnet. Guys all wanted to be his best friend and girls couldn’t get enough of him. He always had someone calling him at odd hours. Jealous and a few steps behind, I waited for my turn.

But when he died, I faded even more into the background. That’s where I’m most comfortable anyway. I deleted all my social media accounts and dropped out of everything not specifically required for a standard high school diploma. I disappeared.

I tried to do what was expected. I clammed up around my parents, picked up the chores they dropped and kept the business of our life going. My family had lived in Canning Mills, a suburban utopia outside of Pittsburgh, for a couple of generations, so we had a steady stream of people stopping by to wish us well.

I washed and returned the hundreds of casserole dishes, and placed phone calls to wider and wider circles of people who hadn’t heard yet but for some reason needed to know.

The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt my parents more, so I ate my grief and steeled my resolve. This gave me time to steady my reactions, to learn to hide in the crevices of life. Chaos seemed to dog our steps and it would no doubt find us in Wyoming, so it was best to be ready. If I were betting, I’d lay it all on my mom causing the next catastrophe.

When Dad broke the news that he’d accepted a job with a hotel in Wyoming, she told him he was insane. He’d been a senior vice president for the largest marketing firm in Pittsburgh, so he pulled hyperbole out of his briefcase. “Crime is nonexistent in this town! People don’t lock their doors! There are probably only seven hundred kids in the high school!”

Mom, a fine artist who’s had shows in major galleries and wasn’t easily fooled, rolled her eyes. “We can’t leave Wyatt here,” she said. “We can’t leave our home.”

Their marriage had steadily disintegrated over the months. They’d gone from being blissful to bickering. Mom picked fights with Dad every day.

She did it in a whisper, through gritted teeth. She did it loudly, following him as he pushed a lawnmower through the overgrown grass. She stepped right through the muddy tracks that the mower left in the soggy ground, pointing her finger in his face and screaming at him to look at her, not caring that the neighbors were watching. She watched him from the breakfast table as he came in hunting coffee and sprang it on him before he could even take a sip.

My dad endured her near constant threats with an inhuman patience. He simply nodded his head and waited. So while it appeared we were all together in this move, we really weren’t. We were limping along and withholding judgment for the time being.

My phone buzzed in the passenger seat. I pushed the hands-free button and waited for Wyatt’s best friend Harris to talk. Whenever possible, he and I connected at four o’clock—the time Harris and Wyatt had run together since they were fifteen and up-and-coming long distance stars.

Sometimes we wouldn’t say anything, but having the line open between us, just in case, helped us both.

“What’s that banging in the background?” I said.

“I’m feeding the dogs. Hold on.”

I drove another mile listening to Harris’s dogs panting and crunching food, and to Harris speaking to them like they were children. Lots of
good girl
and
who’s your daddy.
Finally, a door shut and I could tell he’d closed himself in his room.

“How far away are you?” he said.

“I don’t know…a few hundred miles? It’s raining.”

“Yeah, here, too.” Harris clicked around on his laptop and then one of his favorite bands played softly in the background. “What’s your mom’s psychosis rating today?”

“Dad’s letting her drive so she must be functioning at a higher level. Or he slipped her a pill. The other option was to hitch her car to the moving truck and she won the argument against that.”

Harris snorted. “I can’t believe it. She was always my favorite mom before. My God, she’s Adele Kavanagh—famous artist—and she walked around with broccoli between her teeth half the time.”

“You’re weird,” I said.

“
Nunh-unh
.” He used his ten-year-old boy voice. “You and your mom were cool together.”

He was right. My mom and I used to be very close. I always thought she loved Wyatt more, but she loved me, too, with the strength of a mother bear. She counseled me through skinned knees, stringy hair, training bras, braces, and the savage meanness of girls at school.

She welcomed my independence—no, it was more—she practically forced my independence. She wanted me to see the world through clear eyes. My ability to form my own opinions contrary to the ‘temperature’ of the crowd in the room came from her. My understanding of words like deference and humility and the knowledge of how to apply them came from her.

I chuckled under my breath and Harris said, “What?”

“I was just thinking about how she used to sing with us in the car, at the top of her lungs with all the windows down.”

“Yeah, Wyatt loved that,” Harris said. “Remember when she would dance with us in your living room? Like tribal dances and stomping and crazy stuff?”

“Crazy stuff.” I’d lost so much more than Wyatt. I’d lost my mom.

“So did your parents thank you for all the crap you did to get ready for this move?” Harris said.

“No, but it’s not like they were able to do it all. I didn’t really expect thanks.”

Dad had left me lists of things to handle, and I would grit my teeth and make myself do them. Luckily, the hotel agreed to pack our house. We gladly let the movers wade through the months of jumbled sadness that had built up. I followed behind a woman as she took down picture after picture and wrapped them in bubble wrap—the huge bubbles distorting our faces like fun house mirrors.

We didn’t even apologize or feel awkward. As I sat on my bed, a stranger packed my room. I silently wished that he could pack up the mess in my head, too.

“Why isn’t your dad selling the house?”

“Because he couldn’t bring himself to do it,” I said. “You should’ve seen it this morning—all clean and organized. We left most of the big furniture. Most of Mom’s paintings are still hanging. It looks like we’ll be back in a few days.”

“What’s the new house in Chapin like?”

“It’s not new. It’s old—like
circa
1918 old. Dad said it’s small and right in the middle of town.”

“It’s a long way from Pittsburgh, little sister.”

“Seventeen hundred miles,” I said.

Harris and I both got quiet, and I thought about those miles that stretched between us already. I pictured a map with a tiny Jeep wobbling along the crooked I70 line. Back in Pittsburgh, there was a tiny Harris leaning out a window waving at a tiny me.

“Did you notice Wyatt’s Facebook page appeared again last night?” Harris said. “I got a freaking friend request at midnight. His track picture popped up with the little, ‘Do you know Wyatt Kavanagh?’ message.”

“Who’s doing that?” The sour taste of old anger filled my mouth. Harris and I had deleted all of Wyatt’s accounts a couple of weeks after he died. Neither of us could stand that people who hardly knew him were posting about how close they’d been to him or how they’d had a crush on him. Everyone claimed to have been the last person he talked to. Soon after we took down his page, someone registered a new account in his name. No matter how many times Harris complained and had it removed, it always came back.

“I think it might be Sophie,” he said. “She stalked him enough when he was alive to make me suspicious. I’ll talk to her today.”