Glass Girl (A Young Adult Novel) (22 page)

“It doesn’t matter which a-hole started it,” she said. “All that matters now is that we end it.” Everyone stared at her until she said, “Meg’s still
our
Meg, right? So what about all that other crap? We protect our own.”

She put her arms around me. “Now, the best thing for you to do would be to go out with us tonight and get wasted.”

“Tennyson,” Henry growled. “Enough.”

“God, Henry,” she said. “Relax. Girls have their own way of dealing. You wouldn’t get it.”

“I get that you need to back off a little,” he said.

She shrugged her shoulders as the bell rang for next period.

At the end of the day, I found a note from Henry in my locker—
Group project meeting in physics. I’ll meet you here ASAP. Love, Henry Porter Whitmire.
I smiled, running my fingertips over his
Love
.

The halls emptied out completely within five minutes and it felt strange being alone. I had the misfortune of having a locker next to one of the athletic locker rooms. The hall constantly reeked of sweat and other things that I couldn’t place.

I decided to waste some time organizing. I hauled the green plastic trash can close to me and started reading through papers and throwing things away. About fifteen minutes into my cleaning frenzy, I heard laughter coming from the locker room. It was that laughter that only happens when a group of testosterone junkies gets together to do something totally sophomoric. I didn’t think much about it until I very clearly heard Thanet’s voice. It was unmistakable, of course, because of his CP.

At first I thought he might be telling a story, a joke, which made them laugh. But there was something not quite right. I knew the moods of Thanet’s speech patterns and this was a mood I hadn’t heard since my first day at Chapin High.

I put my ear to the door and heard Grayson say something. Thanet argued, and did a pretty good job of standing up for himself, but then I heard a crash, like a bench had been turned over, then shuffling and a struggle. Thanet moaned.

In the quiet after, I found myself counting the seconds of silence…one…two…If I didn’t hear anything by the time I got to five, I was going to have to go in there. When I whispered four, I heard Thanet say something that ended with my name and then several guys laughed. Just as I steeled my nerve to open the door, Grayson yanked it open, sucking my hair into the vacuum created.

I put my head down and got ready to charge, but before I could move, an enormous, sweaty hand pressed into my chest and pushed me back. “What up, Meg Kavanagh?” he said. Then he looked back over his shoulder. “Than-et, your babysitter’s here.”

“What did you do to him, Grayson?”

“We didn’t do anything to him. He’s just hanging out, helping us put up equipment.”

“I don’t believe you. I heard him!”

“See for yourself.” He opened the door wider and then stopped. “But, hold up, you’re not armed, are you?”

“What is wrong with you?” I said, tears stinging my eyes.

“I’m just kidding,” he said, letting go of the door. The other two guys in the room mumbled goodbye to Grayson and left.

Thanet was sitting on a bench. He managed a small smile for me. “I’m fine, Meg,” he said. “Why don’t you wait outside?”

He was bleeding from a cut above his eyebrow. Someone had given him a towel but the blood still oozed.

“Thanet,” I whispered. “We need to go right now.”

The door slammed shut behind me. I looked around, craning my neck to see if that door was the only way out. The hair on my arms stood at attention almost painfully. I’d felt this before and it had ended very, very badly.

“Hey, for real, Meg,” Grayson said. “I’m sorry about your brother and, if I’d known you weren’t telling anyone, I wouldn’t have posted it.”

“What?” I said.

Grayson looked around, smiling. “Yeah, I think I’m apologizing. I didn’t know you were trying to keep it a big secret. Even from loverboy, huh?”

“Why would you do that?” I said. “You could’ve said something to me before you spread it around.”

He raised his arms palms out in that
idiot wants off the hook
way. “I didn’t have your info. Actually, that’s why I searched for you in the first place—had something to share with you on another matter.” The smile he wore faltered a little. “I told everyone I thought it was cool that your brother did what he did. I was
complimenting
you.”

All the anger I’d suppressed for months chose that moment to erupt. I screamed, “It’s none of your business, you moron!”

I came at Grayson with every ounce of strength I had. Except when I would’ve connected with his two-hundred-pound frame, he leaned out of the way, sending me tripping over my own feet and careening toward the army bunker window of the locker room. My forehead connected with the small pane of glass, a pane that was already cracked.

I heard it before I felt it—that unmistakable sound that I’d spent so much time thinking about and hearing in my mind. The familiar pain was the same slicing burn I’d felt for months after Wyatt died. I knew to surrender to it rather than fight. The concrete wall caught my shoulder and bounced me back into the room and onto the floor.

Relief flooded over me and I sat upright. I touched my arms and my head and my chest. I was still together. I didn’t break. It was just the window. Thanet’s horrified face swam in front of me as he kneeled close.

“God, Meg, you’re a spaz,” Grayson mumbled. “You’re worse than Thanet.” He reached down and pulled me up. “I was trying to apologize.”

Then, in the ultimate show of character, he turned to walk out of the smelly locker room. Just before he opened the door, he turned back to me. “And, by the way, check your boy. I don’t think he’s told you everything he’s been up to.”

Thanet sighed. “Not your business, Grayson.”

“No, but it is Meg’s.” He pointed at me. “Ask Henry.”

The text from Tennyson, asking if Henry’s sisters were blonde, forced its way into my thoughts. Something had happened over Thanksgiving.

When the door clicked closed, Thanet went into triage mode. He jumped up and moved as quickly as his body would allow, bringing me a wet towel. “Here,” he said.

When he dropped down next to me, he was shaking. The cold towel he pressed to my face stung like crazy; I winced and pushed it away.

“Meg, you’ve got splinters of glass in your skin.” He looked around the room. “I need tweezers. Hold on.” He dug around in a drawer attached to a sink and found a first aid kit that had alcohol swabs and tweezers sealed in a package. “Hope you’re okay with a cripple operating on you.”

“Seriously,” I said. “Don’t ever say that again.” I couldn’t handle any more ugliness.

Thanet stilled. “I won’t. I’m sick of hearing it myself.” He handed me a mirror from the first aid kit and then came at me with the points of the tweezers. I closed my eyes. “Breathe,” he said, before plunging a mile into my cheek with a sharp edge.

Closing my eyes made it easier to ask the question in my heart. “What did he mean, Thanet?” I squirmed uncomfortably. His tweezers slipped and poked my ear.

“Sorry,” he said. “What did who mean?” He was gentler when he went for the next sliver.

I groaned because he pretended not to understand my question. “You know what I’m asking. What did Henry not tell me?”

I felt a long splinter of glass sliding through my skin and hanging before letting go. He dropped it into a nearby trash can, and then went back for more. “Now hold your breath,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure, but I don’t think Henry would hide anything from you.”

Thanet rocked back to sit on the ground, blowing out an enormous sigh of relief. He’d finished the operation. I took a close look in the mirror and couldn’t find any more glass. My face looked like I’d fought with a kitten and lost. I peeled my shirt off my shoulder and found a red welt forming where I’d hit the wall.

“Now you sit,” I said to Thanet. “You’re bleeding.” A small river of blood snaked down his face and stained his t-shirt. I used an alcohol swab to clean the cut and then I bandaged it.

“How’d you get this, Thanet?”

He sighed. “Long story or short?”

“Your choice.”

“I found out it was Grayson, you know, who spread the word about your family. I heard him laughing about it earlier so I followed him in here to…I don’t know what I planned to do about it, actually.”

“But you were mad. All revved up on righteous indignation.”

He frowned. “Of course I was mad.”

“And…,” I prompted.

“And they think it’s funny when I lose my balance, Meg. Welcome to my life. I hit my head on the corner of the bench because Shawn kicked my feet out from under me.” He’d been avoiding my eyes but he turned to look at me then. “And you’re crying. Meg, why are you crying?”

“That happened to you because of me,” I said. “I hate this. Do you know how much I hate this?”

Thanet swallowed hard. “I know how much you hate this. I’m—”

“No, don’t say you’re sorry. I just love you like crazy and I don’t want you hurt because…”

Someone knocked on the door behind me and then it opened. “Meg?” Henry said, “You in here?”

“She’s here,” Thanet said.

I rocked back on my heels and pressed my hands to my cheeks, trying to hide the cuts, but hissing from the stinging pain. Henry stepped around the broken glass and bloody towels, reaching down for me. “What happened?” he said, taking my hands from my face to get a better look. “What in the world?”

Thanet was at the sink, washing his face and staring at himself in the mirror. “Henry, I’m sorry,” he said. “It was my fault and it was a disaster. Give me a ride to the bookstore and I’ll tell you everything.”

The evidence lay all around me. Some of the glass pieces on the floor were smeared with my blood and they looked like the beginnings of stained glass.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I’ll just pick this up and then we can go.”

Henry shook his head at me and said, “I’ll get it.” He spun off a thick wad of paper towels and picked up every piece he could find. Then he used wet towels to wipe off the floor and the bench where Thanet had been. Finally he found an empty box, ripped a side off and forced it into the window frame.

I found a pen and wrote, “Broken,” on the cardboard.

W
hen Henry took my hand, he was shaking. We turned down the hallway and walked straight out the door to Henry’s truck. I climbed in the middle and Thanet heaved himself in after me. Henry started the car and blasted the heater to warm the cab. Nobody said a word for several long minutes.

“It was Grayson,” Thanet said. “He’s the one that found out about Meg and put it all out there.”

“I knew that already,” Henry said.

Thanet leaned around me to look at Henry. “Then why in Hades didn’t you pound him?”

Henry’s hands flexed on the wheel. “Grayson told everyone Meg’s brother died in a violent school crime, so I should violently rip him a new hole
in a school
?”

“I didn’t think of that,” Thanet said.

“Was Grayson in the locker room?” Henry said.

“I followed him in there after I heard him laughing in the hall about Meg,” Thanet said. “I screwed up and cracked my skull on a bench. Then the door opens and Meg comes walking in, all protection detail.”

Thanet looked at me sideways and smirked. “Of all the inquisitive hobbits, you are the worst.”

I shuddered against Henry and he wrapped his right arm around me. “Why’d you do that?” He took his eyes off the road to glance at my face. “You should’ve waited for me.”

“I heard a crash and then Thanet’s voice sounded strange,” I said. “It scared me.”

“Tell me how the window broke and why you’re all cut up, Meg.” I could tell Henry’s patience was wearing thin.

“I let Grayson get to me,” I said. “I went off on him. I tripped and hit the window.”

“You didn’t ‘go off on him,’ Meg,” Thanet said. “You had a completely warranted reaction. You did nothing wrong.”

“So Thanet fell and you tripped,” Henry said, scowling. He looked over my head at Thanet. “Did Grayson push her?”

“No,” Thanet said. “But he sure didn’t catch her, either.”

Henry’s hand tightened on my arm. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll heal.”

Thanet chuckled. “You’re hardheaded, Meg, but it’s adorable and endearing.”

As Henry parked next to the curb in front of the bookstore, the three of us watched for signs of Annie through the window. “Should I go in with you?” Henry said.

“No, she’s used to me coming home banged up from falls.” Thanet reached down for his backpack and when he sat up, he looked at me and smiled a tiny smile. “Thanks,” he whispered. “I pledge my eternal fealty to you, Lady Meg. And…I love you like crazy, too.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Thanet looked worn out as he slid out of the truck and bumped the door closed with his back. He had a new limp, but maybe that’s the effect fatigue has on his gait. We watched him through the bookstore window. He walked to the counter, hugged his mom and leaned against the wall to talk to her. She zeroed in on his bandaged forehead immediately, shifting closer to get a better look.

“He’ll be all right,” Henry said, answering the question I hadn’t voiced. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“I’m so tired,” I said. “Maybe you should drop me off at my Jeep and we’ll talk another day.”

“I could do that,” he said. “But I’m not going to because I don’t want you to put any more time or distance between us.” He put the truck in reverse and backed out onto Main. Swinging into the left lane, he turned toward my house instead of the school.

I began to shake again. The muscles in my legs contracted so hard that I could see knots moving under my jeans. Everything in my life was overwhelmingly sad and now even my friends were suffering for it. I leaned over and studied downtown through the passenger window.

The town looked different.

At my house, Henry parked next to the front porch but left the truck running. He slid my cell phone out of my hand and said, “You should call your dad and tell him what happened.”

“What? No.” I shook my head, ready to give a million reasons why that was a bad idea.