Glass Girl (A Young Adult Novel) (32 page)

Laura writes contemporary books for young adults, a genre that gives her the freedom to be honest. Her debut novel
Glass Girl
is an unconventional and bittersweet love story, and its sequel
Perfect Glass
makes long-distance love look possible.

Laura blogs at
Writing for Young Adults
(
laurakurk.com
). On twitter, she’s
@laurakurk
.

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!

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Here’s a sneak preview of
Perfect Glass
(coming June 1, 2013 from Playlist Fiction):

I
couldn’t stop crying because it was so intimate, in that way I always thought being physical with him would feel. If someone had walked in they might have thought Henry was barely touching me. I knew the truth of it.

Things get messy when Meg Kavanagh gets involved—first with Jo Russell, the eccentric old artist, and then with Quinn O’Neill, the intriguing loner who can’t hide how he feels about Meg. Her senior year isn’t turning out like she planned, but sometimes the best parts of life happen in the in-between moments.

He commits to one year in an orphanage that needs him more than he ever dreamed. Thousands of miles from Meg and the new punk who has fallen for her, and absent from the ranch that’s in his blood, Henry Whitmire finds out what it means to trust. When you’re so far from home, it’s terrifying to realize you’re not who you thought.

But the perfect glass of calamity makes the best mirror.

From YA author Laura Anderson Kurk comes the sequel to
Glass Girl,
a lyrical, multi-generational story about love that clouds the eyes, loss that haunts empty rooms, and reunions that feel like redemption.

ONE

Meg

I
’d only seen a picture of her, taken in the sixties, as far as I could tell, by some famous photographer. In the fading image, she wore a blue, shapeless dress and stood at her easel, looking at a canvas like it contained all the answers to all the questions. A hip cocked out. One arm hugging her waist and forming a ninety-degree angle with the other arm, which ended in a loose hand supporting a smoky cigarette. A knowing look and a raised eyebrow. I’d memorized the lines and curves and shadows.

I sat in the Jeep staring at her old house. It leaned sharply to the left and had three front doors—each one painted a bright color. The swerving path of sidewalk to the porch only confused the eye more.

Wiping damp palms on my jeans, I moved into that old routine of cracking knuckles. Once. And then twice. But even that ancient and familiar comfort didn’t settle my nerves one little bit. These words, though, summoned to dam the river of panic in my brain, helped—

Henry Whitmire is worth every bit of this and more.

Henry Whitmire is worth a metric ton of gold.

The three doors, all closed and go away, mocked me until the cherry red one in the middle swung open and banged against the side of the house. I jerked down below my steering wheel. I tried to fill the space usually taken up by knees and ankles, and sometimes bags that shouldn’t be there because they might slide under the brake pedal.

I hummed a little to calm myself.

My mom talked about Jo Russell like she walked on water. Her paintings had come to represent the West. The ones with horseflesh and weatherworn faces. But locals knew Jo as much for her unpredictable behavior as her art. At eighty seven years old, she gave new meaning to crazy—a word I didn’t throw around carelessly.

Half closing my eyes, I imagined her pulling her coat around her, smiling indulgently, and dancing to the Jeep to welcome me. I didn’t let the fantasy go far, though, because fantasies had never served me well and life always delivered.

As mean as this woman was rumored to be, she wouldn’t be any more or less than a person. And a person can be known and understood.

I peeked over the dash. She had the advantage, the higher ground. She looked nothing like the picture in my head.

She waved so I grabbed my bag and keys and jumped out of the Jeep. Better to introduce myself while she was lucid, but, halfway up her walk, I realized she wasn’t waving. She was shooing.

“I have a shotgun, little lady.” Her words were steady and unapologetic—just delivering a bit of information I might need in the near future.

I froze in place and put my hands in the air.

“I’m Meg, Ms. Russell.” My voice sounded small. Surprisingly childish for my seventeen years, the last few of which I’d done some overcoming of some odds. This…this meeting a new person, an artist, shouldn’t even get a rise out of me.

“Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.”

I forced myself to make eye contact and look pleasant. She wore a rainbow-colored wool cap, camouflage ski pants, and a stained white sweatshirt that said I D
ON
’
T
E
AT
Y
ELLOW
S
NOW
.

“I’m not selling anything, ma’am.”

“Why are you trespassing?” Her steely-eyed stare unnerved me.

“My mother spoke with you yesterday about letting me help you around the house a little…or interview you. Did I come at a bad time?”

“‘Did I come at a bad time?’” She laughed and cursed at once. “Honey, they’re all bad times.”

She hadn’t let her guard down yet. One hand still clasped the doorknob and one stayed hidden behind the door, probably grasping that shotgun.

My resolution wavered. I needed to actually survive this to make the University of Wyoming plan with Henry work. Instead of an easy volunteer job, my mom had talked me into rehabilitating the crown jewel of Chapin.

She’d looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “Jo Russell is hurting, Meg.” It took one to know one, and Mom knew Jo was sad about something big. “You could take her mind off her problems and convince her to do one last show at the gallery.”

My mom related to Jo in ways I couldn’t begin to understand. So I would prove myself with Jo, threat of buckshot aside. My teeth chattered, and I pulled my jacket tighter against the biting fall wind.

“Ms. Russell, are you really pointing a rifle at me?” I hadn’t meant for that to sound as cheeky as it had.

“Do I look like someone who’d lie about that?”

Yes
?
No
? “I’m not here to bother you. I just…I’m trying to get into a university writing program and my application is kind of boring, I guess.”

“One-dimensional.”

“Pardon?”

“What you
mean
is your appli
cat
ion is one-di
men
sional.”

I smiled because I love people who can’t resist clarifying, especially when they hit the
high
points with heavy
emph
asis like they’re ac
cust
omed to talking to
imb
eciles.

“Yes, ma’am, but I heard you might be able to help me.” I knew better than to tell her I was also there to help her with basic daily activities—like washing her greasy hair and eating enough to see tomorrow.

“Who in the world told you I would help you with a blasted college application?”

“My mom…Adele Kavanagh. She’s an artist, too.”

“Never heard of her.” The hand that was supposed to be holding a shotgun slipped from behind the door to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

Ah
. Immediate relief. “She’s with the Kaelin Gallery, downtown. She’s met you a few times and you mentioned needing some help with your house.”

“Why would I say that? I don’t want anyone in my house.” She looked me up and down. “Especially do-gooders like you.”

“Oh.” I tried to keep the hurt from registering on my face.

“I’m old, for crying out loud. People think they’re going to come up with something new to tell me. Stupid, stupid, stupid…” Her words dissolved into muttering only she could understand.

“I could just paint your porch there where it’s peeling a little, or help clean up in the yard. I wouldn’t have to come inside.”

Jo shook her head and waved both arms in the air in an exaggerated attempt to get me to Just. Stop. Talking.

I scratched my head. “So…no?”

“No.” She gave me a sarcastic smile.

“Okay, thank you, Ms. Russell. I’m sorry I disturbed you.” I turned to go back to the Jeep. Before I could open my door, I saw Henry’s face in my mind and his brown eyes pleaded with me to give it one more try. “Laramie,” he said. “Together
.”

“I think I gave you the wrong impression,” I called from the drive. “The thing is, I need a creative mentor and you’re the best. I want to write about you on my application for UW because I’m trying to get into a graduate creative writing program as an undergraduate. I’m not qualified but I want it.”

This time she didn’t shut me down or argue. I gathered steam. “Did you have help when you became an artist?”

Jo raised one eyebrow, picked at a scab on her forearm, and stepped down from her porch to examine my Jeep.

“I know this Jeep. From Wind River Books.”

“I work there after school. I want to work with you, though. I admire your paintings a lot.”

A deep chuckle rumbled in her chest, along with a raspy wheeze. “Yeah, I bet.” She lifted her face to the sky. “You ever heard the phrase suck up before?”

My face burned. Because it was sort of true.

“What’s your favorite one then?” She turned her back to me and peered through my Jeep windows.

“The one of the old rancher. The man with freckles.”

“Sun spots. That’s Clifton Weatherby. I don’t know what people see in that painting. It’s not any good. He couldn’t hold still or he’d go stiff from arthritis.”

“It’s his eyes.” I’d studied this painting in a book at our library for so long one day, I could call it up in my mind at will. “I think he looks lost.”

“He was lost, poor old Clifton. He was a week from expiring when he sat for me. Already stank with decomposition.” She watched my face and dared me to react.

Stepping toward her, I raised a hand, mitten palm up, the way my former counselor, Robin, did when she thought I’d had a breakthrough. “I’m sure he was a friend.”

She closed her eyes. “I couldn’t stand him.”

She started toward a shed behind her house. I followed her, not sure if I’d been dismissed.

“You’re Whitmire’s girl, aren’t you?”

I trotted along at her heels like an eager dog. “Yes…Henry’s my…we’re dating.”

She entered the shed and rummaged through a stack of tools, finally picking an old broom to hold out to me. I took it and waited for instructions.

“Where is he? In college?”

I cleared my throat. “No, ma’am. He’s living in Nicaragua, helping with the orphanage that his sister and her husband run. He’ll be there for a year.”

“A year?” she scoffed. “Being a humanitarian? What kind of teenage boy does that? He oughta be tomcatting around on some college campus.”

I felt my spine stiffen, ready to defend Henry’s choices. “He graduated last May and he wanted to do something important before he went to college.”

“Important.” She rolled that word around in her mouth, testing it.

“Yes. Important.”

She shrugged. “Well, I guess an orphanage in a dirt poor country fits that bill.”

I nodded. “After that, he’ll be going to the University of Wyoming. With me, hopefully.”

“He’s got a nice family,” she said, like it answered any lingering questions in her mind. “Known them a long time.” She turned back to a shelf along the wall and started stacking rusted coffee cans full of nails and screws. “If the Whitmires think you’re good enough, I suppose you can tidy up my work shed. My tools are scattered everywhere and half the yard blew in here last week during the storm.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I assume you’ll want me to sign something for your school.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll just write an essay later about my experiences with you. You know, what I’ve learned from our time together.”

She snorted at that. “It’ll be a short essay.”

Jo walked through the yard to her back porch and disappeared, a purple door banging closed behind her. She stared at me through a window for a minute before she closed the curtains.

I glanced at the sky. Rain was moving in so I might have an hour before I’d be sweeping mud out instead of dirt. When I was sure Jo wasn’t sneaking glances out the window, I eased into a perfect warrior pose, because, according to my old Yoga teacher in Pittsburgh, it promoted patience and strong thighs.

Holding it, holding it, holding it, I whispered my mantra, “Aum…Henry Porter Whitmire.”

The purple door creaked open and Jo poked her head out.