Glass Girl (A Young Adult Novel) Read Online Free

“Are we that far from Pittsburgh?”
    “Yes.”
    She looked like a trapped animal. “Do you feel like a rubber band being stretched?”
    I swallowed hard and stared at the enormous Kansas sky. I did feel like a rubber band. One that Wyatt was pinching between his fingers in Pittsburgh and Dad was stretching to Wyoming.
    “I do,” I said.
    “It may be too far.” Her eyes looked wild. “I told Jack that Wyoming is too far!” She squared her shoulders and followed Dad to the room, leaving me behind to consider whether her rubber band would snap back before we crossed the next state line. There was nothing stopping her from making a U-turn on the highway and heading home.
    After she showered, she took her nightly cocktail of pills and climbed into bed, refusing to answer any of my dad’s questions. Just before she dozed off, she picked up her head and searched the room until her gaze landed on my face. I smiled at her, unable to tamp down my hope that she would be herself again. But the moment passed quickly and within seconds she was drooling on the scratchy hotel pillowcase.
    My dad got lost in his laptop so I snuck away from the room and found a chair next to the pool. Our motel shared a parking lot with a country bar where the cowboys lined up around the building smoking and laughing.
    Do Wyoming cowboys look like these—sort of like grown-ups in cowboy costumes?
    “
I’ve died and this is cowboy hell
,
” I whispered to no one but Wyatt.
    In the darkness behind me, someone chuckled. I jumped and turned to look. My dad made his way toward me, walking barefooted on the cracked concrete. He pulled a chair next to mine and sank into it, edging lower and lower until his chin touched his chest.
    “Cowboy hell,” he said, laughing. “Did you see the guy in the white hat?”
    “Yeah, he’s all ‘Hi-yo Silver, away!’
”
    Dad snorted. “Tonto told him to go sleep it off.”
    We laughed quietly, enjoying a moment that felt like all the nice moments before.
    “Is Mom still asleep?”
    “Yes.” He sighed. “I was worried about you. So here I am, kid. Now we talk.”
    “Did you take the comforters off the beds? You know they’re disgusting, right?”
    “Yes and yes.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, always patient for whatever came next in life.
    “Why do cheap hotels give you stationery?” I tried out a topic that felt safe. Our family had always been comfortable with comedy. “Is it so you can write your loved ones a nice little note before you slit your wrists?”
    “Meg.” He released a slow breath that meant he was disappointed with me. “Let’s not waste any more time. Let’s talk about how grateful I am that you’re here, willing to change your life so we can be together.”
    What was the message behind those words? That I had a choice? That there had been a possibility we wouldn’t be together? That my old life was gone? I reached over and squeezed his hand. “You’re welcome.”
    “What’s on your mind tonight, honey? Wyatt? Your mom? Chapin?”
    “Yes.”
    “Me, too,” he said. “All of the above. Your mom is okay tonight, though.”
    “That’s the medication, Dad.”
    She’d been surviving on anxiety meds for so long now that I wondered if she knew where she was half the time.
    The depression fairy reached down to touch members of my mom’s family—full of artist types—often. Something about the creative brain seemed prone to too much ruminating on life. They were a danger to themselves. Add something awful to their lives, like, say, the death of an only son, and all bets were off.
    “Actually, I was thinking about Aunt Leslie,” I said. “Do you think Mom—”
    “
No.”
Dad couldn’t bear for me to finish that thought. He swiveled in his chair to face me, straining the cracked plastic. He shocked me with the force of the word. “No, I don’t think your mom would
ever
in a million years make the same choice. Leslie had a complicated existence. You