The Glass Girl

Monday

Monday

In art, I find my drawing in the file drawer and grab some supplies and set up at my easel. My drawing is a tree, which Cherie says is boring, and I agree, but I sort of like it, or the act of doing it, anyway, because I get lost adding branches and leaves and it calms me down.

From the front of the room, Ms. Green calls to me, Cherie, Lemon, and Dawn. Cherie looks at me and I shrug, like I don’t know.

Ms. Green is wearing some fabulous, swingy silver earrings today that reach almost down to her shoulders. She’s checking her laptop.

“Guys, I don’t have your project for your presentation yet. You were supposed to submit it to me yesterday, since you’re presenting tomorrow. I have the written paper, and thank you for turning that in, Dawn, but not the PowerPoint. What gives?”

My face immediately flames up. “No,” I say. “That can’t be. I submitted it last night.”

Cherie says, “Bella.”

“Bella was doing it,” Lemon says. “Aw, man. Bella, dude.”

I run to my backpack and dig out my laptop and run back to Ms. Green. I slide it on her desk, tapping away to get to our class submission site. “No,” I say. “Look, right here.”

But on my screen, the page from last night just says, Your session has been timed out due to inactivity.

Oh god. I forgot to check it before I went to bed. I never turned off my laptop. I forgot. And it didn’t load.

I lick my lips, avoiding everyone’s eyes. I had that NyQuil, but just enough to make me drowsy. That wasn’t the reason. It wasn’t. “My dad’s Wi-Fi is really bad,” I start, but Ms. Green cuts me off with a stern look.

“I’ve already given you an extension. It doesn’t seem fair to allow you more time,” she says. “You can resubmit today, but I’m knocking a full grade off.”

“No,” I say, my voice desperate. “No, that’s not fair. Sometimes my dad’s Wi-Fi is wonky and it takes forever to send. And I had to work a double. Please.”

“Wow, this is just perfect. Thanks a lot, Bella,” Cherie says, her voice hard. “I really needed a good grade.”

Dawn is quiet.

Lemon shrugs. “Not much we can do now, you guys. Even a B or a C works for me.” He goes back to his easel.

I start tapping furiously. The circle spins and then stops. Submitted appears on the screen. “There,” I say. “You have it. You have it.”

Ms. Green shakes her head. “Bella, I can’t make exceptions at this point. Quarter grades are due Wednesday. I’m sorry about your circumstances, but as I said, I’ve already given your group an extension.”

“But it’s right here, ” I say desperately. “It’s not like you were going to check your submission box at midnight. I mean, come on. ”

My heart says: Just give up, you can’t win this one.

My brain says: This isn’t fair and she needs to know.

I slap my hand on Ms. Green’s desk, hard.

Cherie sucks in her breath and steps away. “I’m out,” she says, walking back to her easel.

“Bella,” Ms. Green says sharply. “I’m going to suggest you stop now and go back to your easel. Agreed?”

Dawn tugs my arm. “It’s okay, Bella. It’s not that big a deal.”

I shake her off. “This is bullshit.”

Behind me, the class gets really quiet.

“Bella,” Ms. Green says. She stands up. She’s so much taller than I am that I can see the tiny, pale hairs on the underside of her chin. “Go back to your easel. Now. Unless you want to take a walk to administration.”

I slam my laptop shut and walk back to my easel, my head down so I don’t have to see all the kids looking at me.

“Weirdo,” someone murmurs.

—

Amber barely acknowledges me as I slide onto the bench next to her at lunch. Cherie slams her tray down, knocking her piece of pizza onto the table. “Way to go, Bella.”

“Drop it,” I say, unwrapping my peanut butter and jelly. It’s pretty much all Dad ever has to make sandwiches for lunch. “I said I was sorry. I had to work. I was tired.”

“It was one simple thing and you said you’d do it.”

“I had to work a double. I was tired. Why didn’t you do it, then? I practically did that whole project myself anyway.”

“Uh, I don’t think so.” Cherie takes a bite of her pizza, cheese drooping down to her tray. Her mouth full, she says, “I helped with the slides, too, and the writing.”

“You spelled everything wrong and Dawn wrote the paper.”

“You guys,” Amber says quietly.

Cherie wipes her mouth. “You think you’re so smart, Bella, but obviously you aren’t, because you couldn’t even double-check that you submitted. Were you all fucked up again?”

“Cherie,” Amber says.

My face burns. “Where did that even come from, Cherie? Like you’re one to talk—”

But I stop talking because my heart suddenly drops.

Dylan and Willow are walking down the aisle, holding hands. He looks over at us and gives me a wave. My eyes fill up. I look down at my soggy sandwich.

“Jesus, Bella,” Cherie says. “Get over it already. He’s with her now. How long are you going to cry about this? Enough. ”

I shove my uneaten sandwich back into my lunch bag and cram it into my backpack. Stand up and almost fall over the bench trying to get out just as Kristen is sliding in next to Cherie.

“Go to hell,” I tell Cherie.

“Bella, stop,” Amber says, trying to grab my arm, but I jerk away from her.

As I’m walking away, Kristen says, “What’s with her ?”

I sit in a bathroom stall, backpack at my feet, breathing hard. How could I have forgotten to check the project submission before bed? What’s so bad about being a few hours late for an assignment? It was a mistake, that’s all. I try to calm my breathing. I scan the walls of the stall to distract myself. It’s like some sort of graffiti den in here. Stick figures fucking, phone numbers, swear words, song lyrics, stuff like Help me and Make it stop and No it’s not okay to be not okay because no one really cares life is not a slogan scrawled in permanent marker. That stupid permanent sign on the stall door that reminds us Sit Wash Scram so we don’t spend more than two minutes in the bathroom because god forbid we have a place to chill and get away from everyone. It’s bad enough we only have four and a half minutes between each class; they can’t even let us go to the bathroom without a stupid sign reminding us to hurry up? Why is Dylan waving at me like nothing is wrong? Why can’t he just ignore me? Why can’t he just leave me alone ? Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?

I can’t calm down. I’m crying. I wish, wish, wish I hadn’t knocked all my vodka down the drain.

Someone says my name.

I freeze.

“Bella, is that you?” Whispered.

I look around the stall, then bend down, peeking under theseparator. Black Doc Martens, the frayed hems of blue overalls.

“Dawn?” I dab under my eyes with some toilet paper.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s fine.”

“It’s okay about the project.”

“Dawn, what the hell are you doing in here?”

Silence. Then, “Hiding, just like you. Usually I eat in the library, but I crunched an apple and got kicked out for being noisy.”

That makes me laugh, but it sounds like a snort, because I’m still kind of crying.

“I know, it’s funny,” she says. “But I never know where to sit in the cafeteria. It’s so crowded and just…overwhelming, sometimes. And I don’t know where to sit in the courtyard, like who to sit by or not to sit by. This school is really big, not like my last one. I thought that would make it better somehow, but it didn’t.”

She’s right. There are like three thousand kids here. Sometimes it’s like trying to swim through thousands of mean hormonal fish.

That’s true, too, about the cafeteria and courtyard. If you don’t already have people to sit with, you’re screwed. Everybody has their own group. Loners get weird looks and sometimes nasty comments if they sit at certain places. And we only get twenty-five minutes for lunch, so if you go through the line, you have maybe fifteen minutes left to find a seat and cram food into your mouth. A lot of kids just decide to eat outside in the yard, but even that’s hard to find a spot. Kids get territorial over trees.

“I get it,” I say quietly.

It’s kind of comforting, talking to Dawn through the stall wall without having to look at her. It’s just our voices echoing quietly in the bathroom.

“I wish I could have one whole day, one, where I didn’t have to feel anxious and worried all the time,” she says. “Do you ever feel like that?”

“Yes,” I say, standing up. “But I’m afraid those days don’t exist. At least, I’ve never had one.”

I hoist my backpack onto my shoulders and squeeze out of the stall. I wash my hands and check my makeup. Slowly, the door to Dawn’s stall opens. Her eyes meet mine in the scratched mirror over the sink.

She steps closer, turns on the water, and starts washing her hands. “I really like your eye makeup. It’s so cool and smoky. Every time I try to do that, I mess up somehow.”

“I could teach you sometime, if you want.”

“Really?”

“Dawn,” I say, turning to her. “Honestly, you don’t want to spend the next two and a half years eating lunch on a toilet in a bathroom stall. You know? Just…sit with us tomorrow, okay?”

She doesn’t smile, just regards me with a careful look.

“Are you sure?” she finally asks.

I dry my hands with a paper towel. “I’m sure.”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”