“Amy?”
I was holding Julia’s lip gloss so hard that I’d cracked the case, and color had smeared across my palm like 166
sickness on my skin. I stared at it, but it didn’t go away.
I wanted Julia to come along and smile, make me take my sleeve and rub my skin clean. I wanted Julia to make a face at the lip gloss and toss it over her shoulder, not caring if it landed in a trash can or on the floor. I wanted her there.
I wanted to know why Julia never said anything about my drinking. I’d lied to Laurie. Whenever I threw up or fell down Julia never said a word. She would help me back up. She would get me water. She would pass me tissues or paper towels or an old sweater from the back of her car.
She would do all that, but she never said a word.
She would always hand me a bottle when I asked.
Patrick touched my hand and I looked at him. He looked startled, was staring at his fingers sliding across the color marking me like he didn’t know his own skin.
“It’s broken,” he said, and even though I saw him speak, his voice was so quiet I could hardly hear him. His hand was freezing, his fingers like icicles against my skin.
I pulled away from him.
“It’s hers,” I said. I said it again, louder, but there was no one around to listen. He was already gone and I just stood there, Julia’s lip gloss melting into my skin.
Giggles found me, still standing there, after the bell rang. She marched me to her office. She made me wash 167
my hands. She wouldn’t give the lip gloss back. When she was done talking at me and said I had to go see Mr. Waters, I saw her sweep it off her desk and into her trash can.
I felt something twist sharp inside me when she did that. Why did that one small piece of Julia have to go? My vision spotted yellow and black, and I wanted to scream,
“Give it back. GIVE IT BACK!”
I didn’t. I wish I had. I fi xed Julia’s locker, but that’s nothing. Nothing.
Mr. Waters said my parents had been called and then told me he wanted a 2,500-word essay about respecting others.
“Because of your, uh, situation,” he said, glancing at Mrs. Harris to make sure he was saying the right thing, “I think this would be most helpful to you. And we do want to help you, you know.”
He didn’t ask why I did it. No one did. No one asked, and no one saw that I just wanted to bring part of Julia back.
168
F I F T E E N
130 DAYS.
It feels like nothing and forever at the same time. I’d ask Laurie about it, but there’s no point.
I wish I didn’t have to see her every week. I wish I didn’t have to see her at all. I guess Mom or Dad (probably both) must have called and told her about me skipping school and the locker thing because the fi rst words out of her mouth as soon as I sat down were, “Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on at school?”
Yeah, like I needed to hear the pen clicking about that.
I ignored her and fished around in my backpack instead.
I wished I’d taken one of the waiting room magazines, because then I could have read it in front of her. All I had with me was homework—which I wasn’t desperate 169
enough to do—and the notebook I write to Julia in. I pulled it out and clicked my pen a few times.
“We can talk about something else, if you’d like,”
she said, and I smiled to myself. I knew the pen clicking would work.
“How about your notebook?” she said. “I’ve noticed you always have it with you. What’s it for?”
“Nothing.” I tried to make my voice as bored as possible, so she wouldn’t keep asking about it.
She looked at me. I looked back. She clicked her pen (argh!) and said, “All right, let’s move on. I’ve asked you to think about Julia and your friendship with her, and we’ve discussed certain events.”
Meaning the . . . she meant that thing we’d talked about before, and I wasn’t doing that. No way. I jammed the notebook back into my bag and wished it was her big stupid head.
“You look upset,” she said.
“I’m fine,” I said, and looked at the clock. Still forever to go.
I wished Laurie would just shut up and put me on drugs. I’d take anything to avoid dealing with her every week. They tried that when I first got to Pinewood, actually. Put me on antidepressants. The first one really 170
messed with me—I spent two days in the bathroom in what was called “severe gastrointestinal distress.” (Only doctors would have a fancy name for that.) Then I got put on another pill, only that one made me so nauseated that I couldn’t eat. Or rather, I could, but then I’d just throw it right back up. I refused to take anything after that, but
