I pad through Lolly’s room and look in the mirror. My face is wet clay, unformed and gloopy with unctuous smoothness, like eighties saxophone jazz. I wrinkle up with disgust at my reflection. The tension of crying makes my hungover head hurt more, which makes me want to cry harder, and I can’t see how life is ever going to get better. Life has tied itself into a heavy knot around my head and bears down hard. Life has me gripped by my fucking face and I can’t escape. I can’t escape my life; I can’t escape my stupid fucking face. The sound of shattering glass hits me before I realize I’ve balled my hand up tight and punched the mirror.

Chapter Thirteen

I put my right hand under the running tap in the bathroom and thumb out shards of glass with my left. There’s so much blood I’m angry with myself for doing it, but the crunch of the glass against the side of the sink and the way the little slivers scratch as they dislodge from my flesh are satisfying. I grind my teeth along with the sound, squeeze a towel into my hand, bite the plastic off some gauze and wrap up the wound. There’s a noise in the distance and then another—two weak blasts from Duck Island—then silence.

I sit on the toilet lid and keep the pressure on my bleeding knuckles. I try to cry but nothing comes out except these poor me snivels. The echo of them is like a fly trapped in my head. Trying to cry sitting on a toilet in my underwear and socks was never going to work. I can’t take myself seriously. My brain’s a piece of fat someone picked off their bacon and tossed back into the greasy pan. My face feels caked in wax.

Codeine. Valium. Water that gets on my face when I stick it under the tap to swallow the pills. I tug a simple gray cotton dress off a hanger in Lolly’s closet and pull it over my head awkwardly, trying not to bleed on it. What will I say? How will I make them let me into the meeting, at least? Bat my eyelashes, purr out please. Let me in. Please.

I just want to be old like a normal person.

The crack man occupies the full length of the back wall downstairs. A stick figure, really, a negative, a nothing, just the white sky his presence exposes. He’s taller than me, but he’s not even in my weight class. You’re nothing.