Perfect Glass (A Young Adult Novel (sequel to Glass Girl))

by Laura Anderson Kurk

Copyright 2013 by Laura Anderson Kurk

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Angela Llamas

Cover image by Jenny Livingston

Published in association with MacGregor Literary Inc.,

Portland, Oregon

For Mara Schasteen, friend and artist, because she sees me.

This book is the sequel to
Glass Girl
, originally published in 2010, then revised and released in April 2013. If you’ve only read the original
Glass Girl
(2010 edition), you might find yourself confused while reading
Perfect Glass
.

Important things changed when
Glass Girl
was revised in 2013. Big things (like what happens in the cave and how Meg relates to her mom) and little things (like how Thanet and Mr. Landmann are spelled) could trip you up. I recommend you
download the new
Glass Girl
and read it first, just so we’re all on the same page.

I’m thrilled to put this second story in your hands. Thank you for hanging out with Meg and Henry for a while longer.

How wisely fate ordain’d for human kind

Calamity! which is the perfect glass,

Wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

—William Davenant

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, intersecting with her 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 ancient human ritual of cracking knuckles. Once. And then twice. But even that didn’t settle my nerves one little bit. Certain words did help stem the panic, though. Like these—

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 opened slowly.
Was that a gun?
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, an artist of international fame, like she walked on water. Her paintings—the ones with horseflesh and weatherworn faces—had come to represent the West. 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.

As mean as this woman was rumored to be, she had to be a person. And a person can be known and understood.

I peeked over the dash. She leaned into the doorframe. 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. 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. I’d overcome some intense experiences in the last few of those years. I’d lost my brother, Wyatt. I’d moved fifteen hundred miles from the only home I’d ever known. I’d lost my mom and then found her all over again, deeper this time. I’d fallen in love with a boy, then said goodbye to that boy. 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 stayed hidden behind the door, probably grasping that shotgun.

My resolution wavered. I needed to actually survive this to go to the University of Wyoming with Henry the way we planned. My mom, knowing I needed documented volunteerism on my UW application, had talked me into rehabilitating the crown jewel of Chapin. She related to Jo in ways I couldn’t begin to understand.

“Jo Russell is hurting,” she’d said, with tears in her eyes. “You could take her mind off her problems and convince her to do one last show at the gallery.”

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.”

“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 accustomed 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, then waved both arms in the air in an exaggerated attempt to get me to 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 that 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.”