Free Glass Heart by Amy Garvey Page A

“You should totally do this, you know.”
    She passes the flyer to Gabriel, and I roll my eyes. “Gabriel’s not a photographer.”
    “I mean you, dummy,” Jess says as if this should have been clear.
    Now I’m glaring at her. Way to ruin my Christmas photo surprise. She ignores me, of course.
    “You take pictures?” Gabriel says, handing over the flyer with a curious expression.
    I shrug. “I, uh, used to. Not really.”
    “See, right there,” Jess says, leaning over the table to point at the words: MEETING MONDAY, JAN. 4, YEARBOOK ROOM, 4 P.M. BRING YOUR CAMERA AND EXAMPLES OF YOUR WORK. “You have plenty of time to get something together.”
    I blink at her. “Who said I wanted to take pictures for the yearbook?”
    She’s not backing down—I know that look. “No one. But I think you should do it, and Gabriel agrees. And so does Darcia.”
    “Darcia’s not even here!”
    “Yeah, but she would agree if she were,” Jess points out, which is probably true. Even Gabriel is nodding.
    I look at the paper again, thinking about how very much I do not have in common with Brittany Lowry and especially Alicia Ferris, but I think Tommy Britton is on yearbook this year, and I know there have to be other people. People who don’t make me want to chew my own hair.
    “I don’t know. . . .”
    “You can do anything,” Gabriel says softly, leaning a little closer so his words tickle my cheek, which is completely unfair.
    “And it’s not like you have to take pictures with them,” Jess says carefully, as if she’s talking to a slow four-year-old. “Because then you would all have the same pictures.”
    “Like they do every other year, you mean?” I ask her, and Gabriel snorts a laugh.
    “It would look good on college applications,” he says a moment later, while Jess makes dagger eyes at me.
    “Yes!” She actually pumps her fist, and I kick Gabriel under the table.
    He does have a point, though. I need more extracurriculars for my applications, and everyone from my guidance counselor to my mom to my boss at the café has started reminding me about it.
    Plus, I could make Alicia’s photos look really craptastic in comparison.
    “It’s a thought,” I say with a shrug, and Jess throws a piece of green pepper at me. It still has ranch dressing on it, too.
    “You’re going to rock.” Gabriel kisses my neck, right beneath my ear, and I shiver happily.
    In World Lit, Darcia is sitting pale and nervous next to me as we start the exam, and I forget the extra, sharp pencils I had in my bag. I can’t get them out once the test has begun, though, so I just keep writing, focusing on the tip every time it starts to round out, and watch as it sharpens itself.
    No bells go off, no sirens blare, no one storms into the classroom in a black suit and FBI shades to take me away. Floating may have been a spectacularly dumb thing to do in public, but there are other things I can get away with.
    I walk into PE and for the first time in my life, I realize I’m not dreading it. Just for the hell of it, halfway through the lesson on yoga stretches, I focus on a bag of gym balls propped loosely in one corner and concentrate on nudging it over just hard enough to fall. Balls bounce everywhere, half of them into girls pretending to breathe through the downward dog position. In seconds, the whole room is echoing with laughter, and Ms. Singer is barking to clean it up and go get changed, fifteen minutes early.
    It ends up being a pretty good day after all.
     
    Gabriel, Dar, Jess, and I push into the steamy warmth of Bliss after school on Thursday, the last day of classes. Trevor looks up from the counter with his usual scowling bad grace. “You’re not working. To what do we owe the honor?”
    I roll my eyes and drop my backpack on the window seat. “We’re paying customers, isn’t that enough?” I feel like I can really breathe for the first time in days, break is laid out in front of me like a clean sheet of paper,