Free Such a Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess

leave, we three are going to sit down and find a workable solution to this problem.”
    I cross the upper landing and head for the bathroom.
    “Now,” my grandmother says, “does Meredith still like tuna salad?”
    “No,” I shout, because my mother doesn’t know what I like anymore. “I don’t eat things that bleed. Just cheese with lettuce or tomato with mayo. No dead fish or animals, please.”
    “You see what I have to put up with?” my mother says.
    I open my mouth to answer, then think better of it as it will only irk Leah Louisa and I need her on my side.
    “She’s a teenager,” my grandmother says and her voice grows stronger as she mounts the stairs. “Let’s focus on the bigger issues, shall we?”
    I close the bathroom door and strip down, careful to stow my cigarettes, lighter, and knife in the pocket of my grandmother’s robe before I hand my soiled stuff through the cracked door.
    “What about your underwear?” she asks, accepting the grubby wad.
    “Well, I left in kind of a hurry, Gran,” I say, catching sight of myself in the full-length mirror. I’m nasty. Messy. I look like I’m wearing dirt-gray Peds and with a little more knotting and studied neglect I will have perfect Rasta hair.
    “All right,” she says, sighing. “Come down when you’re finished.”
    My feet ache and there’s a purple knot above my eyebrow where I whacked my head climbing out the window. It’s tender and I don’t press on it again.
    The shower is heaven, though, with forty-four perfectly square tiles and four thick guest towels. The blue in the bathroom is pure and pristine, and reminds me of the serene eyes and painted robes of the oak Madonna icon next to Andy’s bed.
    A victim soul is a pious individual chosen to absorb the suffering of others.
    That boy needs a good shrink and some physical therapy, not some corn-fed quack quoting Scriptures and waving a crucifix.
    I twist off the water and open the curtain. Grab a towel and blot my skin. Slip into the striped cotton robe, perch on the hamper, switch on the fan, and light a cigarette.
    I don’t know what to think about this.
    Is Andy really suffering in the curable sense? Because he isn’t ill, he’s paralyzed—and not from birth, either.
    He was hanging out an SUV window on the night of his high school graduation, whooping and waving his diploma, one of dozens in a wild, snaking caravan of cars on the way out to party.
    Andy’s buddy, the driver, had started drinking early. He’d gunned the engine and whipped a right onto Main Street. Cut the corner too short and bounced over the curb. Andy, hanging up to his waist out of the passenger window, had hit the steel stop sign chest-first and the impact flung him out onto the road.
    I wedge my cigarette in my mouth and squint against the acrid smoke.
    If Andy has no physical pain, then what suffering does Ms. Mues want cured?
    I think of the scars knitted across his body and the “accident-prone” label. Of the stories Ms. Mues has told me about Andy’s postmolestation childhood.
    Crashing bikes into walls. Rollerblading into traffic. Falling off the monkey bars and out of trees. Bungee jumping off the roof with a homemade tether.
    I run my cigarette butt under the faucet and hide it in the wastebasket.
    Getting high. Driving drunk. Picking fights. Unprotected sex?
    The accident, numbing half but not all of him.
    I rip a comb through my hair, yanking at knots and making my eyes tear.
    Gallons of Jim Beam. Gallons.
    Open the bathroom door and emerge in a cloud of smoky steam. It dissipates fast, no match for sunlight and air-conditioning, leaving me chilled and seeing clearly.
    Ms. Mues isn’t praying for Andy to walk again.
    She’s praying for him to want to live.

Chapter Twelve
     
    I belt the wrap robe over the pocket with the cigarettes in it, but I can tell by my grandmother’s arched eyebrow that I’m not fooling her.
    “Two tomato sandwiches with two pickles,” she says instead, setting