Free The Life of Glass by Jillian Cantor Page A

times trying to figure out exactly what it might mean. It said, Call Sally Bedford . Sally Bedford. The woman Grandma Harry had mentioned to me, that I’d assumed was one of my father’s college girlfriends. But then what was he doing with a note to call her in his journal?
    I heard the doorbell ringing somewhere in the distance, so I put the piece of paper back inside the journal before I went to answer it. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I was still in a bikini top and jeans, because there was something about that note, written in my dad’s familiar scrawling strokes that really unnerved me. And I wasn’t even thinking to check who was at the door, because I just assumed it was going to be Ryan or Courtney or the both of them.
    So I opened it annoyed and only half paying attention, and when I looked up I saw Max Healy standing on my front porch. Suddenly, I remembered the bikini top. I tried to fold my arms over my chest sort of nonchalantly as if I always stood that way.
    Max whistled, and I felt myself turning red. “Who are you?” he said, which was a strange question, considering he was the one who rang my doorbell.
    Ashley and the Nose must have been in her bedroom, because I heard them barreling down the front hallway until they were close enough to the door to push me out of the way. “Hey, Max,” Ashley said in that supersweet voice she usually reserved for Austin, so I wondered if they’d broken up. Maybe he would become Mr. October after all. “Come on in.” Ashley glared at me, and I knew she wanted me to leave, but I didn’t.
    “Who’s that?” Max pointed to me.
    The Nose laughed. “That’s Ashley’s sister. And she was just leaving, weren’t you?” Ashley glared at me again and motioned with her head toward the front door, but I didn’t know where she expected me to go dressed like this.
    “Hey.” Max gave me a little wave.
    I felt my heart pounding as I waved back to him. “See ya,” I said, and I turned on my heels and headed back toward my room.
    “Don’t pay any attention to her,” I heard Ashley say.
    Yes, don’t pay any attention to me. I’m invisible.

Chapter 9
    I came to learn that there is an awful lot you don’t want to know that you can learn on the internet. If I wasn’t feeling well or I developed a symptom, I tended to go a little overboard and look it up on Google. Then I’d end up on some website for some strange disease, which I would convince myself that I had in a matter of minutes.
    Right after my dad died, I got this weird eyelid twitch, which was really annoying. My bottom lid would just twitch and twitch, no matter what I did to try and stop it. I looked it up online and settled on Parkinson’s disease. I told my mother that I needed to go for an MRI.
    “I’m sure you’re fine, sweetie.” She brushed me off, the way she did about most things.
    “Look at it.” I pointed to my eyelid, which had started twitching like crazy while I talked to her.
    “That happens to me when I get tired,” she said, all nonchalantly, not even caring that I may or may not have this terrible disease.
    I sighed. “But I have a bad feeling about it.”
    She stopped what she was doing, came over, and gave me a hug. She pulled back and looked directly at me. “I’ll tell you what, sweetie. Let’s give it a few weeks and see if it goes away on its own first.” I could hear it in her voice, that my mother was sick of doctors, that she couldn’t believe that there could really be anything wrong with me, that lightning would strike us twice. I didn’t want to be the one to take her back to that awful place again, so I nodded.
    She was right; the twitch did stop after a few weeks, and after that I promised myself that I wouldn’t look up any more symptoms on the internet.
    But it was hard to stop. Especially if something was bothering me, if I was home all alone with nothing else to think about. I didn’t mention anything else to my mother though. I figured each