She gulped deep, damp breaths and sat back, willing herself not to bawl (because they'd hear), and wondered if she could call Mom and Dad for an extension on her allowance, or use the credit card that was 'just for emergencies.' It sucked to be smart, because this was where it got you. Cry like the baby they all said she was, too young to be here, too young to be away from Mommy. Her face felt hot, and she was shaking, and she knew, just knew, that she was going to cry. Keep my cool.Ĭlaire threw herself into an orange plastic chair, dumped her backpack on the scratched linoleum, and put her head in her hands.

Assuming she could find anything she could stand to wear. After all, downtown Morganville, Texas, was the thrift shop capital of the world. She supposed she could find some clothes, if she looked around, that wouldn't totally blow her entire budget. And she had.Ĭlaire had about three hundred dollars left to last her for, well, months, after the latest round of calling out for pizza and buying yet another book for Professor Clueless Euliss, who didn't seem to have figured out yet what subject he was teaching. Pants that were too short and made her look like a hick, shirts that were too big and too stupid, and made her look like her mom had picked them out. She had some other clothes - a few - but they were last-choice clothes, oh-my-God-wouldn't-be-caught-dead clothes. 'No!' She yelled it into the washer, where it echoed back at her, and slumped back down, then kicked the washer violently in the dent made by all the other disappointed students before her. Every piece that she actually wanted to wear. She was missing every piece of clothing that she'd worn in the last two weeks. One crappy pair of underwear, fraying at the seams. It smelled like mold and cheap detergent. 'No,' she said out loud, and balanced herself on the edge of the washer to look down into the dark, partly rusted interior. She'd never seen it work, not in the last six weeks since she'd arrived at school. Two washing machines, two dryers, and you were lucky if one of them was working on any given day and didn't eat your quarters. She was in a hurry, of course - there were only a couple of machines on this top floor of Howard Hall, the least valued and most run-down rooms in the least valued, most run-down dorm. When she reached into the crappy, beat-up washing machine, she found nothing but the wet slick sides of the drum, and - like a bad joke - the worst pair of underwear she owned, plus one sock.

On the day Claire became a member of the Glass House, somebody stole her laundry.

Glass house book rachel caine