Chapter 4
They discharged me just after lunch. Dr. Patel said my skin would be okay, that my eyes were clear and my lungs sounded clear, and that the lab would call if the glitter glue had anything bad in it. She gave Mom a paper with instructions and a number to call. The nurse took the bandage off my elbow and put a little sticker with a bear on it instead. I kept holding my plush toy with the yellow foot. Mom had washed most of the paint off my hands in the sink in the exam room, but there was still purple under my nails.
Grandma drove ahead of us. Mom carried me to the car even though I could walk. She buckled me in and didn't talk. The hospital parking lot was bright and hot, and the air coming out of the car vents smelled like old french fries.
At home, nothing looked broken. The front door was unlocked. Grandma had left her sweater on the back of the couch. In the kitchen, the floor where I'd fallen was clean. Someone had mopped it. The cabinet under the sink was closed.
Mom stood in the doorway holding my hand. "Lily, baby, stay right here for a second, okay?"
I nodded. My gown was gone and I was back in my leggings and t-shirt from that morning, but they felt too big.
Grandma came in from the hallway with a trash bag. "I cleaned it up. I didn't want you to come home to that."
Mom didn't look at her. She knelt down and opened the cabinet slowly. Inside were the bottles under the sink, the trash bags, and on the top shelf where the craft stuff wasn't supposed to be, the empty spot where the birthday craft box had been. The box was on the counter now, torn open, with glitter glue tubes scattered around it. One tube had burst. Red glitter stuck to the cardboard.
"This was on the top shelf of the pantry," Mom said quietly. "You said you moved it."
Grandma folded her arms. "I did move it. She must have climbed. Lily climbs everything. You know that."
I remembered the chair. I had pulled the kitchen chair over. I wanted to see the sparkles. Mom looked at the chair, still tucked under the table, then at me.
"Did you climb the chair, Lily-bean?" she asked. Her voice was soft, not mad.
I looked down at my yellow-foot toy. "I wanted to make a card," I said. My throat felt dry. "For my project next week. It was still boxed."
Mom breathed out slowly. She touched the tear on the box where the cardboard had given way. "And then what happened?"
"I pulled it down. The tubes fell. One popped." I showed her my hands like she could still see the paint. "It got on me. I slipped on the sparkles."
Grandma stepped forward. "She called for me. I came as fast as I could. She was on the floor crying and covered in it. I thought— I wiped her arms with a wet paper towel and picked her up and we went. I didn't know what was in it."
Mom stood up and closed the cabinet. The magnet clicked loud. She didn't yell. She just stared at the clean floor where the glitter had been. I saw her hands shake a little.
She picked up her phone and looked at the paper Dr. Patel gave her. At the bottom it said a social worker would call that afternoon to check in. Mom read it twice.
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"We're going to keep this cabinet locked from now on," she said, more to herself than to anyone. "And that stuff goes in the garage, up high."
Grandma nodded and reached for me, then stopped when Mom pulled me a little closer. The kitchen felt too quiet. The chair was still there, in the exact spot I'd left it that morning, its little feet marks in the clean floor.
