Glass (crank, #2)

The second book in Ellen Hopkins's Crank trilogy, Glass continues the story of Kristina Snow, a seventeen-year-old from Reno, Nevada, who became addicted to crystal methamphetamine, referred to throughout as "the monster," during a summer visit to her biological father in Albuquerque. Written in verse, the novel picks up several months after the events of Crank, with Kristina living at home with her mother, Marie, and stepfather, Scott, caring for her infant son, Hunter. Hunter was conceived when Brendan, a manipulative acquaintance, raped Kristina. Chase, who genuinely loved her, has left for California, and Kristina has been sober since Hunter's birth roughly four months earlier. She is studying for her GED, but exhaustion, dissatisfaction with her body, and the monotony of new motherhood leave her vulnerable to the monster's call. Kristina has long harbored an alter ego she calls Bree, a reckless persona she created to navigate life as a drug user, and Bree is growing louder.

Kristina contacts Robyn, the sister of her old friend Trent and a fellow user living in Stockton, California. Despite Trent's warnings, Kristina lies to her mother about attending a college fair, borrows the family car with a hundred dollars for expenses, and steals another hundred from Hunter's piggy bank. At Robyn's apartment, she meets Trey, a strikingly handsome dealer carrying high-purity Mexican methamphetamine known as glass, which must be smoked rather than snorted. Kristina takes her first hit and is overwhelmed. Trey sells her an eight ball for two hundred dollars, with the remaining hundred owed on credit, and fashions her a makeshift pipe from a lightbulb. They exchange numbers.

Kristina drives home buzzed, arriving around four A.M. to her mother's fury. Over the following days, she manages roughly two hits daily, telling herself she is in control. She picks up a job at the local 7-Eleven, where a fellow user named Grady works the counter.

Family events pile up on her birthday weekend. Kristina's estranged biological father, Wayne, announces a visit, the same weekend her older sister, Leigh, is arriving with her girlfriend, Heather, for Hunter's baptism. Kristina persuades Leigh to attend by asking her and Heather to serve as godparents. Wayne arrives visibly strung out with his girlfriend, Linda Sue. Through Grady, Kristina arranges to buy crank, a lower-grade form of methamphetamine, and discovers that Grady's supplier is Brendan, Hunter's biological father. She completes the purchase without revealing Hunter's paternity. On her birthday night, Wayne takes Kristina out to snort lines and gamble at Reno casinos. They stay out until morning and arrive late, visibly wrecked, to Hunter's baptism. Kristina turns eighteen.

Three weeks at the 7-Eleven follow, punctuated by the manager Kevin's persistent groping and Kristina's daily hits of ice, another term for the high-purity glass Trey supplies. When Trey calls and says he is in Reno, he picks Kristina up in a new Mustang. She tells him about her past, including Brendan's rape, and Trey responds with tenderness. He drives her to his cousin Brad's house in Red Rock, a rural community north of Reno. Brad is raising two young daughters after his wife, Angela, left, and has a massive meth supply. Kristina and Trey have sex for the first time, deepening her attachment.

On Thanksgiving, after a tense family dinner, Kristina announces she has a date with Trey. Mom accuses her of abandoning her responsibilities. Kristina spends the holiday weekend at Brad's, and she and Trey exchange declarations of love. Trey also reveals that a girl he once mentioned in Stockton was actually Angela, Brad's estranged wife. Kristina is devastated but stays. Back home, a confrontation with Scott escalates: Kristina threatens to take Hunter to her father's, and Scott warns the baby would be dead in a week. Mom tells Kristina she cannot care for a child. Kristina collapses in tears.

In December, while watching Hunter during a hard crash, Kristina falls into such a deep sleep that she cannot wake when Hunter rolls under a chair and becomes trapped. Mom finds him, pushes Kristina out the front door, and refuses to let her return. Brad agrees to let Kristina stay in his spare room and then offers her a job as live-in nanny for his daughters, providing room, board, and a hundred dollars a week.

Trey returns for semester break, and the couple spends two weeks together. After he leaves, he rarely calls. Kristina grows lonely and begins dealing small quantities to acquaintances. She also starts a quiet affair with Brad, both acknowledging they are substitutes for the people they truly love. On a later visit, Trey finds them in bed together but reacts without anger, admitting he has been sleeping with other girls at school. Before leaving, he asks Kristina for time to sort out his feelings.

When Angela returns at Easter wanting to reconcile with Brad, Kristina is forced out. Brad gives her his remaining inventory on credit and introduces her to Cesar, a gang-affiliated meth supplier operating out of a mobile home in Fernley, Nevada. Kristina moves into a run-down weekly motel. Alone and depressed, she encounters Chase downtown with his pregnant wife, Amanda. Sitting by the Truckee River that night, she hears the water calling her to step over the railing. She approaches the edge but pulls back.

Trey drops out of school, and they rent an apartment together. Kristina retrieves Hunter from her mother, but domestic life falls apart. Hunter bites through his lip falling from a chair while Kristina smokes in the bathroom. Trey, frequently absent, gambles away their money. A fight erupts when Trey comes home high, finds Grady in the apartment, and turns jealous. Kristina accuses Trey of continuing to see Angela, and he confirms it, adding that Angela has returned to using. Kristina calls her mother to take Hunter back. Mom and Scott file for legal custody, claiming Kristina is an unfit mother.

To pay debts, Kristina burglarizes her mother's house while the family is at her younger brother Jake's baseball game, stealing checks, jewelry, and a camera. She forges checks using a fake ID in her mother's name. Mom confronts Kristina, warning her she will die if she does not stop. When a newspaper publishes a bank surveillance photo of Kristina cashing a forged check, she and Trey abandon the apartment and begin living in his Mustang. They go to Cesar for a final half-pound front with no intention of paying and drive into California, where a patrol officer discovers the drugs during a stop near Sacramento. Both are arrested and charged with possession, trafficking, and importing methamphetamine across state lines.

During four days of withdrawal in jail, Kristina uses her one phone call to reach Quade, an old friend who has become her most reliable source of support. A medical examination reveals she is pregnant with Trey's child. A public defender offers a deal: If Kristina testifies against Cesar's operation, her sentence will be reduced to six months. Extradited to Nevada, she learns her own mother identified her from the bank photo and turned her in. From behind bars, Kristina catalogs her fragile hopes: that Trey will write, that Quade will stay in touch, that the monster has not damaged her unborn baby, and that addiction will someday fade to a distant memory. She closes by acknowledging how much hoping she is doing and noting, with wry self-awareness, her persistent and unexplainable optimism.