Page 8 of You've Got Hate Mail
“Cricket. Cricket The Epic Failure. Full name. All caps.”
I did not have enough coffee for this today. Or sleep. Or alone time.
But I keep my tone even and patient while I reach for the flashlight in my bag of spilled tools. “Nice to meet you, Cricket. May I please check your head?”
She winces while I aim my flashlight in her eyes.
“Do you have to?” she says.
“Pupils look good. Follow my finger with just your eyes, please.”
I move my hand, watching her track my finger with big brown doe eyes under dark, feathered eyebrows.
Her lashes are thick, standing out against her pale skin.
“Good,” I murmur. “Can I feel your head?”
After the briefest hesitation, she lifts her head away from the tile wall.
I take that as implicit permission and slide my fingers into her wet, soapy hair, prodding her scalp beneath the towel as gently as I can to feel for any bumps.
“Ow!” she yelps.
“No immediate bump. How’s your neck feel? Any pain when you move it?”
She twists her neck this way and that, which can’t be easy with the towel still piled on her head, then shakes itno, then winces. “Only where I hit my head.”
She sounds like Lavender when I’m pulling out a splinter, sullen and cranky and unhappy about being kept from her own plans.
Speaking of my daughter—I glance into the bedroom as she meows a few more times. Her feet are sticking out from under the bed.
So she’s contained.
For the moment.
“Good,” I say to Cricket. “Sharp pain? Dull pain? Any vision problems?”
“Just that I can see you.”
“Can you sit up?”
“Not without flashing you again.”
“Seen it all before.” I have. Many, many, many times.
But my backstabbing brain decides now is the time to remember her round, perky breasts, and the notch of dark hair between her thighs, and the tattoo I couldn’t read scrolled beneath her ribs.
“I’m trying to show mine a little less right now,” she says.
The robe isn’t covering everything. Her legs are still sticking out, and she’s probably right that she’d flash me again if she moves.
So I shove off the tub and head to the bedroom.
“Finding monsters?” I murmur to my daughter.
“Meow.”
“Good. Scare them.”
