Page 38 of You've Got Hate Mail
I hope I’m not ruining something that Heath loves. Kids’ phases are so cute, and my experience with my own nieces and nephews tells me that the phases are always much too short.
“Sometimes the heroes we need aren’t what we expect,” I tell her while I head across the kitchen to grab the milk and eggs.
“I want to be a dragon slayer.”
“You can be anything you want to be.”
“Agreed,” Ginny calls.
I grab the cardboard carton of eggs and the milk and pull them both out of the side-by-side fridge, but something’s suddenly wrong.
Crack.
Plop.
Crack.
What—are you for fucking real right now?
“No!” I shriek.
The egg carton.
The egg carton is broken on the bottom and all of the eggs are falling out.
Instinct has me dropping the milk so I can thrust my hand under the egg carton and catch the falling eggs, but the jug shoots off its lid as it, too, hits the floor, sending a spray of milk straight up in the air and coating me while I try to shove the eggs back in the fridge and catch the falling eggs at the same time.
All I succeed in doing is banging my hand against one of the shelves in the fridge.
“No!” Lavender shrieks, her voice an echo of mine.
“Cricket?” Ginny calls, her voice closer.
“Don’t—” I start, then I freeze.
What are words?
“Eggs!” I bark. “Milk! Floor!”
“The wha—aaaaaaaahhhh!”
There’s a slap and a different kind of crack on the other side of the open fridge door, followed by a low moan.
Lavender’s eyes have gone round in horror instead of fascination.
I can’t breathe, while Ginny, on the other hand, is breathing loud and ragged.
I think I’m crying again.
“Motherfu—under,” Ginny gasps from the floor.
I shuffle backward in the milk and broken eggs until I can close the fridge door, and then I look at what I’ve done now.
“I’m okay,” Ginny says as soon as she makes eye contact with me. She’s on her back, one of her legs sticking out to the side, wheezing. “I’m okay.”
The wince and the pain in her voice—I broke her.
Now I’m breaking other people.
