18. Fox #2
“How much money?” Wendy asks from the one barstool behind the island.
“Oh, uh.” Pan thinks. “A dollar?”
“Done.” Wendy jumps up and runs out to the front door.
“Do you even have a dollar right now?” Tink asks, but Pan brushes him off.
“Look at my man Fox here, being all domestic.” Pan puts his elbows on the island and his chin in his hands. “Whatcha making us?”
“What’s it look like?” I pick up the bowl a little to show him. “And who said they were for you, anyway?”
Tink snorts. “Oh, so you’re gonna eat a whole box of pancakes yourself?”
“What, you think I couldn’t?”
Tink does his little smile. “No. I know you could.”
“Shut up,” I tell him, not that I’m actually mad. “No, they’re not just for me. Kids like pancakes, right?”
“Everyone likes pancakes,” Tink says.
“Are you saying you want some?”
“I’m saying that,” Pan interrupts, scratching his ribs. “Hey, they’ve literally got my name on them.”
“Back!” Wendy stomp-runs back in with a stack of papers in her hand: grocery store coupons, mostly, and a few actual envelopes, all rubber-banded together.
“Thank you kindly,” Pan says. He takes the pile and chucks it in the trash can.
“Hey!” Wendy says, laughing a little. “Why’d you ask me to get it if you were just gonna throw it out?”
“So it doesn’t clog up the mailbox,” Pan says, and makes a face at Wendy. “Duh. Leave too much in there and someone might actually notice this place is…whatever the word is. Abandoned and falling into disrepair. Gotta hide in plain sight, you know?”
Wendy giggles as Pan winks, stretching his arms overhead and yawning the world’s loudest yawn. I fork-whisk the egg into the batter.
“Working late?” Tink asks.
Pan ends his yawn on a laugh. “You could say that.” His eyes flick to the door to the shop, and I can just see a figure tiptoeing out. A female figure. The blonde Mermaid, with the big…eyes. Emerald, that’s it. Caught in the walk of shame.
Unfortunately, Wendy sees her too. She turns back around to us, eyes narrow.
“What’s she doing here?”
Pan says nothing. And I certainly don’t wanna answer that one, so I decide to duck under the counter and see if we own a spatula.
“Huh?” I hear Tink’s voice after a moment. “Oh, uh…”
There. Spatula, a little melted on the edge but probably will work. I grab it, and when I come back up, Tink looks…
It’s weird. Like he’s legit lost for words. Not something I usually see in Tink.
I hold the spatula kind of stupidly as behind Wendy’s head, Pan does a little “who, me?” shrug. Then holds up a hand for me to high-five. Which I do, with my hand not holding the spatula, because sure, GG and all.
“Don’t worry about it,” Pan says, grabbing Wendy’s shoulder. “She knows her way home.” He flashes a grin at all of us. “Now, how about those pancakes?”
“Can I ride your bike?”
“Um, do you have a license?”
Wendy sighs. “Well—”
“Then no,” I answer from halfway inside Tink’s bike.
Wendy seems to like spending a lot of the day in the garage with me. Which I don’t really mind. She doesn’t really get in the way, not like she would for Kit or Blue, anyway. And it’s nice to have someone to talk to.
“Do dirt bikes need a license?” she asks.
“Technically?” I give the wrench another ratchet. “No.”
“Okay, so can I ride the dirt bike?”
“No.”
“Aw, why not?”
“Because it’s still kind of broken.”
“I thought you could fix it.”
“I can,” I say. “But I’m fixing this one right now. For Tink.” Not that it was exactly broken to begin with. Not in the same way that little dirt bike is. But now I’m committed. And Tink’s ride is going to be pretty good once I’m done. “Can’t you go watch TV or something?”
“TV’s boring.”
“Well…” I squint into the bike, feeling around for where the teeny tiny little threads of the nut seat around the bolt to loosen it. “What—else—do you do—for—fun?” Damn, but that sucker’s seized.
“I dunno.” Wendy lifts a shoulder as I pull my head out. “Do you have any books?”
My chest squeezes tight. “Uh, not…really,” I say. “Not around here.”
“Oh. Okay.”
After that, Wendy goes silent. She’s sitting on the work table, her legs dangling and her wrists between her knees, and she’s staring at the wall.
At this drawing of Kit’s I have pinned up, one he did when we were kids—I forget how old, because it doesn’t really look like a kid’s drawing since he was already really good.
It’s of us, me and him, in this more comic-book style he used to draw, posing with our hands clapped together like superheroes.
“Have you heard from my brothers yet?” Wendy asks, her voice suddenly very small.
And I swear my heart actually breaks.
Here I am thinking how cool it is to have a little sister, and I forgot this kid already has brothers.
Had. I mean.
I swallow. “I don’t know,” I say. Which is the truth, pretty much. “I can ask Tink later.”
Wendy just nods. “Okay.”
She keeps staring at the drawing. I swallow again and—
“You know what?” I say, putting down my tools and wiping my hands on my work pants. “I know where we can get some books, if you’re interested.”
The library in the Strip is small, hot, and dark. It’s this brick building a few blocks down the boulevard with a cracked-up parking lot, the kind of place where, if I saw a bike like mine, I’d definitely swing by later to boost it.
But no one boosts my bike. Not if they want to work with Fox again. And most of the shop guys do, so.