18. Fox
FOX
On Monday, I hear footsteps outside the garage, which is weird, because usually no one comes in here and I’m by myself. And usually I like it, but when I saw who it was hovering at the door, I actually took a break.
“Oh, hey,” I say, giving Wendy a wave. “What’s good?”
“Um, I didn’t want to interrupt,” Wendy says really fast.
Kids are so funny, how one minute they’re sassy and annoying, and then the next minute, they’re kind of polite.
Or maybe that’s just Wendy. I haven’t really hung out with a lot of kids besides her.
Not since I was one. And I haven’t even really hung out with her that much, but… I don’t know. So far she seems cool.
“No, you’re good.” I straighten up a little, my knees cracking from where I’m working on Tink’s bike. “This isn’t exactly urgent or anything.” Unless Tink has somewhere he needs to go in the next day or two, which I don’t think he does. I twirl my wrench around. “What’s going on?”
“Um, nothing,” Wendy says. “I was just kind of looking around the shop, but then the black-haired guy yelled at me and said to get the hell out of there because he had to keep things sterile, so…”
I wince. “Yeah, that’d be Blue. He does the piercing and he’s kind of anal about it.
Sorry about him.” I shrug. “But you can come in here if you want. Nothing has to be sterile. It’s actually all kind of gross.
” I look down at myself, tank top and work pants already smeared with oil in various places.
My hands are a wreck, splotched all black and the skin ripped up from my being careless.
Wendy must notice, because her eyes widen a little as she follows my gaze. “Are you okay?” she says, looking at my ripped up knuckles.
“What? Oh, yeah, fine.” I shrug again. “Just part of working with your hands, you know.”
Wendy shakes her head.
“You ever fixed a bike before?” I ask.
She laughs. “No, I don’t even have, like a bike bike.” From behind her, the dog slips in through the door and slides right under her fingertips for pets. “My brothers said it probably wasn’t safe to ride around the neighborhood, so they just never got me one. But I see kids on bikes all the time.”
I chew my lip. “Yeah, I kind of agree with them on that,” I say, crouching down next to Tink’s bike again and showing her over.
“What do you mean?” Wendy says, taking a step closer.
“I…” I hesitate because I don’t know how to phrase it.
How do I tell her that people are dealing dope on the corners? That I’m out there, stealing bikes to hack into pieces and sell off for parts?
You don’t, dummy, my brain tells me. Think of something else.
“Bikes can give you a hell of a skinned knee when you are falling off,” I say. “I mean, you don’t want to end up like me, right?” I wiggle my calloused, cracked fingers at her and she shrieks.
“Okay, you really need to learn about skin care,” she says. “You could do a hand mask or something.”
“A hand mask?” I squat and peer back at the insides of the bike, just so I don’t lose track of where I was tightening the socket. “You mean like one of these?” I turn to her, form my fingers into the O-K symbol, and flip my hands upside down so I’ve got on little hand goggles.
Wendy laughs. “No, dummy, like a face mask but for your hands.”
I remove the goggles. “You lost me,” I say.
A little smile crosses Wendy’s face. One of the few I’ve seen since she got here. “I can show you,” she says. “Just give me a second.”
So that’s how, later that night, I end up doing skincare with a ten-year-old girl.
“Don’t laugh,” I say to whoever walks in from the hall—Pan, of all people.
I’ve got my hands in these weird wet gloves, another piece of wet paper on my face, and there’s a beauty YouTuber on the screen that I’m supposed to be paying attention to about the importance of hydration.
Pan ignores me and laughs anyway. “Dude, if you wanted a facial, you could have just asked Blue. Bet he’d even give you a discount.”
“I’d charge extra.” Blue’s right behind him, swigging from a water bottle. He gives me one look, snorts, glares at Wendy, and continues down the hall.
“Guys,” I hiss, bugging my eyes as best I can from behind the mask at Wendy. “Don’t be gross.”
Wendy pivots around. “What’s gross?”
“Oh, uh—this feels kind of gross, I mean.” I point to the mask on my face with the mask on my finger. “Is it supposed to feel gross?”
“Not…exactly,” Wendy says. “It’s supposed to feel soothing.”
“Oh, so it wouldn’t bother you if I got you all goopy?” I extend a finger toward her.
“Ew, no!” Wendy pushes away across the couch.
Over by the island, Pan looks up from his phone and points at me. “Game. Friday night. You good?”
“Huh?” I turn to him so fast the mask slides off my face a little. “Oh, sure. Can do.”
“Perfect.” Pan gives me a salute with his phone hand and heads for the stairs. As soon as he’s gone, I go back to Wendy. “I’m not technically touching you,” I say, keeping my finger a good few inches away like I used to do with Kit when we were kids. “See?”
“Stawwwwp!” She cracks up.
“I’m not touching you!” I say. Then I wiggle my finger around for good measure and put on my best alien voice. “E.T. phone home.”
Wendy frowns behind her own mask. “Um, what?”
I frown, too. “What do you mean what?”
“I mean, what are you talking about?”
I blink. “E.T.,” I say. “The alien. You know, with the finger? He’s all slimy.”
Wendy blinks too. “I do not know what you are talking about,” she says.
“Oh come on,” I say, as the stairs squeak with the sound of someone coming up: Kit, this time, holding an apple. “Everyone knows E.T.! Like—bro.” I flag Kit down. “Back me up here. E.T., the slimy little brown guy? That movie’s a classic, right?”
Kit looks at the face mask, opens his mouth, closes it, and then frowns. “E.T. is not slimy.”
“Huh?” I say. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, on what planet is that thing slimy?” Kit says. “And don’t say Earth.” He bites into his apple and leans against a barstool. “Trust me, I spend a lot of time looking at skin, and that guy is not slimy.”
I shake my head so hard that the mask almost slides off of it for the second time. “No. Absolutely not. He’s an extraterrestrial. An alien. Aliens have…alien goo or whatever. They’re wet and slimy.” I look at Wendy. “You’ve got to back me up here.”
She gives me an exasperated sigh. “I told you, I’ve never seen it. I don’t even like alien movies.”
“I mean, it’s not an alien alien movie, exactly.
But you’ve gotta see E.T.” I don’t really like alien movies either.
If I’m being honest, the reason I like it is that it’s just easy to find.
Like, I know the letters. I can search for it.
I can find it. And I liked how it’s all about kids saving the day and stuff.
It was one of those DVDs that just always seemed to be wherever we were, so I’ve seen it, I don’t know, maybe twenty times.
There is another set of footsteps from the hallway—but not Blue this time. Thank God. I’m glad to see it’s Tink.
“Yo, Tink,” I call. “Can you—”
“Can you settle a very dumb argument for us?” Kit finishes for me. “E.T. If you touched him, would he be wet, or dry?”
Tink stops, like he has to think about what we’re saying.
“The alien,” I remind him. “From the movie.”
“Uh…” Tink scratches the back of his head, and I realize that I’m still wearing all this stuff and look kind of ridiculous, because when he looks my way, he smiles a little. Or half-smiles, really.
But whatever it is, it fades fast.
“E.T. the alien, wet or dry,” he repeats. “He’s kind of…” Tink cocks his head. “I think he sort of feels like a frog, you know, like soft, and sorta, I don’t know. Velvety.”
“Okay, sure,” Kit says. “But that means on a scale of wet and dry…”
Tink bites his lip. “Wet,” he says. “Definitely wet, if those are the two choices.”
“Yes!” I say, pumping my fist and rising up from the couch to offer Tink a high five, which I realize is also wet from my hand mask. “Thank you for backing me up.”
“You guys are idiots,” Kit mumbles into his apple.
“Are not,” Tink and I say at the same time.
Which makes me smile, even with the mask on.
And makes Tink smile, too. A full one this time.
And you know…
“You…got another one of those masks?” Tink asks, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “They do look, uh, refreshing.”
Wendy nods. “Um, absolutely I do.”
And Tink’s got a nice smile, I think. He should really do it more.
I guess I kind of always wanted a little sister. I mean, I know I already have a little brother. Technically, Kit’s younger by a couple minutes, I think. But, I mean like a real little sister, like a kid sister. Which is exactly what Wendy is like.
“What’s next?” I give the bowl of batter another stir with the fork, which is what I’m using since I can’t find a whisk.
Wendy looks at the box. “The eggs,” she says. “Two of them.”
“Eggs,” I repeat, nodding. “Uh, can you see if we have eggs in the fridge?”
Wendy sighs, but runs across the kitchen to the fridge.
“We could have gotten pancakes from McDonald’s by now,” she says, from behind the door. “That’s what my brothers always do.”
“Yeah, well, homemade pancakes are better for you,” I call back. No idea if that’s true, but whatever.
Wendy sighs and closes the fridge, a carton of eggs in her hands. “There’s only one,” she declares.
“Oh.” I lower my fork. “So we’ll use one, I guess. It can’t make that much of a difference.”
Wendy frowns. “Yes it can. It’s literally half as much.”
“Listen, do you want pancakes or not?”
“Does someone have the—oh.” Tink stops at the kitchen door. “Sorry. I thought I smelled something burning, so—”
“I’m on it,” I say, looking back at the stove. “I’m just—”
The pan I put on there to preheat is smoking.
“Shit. I mean, shoot.” I rush over and turn off the burner as Wendy sets the one-egg carton on the island. “Um, it’s fine.”
Tink tips his head. “Is it?”
“Okay, who wants to go to the mailbox for me?” Now it’s Pan, walking in barefoot and shirtless. “Because I’d pay money to not have to go outside.”