Page 39 of Things We Hide from the Light
Waylay looked down at her plate for a second before shrugging in preteen annoyance. “It’s just something dumb. You guys don’t have to do it.” She made a show of spearing a green bean with her fork and scrunching up her face when she took the tiniest bite possible.
“You might be surprised. We like dumb stuff,” I told her.
“Well, there’s this Girl Dad challenge on TikTok where dads let their daughters put makeup on them. And paint their nails. And some of them do their hair too,” she began.
Knox and I shared a frozen look of terror.
We’d do it.
We’d hate every single second of it. But we’d do it if Waylay wanted us to.
Knox swallowed. “Okay. And?” He sounded like he was being strangled.
Naomi sighed. “Waylay Witt!”
The girl’s grin was diabolical. “What? I was just priming them with something worse so they’d say yes to what I really wanted them to do.”
I relaxed as the threat of lipstick and fake eyelashes dissipated.
Knox rocked back in his chair, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “What the fuck am I gonna do with her at sixteen?”
“Oh man!” Waylay groaned.
“Jar!” Stef said.
“If you would stop f-bombing every sentence, maybe we could be eatin’ potato chips and pepperoni bites instead of dang green beans,” Waylay groused.
Lina’s earrings jingled as she tried to hold in her laughter.
“What do you really want us to do?” I asked.
“Okay. So my school is doing this dumb Career Day thing and I guess I thought maybe it wouldn’t be the most horrible thing if you and Knox came and told my class about your jobs and stuff. You can say no,” she added quickly.
“You want me and your uncle Nash to talk to your class?” Knox asked her.
I rubbed my forehead and tried to chase away all the “hell nos” that were echoing in my head. Community relations was a big part of my job, but I’d avoided all public events since…before.
“Yeah. But only if you’re gonna do a good job, because Ellison Frako’s mom is a district court judge and she’s going to do like a mock trial thing. So don’t, like, show up and talk about paperwork and bank statements.”
I smirked. Paperwork and bank statements were ninety percent of my brother’s job.
Waylay looked at me. “I thought maybe you could do something cool like shoot one of the annoying boys with a Taser.”
Lina choked out a laugh and some of her beer next to me. Wordlessly, I handed her a napkin.
Naomi shot a pleading look my way.
Like I didn’t know how much it cost Waylay to ask for what she wanted.
“I might not deploy any weapons in the classroom, but I could probably come up with something,” I said. A cold bead of sweat snaked its way down my back. But the happily stunned expression on Waylay’s face made it worthwhile.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. Fair warning though, my job’s way cooler than Knox’s.”
Knox snorted. “Oh, it’s on.”
“What are you gonna do? Reenact a lottery win?” I joked.
