Page 54 of Power Play

“You should go,” I said. I pushed at his shoulder, a little nudge that was completely ineffectual. My hand looked tiny against his body.

“Okay,” he said. “But I’ll be in touch.” He lifted his hand and shot us that good boy/bad man grin of his and trotted down between the flower beds back to the truck.

“Honey,” Ms. Rene said.

“Don’t say it,” I said.

“I’ve got to say it,” she said and put an arm around my shoulders. “That man is fine with a capital F.”

I laughed. “I don’t think people sayfineanymore.”

“I sayfine. Only in this case it’s probably not enough. What’s this job opportunity?”

“He wants me to be a nanny. He’s helping a friend out by watching her daughter, but he’s in over his head.”

We stepped inside the house and Ms. Rene began the process of locking us up tight.

“Well, that sounds like a perfectly good job. What’s the problem?”

Of course she was right. That job meant the start of the next chapter of my life. All debts paid. All wrongs as right as I could make them.

But what would it cost me?

“Nothing,” I said and gave her a big smile that I didn’t really feel.

14

Liam

Me: Yo, Wy. Text me back would ya?

Me: I’ve got some stuff going on I need to tell you about.

Me: Also please say hello to my first and only crush. You crush stealer!

Iwoke up to a pat on my face. I rolled onto my back, braced to kick my brother in the nuts, but it was Tess standing there in her nightgown holding a stuffed bear and the book she’d been reading yesterday. I realized it was a different book. This one was red.

She’d finished the other one.

“Tess,” I said, heaving a deep breath. “What’s…are you okay?”

“There are people outside,” Tess said.

“What?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I slept like a rock. A day of sun and swimming, after days of drinking, had wiped me out.

“Are you talking about Mike? He’s always there, honey.”

She shook her head no. “There was a bee-”

“There’s a bee in here?” I asked, ducking my head like it might be circling me.

I hated bees. Once my brother took a sip from a pop can and a bee had crawled inside of it and it stung him. The bee kind of stuck to his lip and I had to pull it off of him. The memory gave me the heebie jeebies.

“Are you scared of bees?”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

She smiled at me and pretended to zip up her mouth and tuck the key in the pocket of her nightgown.

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