Page 4 of Sinful in Scrubs

I thought it would be an exciting change.

I was learning how wrong I was about everything.

I reached out to pat my son on his head. He swiveled, and my hand fell heavily onto his shoulder. I gave him a squeeze. “How long have you been playing video games?”

His mouth dropped open like that same half-dead fish he looked like a few moments earlier. It was a dead giveaway that he was lying and trying to come up with an excuse.

“Give your sister the controls, and go to your room and do your homework.”

“But, Daaad.” He dragged the vowel out, turning Dad from one syllable into many.

“Upstairs, or do I need to talk about putting you on restriction?”

He wiggled out from under my hand and dashed back into the den.

“Ow, you little shit!” Lily yelled.

“Lily, language!”

Jason ran past me.

“He threw the controller at me,” she replied.

“Jason!” I barked out. I was met with the loud closing of his bedroom door.

A low growl escaped my throat when I stepped into the den and faced Lily. “You dyed your hair again. I thought we talked about this.”

She twirled her finger through a lock and glanced over at it. The heavy, dark rings around her eyes emphasized the whites and made her look like a cartoon character. “What? It’s black. That’s a natural color. School said no unnatural colors. It’s not purple.”

I shrugged, unhappy with the direction my daughter’s appearance was going in. She was right, her hair was a natural color. The rule had been nothing extreme that the school would send her home for. I should have been more specific, I guess.

She waved the controller around in her hand as she leaned forward and began changing settings on the PlayStation. I was a little surprised when she turned the TV off.

“I thought you wanted to play?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I wanted Jason to stop. He plays with the sound too loud. The neighbors were banging on the walls.”

We lived in a row of townhomes. The walls weren’t as thin as they would be in an apartment, but loud noises did travel.

“I’ll make him go over and apologize after dinner. How was school?”

“It sucked,” she said.

“Lily…”

“It always sucks. I hate it here.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I know this hasn’t been easy. What’s for dinner?” I asked as I headed back to the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” Lily said as she flopped onto the couch. “You didn’t say anything about making dinner.”

“It was my first day at work and you couldn’t even think about making dinner without my having to tell you?” From where I stood in the dining room, which was still piled high with unpacked boxes, all I could see of Lily was the hand she held up over the back of the couch. She let her hand fall and flop around as if she were too lazy to wave it about, but still trying to be dramatic.

“I’m just a kid. It’s not my job to think of those things.” She said it with such an attitude, I knew she had actually made a conscious decision to not step up and make dinner.

I wasn’t in the mood to fight with her. I was tired and I had a hard day at work. Working on children took a different level of detachment from working on adults or soldiers had. And I was unexpectedly worn out from it all.

I continued through the dining room into the kitchen. The rooms were stacked front to back in a row—den, dining, kitchen. A long hallway from the front door passed all the rooms on one side and went straight into the kitchen, and the stairs to the upper floors were on the opposite side of the hall from the rooms. The town house was narrow and tall. And I thought it was perfect.

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