Page 1 of Hot Four Teacher
Chapter one
Knitting, Pickles, and Weed
Michelle
“Do you think I could kill someone with a knitting needle?” I ask, holding up one of the small metal sticks.
“What?” My daughter, Eve, questions from the kitchen.
“Knitting needles. Do you think they’d be a good murder weapon?”
My fifteen-year-old comes walking in while sipping a bottle of water. “Eh, I don’t know. I mean,couldyou kill someone? Sure. But I feel like you’d have to wipe off fingerprints super wellto get away with it.”
“Hm. Probably. What would be your weapon of choice?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Icicle.”
“Why?”
“Because all the evidence would just melt away.”
“Smart.” I pause for a moment. “Should I really be encouraging this?”
“Eh. I’m sure this isn’t the worst thing we’ve ever discussed.”
She has a point. Getting pregnant at seventeen has given Eve and me a very interesting relationship. Half the time, we are the closest best friends you can imagine. The other half of the time, we bicker like sisters. There’s not a ton of middle ground.
She stares at the giant pile of yarn on the couch next to me warily and decides to go sit in the chair instead.
The narrator of the true crime documentary I’m watching says, “The police found that the killer stopped for a snack and left grease-laden fingerprints on the doorknob.”
At the same time, Eve and I both mutter, “Idiot.”
We get caught up in the show for a few minutes before Eve says, “Mom, what are you making?”
“I'm knitting a granny square.”
“What’s the purpose of a granny square?”
“Well, you make a lot of them. And then, you knit them all together to make a quilt.”
“Are you doing any designs on your granny squares? I saw a lady on TikTok who knitted all different cartoon characters onto them.”
Show off.
“I decided to do just solid plain ones. I like that aesthetic better,” I tell her even though it’s a total lie. I tried doing designs to start with, but I couldn’t figure it out. In fact, I’m having trouble doing almost everything involving knitting. I can’t even keep the yarn from knotting up.
Eve says, “Okay, Mom, I’ve been silent long enough.”
“What? Eve, you’re literally never silent.”
That earns me an eye roll. “Look, while I’m all for you trying new hobbies, it’s getting out of hand.”
“How so?”
“Okay, let’s see. You started with watching the true crime stuff.”
“You watch it with me,” I interject.
