Thanks, kid. I owe you one.
CHAPTER 18
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 abikebike.” 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? ThatI’mout 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.”
