Page 23

“It works.”

“They put the rest of my work online.”

“Send it to me.”

The girl is sideways in one of the gray chairs with one shoe off, a notebook open across her lap, and a white wrap around her right hand. She has drawn the television mounted over the reception desk, down to the crooked cable disappearing behind it. Her phone rests beside the page.

“How much work?” Gabi asks.

“Twelve pages.”

“That’s criminal,” I say.

The girl looks over.

“Due Monday,” Gabi adds.

“School out?”

“Suspended.” The girl lifts the wrapped hand. “I hit somebody.”

“Did you win?”

“He cried.”

“That sounds promising.”

Her eyes narrow.

“You weren’t there.”

The joke falls flat enough to leave a mark.

“You’re right.”

“You don’t know what happened.”

“No.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

Also true.

I was close to doing what I always do. Finding out what happened, deciding what ought to be done about it, and telling her. I had most of it built before she finished her sentence. I do that. It’s fast, it’s usually right, and nobody has ever sat in a waiting-room chair with one shoe off and refused delivery.

I stay quiet, which isn’t my best event.

Gabi keeps feeding paper into the printer. She doesn’t rescue me.

The girl presses her thumb over the bent corner of her notebook.

“He says things about my mother.”

I could ask what.

I do not.

She looks down at the bandage. “My mother had to leave work because of me.”