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“She says you couldn’t keep your hands on one woman even if they were glued to her sides.”
Deke threw his head back and laughed out loud then. And when he did, with his white teeth flashing, his dancing eyes, and his shiny, smooth hair skimming his shoulders, I got a glimpse of what drove the women in town crazy over him.
But then we both got down to the business of that chunk of glass still stuck in my knee.
“Liddy, I’ve cleaned out the scrapes on your palms where you braced yourself for that fall and cleaned out the area around the shard. That didn’t hurt too much, did it?”
“No sir.”
“Good. Now it’s time to pull that hunk of bottle glass out of your leg. I’ve treated a whole lot of wounds, and although this might hurt like a bastard, I think I can fix the rest of you up without too much fuss. My fingers are stronger than hell, and I can pull that glass out hard and fast with no problem. I’ve got a butterfly bandage that I can put on the cut to close the sides of the wound and help it heal. I can do that right here and now, but if you would rather have a doctor take care of it, then we can go to the hospital.”
I thought about this for a minute. I had never been to a hospital and didn’t plan on going anytime soon. Besides, a butterfly bandage sounded cool.
“I’ll go with option one,” I said somberly.
Turns out the butterfly bandage did not have big, beautiful, colored wings like I had hoped it would. In fact, it looked nothing at all like a butterfly. But it did the trick, and I was starting to feel a little better. Now that I was all taken care of, a part of me felt a teeny, tiny, twinge of guilt.
“You better save some of those butterflies for Kid.”
“You think so?” Deke raised his eyebrows. “And why would that be?”
“I bit his hand. The one that ripped my picture.” I confessed. Then I felt another stab of guilt when I thought about the blood that had filled my mouth. “And I think I took a chunk right out of him.”
Deke opened his mouth to speak, but just then Aunt Betty came bursting through the doorway.
She took one look at my swollen, tear-filled eyes, bandage-covered knees, and gauze-wrapped palms. Then she looked beyond me to the ripped painting with the blue ribbon still attached to one half.
“You okay, Liddy?”
I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t okay, that I hurt all over and I was madder than hell about the picture, but the look in Aunt Betty’s eyes stopped me cold.
“I’m okay.”
“Is that your blue-ribbon picture sitting on that table torn right in half and covered with dirt?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who ripped it up, Liddy?”
But when I opened my mouth to tell her the blame was all on Kid, I found myself hesitating.
“Lydia Rose Hall!! Aunt Betty was getting madder and madder. “Did Kid Harding have anything to do with that painting being ripped in half?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I nodded softly because the look in Auntie’s eyes was scaring the mad right out of me.
“And all those cuts and scratches, was that him too?” She asked but didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, Betty turned to Deke and started shouting and hitting him with her beauty bag. That beauty bag contained a hairdryer, two curling irons, and a hard case filled with steel scissors. I knew just how much getting hit with it hurt because one time it fell from the shelf in the bathroom closet and left a lump on my head.
He let her shout and smack him for a while, but when she didn’t let up, Deke picked Aunt Betty clear up off the floor, brought her out into the main garage, and slammed the door shut behind them. When I heard a low cough, I turned around to see Kid Harding suddenly standing in the middle of the room. He was holding his blood-soaked hand and looking at me in a way that I knew he felt bad, and not just because of his hand.
“How did you get in here?” I scowled.
Kid turned his head and nodded to a door that I hadn’t noticed before.
“I’m sorry about your picture.” He said as he moved towards me.
“Well, I’m not sorry about your hand,” I told him, but it looked pretty bad— all bloody and bitten.
His brow knit in consternation when he rounded the table and saw my scraped hands and knees. “What happened to you?”
