Shooting her a wink, I motioned at the sink for her to get on with getting ready and made my way out to the little girl who took up as much space in my heart as her aunt did.
“Are they bubblegum and grape flavored?” Shanti asked, looking at the two pill bottles.
Squatting down next to her, I read the label and also checked the dosage instructions on the back. “Yup. Do they taste good?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was quiet, and she looked pale. The contrast with how she usually was almost broke my heart. “I don’t think they’re going to fix this owie, Carter.”
Opening the bottles and shaking out the pills onto my hand, I held them out for her to take. “Remember when Nemi hurt her ankle at the Townsends barbecue and had to have a bandage on it for a while?” She nodded, chewing the tablets slowly. “Bond told me he got her a Pirates Of The Caribbean bandage to put around it. Do you want me to see if they do your favorite television character?”
Swallowing the grape/bubblegum mixture, she nodded slowly. “Okay.”
This was where I learned something new. Assuming kids were like adults—unless they were awkward, like, say, a Townsend—I waited for her to elaborate and tell me which character. When she just stared back at me, I got the hint.
“Who’s your favorite character?”
“Ryan Reynolds.”
“Uh, which movie?” Awful mental images of the sweet little girl saying, “Van Wilder,” hit me as soon as the question left my mouth. It was a great movie, but Shanti watching it, especially the chocolate éclair scene, wasn’t a good prospect.
She shrugged. “Any of them. I’m going to marry him when I’m old enough in ten years.”
“You’ll only be fourteen in ten years, that’s not old enough.”
Her head tilted as she frowned at me. “Says who?”
“The law?” I drawled, raising an eyebrow.
Not to be deterred from her life dreams, she pressed, “And how do you know that? I haven’t heard of this ‘law’ before.” She even did air quotations with her good arm around the word ‘law,’ reminding me so much of both Naomi and Jacinda.
“It’s my job to know the law, and everyone knows what the age of consent is.” I glanced at the bathroom door, begging for Naomi to finish getting ready and save me from what was a suddenly uncomfortable discussion.
“What’s the age of con-da-sent?”
Swallowing loudly, I thought up an age-appropriate explanation, but all that came out was, “Ask Naomi, she can explain it better than me.”
“Okay. People say that a lot. I asked Uncle Bond why Aunt Jacinda, Aunt Heidi, Aunt Naomi, Aunt Sayla, and Aunt Evie slid down poles and why he’d said he’d make it rain until Heidi was soak—”
I used Naomi’s trick and put my hand over her mouth to stop her. “We don’t have time for that. We’ve got to get you ready to see the doctor about your arm, remember?”
“I can’t forget it,” came her muffled response. “And my twenty bucks.”
Tentatively lifting my hand away so she could speak, I waited to see if she’d go back to the discussion she should never have heard. It wasn’t Bond’s fault or anyone else’s, I knew they’d never say something as crude as that in front of the kids, but Shanti had a knack for hearing things she definitely shouldn’t.
Instead of going back to it, she looked down at her injured limb. “My arm hurts like a ditch.”
I blinked, replaying the word in my mind to make sure it wasn’t what it should have been.
Taking pity on her, I tapped her gently on the nose. “Do you trust me to go and pick you some clothes to change into when Naomi gets out of the bathroom? She can help you get into them because it’ll be hard with your sore arm.”
Shanti’s eyes widened. “You’d do that?” she breathed. When I nodded, she held up her good arm and gave me a soft hug, making sure not to move her bad one or pull me in too close. “I’d love that.”
So, that’s what I did, except what should have been a relatively easy chore turned out to be one of the biggest challenges of my life. See, it meant that much to her for me to pick out her clothes that I was scared of letting her down or picking shit she’d hate, so I spent the extra time choosing and then second-guessing my choices.
Finally, I decided on an Army green tank top, a pair of pink camouflage leggings, and the matching hoodie which zipped up at the front. I even went the extra mile and picked out a pair of Converse for her, these being glittery pink, and then took it all through, holding it out for her to see.
And yeah, I almost cried like a little bitch when she took in the full outfit, now lying on the bed, and declared, “That’s now my most favoritest.”