I shrugged, parting her hair. “Eh, it’s not that bad.”
Her face called bullshit in the mirror.
“Really, it’s not. Trust me, I’ve seen much worse.”
She looked away from me. “Yeah right.”
“I pulled a sock off a patient once and the foot came off with it.”
Her eyes darted back to mine. “No way.”
I combed down to the ends. “I’ve seen things that would keep you up at night. This is not one of them.” I made another part in her hair. “Not much fazes me. This isn’t even a particularly bad case. There’s hardly anything here.”
“This is so stupid. Who even gets head lice?” she said.
“I’ve had lice before.”
She blinked at me. “But… but you’re so pretty!”
I laughed. “Pretty girls can’t have lice? Trust me, they can. Lice are actually attracted to clean scalps, did you know that? It doesn’t mean you’re dirty.”
A flicker of gratitude moved across her expression, but then her face darkened again.
“How have you been doing?” I asked.
She sniffed, but she didn’t answer.
“My mom was gone a lot too,” I said, wiping the comb on the paper towel. “I was in foster care a couple of times, so I get it.”
“You were?”
“I was.”
“What’d she do?” she asked.
I shrugged. “She wasn’t really good at taking care of me.”
She peered at me. “My mom was good at taking care of me,” she said, her voice almost too low for me to hear.
“You know who else will be good at that? Justin. And Leigh too.”
A long pause. “I guess. It’s like, nobody gets it though. Alex is just all Alex and Chelsea’s so small she doesn’t even know. She thinks Mom’s at camp.”
“Camp’s as good of a story as any. Let it be camp.”
“Yeah, but it can’t be camp for me. I have to know.”
“She’ll be home one day, Sarah. It’ll come faster than you think. You can visit her and write to her and call her. You can stay close to her—you just have to try. I know this is hard, but good things can still come out of it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Like what?”
“You find out a lot about yourself during times like this. You realize how resilient you are and what you’re capable of.”
“I don’t want to know any of that,” she said.
“Ha. Fair enough.” I worked quietly for a moment. “What are you going to miss the most while your mom’s gone?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe like, her cookies or something.”
“Learn to make the cookies, so everyone can still have them. Maybe you can even bring them to your mom when you visit. I bet Justin can help. He’s a really good cook. You should try what he makes.”
She looked like she didn’t believe me.
“He made me this egg salad sandwich that was, I swear to you, the best one I’ve ever eaten,” I said. “He smokes ribs, and he’s got a really good Mississippi chicken recipe. Seriously. Try it.”
She seemed to consider it. “Yeah. Maybe.”
Several minutes passed. I watched her face in the mirror, deep in thought.
“They’ll make fun of me at school,” she whispered. “’Cause my mom’s in jail.”
I nodded slowly. “They do that.”
“Did they make fun of you?”
“They did.” I dragged the comb down to the ends. “My clothes were too small, my hair wasn’t brushed. There were a few weeks I had to use a men’s briefcase for a backpack because I didn’t have anything else. All my clothes were in black trash bags.”
She looked horrified.
