After a too-long beat, Knox whistled and hooked his thumb at the client in the waiting area. The man hefted his tall frame out of the chair and lumbered back.
“How’s it going, Aunt Naomi?” Waylay called from behind me. “Still look like a wet mop?”
Kids were jerks.
“She’s being transformed as we speak,” Jeremiah promised, sliding his long fingers through my significantly shorter hair. I choked back a purr.
“How’s your hair?” I asked my niece.
“Blue. I like it.”
She said it with a mix of reverence and excitement that had me smiling. I gave up worrying about whether or not I was overcompensating and turning Waylay into an entitled brat and decided to just go with it.
“How blue? Like Smurfette blue?”
“Who’s Smurfette?” Waylay asked.
“Who’s Smurfette?” Stasia scoffed. I heard her rummaging through her pockets and then the telltale sound of the Smurf theme song coming from a phone. “That’s Smurfette.”
“Wish my hair was as long as hers,” Waylay said wistfully.
“You cut it pretty short before you came in here. But it’ll grow,” Stasia told her with confidence.
Waylay was silent for a moment, and I craned my neck for a glimpse of her in the mirror. “I didn’t cut it,” she said, eyes meeting mine.
“What’s that, sweetheart?” Stasia asked.
“I didn’t cut it,” Waylay said again. “My mom did. As a punishment. Couldn’t ground me ’cause she was never around. So she chopped off my hair.”
“That fucking b—ouch!”
I kicked Stef then spun my chair around.
Waylay shrugged at the suddenly silent adults around her. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
That’s what she’d told herself. I remembered the tidy bins of hair accessories in her old bedroom. Tina had taken something from her, something she’d taken pride in.
Stef and Stasia looked to me, and I searched for the right words to make this okay.
But someone beat me to it.
Knox dropped the razor on a metal tray with a clang and crossed to Waylay’s chair. “You get that that was a dick move, right?”
“Knox, language,” I hissed.
He ignored me. “What your mom did was born out of a place of unhappiness and meanness inside her. It had nothing to do with you. You didn’t cause it or deserve it. She was just being an asshole, yeah?”
Waylay’s eyes narrowed as if she were waiting for the punchline. “Yeah?” she said tentatively.
He nodded briskly. “Good. I don’t know why your mom does the things she does. I don’t really want to know. Something’s broke inside her, and that makes her treat others like shit. Got it?”
Waylay nodded again.
“Your Aunt Naomi over there isn’t like that. She’s not broken. She’ll probably still fuck up now and then, but that’s cause she’s human, not broken. Which is why when you mess up—and you will cause you’re human too—there has to be a consequence. It won’t be cutting your hair or not making you dinner. It’ll be boring shit like chores and grounding and no TV. Got it?”
“I got it,” she said quietly.
“From here on out, if anyone says they have a right to decide what to do with your body, kid, you kick ’em in the ass, then come find me,” Knox told her.