Chapter 6: Night Shift

He let go when Hattie sat up behind her sheet and asked if pancakes counted as a vegetable.

"No," we both said.

"Then why does everyone act like I'm wrong?" she said, and crawled out to look for her socks.

I spent all of Saturday afternoon looking at the butterfly strips on my palm.

I told myself it was because the cut itched.

On Sunday morning at seven, Maureen knocked and said breakfast was on the second floor and nobody was allowed to refuse.

Her apartment was the same shape as Grandma's, only warmer.

Every wall had a framed school photo on it, kids with missing teeth, and the kitchen smelled of bacon and cinnamon.

"They're all my lunch kids," Maureen said, when she saw me looking. "Thirty-one years in a cafeteria. Every one of them knows my name."

Hattie pointed to a boy in a blue sweater.

"Who's that?"

"That's Crispin, third grade."

"He looks like a potato."

"He was a potato," Maureen said cheerfully. "A sweet one. Sit."

Crispin came in at half past seven, still in his scrubs, with his badge clipped to the pocket.

He smelled like hand soap and the cold outside.

He had been on his feet for twelve hours, and it showed in his shoulders.

"Morning," he said to the room, and his eyes landed on mine for a second.

Then they dropped to my hand.

"How's the cut?"

"Itchy."

"That means it's healing." He stopped next to my chair. "May I?"

I held out my hand.

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