Christy’s eyes darted from Dallas to me, and she let out a deep breath that I would bet an ovary had some cuss words mixed into it. She said something to the coach, shot me another look, and started walking off.
I waited until she was a decent distance away before lifting my chin at him and asking, “We’re having hot dogs for dinner, Lex Luthor. You want some or what?”
*
“Lou, what’s wrong with your head?”
Louie, who was sitting on the couch playing a video game against Josh, had suddenly dropped the controller into his lap and started scratching the shit out of his scalp, wincing. “It itches.”
I frowned over at him. “Make sure to wash your hair tonight then, nasty.”
He said, “Uh-huh,” just as he grabbed the controller again, focused on the fighting game he was currently playing against Josh.
We had finished eating dinner a half hour ago, and since then, the four of us—Dallas included—had rotated playing what I would have called Street Fighter when I was his age. I had no idea what the game was really called. I’d lost the last match against Josh, and Louie had taken my spot.
Adjusting myself on the couch, I pulled up my knee and accidentally hit Dallas’s in the process. His attention had been on the screen until then, and he turned to give me a small smile.
“Do you want another hot dog?” I asked. “We ate all the fries.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m stuffed. Thanks.”
I wasn’t surprised; he’d eaten four already.
Another spot on my head started to itch, and I reached up to scratch at it with my index finger. Louie wasn’t the only one who needed to wash his hair. When I glanced back at the man sitting one cushion down on the couch, he raised his eyebrows in question and I raised mine right back.
“Ugh!” Josh shouted out of nowhere, his remote flying across the floor as both of his hands went up to his hair, scratching the hell out of his head. “It itches so bad!”
What the hell was going on?
Out of the corner of my eye, Louie started doing the same, except with only one hand. It looked like they were both trying to get blood. I’d barely thought that when another spot on my scalp started to itch, and I went to town on it.
“What the hell is happening?” I asked, scratching.
The only sound in the room was the sound of us raking our nails across our scalps. Then, Dallas said, “Louie, turn on that lamp.”
Louie did what he was told with his free hand.
“Do we have bed bugs or something?” I asked, hoping he might have an idea.
Dallas was too busy bouncing his gaze from one boy to the other and me; his expression was thoughtful. He gestured at Lou to come toward him and the boy did. I was still scratching as Dallas parted Louie’s hair with those big hands, his face dipping forward really close to take a look at his head. He didn’t say a word as he drew his hands back and then moved his palms to a different spot, doing the exact same, his nose coming inches away from Louie’s scalp. He did it a third time, too.
I glanced at Mac asleep on the floor and asked slowly, “Do we have fleas?” I gave him his flea medication on the same day every month.
Dallas sat up and pinched his lips together, and somehow managed to say calmly, “No. You have l-i-c-e.”
“L-i-c-e?” Josh muttered the letters under his breath.
“Li-cee?” That was Louie.
I still had a hand on my head as I wrinkled my nose. “What—Oh my God. No!”
*
There are only a handful of things in the world that I’d been embarrassed to buy. When I was a teenager, I’d purposely only buy pads and tampons at stores that had a self-checkout lane. In my early-twenties, I started buying condoms online because I was too embarrassed to buy them at the store. There was also itch relief medicine for that time I had a yeast infection, and lubricant that I had bought for Louie when he’d been a baby and needed to get a thermometer where no thermometer should ever have to go.
And then the lice happened.
Lice. Lice. Fucking lice.
Vomit crawled up my throat each time I thought about the eggs and little critters covering my head and the boys’.
Buying three boxes of medication and a gallon of bleach at the twenty-four-hour pharmacy went on the list of things I was ashamed to buy. When I was a kid, we had gasped over the nasty kids who’d had lice. And now I had three of them in my house, one of them being me.
“You really don’t have to do this,” I had told Dallas the second it clicked that I needed to be at the pharmacy five minutes ago and claimed we needed to leave right then.
Standing in front of me and in between two freaked out kids that had yelled, “THERE’S BUGS IN OUR HAIR?” all he had done was blink and stay cool, and then he’d plucked my car keys from my hand. “I’ll drive. You look up what you need.”
Well, when he put it like that, I swallowed my “I’ve got this.” There were eggs in my hair, in Josh’s hair, in Louie’s. Oh my God. It was disgusting. Really, really disgusting. I swore my head felt even itchier after Dallas had confirmed what the hell was on us. For one moment, I thought about calling my mom, but after we’d ended the night, the last thing I wanted was for her to find a reason to blame me for the boys getting lice, because she would. Forget that I knew for sure I’d gotten it once in elementary school—my entire fourth grade class had gotten them—but it would be a whole different situation if it happened on my watch.
Like Dallas suggested, I spent the ride looking up what I needed to buy and do. He stayed in the car with the boys while I ran in and bought what was needed, the clerk only side-eyeing me a little when he rang me out.
“You do their treatment and I’ll help with the sheets,” Dallas said in that crisp, no-nonsense tone of his as we pulled into the house.
“Really, you don’t have to do that. It’s already almost twelve.” Fuck, it was almost midnight? From the instructions I saw online, I was going to be up all night, washing sheets, clothes, and vacuuming. We were going to have to wake up early too, for Josh’s next game.
I was going to be sick. I could handle blood. I could handle the boys when they were sick and threw up all over the place. Diarrhea and me were old friends… but this lice thing crossed a line into a territory I couldn’t deal with. Bugs and I were not friends meant to have a close, personal relationship together.
I caught him glancing at me briefly before turning his attention forward again, but his hands flexed across the steering wheel. I’d put a grocery bag over the headrest for him because I was paranoid. “I know I don’t have to.”
“I have fleas!” Louie hollered from the backseat.
“You don’t have fleas. You have lice,” I corrected him, crying a little on the inside at the reminder.
“I hate lice!”
“Lou, do you even know what lice do?” I asked.
Silence.
I snickered and laughed a little despite it all. It was for the best that he didn’t. “Okay, which one of you borrowed someone’s hat?”