Page 53 of You've Got Hate Mail
Lav leaps to her feet.
Cricket lands on her ass, back against the rotting boards, which creak but don’t shatter.
“I’ve got you, you mangy dragons,” Lav yells.
She’s brandishing a foam sword, slicing and dicing the air, and I suddenly realize she didn’t meow at me once yesterday.
This morning either.
“Cricket, keep up! You think I can take on seventy jillion-hundred dragons myself?”
“I’m feeling my age in my bones today,” Cricket calls back. “I’m coming. I’m just slow.”
Lav harumphs. “You sound like Ms. Emerson.”
And then my daughter goes back to slashing and kicking and yelling at the dragons.
Working out all of that six-year-old energy.
Huh.
Maybe that’s why bedtime was easier last night.
“I don’t know who Ms. Emerson is, but I hope Lav doesn’t have her again this year,” Cricket says to me.
I offer her a hand.
She hesitates, then puts her hand in mine and lets me pull her up.
A low buzz radiates from my palm through the bones in my arm, up to my shoulder.
Stop it, I order myself.
“Ms. Emerson was last year’s teacher,” I say. “Came out of retirement when they needed a long-term sub. Wasn’t the best fit.”
Cricket winces.
“Cricket!They’re winning! Who do I have to talk to to get some help around here?”
“Excuse me, I have to go slay dragons,” Cricket says to me.
She takes three steps, trips, catches herself, and then manages to reach Lav’s side, where she dances around, brandishing an invisible weapon, kicking and slashing and chopping with almost as much coordination as my six-year-old has.
I start to smile, realize what I’m doing, and growl softly to myself.
Mabel says Cricket’s looking for a new job and talking to friends back home about possibilities for new living arrangements.
She’s not staying much longer.
Thatis what I should smile about.
And the plumber should finally be here today to look at the mother-in-law house, which isalsosomething I should smile about.
Progress.
Yep.
It’s all about progress and people finding ways to live their best lives.
