Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self - By Danielle Evans Page 0,36

drying, tiny heart-shaped rhinestones in the center of each one, and the salesgirl had gone to wait on the next customer, a miniature blonde with a functional razor phone but no parent in sight, Esther turned to him accusingly.

“You’re going away,” she said.

“I’m not,” he said.

“You told the lady you were.”

“It was pretend,” he said, closing his eyes. “This is a make-believe place, it’s OK to pretend here. Just like I’m your pretend Daddy.”

He realized he had bought her silence on one lie by offering her another, but he couldn’t see any way out of it. So they wouldn’t tell Lanae. So the salesgirl would flirt with him a little and do a little something extra for Esther next time. He had made sacrifices. Esther deserved nice things. Her mother worked two jobs and her real father was somewhere in Texas with his second wife. So what if it was the wrong things they were being rewarded for?

At the counter, he pulled out his wallet and paid for Esther’s manicure with the only card that wasn’t maxed out. Esther ignored the transaction entirely, wandering to the other end of the counter and reappearing with a purple flier. It had a holographic background and under the fluorescent mall light seemed, appropriately, to glitter.

Come see Mindy with Glitter Girl! exclaimed the flier. Mindy was a tiny brunette, nine, maybe, who popped a gum bubble and held one hand on her hip, the other extended to show off her nails, purple with gold stars in the middle.

“Everybody wants to see Mindy,” said the manicurist. She winked at them, then ducked down to file his receipt.

“Maybe we could go,” he said, reaching for the flier Esther was holding, but the smile that started for her dimples faded just as quickly.

“I don’t really wanna,” she said. “It’s prolly dumb anyway.”

He followed her eyes to the ticket price and understood that she’d taken in the number of zeros. He was stung for a minute that even a barely five-year-old was that acutely aware of his limitations, then charmed by her willingness to protect him from them. It shouldn’t be like that, he thought; a kid shouldn’t understand that there’s anything her parents can’t do. Then again, he was not her father. He was a babysitter. He had less than a quarter of the price of a ticket in his personal bank account—what was left of his disability check after he helped his mother out with the rent and utilities. He spent most of what Lanae paid him to watch Esther on Esther herself, because it made Lanae feel good to pay him, and him feel good not to take her money. He folded the Mindy flier into his pocket, and gently pulled off the twenty-dollar glittered tiara Esther had perched on her head to leave it on the counter. “Mommy will come back and get it later,” he lied, over and above her objections. Even the way he disappointed her came as a relief.

Of course, the thought had crossed his mind. He never thought Kenny and Lanae were the real thing—didn’t even think they did, really. Things had changed between her and Kenny in the year Georgie had been gone—softened and become more comfortable than whatever casual on-again, off-again thing they had before she and Georgie had dated—but he wasn’t inclined to believe it was real. He pictured himself and Lanae as statues on a wedding cake: they were a pair. Kenny was a pastime. How could Georgie not hope that when she saw the way he was with Esther, she’d see the rest of it sooner?

But it wasn’t like that was the reason he liked watching her. Not the only reason. Esther was a good kid. He thought it meant something, the way she didn’t act up with him, didn’t fuss and hide the way she’d used to at day care. But yeah, he got to talk to Lanae some. At night, when Lanae came home, and Esther was in bed, and Kenny was still at work for an hour, because being manager meant he was the last to leave the KFC, they talked a little. Usually he turned on a TV show right before she came in, so he could pretend he was watching it, but mostly he didn’t need the excuse to stay. It was Lanae who sat with him that week after his father had died, Lanae who, when she found out she was pregnant with Esther, had called him, not her