Good Boy (WAGs #1)(30)

Now I’m standing here in the center of the room, uncertain. My eyes sweep one more time, finding only unaccompanied adults around the edges of the space—nurses in their bunny-rabbit pediatric scrubs, and a parent or two.

And a teenager.

Oh.

She’s sitting at a table alone, stabbing angrily at her knitting. Her fingers are white sticks against the dark yarn. She’s wearing a scarf tied around her scalp, and there’s a dark circle under each of her eyes and a scowl on her face.

I wander over, feeling tentative.

“Don’t want any,” she mutters as I approach.

“Well…” I sit across the table from her anyway. “I’m here to force you to make a play dough jack-o’-lantern with me. My entire semester’s grade is riding on this, so make it good.”

She looks up quickly, confusion and scorn mixed together on her face. “What the fuck?”

“Joking,” I sputter, the tension getting to me. I actually giggle. “Jeez.”

For a split second something like humor crosses her face. Then the scowl returns. “You’re a nursing student?”

“Yup.”

“Pay close attention when they teach you to draw blood. Because most of the nurses here suck at it. Big time. I look like a junkie with track marks because none of them can find a damn vein.” She shows me her forearm, where I see some nasty bruising.

“Ouch. I’m sorry.”

My sympathy doesn’t go very far with her. “Whatever. I’m having a spinal tap tomorrow. That’s ten times worse.” She squints at her knitting and then suddenly throws it down. “My mother says that knitting is relaxing. But this ribbing is all wrong and I just want to stab someone with the needles.”

Given the look on her face, I think she’s mere seconds away from following through with that threat. “I know ribbing,” I say quickly. “What’s the problem?”

“Really?” For the first time since I sat down, she looks hopeful. And the change of expression takes years off her gaunt face. “Why do I have all these extra loops?” She passes her knitting to me.

And it’s a total wreck.

“Hmm…” I say, taking care to find the right words. “The regular stockinette stitch looks great.” She’s made a bunch of stripes—burgundy and mustard-colored.

“Thank you.”

“But the ribbing has some issues.”

“It’s a disaster.”

“I think I know why. When you switch between knit and purl, you have to move the yarn before you take the stitch. Those extra loops happen when the yarn is in the wrong place. When you’re going to knit next, it needs to be in back, and when you’re going to purl, it has to be in front.”

“Oh,” she says slowly. “Can you show me?”

“Sure. But we’re fixing this, right?”

“Can it even be fixed?”

“Anything can be fixed.” I grab the stitches and slide the whole thing off the needle.

With a gasp, she clutches her heart.

“Omigod, are you okay?” I squeak, sounding nothing like a nurse.

She points a shaking finger at the knitting. “You just…murdered it.”

“No I didn’t.” I grab the working yarn and tug, and her stitches start to fly apart.

“Holy…” With a sob she buries her eyes in her hands. “You’re going to drop all the stitches. That took me weeks.”

“No—look! If you want to be a good knitter, you have to be a good unknitter.”

One eye emerges from behind her hand. “Can’t look. That’s like…gory! Blood and guts everywhere.”

“Do you have a name?” I ask, working quickly. It takes me about sixty seconds to remove the bad stitches and then catch all the remaining ones on the needle again.

“Leila,” she says from behind her hands.

“Look now, Leila. See? You only lost a half inch of knitting.” I pass it back to her.

“Wow.” She turns it over in her hands. “Okay. That’s pretty cool.” She picks up the other needle and knits two stitches. “Now tell me what you mean about moving the yarn.”

I show her. “Now, with that yarn in front, purl.”

She hesitates.

“You’ve got this.” I mimic the right motion and give her the memory line I used to learn knitting. “Come out the front door, grab your scarf…”

She puts the needle through and wraps it.

“Now duck out the back before the cat barfs.”

“Oh my fucking God,” she says, squinting at the needle. “Worst rhyme ever.”

“It worked, though. Where is the gratitude? Now move the yarn to the back and get ready to knit.”

She does. And a few minutes later, she’s holding her knitting up to the light and crowing about how great it looks. “Like real ribbing!”

“That’s because it is.”

We talk knitting for a while longer, and then I’m surprised when Nurse Hailey taps me on the back and says our time is up. “Meet us out in the hallway, please,” she says.

“Thank you,” Leila tells me. “I didn’t get your name.”

“It’s Jess. Good luck with your…is it going to be a sweater?” I ask, although the knitted piece is really too small for that.