“Okay. Thank you, Marcus.”
Ethan climbed up into the chair, and Marcus snapped the cape around his neck, and everything was completely normal.
For about fifteen minutes.
Ethan talked the whole time, the way he does. He told Marcus about his soccer team, about how he’d almost scored last week but the goalie was “basically a professional,” about a kid in his class who ate a crayon on a dare. Marcus played along, asked him about school, asked which superhero would win in a fight, all the standard stuff.
Ezoic
I sat in the waiting chair and half-listened while I answered work emails on my phone. Every now and then I looked up. Once because Ethan yelped that Marcus was “cutting off way too much” and once just to smile at how grown-up he looked in that big chair.
Then Marcus started trimming behind Ethan’s left ear.
And the clippers stopped.
I noticed because Ethan stopped talking at the same time. He’d been going a mile a minute, and then, all at once, quiet. That’s what made me look up.Marcus had his fingers on the skin behind Ethan’s ear, moving the hair aside. He was staring at something. Not for a second, not the quick glance you give a mole or a bug bite. He stared for a good while, long enough that it started to feel strange.
Then his eyes came up and found mine in the mirror.
Something in his face had changed. The easy friendliness was gone. He looked, if I had to put a word to it, careful.
