Page 1 of Hot Four Teacher (The Lawson’s #4)

Chapter one

Knitting, Pickles, and Weed

Michelle

“ D o you think I could kill someone with a knitting needle?” I ask, holding up one of the small metal sticks.

“What?” My daughter, Eve, questions from the kitchen.

“Knitting needles. Do you think they’d be a good murder weapon?”

My fifteen-year-old comes walking in while sipping a bottle of water. “Eh, I don’t know. I mean, could you kill someone? Sure. But I feel like you’d have to wipe off fingerprints super well to get away with it.”

“Hm. Probably. What would be your weapon of choice?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Icicle.”

“Why?”

“Because all the evidence would just melt away.”

“Smart.” I pause for a moment. “Should I really be encouraging this?”

“Eh. I’m sure this isn’t the worst thing we’ve ever discussed.”

She has a point. Getting pregnant at seventeen has given Eve and me a very interesting relationship. Half the time, we are the closest best friends you can imagine. The other half of the time, we bicker like sisters. There’s not a ton of middle ground.

She stares at the giant pile of yarn on the couch next to me warily and decides to go sit in the chair instead.

The narrator of the true crime documentary I’m watching says, “The police found that the killer stopped for a snack and left grease-laden fingerprints on the doorknob.”

At the same time, Eve and I both mutter, “Idiot.”

We get caught up in the show for a few minutes before Eve says, “Mom, what are you making?”

“I'm knitting a granny square.”

“What’s the purpose of a granny square?”

“Well, you make a lot of them. And then, you knit them all together to make a quilt.”

“Are you doing any designs on your granny squares? I saw a lady on TikTok who knitted all different cartoon characters onto them. ”

Show off.

“I decided to do just solid plain ones. I like that aesthetic better,” I tell her even though it’s a total lie. I tried doing designs to start with, but I couldn’t figure it out. In fact, I’m having trouble doing almost everything involving knitting. I can’t even keep the yarn from knotting up.

Eve says, “Okay, Mom, I’ve been silent long enough.”

“What? Eve, you’re literally never silent.”

That earns me an eye roll. “Look, while I’m all for you trying new hobbies, it’s getting out of hand.”

“How so?”

“Okay, let’s see. You started with watching the true crime stuff.”

“You watch it with me,” I interject.

“True. But you watch so much that it has infiltrated your dreams.” She doesn’t give me a chance to argue before adding, “Then, you tried gardening. You bought those questionable seeds from that guy who hangs out by the park.”

“They were cheap,” I say. “I was trying to grow us an herb garden.”

“Oh, you did. You grew weed.”

“Look, in hindsight, that wasn’t my proudest moment, but maybe I could’ve turned into that mom from Weeds if you would’ve let me keep it.”

“Mom, there is no way you could ever be that cool. You would have done something dumb like tried to sell to a cop.”

“Ouch,” I mumble, but I know she has a point.

“Then, you tried Zumba and threw out your back. And don’t even get me started on your jewelry making. We are still finding beads everywhere that beads don’t belong.”

“Eve, get to the point.”

“You’re going to end up hurting yourself…or just plain going crazy…if you keep doing all of this.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” I protest.

“Mom, you tried pickling.”

“So?”

“You hate pickles and refuse to eat them!”

“But you like pickles.”

She sighs. “Mom, I hate to tell you this, but those things you made in no way resembled pickles. Why are you doing all of this? Why the sudden interest in trying new things?”

“I’m just trying to branch out,” I tell her.

“Why don’t you just go back to playing video games? That’s your favorite thing in the world to do.”

She knows me so well. My perfect day is sitting around, watching TV, and playing a cozy farming game on my Nintendo Switch. But I’m rapidly approaching thirty-five, and I figured maybe it was time to get some more adult hobbies. Unfortunately for me, it’s not going very well.

But I’m nothing if not determined.

Deciding that I’ve had enough of this subject, I opt to change it.

“Are you excited to go camping with Jill this weekend?” I ask.

“Yeah, it should be interesting.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Jill and Chaz are fighting.”

Looking up from my knitting, I ask, “That’s Jill’s boyfriend, right?”

She nods before regaling me a tale of a tragic love story between two teenagers who argue over jealousy and then analyze cryptic social media posts. While I listen, I thank the lord that I’m not still in high school.

I also thank that same lord that Eve hasn’t fully entered the dating world yet. She’s had crushes but nothing serious…and nothing that ever turned into a real relationship. I don’t know if I’m ready to hear her talk about her own dating life just yet.

She finally finishes by saying, “I hope we have no cell service this weekend, so she won’t be texting him the whole time.”

“I’m sure once you guys get out on the lake, she’ll be too preoccupied to think about him.”

“Man, I hope so. Otherwise, it’s going to be a very long weekend.” She pauses for a moment. “So, what kind of hobbies are you going to get into while I’m gone? Taxidermy?”

“Maybe,” I joke. “Let’s see if your hamster gets stuffed by the time you get back.”