Chapter Three
The day Myka's glasses were ready to be picked up she snuck out of the house alone. Pete had teasingly resurrected all the glasses taunting she had endured as a child and Claudia had composed a little song to go with them. This had not been helped in the slightest by Artie's apparent amusement in seeing Myka so uncharacteristically ruffled, nor by Helena's contribution of Victorian spectacle insults. All in all, Myka felt that her optometrist, who already thought his new patient exceedingly odd, would not benefit from an off pitch rendition of 'Victorian ladies don't make passes at Warehouse agents who wear glasses'.
She knew it was all in jest and, quite frankly, nothing more than she deserved after the many (many) jokes she had made at Pete's expense when he had managed to burn off his eyebrows with John Walker's matches last month. All the same she had enjoyed the quiet drive and relished the taste of the last Twizzler (Helena had taken an unfortunate liking to them and had discovered her secret stash al too quickly) as she hopped out of the car.
Choosing her new frames had been an arduous affair with both Pete and Claudia vying for her attention, offering suggestion after suggestion – none of which had been entirely to her taste. The committee had finally conceded to her choice, however: a pair not unlike her existing ones in shape, but much thinner in frame. Which, according to her consultants, had made all the difference regarding her supposed overt geekiness.
Dr. Williams, quietly relieved to see his patient without her raucously well intentioned companions, handed over her new spectacles. "Your contacts aren't quite ready I'm afraid, you shall have to make do with these."
Myka assured him that it would be fine and slipped her new glasses over her eyes.
If there was anything Myka truly hated it was acknowledging that she was wrong (especially when doing do made Pete right), but even she had to admit that the world was fresher than it had been moments before. The leaves on the trees had a new definition that hadn't existed that morning. She could see individual children playing in the park at the end of the block. And, upon returning to her car, she was suddenly all too aware of the number of cookie crumbs that now coated her passenger seat, something that Pete would most certainly be remedying that afternoon. It seemed, she admitted with a sigh, that the new glasses had indeed been in order.
Still, she thought, her brain finding that silver lining, this did mean a renewed eye for detail... and there had been some details at home that had gone unstudied for too long.
Myka's happy (and almost dangerously distracting) thoughts accompanied her all the way home and it was with a new spring in her step that she bounded up the walk and onto the porch of Leena's. Throwing the door open with gusto, she practically skipped over the threshold. "Guys, I'm back!"
Myka frowned at the lack of response and so followed the faint strains of music into the parlour where Helena was sitting curled up on the lounge, completely lost in the world of whichever novel she had commandeered for the day. Sneaking up behind her, Myka reached her arms around her shoulders to rest on her collarbone, leaning in to leave a kiss on her hair.
Before she could do so, however, Helena had lept from her chair, pulling Myka from her feet and flipping her over to land squarely on Leena's now completely smashed coffee table.
Confused, and more than a little sore, Myka looked up to see what game Helena was playing now – only to find herself staring at the scary end of the woman's fully charged Tesla...