Chapter 14 — Wanda and the Deflection-Move

Wanda, with her warm-brown-and-cream fur, was never one to linger when there was work to be done. Especially not her work. Her quick eyes darted around the art room, scanning for an exit, or perhaps, a distraction. Paint splatters still clung to the floor, and a pile of brushes lay soaking in a bucket, forgotten.

Liam, who always seemed to be the one left with the scrubbing, sighed. “Wanda,” he said, holding up a brush dripping with blue paint, “these are supposed to be cleaned right after we use them.” He paused. “You left a whole bucket of them.”

Wanda’s head snapped up, her whiskers twitching. She was a small creature, even for a weasel, but she filled the space with a sudden, indignant energy. “Oh, I left them?” she practically squeaked. “What about Chloe? She left her clay tools out last week, and they dried solid! Nobody said anything to her.”

Chloe, who was carefully wiping down a pottery wheel, paused. She looked from Liam to Wanda, then back to the still-dirty brushes. The clay tools had indeed been left out, and she’d felt bad about it. She’d cleaned them eventually, but Wanda wasn’t wrong about the past event. Still, it didn’t change the fact that the brushes were sitting there now.

Liam frowned. “That was last week, Wanda. And Chloe cleaned them up. We’re talking about these brushes, right now.” He gestured to the overflowing bucket. “They’re going to get ruined if they sit much longer.”

Wanda bristled. “Ruined? Don’t be so dramatic! And anyway, you didn’t even put the caps back on the paint tubes, Liam.” Her voice rose. “I saw them. They’ll dry out, and then what?” She gestured wildly towards a shelf, her quick eyes already finding new targets.

The paint tubes, it was true, had a few caps askew. Liam had been in a hurry. But the brushes were still in the bucket, their bristles stiffening by the second. The original problem, the one about the brushes, seemed to vanish into thin air. It was replaced by a flurry of other people’s past mistakes. Wanda had a particular way of doing this, a signature move. When criticized, she would respond with, “What about [other person who does similar bad thing]?” The criticism would be deflected, never truly addressed. The other person’s behavior, no matter how true, was irrelevant to whether Wanda’s original action was wrong. This pattern, where a criticism is met by pointing out someone else’s similar misbehavior, is sometimes called whataboutism.

It was a pattern, clear as the muddy water in the brush bucket. A criticism would arrive, aimed squarely at Wanda. Her response? An instant attack on the critic, or a swift pointing of a paw at someone else who had done something similar. The original criticism, the one that started it all, would just drift away, ignored.

Liam sighed again, a longer, heavier sound this time. He knew it was pointless to argue. He picked up the bucket of brushes himself. Chloe offered a sympathetic glance.

Wanda, meanwhile, had already moved on. She was now inspecting a shelf of half-finished projects. “Honestly,” she muttered, loud enough for them to hear, “some people just don’t know how to clean up after themselves.” Her quick eyes met Liam’s for a split second, then darted away. The brushes, however, remained Wanda’s responsibility, even as Liam carried them to the sink.

This was Wanda’s Deflection-Move. It was her way of avoiding accountability. She wasn’t a bad character, not really. But her habit of turning every criticism into a game of “not me, them” meant problems rarely got solved. Not when she was involved. It was a common trick, this shifting of blame. It kept the original issue hanging in the air, like a forgotten question.

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