Page 4 of The Friend Game

“WHO ARE YOU?” A little boy sitting at the table nearest the door asks.

“Are you our susta-tute?” The girl sitting next to him asks before pushing up the glasses sliding down her nose.

“Uh, no,” I say slowly. “I think actually there’s been a little mistake here.”

“My mother says it’s okay to make mistakes as long as we learn from them,” another girl announces. “What can you learn from this mistake?” She holds both her hands palms up in the standard question pose.

Okay, these kids are adorable. But I have to stay focused. Maybe I can call Channel 3 later and explain what happened. Surely they’ll understand that I couldn’t just leave twenty 5-year-olds unattended.

“I don’t know if she heard you, Bella,” someone whisper-shouts to the little girl.

I mean, if the producers of Channel Three Action News can’t understand the predicament I’m in, maybe I don’t even want to work for them.

“Do you know how to talk?” A redhead boy shouts across the room, and a bunch of kids giggle.

Oh right. Talk first; think later.

“I do know how to talk!” I announce with the dramatic emphasis of someone who’s just announced their candidacy for President. A couple kids look startled. “What I mean is,” I say at a more normal volume, “I am going to be your substitute teacher for just a little bit of time this morning, while I get this little misunderstanding sorted out. How does that sound?”

The kids all just stare at me.

“Right.” I step further into the room and take a look around. The kids are all sitting at square black tables on metal stools with different colored tennis balls on the bottom. Along one wall are colorful letters spelling the word CREATE and an oversized color chart poster. The wall to my left has a huge bulletin board on it that says, “Welcome to Mrs. Williams’ Art Class!”

This is an art class? A familiar frisson of excitement runs through me. I try to tell it to go away. I can’t be excited about a new job, a job that I don’t even have the licensure for, when I haven’teven started the job I just decided was the one for me a couple of days ago.

I’m going to be a make-up artist at Channel 3 News, I remind myself. It’s a great use of an art degree. At least according to my Google search. And who doesn’t want to work on a television set? I’ll just get these kids started on an art project, then call down to the office and explain the situation.

“What were you guys working on with Mrs. Williams?” I ask them.

“We were going to start our self-portraits,” the little girl who informed me I need to learn from my mistakes supplies helpfully.

“Self-portraits!” My voice goes to crazy excited mode again, and one kid slips off his stool a little in surprise. I don’t even care, because I used to love doing self-portraits when I was a kid! There are just so many things you can do with them. Lego people portraits, mixed media portraits, self-portraits that use words too, although that might be hard with kids this young. “Did Mrs. Williams say how she wanted you to do them?” I ask before my brain gets too carried away.

“She gave us paper and pencils,” learn-from-your-mistakes girl once again supplies the information I need.

“Paper and pencil!” I exclaim in disappointment. No offense to Mrs. Williams, but talk about blah. “No, no, that just won’t do.” Andnow I sound like Cinderella’s fairy godmother. “I mean, I think we’re going to change things up a bit,” I amend.

I step towards the dry erase board at the front of the room and select a marker.

“Anybody here play with Legos?” I ask, and the room fills with a round of “yeses” and “I do’s” and “I built a million piece Lego set with my dad yesterday!”

“So nobody?” I say with a grin, and the kids all giggle. “We’re going to make Lego self-portraits,” I tell them. “That means you’re going to draw yourself as a Lego person. Now I’m going to help you with the basic drawing of the shape, but then you guys get to take over. You can design the outfit, the hair, the background of the page. Just so long as your Lego person reflects you. Got it?”

The kids all nod and hurry to pick up their pencils and follow along as I lead them through the steps to drawing a Lego person.

Over the next few minutes I get lost in the hypnotic art of drawing, walking around the room to help anyone struggling and laughing along with the kids about how hard it would be to have claw hands like the Lego people.

“Not to mention how Lego people can’t bend their arms,” I pipe up after one little boy says he would never want claw hands since then hewouldn’t be able to play baseball very well. “And if you can’t bend your arms the only real sports option would be dancing, right?”

“Dancing? Why dancing?” Learn-from-your-mistakes girl, whose name I’ve now learned is Bella, asks with a giggle.

“Well, because, at least you could still do a pretty good robot.” I hold my arms out in front of me, palms vertical, and start moving them stiffly in front of me, rotating from side to side so all the kids can see me. The kids erupt in peals of laughter. “You guys try it too,” I say through my own laughter and soon everybody is up on their feet doing the straight armed robot. We turn in circles and bend our hips doing a robot dip. Someone starts singing Baby Shark, except they change it to Baby Robot, and we all join in.

It’s as I’m doing my own interpretation of grandma robot (a.k.a. a rather glitchy robot who sings “g-g-grandma r-r-robot” and has extra jerky arm movements) that I spot the man standing in the doorway quietly observing all of us. I scream and immediately drop my arms to my side.

The man’s cerulean eyes widen in surprise, and he holds his hand up in surrender as all eyes in the room go to him. My initial shock fades, pushed out by embarrassment as the kids all start speaking over each other in excited voices. Then like a mob of Black Friday shoppers who just spotted the lasthot ticket item, they pounce, hurtling their tiny bodies at him with a velocity that I’d find alarming if I were in his shoes. But he just braces himself then lets it happen, laughing as they plow into him. And miraculously he doesn’t fall down. Only stumbles a little. Goodness he’s solidly built. Like a truck. A really hot truck.

Honestly, if I were a different kind of woman, I’d pounce on him too.

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