Page 45 of The Friend Game

And now I’m all done with my penguin and orca analogy.

“Okay then,” I tell the kids, “let’s do this thing.”

It’s probably just because their enthusiasm is catching, but as I open the door and approach the wheel my heart rate kicks up and my fingertips start to tingle.

“First things first,” I tell the kids as they file into the tiny room after me, “we need to pick some music.”

They all start cheering, and I hear choruses ofTaylor swiftandMiley Cyrus.Weird how the music choices haven’t changed all that much since I was a teenager. I ignore them all and select my Adele album, because I’m on edge and her voice transports me to another world where I too can belt out my emotions and find reprieve.

I have all of the kids put on aprons, then slip my own apron over my head. Next I walk them through the process of readying the clay for the wheel. Wedging it to make it smoother, then weighing it to ensure we’re using the right amount for our wheel. I give them each a ball of clay to play around with as I demonstrate all of this.

“Now can you show us how to use the wheel?” Ellie asks as I take my ball of clay off the wheel.

Right. No more delays. It’s go time. And I am totally in control of my emotions. Sure, my ex told me I didn’t have what it takes to be a professionalpotter and that my work had only ever gotten noticed because of him, but these kids don’t know that. They’ll be impressed just by the clay spinning around on the wheel.

Inhaling deeply through my nose, I sink onto the stool, adjusting my posture so that my knees are level with the wheel. I squeeze some water onto the wheel then drop my clay in the middle.

“Getting the wheel just a little bit wet is important so that the clay will stick to it,” I tell the kids as the ball of my foot finds the pedal and presses gently down.

And then to my utter shame, I forget all about the kids in the room as the clay starts moving between my fingers and a year of built up tension slides out of my body.

I’m home.

I start humming along to Adele as I shape the clay, completely lost in my own world. To help center the clay more completely I start by squeezing it up, a process called coning. The clay rises between my fingers, forming a tall dome-like structure. I’m about to lift one hand to press the tower down, when my Adele record cuts off abruptly, startling me from pottery haze. My foot slips off the pedal the sudden stop making the clay jolt in place, the top leaning slightly to the side.

I look over to see Lexie Stone standing by my record player with a disapproving glare on her face. Worse, standing on her other side is Luke. Who’swearing an inscrutable expression that I’d have to be a mind reader to figure out.

Gosh, I wish Icouldread minds. Or at least his anyway.

“What is going on in here?” Lexie demands. “Are you teaching the children to make phallic art?”

Phallic art?I turn back to my pottery. What is she talking—oh. Oh yes, I see what she means. The coning process followed by the abrupt stop of the wheel has in fact given the lump of a clay a distinctly, uh, phallic shape.

Oh my.

That’s not ideal.

Although, c’mon. Does she really think I’m showing the kids how to make clay penises? “Of course not,” I say, determined not to let Lexie get the best of me. I’ve done nothing wrong here. “I was doing a pottery wheel demonstration for them, and molding the clay into a cone-like shape is part of the process. It centers it and gets rid of any particles in the clay that could create bubbles.”

“If making pottery requires you to turn clay into such obscenely phallic shapes then perhaps our students shouldn’t be doing it.”

“It’s only a temporary shape,” I tell her. “I was just about to show them how to smush it back down into a nice round hump.” She winces at the wordhumpas if I’m speaking in innuendos. MaybeI could’ve used a different term, but really— she’s the one throwing around the word phallic.

“Temporary or not, I don’t like it,” Lexie sniffs. “Mia,” she addresses her daughter, who is sporting a look of mortification, “we have to go now. We’ll have a discussion later about whether or not you’ll be coming back to art club.”

“Mrs. Stone,” Luke speaks for the first time, “don’t you think you might be making a little bit of a mountain out of a molehill here?”

Oh gosh. It’s so sweet he’s sticking up for me. Which is why I absolutely cannot laugh. My lip twitches. Don’t do it, Hannah. Do not laugh at him trying to make your phallic pottery situation better by talking about a molehill being enlarged into a mountain. Do not laugh.

Luke’s eyes find mine, and I have to start coughing to cover my giggles. What am I twelve laughing at my earth science teacher saying Uranus? Although to be fair, usually the earth science teacher wouldn’t be laughing in that situation whereas… Luke is very clearly also trying not to laugh. He must’ve realized his word choice wasn’t the best given the, uh, obscene pottery.

Speaking of which–surreptitiously I attempt to smush the clay down. Lexie is busy sputtering at Luke about how she never overreacts to anything, so I’m able to do it without her noticing. At least until Agatha pipes up.

“Is Mrs. Stone upset because the clay looks like the poop emoji?” she asks, gesturing to my new creation. Which does in fact have the same shape as the poop emoji.

Eh, that’s better than a penis.

Which is why I quickly say, “Yup, that’s why she’s upset, but I’m just going to–” I press the clay even further in on itself and, thank goodness, now it just looks like a lump. “There we go,” I brush one hand against the other, “all fixed. No more poop emoji. Problem solved.”

---