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The teacher goes around the room, passing out stacks of cardboard, crayons, markers. I watch as Elle settles at another table and starts passing out the things to the kids.
Okay.
Okay, I should be doing that, too, right?
I lean over the little girl’s head as she plunks down next to me and pick up the stack of colored paper. “Here you go,” I say, passing her a sheet.
“No!” she exclaims in a squeal. “That one’s green! I always get the purple one!”
“... purple. Right. Purple.” I really don’t want to set off the tears, so I quickly take the green sheet back and fish out a purple one before handing it to her.
And so it goes, down the entire table, giving them each the color they want.
“Don’t start writing or drawing yet,” the teacher says as little hands scramble greedily for markers and crayons. She claps her hands together. “We’re going to fold them first. Remember when we made Valentine’s cards? Do what Miss Joly, Miss Lark, and Mr. Marshall show you.”
Shit, I’m supposed to be teaching them?
I glance desperately at Elle again for help.
She catches my eye with a sweet little smile and pointedly creases her sheet of bright-blue paper in half along the long side, folding it into a card shape.
Right.
“Like this,” I say. Why am I so anxious? I have my own sheet in green—the sheet the little girl rejected—and I set it down and smooth it against the table.
The children mimic me solemnly, very seriously focusing on creasing their pages in half. The little girl’s so intent on it she practically has her nose on the page, but she’s making a mess.
“Careful,” I say, gently nudging her hand. “You’re bending the corners.”
“Oh no!” she gasps, then pouts up at me. “Will you show me again?”
“Of course, Miss—what’s your name?”
“Sara!” she says happily.
“All right, Miss Sara. Watch me.”
I fold her paper for her carefully, showing her with slow movements until it makes a perfect crease. She claps her hands together with that ear-splitting squeal again.
“It’s so good!”
“You can be that good with practice,” I say, right before the teacher’s voice rises again.
“All right, everyone, we’re writing to our pen pals today,” she says. “Pair up with the people next to you and start writing letters. Say nice things. When you’re finished, you can decorate your letters and give them to each other.”
Sara bares her teeth up at me in a wickedly joyous smile.
Goddamn, children are terrifying.
“You’re my pen pal, mister!”
“I guess that makes you mine. Do you know how to write a letter, Sara?” I look down the rest of the table. “Do all of you know how to write letters?”
I have no idea what their answers are.
It’s all just a blur of noise from the few who are listening.
“Slow down,” I say desperately. “Okay—okay, let’s just listen, okay? You should start the letter with ‘Dear’ and then the name of the recipient. So I’m going to write ‘Dear Sara,’ and then I’m going to write what I want to say to her. At the end, I’ll sign it. ‘Yours, August.’ That’s how you write a letter to your friends.”
