Page 3 of Jaime
“Put your hands together to welcome Mr. McIntosh!”
At the sound of the light applause, my smile grew. Toddlers didn’t usually grasp the applause system, which meant the parents had to clap louder. It was sweet but unnecessary. I’d told Naomi to stop making people clap. When I read at the library, Mikaela, the assistant there, always did it too.
Oh well. I appreciated the gesture and stepped into the bookstore, still smiling.
My steps faltered a little when I saw how many people filled the space. The shop was packed this time. Children crowded the floor at the front, all the way up to the seat I was supposed to sit on. Every audience chair was full, with either a parent on their own or holding a young child. A couple of them had quiet babies strapped to their chests. Behind them, more people were standing, filing between the shelves.
“Wow,” I said, coming to my spot in front of the display stand, feeling the heat of so many bodies. “I feel like I need a microphone.”
A couple of people laughed.
I took a moment to look at them all. So many smiling faces.
Warmth bloomed in my chest.
Arty, my producer, had said that our numbers were way up lately. It seemed that he was right.
“Thank you all so much for coming,” I said. “I appreciate you choosing to spend your afternoon with me.”
I looked down at the kids as I took my seat.
“Are you excited to hear a new story?” I asked.
A couple of them started talking at once. With a trained ear, I was able to answer them both despite them talking over each other.
I told the first child I was delighted to meet him in person after his proclamation that he watched me on TV. For the second child’s question about what story we would be reading, I picked up the book and showed it to the audience.
“Today, I’m going to be reading you my newest book, Rowdy the Frog. It’s about a frog who gets... can you guess?”
A couple of the kids started to stand, jumping up and down to get my attention.
“Rowdy!” one of them shouted.
I laughed.
“That’s right. Have you ever felt rowdy? That means noisy and all over the place. A little wild. Yes, like that,” I said as the kids started to act it out.
“Now, let’s all have a seat and find out what happens to Rowdy.”
To my surprise, the kids all sat down at once, eager to hear my story. I opened it up to the first page and the illustration there, smiling at the wide-eyed faces. They were all so damn cute.
As I started to read, the room fell silent, everybody hanging on my every word. I paused whenever I could to ask the children questions, making sure they could all understand, but they were quick to get back into it whenever I started to read again.
Around the room, the parents listened aptly. They always did to make sure that it was the right kind of story for their little ones. They were really the people I was selling to after all. But that wasn’t what was important to me. What mattered the most were the kids. My eyes flicked across the room again, making sure that no one was being left out. Sometimes the kids in the back felt excluded. But it wasn’t a child that caught my eye.
For a moment my gaze landed on a young man at the back of the room, and my words faltered. I didn’t know how I hadn't seen him there. He stood out like a sore thumb: a black cloud in the middle of all the happy people. Dark brown hair and eyes, a leather jacket, and a frown complemented the gloomy persona.
What the heck is someone like that doing here?I wondered.
I tore my gaze away, seamlessly moving back to the words in the story, but something kept drawing my eyes back to him.
The way he was looking at me, his eyes boring straight through me, made it hard to speak each time our gazes met. But there was something else, and, as I reached the last pages of the book, I realized with a sudden sinking feeling what it was—a baby. It wasn’t in a stroller or carrier of any kind. It was just held in the fold of his jacket. I could only tell it was there by the way he was holding his arm around the bundle. He was clearly being careful. A familiar feeling of loss washed over me.
Anyone looking so depressed while holding an infant was cause for concern in my books. That wasn’t my area of expertise though. I was here for the older children. The ones who could follow along and play games, and I definitely wasn’t here for their parents…
Yet, no matter how much I told myself that, my eyes kept going to his somber form.
I finished the story and began asking the kids simple comprehension questions as well as some fun ones, like how they would jump if they were Rowdy. The whole room devolved into frog jumps and laughter.
