Page 20 of The Mentor
“Hello,” Shelly said and held her head high, which couldn’t be easy for a self-aware teenager with a bad condition of acne and big bushy eyebrows. “I look forward to getting to know you all.” Her eyes fell on Marco, the other assistant, before she quickly looked down.
“Thank you, Shelly,” I said and spread my hands out in a gesture of openness. “This is your new family. We are going to live together, learn together, grow together, and hopefully laugh together a whole lot.
“But the first step is to get to know each other so we’re going to play a little game called boxes. Do you know it?”
The Nboys shook their heads.
“It’s very easy to put people in boxes when we first meet them,” I said. “But sometimes we don’t put them in the right box because people are not just one thing. They are many things.”
“We’re going to build two big boxes, symbolized by squares on the ground,” Archer explained. “Use sticks to form them. Go!”
The two groups of children hurried to do his bidding and soon two large squares had been formed.
“I want all Northlanders to stand in that box.” I pointed and went to place myself in the other square. “And all Motlanders join me over here.
There we were, three women, a teenager, and ten children gazing at four men and ten boys.
“All right,” I said. “But now I want it to be boys and men on that side and girls and women on this side.”
Tommy and Nieall nervously moved closer to each other but didn’t move out of the Motlander square.
“Come on,” Archer called. “We won’t bite, and it’s boys on this side.” When they finally walked to the other box, Marco, Magni, Boulder, and Archer all welcomed them enthusiastically. “This is Nieall and Tommy,” Archer said to the other boys, who made room for them.
“All right, let’s try something different,” I announced. “Let’s split it into grownups over here and kids over there.”
Again, Raven was the first to run ahead and with her she brought laughter and the seven other girls. Shelly stayed with us and shot me an insecure look. “Stay here. To them you’re an adult,” I whispered to her.
The twenty children were cramped in the square, and it was interesting to see how the shy children made sure to stay as far away from the new group of children as possible.
“Okay, now box one is for the people who like to get up early and box two is for those of us who like to sleep in.” This time the children mixed: the younger leaning toward getting up early with Archer and Marco, while Magni, Boulder, and some of the older boys joined us in box one.
From then on we mixed around according to breakfast versus dinner, running versus walking, movies versus books, and we also made boxes for the talkative, the shy, the funny, and then I asked: “Get into box one if you’re excited about getting to know your new family and get into box two if you’re not.”
Everyone walked toward box one except Solomon, who sauntered to box two and stood for a second enjoying being in the spotlight, before he broke into a wide grin and joined us.
“Now that we’ve decided to be a family, we need to learn each other’s names,” I said. “We’re going to learn while we walk back to the school.” I did a quick round of pairing them up and had them stand in a line of two. “Okay, you only have a minute with the person next to you before we switch. There will be a quiz when we get back to the school and whoever can remember most names wins, so pay attention.”
Archer and I walked behind the line of children, who all chatted away as we moved in the direction of the school.
“That went pretty well,” he said and smiled.
“Yes, so far so good.”
“Switch,” I called out and Solomon, who was in the lead with Willow, moved to the back while the other kids in his line moved forward.
“When are you gonna tell them?” Archer nodded ahead to Hunter and Willow, who were now walking side by side, introducing themselves to each other.
At first I didn’t reply. I was too fascinated with the sight of the twins, who were shyly talking and exchanging names with each other.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll tell them tomorrow.”
“Why not today?”
“For the same reason I didn’t want Khan to be here. Children can only handle so much at a time.”
After making sure the children had spent a minute with each of their new classmates, we had them sit by the long table in the dining room, naming each student in a quiz.
There were a few laughs at some of the wrong guesses of names but overall the children had a good memory and Paysey, Rochelle, and Sultan scored a hundred percent correct answers.
