Clarice giggled and it was easy enough to look shy and overwhelmed and uncomfortable but pleased. Veronica took her own lunch back to her office and closed the door. Clarice threw out the rest of the ramen and covered it with a paper towel so the waste wasn’t obvious; what she’d already eaten sat uncomfortably at the bottom of her stomach.
22
BRUNO
Logan and Vivian were both waiting in the hallway to collect their own kids as Bruno hurried up to the classroom door. There was no time for more than a polite nod before the bell rang and there was a surge of shrieks and yells and a sea of tiny people hit the halls, poorly contained by the few harried parents and even more harried teachers. “No running!” “I forgot my lunchbag!” “BYE!” “Remember your homework!” “MOMMY I ATE A BUG!” “ME TOO!”
Fortunately, the bugs turned out to be cookies decorated like ladybugs for one of the kids’ birthdays. Bruno shared a relieved laugh with the other parents, then said, “Train to Tiny Paws, heading out of the station!” to get Gil to follow him down the crowded hallway instead of getting distracted by a hundred shiny diversions.
“I’M AN AIRPLANE!”
Bruno got him herded to their car and had to wait while other parents chased their offspring across the lot behind his car.
He ended up following Vivian’s van down the street,and he frowned as he thought again about how much extra work it was to ferry three kids from one place to another in three separate vehicles in the middle of a work day. He liked half-day kindergarten and was glad that Gil was getting to transition to a human-heavy elementary school instead of transferring all at once, but it was a definite disruption to his working rhythm. He’d gotten spoiled, leaving Gil at Tiny Paws all day. He glanced into the mirror. Gil was drawing in the frost on the window. “I’m going to be A BASKETBALL.”
“A basketballplayer?” Bruno quizzed him. Neither he nor Gil inclined towards tall or athletic. If he had to guess a sport, he’d have chosen soccer or softball.
“NO,” Gil corrected him. “A BASKETBALL. Other kids can throw me around, but I’D MAKE THE SCORE.”
Bruno snort-laughed. “Well, I guess you would. Except…”
Gil sighed. “I can’t be a ball at school. School is for HAVING a ball. Not BEING a ball. Tara says a ball is a party where people dance in big dresses. Can I have a big dress?”
Bruno wasn’t sure how serious the request was. “Big dresses are expensive. How about a little dress?”
“I GUESS.”
Gil had forgotten about dresses and basketball by the time they got to Tiny Paws and was back on a favorite subject: dinosaurs. “Why aren’t there any DINOSAUR shifters?” he wanted to know. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I bet there are, they just have to live in special houses with HUNDRED foot roofs.”
“We’re going outside now,” Bruno reminded him. “Ixnay on the iftershays!”
Gil had taken to pig latin like he had to swimming; hewas enthusiastic, but Bruno was pretty sure he would drown without the floaties. “Iyay antway offway onutday inyay morfday.”
Bruno couldn’t pick a sentence out of the soup. “We gotta go inside so I can get back to work, pup.”
“Iyay amyay otnay ayay uppay. ENNIFERJAY ISYAY AYAY UPPYPAY.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Gil drug his feet going down the sidewalk, stepping with unnecessary caution around clumps of snow until he found one that was just right and went in to the tops of his boots.
“Gil!”
“I wanted to see if it was DEEP!”
“It was, now get inside!”
Vivian was just coming out the door as he went in, and they exchanged busy nods.
“Boots off, Gil.” Bruno commanded. “No, don’t leave them in the middle of the way! And, you’re gone.”
Gil was already over the gate into the playroom, loudly declaring, “I ATE BUGS. FOUR OF THEM!”
Bruno handed his lunch bag over the gate to Alan.
“How was the date?” Alan asked.
“Does everyone know?” Bruno groaned.
