My eyes finally heavy, I close the book and lower it to the carpet.
Brie and I have found plenty of books marked up in the past, but I’ve never seen handwriting like this at the bottom of the pages, as if the words were part of the original story.
Who marked up this valuable edition, almost a hundred years old? An aspiring author, perhaps? Or had someone tried to leave a message hidden in the pages?
My skin tingles at the thought.
Charlotte’s ability to read German has faded in her twilight years, but it’s not gone. Tomorrow, after my appearance as Story Girl, I’ll ask her to help me translate these lines. Perhaps there’s a simple explanation for the additions.
My hand slips down to find Inkspot’s fur, but it lands on theBambibook instead. And I fall asleep right there, dreaming of old books and balloons and cats who like to fly.
CHAPTER 3
“‘This is George.’” I hold up the picture book so every child seated on the carpet can see. “‘He was a good little monkey, and always very curious.’”
I slowly turn the page as I tell the story of the monkey and the mysterious man with the yellow hat, on their way to camp in the wilderness. The man warns George not to wander off, but when he turns around, it’s too late. George is already gone.
My audience scoots closer, several dozen children anxiously waiting to hear what happens to the monkey they love. And I, in my red cape and silly socks, unfold the story for them.
In this day of unlimited screen time, countless games and movies, I’ve often wondered if this next generation of kids will be the one to turn their back on books. So far I’ve seen no evidence of a rebellion. They come in droves to the store and—usually—listenwithout interruption. Perhaps it’s a testament to their parents’ love of the written word.
After I finish George’s adventure, one of the younger boys in the front row raises his hand, whipping it around like a flag caught in a storm.
“Yes, Michael?”
“I’m wearing new underpants,” he announces confidently, as if everyone will be just as excited as he is by this news. “Spider-Man.”
I quickly reach for the crate where I store my reading books. “Very good.”
He stands, turning to the children behind him. “Do you want to see them?”
Thankfully his mother rushes forward before I have to intervene. “No one wants to see your underwear,” she says in one of those mortified mom whispers meant for a crowd.
I march my fingers quickly across the book spines in the crate and pick up one that I hope will redirect, ASAP. We have ten minutes left, plenty of time for Dr. Seuss. “Anyone ever hear about the fox who wears socks?” I lift one of my legs for a visual of my striped pair.
A few of them raise their hands.
I open the book and repeat by memory. “‘Fox. Socks. Box. Knox. Knox in box. Fox in socks.’”
The front door chimes, and I’m hoping it’s Charlotte so I can ask her to help me translate the lines in theBambibook. But when I glance up, I choke down a groan. Kathleen Faulkner and her six-year-old son, Jack, walk into the store.
Focus—back to the blue-socked fox in my hands, my words slurring a bit as I continue with the story.
Kathleen seems like a perfectly nice woman, and her son isadorable—but I am a victim of the smallish-town curse where every resident’s path seems to intersect everyone else’s at one point or another. And I can’t very well turn away the wife and stepson of my ex-fiancé from a reading of Dr. Seuss. I’m only grateful that not once in the past two years, to my knowledge, has Scott Faulkner stepped through the front door.
Jack squeezes into a space beside my feet, Kathleen joining the lineup of adults curled around the outskirts.
“‘Let’s do chicks with bricks and clocks, sir. Let’s do tricks with bricks and blocks, sir.’”
“You messed it up,” Owen, my nephew, shouts. Then he grins as if he’s done my audience a great service by correcting me.
Unfortunately, the tongue-twisting in this book only gets worse from here, and I’ve lost my momentum.
I start to read the next page about stacking the chicks and bricks and blocks, but it’s a disaster. Perhaps I should ask if Michael has anything else he’d like to share.
“I hate to interrupt,” my lovely sister says from behind the parental wall, “but I have it on good authority that chocolate-chip cookies taste best when they’re warm, and I’ve just taken a batch out of the oven.”
With those words, the fox and his socks are forgotten as my audience surges around the castle steps, up to the counter with the cookies and hot chocolate that Brie has waiting for them every Saturday. Next week, I’ll take a mulligan on the book about the quirky fox.
