Page 27 of How To Not Need You

Three seconds later, my phone explodes once again.

Seventeen exclamation marks. A dancing kitten sticker. A string of emojis that includes what appears to be every celebratory symbol available in the standard keyboard.

I set the phone down. Close my laptop. Pull the quilt back over my legs.

And I smile.

It’s a small smile. The kind that happens when no one’s watching and you’ve just been thoroughly, completely out manoeuvred by someone who hasn’t even lost all their baby teeth.

And somewhere between conscious thought and sleep, I realise that I’m looking forward to it.

Which is, frankly, the most concerning development of all.

Seabrook Primary looks exactly how a primary school should look, which is to say: aggressively cheerful and slightly falling apart.

Low-slung brick buildings. A corrugated iron roof someone painted sunshine yellow about fifteen years ago and has been patching ever since. A hand-painted mural of the coastline stretches across the foyer wall with enough enthusiasm to make professional artists wince and children point proudly.

I stand in the car park with my tote bag and my printed artwork and the distinct sensation that I have made a catastrophic error in judgment.

Inside, the gym has been converted into something between an art studio and a controlled riot. Long tables draped in butcher paper, already bearing the first tentative scribbles of early arrivals. Plastic cups of water that have turned cloudy grey after a few brush rinses. Stacks of colouring books with dog-eared corners. Tubs of acrylic paint in primary colours lined up along the centre of each table. Small aprons hanging off the backs of chairs, most of them sized for humans one-third my height.

I find the volunteer sign-in table. Behind it sits a woman in her mid-forties with a laminated name badge clipped to a lanyard patterned with cartoon owls.

“Name?” she asks, pen poised above a clipboard.

“Liv Carter.”

She scans the list. Stops. Looks up. “Oh! You’re Tilly’s friend!”

I open my mouth to correct her, we’ve met twice, I am not, by any reasonable definition, Tilly’s friend, but the woman is already checking me off with a flourish.

“She’s been talking about you all week. Apparently you’re an artist?” Her smile is genuine. Warm. The kind that makes it impossible to be the person who says actually, I was emotionally manipulated by a five-year-old, and I’m still not entirely sure how it happened.

I hold up my portfolio. “Yeah, I brought some prints for the fundraiser.”

“Perfect! They’ll be auctioned alongside the student work. Table three is where we’re setting up the display. Tilly’s already there, she’s been saving you a seat since drop-off.”

Of course she has.

I’m about to ask for clarification, saving me a seat implies I’m staying, which implies I’m volunteering, which was absolutely not the arrangement, when something small and determined hits me somewhere around the hip with the force of a golden retriever puppy.

“LIV!”

Tilly’s arms wrap around my legs with the kind of full-body commitment usually reserved for reunion scenes in disaster movies. Her golden curls are a mess. Her front tooth is still conspicuously absent. She’s wearing what appears to be a paint-splattered t-shirt over her uniform skirt and one mismatched sock.

Any residual resentment I had about being guilt-tripped by a five-year-old evaporates on contact.

She lets go only to grab my hand. “You came! You came! I knew you would come!”

“Apparently everyone knew except me,” I mutter, but she’s already towing me across the gym floor, narrating at a speed that makes me mildly concerned about her oxygen intake.

“That’s Tyler’s painting, he did a dinosaur but it looks like a blob, I told him it was good anyway because Miss Okafor says we have to be nice. Purple is the best colour, obviously, because it’s like a king colour and also it’s my favourite and also it’s the colour of grapes which are also my favourite except when they’re green then they’re not as good. I saved you the seat right next to me, see? It has your name on it!”

She points to a folded piece of construction paper taped to the back of a child-sized chair. In wobbly capital letters, it reads: LIV.

Not “Ms. Carter.” Not even “Liv’s chair.” Just LIV, as though my entire identity has been condensed into three letters and declared property of the art table.

I sit. The chair is only about knee-height. My legs do not fit underneath the table.