Chapter 10
Spaghetti dinner with Doc and the little one the night before went as well as could be expected. Kinley didn’t hate it. She actually enjoyed it, albeit reluctantly. JT was a cute kid, and his dad even cuter with him. This wasn’t what she signed up for, though — definitely more than a fling with a kid involved — but it wasn’t awful and there was something sweet about Jace being a dad.
She wasn’t sold on other kids, though, especially today while helping her friend, Hannah Owens, teach her Pintsized Picassos class to three to six-year-olds at her shop. The Kid Kabin, Pine Valley’s one-stop, all-things-kid store where Hannah was manager and resident artist, hosted several art related classes a week. Today was all things paint, glitter, and glue and anything else you could toss at a canvas. First an ice cream gelato truck with annoying music and a mean old man, now snot-nosed kids and all things sticky and messy. Kinley was noticing a pattern. Kids just weren’t her thing.
“Thanks for helping out, Kinley. You’re a lifesaver! This is a two-man job and Becky getting sick made this a survival of the fittest kind of gig until you got here,” Hannah joked, relieved her friend was able to fill in.
“I don’t know, Hannah, the kids seem pretty mellow. You’re a rock star at this! You’re like super woman with this stuff,” Kinley admitted, looking around the class, each student engrossed in the canvases resting on their easels, calm as can be.
“Oh, Kinley, Kinley, Kinley…” Hannah said, shaking her head at her naïve friend, “it’s not what you see, it’s what you don’t see with this crowd. Look again. Quiet means there’s trouble.”
“Excuse me?” Confused by Hannah’s admission, Kinley scanned the crowd of runts again. “I don’t see any…”
Hannah giggled. “Boom, you found it, didn’t you?”
“You have got to be kidding me! Is he eating…oh my God, that’s…glitter!” Kinley said in disgust. “She just did too!”
“That means they already ate the glue. Man, they’re good!” Hannah sighed.
“Ate glue? What? Why?” Kinley followed Hannah to the group at the back-corner table. Kinley’s nephew, Cooper, and JT were among the group. She hoped and prayed the only two tykes she liked weren’t part of the glitter and glue crew.
“Danielle?” Hannah started with one of the girls, hoping to get an honest answer. “Want to tell me why the glue and glitter are going in your belly instead of on the canvas?”
A little boy next to Danielle laughed when Danielle’s eyes dropped to the floor, so he answered for her, “Unicorn poop!”
Hand to mouth, Kinley gasped in shock, horror strewn across her face. “What did you say? Tell me you didn’t just say that!”
The group giggled, gaining the attention of the other kids at surrounding tables. Hannah joined them, fully aware of what the kids were trying to accomplish. Hannah decided to let Kinley find out on her own…since she asked.
Danielle’s glance met Kinley’s eyes, her rosy cheeks revealing her embarrassment. “We’re making unicorn poop. Unicorns poop glitter and…and…you have to eat the glue and make it in your belly.”
“Eat the…” Kinley looked at Hannah, who shrugged her shoulders, holding back a laugh, “glue doesn’t make unicorn poop. Glue is just…glue.”
JT tugged at Kinley’s shirt, trying to get her attention. “Miss. Kinley, you eat the glue so the glitter sticks, but I don’t eat it and Coop doesn’t eat it. My dad said it’s only good for a tummy ache and not good for unicorn poop because we’re not unicorns.”
“I think I’m still missing something here. You all really ate glue and glitter?” She scanned the table, noting sparkly lips all around, with the exceptions being JT and Cooper. These kids were really eating the glitter! Ewww!
“Um, Ms. Kinley? If you eat the glue first, the glitter sticks. So, when you poop, it sparkles — unicorn poop!”
“Surely you know you don’t need to eat glue for glitter to stick to your…” Palm to face, Kinley realized what she was saying and quickly diverted the conversation. She was not about to discuss unicorn poop, or poop of any kind for that matter, with the six and unders. “Look, you can’t eat glue, and you can’t eat glitter. It’s gross. Really gross, and JT is right. You’re just going to get belly aches. You’re not…unicorns!”
The little boy next to Danielle chimed in again, crossing his arms, not satisfied with such an absolute. “Then how do we get unicorn poop?”
“Are you for…” Kinley turned to Hannah again, redirecting her question. “Are they for real? Like, this is real? They really want…that? I can’t even believe I’m…”
Kinley let out a deep sigh, closing her eyes as she collected her cool, trying to find a solution and way out of this conversation. Never in her wildest dreams had she seen unicorn poop conversations as part of her life’s resume. Nonetheless, here she was, and she needed a solution. She glanced around the table at the various supplies she had access to. There had to be an answer among the Crayola crowd and their safety scissor gear.
Her face lit up. She wasn’t sure if this was brilliant or completely absurd, but it remedied the immediate need for unicorn…stuff. Kinley grabbed a container of Play-Doh from the center of the table, pulling out one of the tot sized chairs and taking a seat. The Crayola crowd began to circle her table, skeptical of the pile she was placing in front of her.
“Purple! Perfect!” she said, opening the first can. “And pink! Hey, kid…hand me that yellow one!”
Opening each can, she scooped the bright, squishy dough, setting it on the table in front of her one container at a time. Digging in to the final container, an air pocket combined with sliding the clay like matter out of the plastic made an awkward gas like sound.
“Ms. Kinley farted!” The group of littles became lost to laughter.
JT’s hands went to his hips and he puffed out his chest, ready to defend her ghastly honor. “That’s not a fart! She’s a lady…it’s a toot!”
Being the dutiful nephew, Cooper joined his best friend. “Yeah! My Aunt Kinley just toots a lot! Be nice, Charlie!”
“Whoa, whoa, boys, thanks, but I got this,” she said to her two tiny heroes before addressing the group. “Drop the toot and fart talk, got it? You’re actin’ like a bunch of monkeys. You want unicorn poop or not?”
With a quick cheer from the crowd, she nodded her head and went to work. Grabbing a small handful of playdoh from each color, she worked them together before rolling them in the bowl of glitter, working it in. “Now, when it’s all pretty and sparkly, you have to make it a shape. Hearts! Unicorns…well, they do…you know…their business in heart shapes!”
Wiping her hands over the bowl, she took to her feet, confidently resting her hands on her hips, proud of her glitter hearts. “Now, you guys don’t have to eat glue and glitter. This is the real deal, gang! Oh, and I didn’t fart…or toot. It was the container…it does that.”
Hannah clapped her hands for her friend as Kinley walked off, ready to clean up for the day and ready the kids for parent pick-up.
An hour later, JT was the only child left due to Jace’s last appointment running late. He walked in to see Kinley squatting down to JT’s level, helping him with his jacket zipper.
“Ms. Kinley?” he asked.
“What’s up, dude?” she replied, ruffling the boy’s dark hair.
“I didn’t like it when Charlie said that about your farts.” Kinley snickered at Jace’s reaction to the F word. “’Cause you are the best teacher ever and I like being your dude.”
“Well, thanks, dude. You were pretty awesome too. Thanks for having my back, buddy.”
Her own sparkly heart melted when he wrapped his tiny arms around her neck and gave her a squeeze. The real kicker was the sweet little kiss he planted on her cheek. Kinley was falling for the kid as much as she was his dad.
Jace thought he and his son needed to stop at the bakery on the way home so JT could get two of everything.
Score for team Detweiler.