For the last few hours, I critiqued portfolios and talked to art school hopefuls. I wasn’t sure if I was cut out for advising. I loved reading to the kiddos, but the teenagers? They made me nervous. Skylar was a young person, questioning everything about themselves. When I mentioned coming out, they didn’t have questions. Instead, I grabbed a sheet of paper and asked them to teach me the basics of drawing. For a guy who loved comics, I couldn’t draw a successful stick figure. Skylar, however, not only had a gift for art but for teaching.
We’d be having our first GSA meeting at the comic book shop. Before I left, they said thank you. Mrs. Chessa might as well have thrown a rope around my neck, tying me to Firefly. Now, I needed to?—
“Jason!”
Through the crowd, I spotted Lucas. His dad had dressed him in jeans and a button-down short-sleeve shirt. I’d need to get this kid some t-shirts so he could blend inwith his peers. An eight-year-old shouldn’t be better dressed than me.
He charged toward me, cutting through the crowd like an offensive lineman. “Hey, Lucas. How was school?”
“Whoa.” He said as if it were a loaded question that needed unpacking. “Ms. Maggie gave us so much homework. I have two worksheets.” Once upon a time, I remembered Ms. Maggie giving me the same worksheets. “Math. I hate math. Do you like math? I bet you do a lot of math. Dad says grownups do math.”
I needed coffee to chase his train of thought. “I do a lot of math.” Did I tell him I used a calculator? Wait until he got to multiplication tables. That’d shake his reality. “What are?—”
“I got our spelling list, too.” Oh, I guess Lucas had more to share. “I have to write sentences. I don’t like writing. I never get gold stars.”
“If you don’t write, how are you going to make comics?”
His eyes grew wide. The possibilities flashed across his face. The long pause in his sharing meant he had never thought about it before. Mrs. Chessa always appreciated how I encouraged the kiddos to read and write.
“Maybe we can work on one together.”
He gasped. “Really? Can it be about superheroes? Can Valiant be in it?”
I dropped into a squat so we could see eye-to-eye. “What if it was about an eight-year-old who moved to a new town?”
He shook his head. “That’s boring.”
“But what if he’s secretly a superhero?”
“Can Valiant still be in it?”
I appreciated his singular focus. “I bet he can come help the kid fight crime.”
“Good.”
I gave his hair a ruffle. Lucas growled and shot out of reach. “No touching. Dad says you have to ask. I have to give permission.”
Lucas had put me in my place. “I apologize. Your dad’s a smart man.” Other than being a literal wedge between us on date night, I knew little about the kid. The next time I asked Simon out, I might take a chance and invite Lucas as well. There’d be no Simon if I didn’t get to know his kid.
“Can I walk home with you?” I could handle a kid for three blocks. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have kids of my own, much to my mom’s dismay. If a handsome man came with forty pounds of baggage, I might be able to handle that. Mom would spoil Lucas rotten.
He mulled over the idea. “I suppose.”
We started our walk through the crowd of kids. “How do you like Firefly?”
He shrugged. That seemed out of character for a kid who had no filter.
“Making lots of friends?”
“Just Josh. But he’s weird. He likes to eat glue.”
There was always a glue-loving kid. Some things never changed. “Is he the one who had the sleepover?”
Lucas shook his head. “Eric had the sleepover. I don’t think I like him. He picks on Josh.”
“That doesn’t sound very nice.”
The sound of the elementary school faded into the background as we reached the crosswalk. Without asking, Lucas reached up, holding one of my fingers. I assumed his dad had taught him to hold his hand whenever they crossed a street in Boston. The crossing guard gave us a nod, letting us move ahead. Firefly didn’t have enough cars to warrant crossing guards, but here we were.
