Emme leaned against the threshold, glancing at her students before grinning up at me. “Are we ready to do this?”
I kept telling myself this didn’t matter. That I could fumble the whole thing and bore these kids out of their skulls, and no one would care because I gave them a bunch of money today. But I wanted to be good for Emme.
“If you are,” I said, watching while one kid karate-kicked his way across the room.
“Then here we go.” She patted my arm and breezed inside. “All right, my friends. Raise your hand if you remember me talking about a very special guest coming to visit us today.” She raised her hand while pressing one finger to her lips as the kids started murmuring to each other. “Our visitor’s name is Ryan Ralston and I think some of my friends might’ve heard of him before because he is a very famous New England football player.”
Shit. She didn’t even roll her eyes at that. Her teacher face could give my game face a run for its money.
“Give me two thumbs up if you’ve heard of Mr. Ralston before. Okay, I see so many thumbs! Now, wiggle your pinkies if you like football.”
Stella chuckled beside me as hands and fingers all waved in the air. “Oh my god, Ryan, she’s the cutest thing in the world. I want to gobble her up,” she whispered.
“Love it, love it,” Emme drawled. “Now, my friends, let’s make sure we show Mr. Ralston the best, shiniest versions of ourselves today. That means we listen by keeping our lips zipped and our listening ears open. We raise our hands if we have questions and we wait silently for Mr. Ralston to call on us. Even though we have lots of visitors in the back of the room”—every head swiveled toward the media crew assembled against the wall like a defensive line—“we are going to keep our eyes up here. Got it?”
“Good,” they chorused.
“Great,” she replied. “Let’s take twelve seconds to organize our spaces so we don’t have anything distracting us while Mr. Ralston is speaking. Go!”
“How do you know her again?” Stella asked.
I watched Emme help the karate-kicker tuck a disaster of papers in his desk. When she was finished, she gave me a nod. I felt my lips turning up into a smile. The obvious answer was from back home, from high school, from ninth-grade biology, from listening to music in her car during lunch all of senior year so I didn’t have to talk to anyone. But I heard myself say, “She’s my favorite thing in the world.”
