(6) I Hate Kids

On Friday, Mom forces me to have an extremely early dinner before leaving for the sleepover thing at church. It's 4:30 p.m., and she pushes daal to me. "One more bite," she says.

"I'm not a child," I say. "I don't want another bite."

"Who knows what they'll feed you there," she complains. "And they're going to make you work."

I roll my eyes. "It's just yelling at kids—I mean, watching them for a night. I'll be fine."

Patrick comes down the stairs and hovers over my plate. He takes part of the roti still there. Mom smacks his hands. "That's for Indra."

"He can have it," I say. "I'm not hungry."

Mom makes Patrick do the dishes and keeps an eye on me as she cleans the rest of the kitchen. When I'm done eating, I finally grab my backpack and head to the door.

"Indra," Mom says. "You're spending the break with your dad. He'll pick you up in the morning once you get back."

"I know. Bye!" I take the keys to Patrick's Prius, but Mom stops me again.

"Hold on," she says. She and Patrick exchange glances.

I narrow my eyes. "What?"

Mom clears her throat. "Your grandparents are visiting. Your father's parents, I mean."

"Noo—!"

"Shh," Mom says sharply, cutting me off. "Be nice. It's only two weeks."

"I don't like being nice."

Mom sighs. "Do it anyway."

"Tell them Patrick will get mad if I don't go to church," I say. "That I have to stay here. Make Patrick the villain."

"But that's not true," Patrick says.

"I know. It's called lying. Besides, you got mad the first day," I point out.

"Not because you didn't want to come," Patrick says. "But because you called Jesus fake. And I was not mad. I was irritated."

I shrug. "I don't want to go anymore. I'll just drive back here after the sleepover thing. You don't need to come pick up your car."

"You're going," Mom says. "No excuses. See you soon, baby." She kisses my head. "Behave, please."

"Hmph."

When I get to the church, I am forced to put on a tacky badge. Since Mom didn't let me leave until I finished "dinner," I'm late, which means I got to skip all the hard work of organizing zones for boys and girls to sleep, setting up the games and food, and all the other tiring things. I consider myself lucky and thank Mom for it.

Then I have to stand outside and herd kids inside after they sign in. Jaron spots me, and I spot him. He's also wearing a badge. His face darkens. "You," he says.

I guess he was done trying to be nice. "Me," I agree. Of course he was here. He was everywhere I went, like a demon haunting me. And, well, he was church royalty, so I guess he had to be here. I ignore him and pay attention to the kids.

Most of them are above the age of 10, so I assume they can be reasoned with. Nonetheless, I know myself, and also know that the sensitive and tenderhearted should be protected from me. I am not qualified for this. Shouldn't there be a training or something? Do I look like a dork, wearing a badge and forcing a smile? I hope not, since I see Thyra trade spots with one of the other chaperones at the sign-in booth, just a few feet away from me. She beams and waves at me.

I give her my best smile and wave back.

One kid taps me. "Where are the bathrooms?"

"I dunno. Hold it until you find one," I say. He frowns. I make him line up with the other kids. It takes about an hour and a half until all the kids are here and signed in, and I'm allowed to sit down for a bit. I sit next to Thyra, who offers me her water.

"How was it?" she asks.

"Fine." I drink some water—wait. It was sour in my mouth and burned going down my throat. I hold the bottle away from me, coughing and spitting it out, which is so embarrassing. "W-What—is this alcohol?"

"Shhh!" She snatches it back, grinning. "I thought you'd smell it before gulping it down!"

"Well, I didn't." I wipe my mouth. "We probably shouldn't be drinking when we're supposed to be looking after kids."

She waves her hand. "Once they're put to bed, the juniors and seniors get to sneak out into the woods. It's like a tradition." She lifts her 'water' bottle. "That's what I meant when I said fun."

Oh, thank God. And I was thinking I was in for a dreary night, only here to try and impress a girl. "Counting the minutes," I mutter and look unhappily back at the kids, setting up their stuff in their sleeping zones.

We spend a few hours playing games and making crafts with the kids. I do not. I mostly walk around handling supplies or hide in a corner so I don't have to do anything. I am told to fetch beads, so I pick through the cabinet for a box of beads. As I do this, I see the kid who tried to talk to me earlier. "Hey, kid," I say as I pick through the cabinet for a box of beads, "Did you manage to find the bathroom?"

He glares at me. "If the bushes on the other side of the street count."

"Attaboy. Problem solving on your own. But don't do that again. It's gross." I offer him a fist. He looks confused, and then he fist-bumps me back. "Go away now. I'm busy." I shoo him in the direction of the other kids.

"You're weird," he decides.

"I said go away." And he does go away, thankfully.

I bring the beads back to the crafts table and then hide in the hallway for 20 minutes, away from the room where all the kids are. After a while, Jaron finds himself here too. "Ugh," he says, and turns away.

He's wearing a white shirt and blue pajama pants. We're all in pajamas, but I am of the opinion that his shirt is too tight for him. There is no need for him to be showing off like that: we get it, you're built and you're hot.

Why is he always wearing tight clothes anyway? Doesn't seem very holy.

The back of his hair is just as gold as the rest of the mop on his head, and it looks all soft and warm under the yellow lights of the church. Why am I always looking at his hair? Because it was ugly, of course, and certainly not because it was soft and I wanted to touch it.

"Are you also hiding from the kids?" I ask.

He turns around to face me. "What? No. I'm not lazy."

I shrug. He looks back down at his phone, typing furiously, his face scrunched up. He wipes his cheek, and I realize he's just wiped a tear. I hesitate. Should I ask him if he's okay? No, he probably doesn't want to know that another dude saw him crying. Or maybe I should just ignore it. Yes, that seemed best.

Damnit, I wish I were meaner. "Um, hey man. Wanna show me that painting I'm supposed to work on? I promised to start after finals, remember?"

He blinks. "Sure." He starts walking down the hallway, and I follow him. He turns the corner, keeps walking, and pushes open a door into what looks like a storage room. It's pretty big, though. It looks just like one of the classrooms, except it's dusty and filled with plastic chairs, empty bookshelves, and random supplies.

He uncovers a painting, lifting dust off the fabric he moved. I sneeze and cover my nose. "This is it," he says, crouching next to it. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin."

"What?" I say.

"It's a verse. The one this painting is inspired by. Can you fix it?"

I look down at the painting. It's a field of lilies, unsurprisingly. I generally don't like landscape art. I find it boring. This one is different, though. There are enough minuscule details to tell the artist was very mechanically skilled, the composition was excellent, and the colors were lovely. I mean, still not something I would make on my own, but it was a sweet, lovingly made piece of art.

And its edges are also covered in mold. I cover my nose. "I can't fix this. It's all moldy. You need archival-level repair."

"They quoted us $3,000," Jaron says. "We can't afford that."

"Can't you, like, crowdfund or something?"

"We tried. I don't think enough people care about a random old painting to pitch in. Our church isn't that big, you know. $3,000 could probably be put to better use anyway."

"Hmm. I'm gonna have to cut it, then," I say. "The parts that aren't moldy, and repaint it. Maybe I'll do watercolors to match, or since it'll be all cut up, I could try acrylics and paste it in that way. Save money on high-quality glue—oh, or gouache. Best of both worlds, you know?"

Jaron is smiling faintly.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing. Yeah, you can cut it up. That's fine. If you can't salvage it as is."

"Definitely can't," I confirm. Jaron begins rummaging through boxes and finally comes back with scissors.

"Now?" I say.

"Why not? It's not like you're going to be helpful with the kids anyway. I heard you told a kid to hold his pee instead of letting him use the bathroom."

"I would never do that," I lie. We both pull on gloves. Since we can't find a proper mat, Jaron holds the painting upright and I cut out the mold-free sections as cleanly as I can. He seals the contaminated scraps into a plastic bag. I rinse out a clean brush in the sink and gently sweep off the pieces, five in total.

Jaron returns with a bottle of disinfectant alcohol. I dab it lightly over the backs and painted sides of each fragment, then lay them flat on a wiped-down wooden board. We crack a window, just in case. Alcohol and mold permeate the room with an awful smell. "A conservator somewhere probably died at how amateurly we're doing this," I say.

Jaron laughs. I look at him. He's looking back at me, no longer seeming as upset as he did before. I guess my plan to distract him worked.

"This is going to end up awful," I add. "Five cut-up pieces won't look much like the original."

"I'm sure you'll come up with something."

I shrug. "You take the blame if something goes wrong."

"Sure." He sits back on his heels and twists toward me. His knee touches my thigh. "We should go back now. Maybe they need help with the kids."

"I hate kids," I say. He laughs again, so I smile. "Are you going to the party thing after the kids sleep?"

"What party thing?"

"I dunno. We get to party in the woods, apparently. After everyone's asleep." I wait for him to move, but he does not. This jerk's knee is still touching me. But I guess there isn't much place to move. This is a cramped storage room, and the painting is spread out before us, taking up too much space.

"I'm new at this church too," he reminds me. "So I didn't know. But I guess I'll go. Could use some alcohol."

"Why? Did you get dumped?" I tease.

He glances at me. "Yeah."

"Oh... sorry, man." I assume he means Ansel.

"Yeah," he says. So that's why he'd been crying earlier. Or trying not to cry. Then he unfolds his legs over the little space we have (the audacity of white men) and stretches them over my own legs, yawning loudly. He rubs his face. "Had a game yesterday," he explains. "Tired. We were up late. Celebrating."

Was he just oblivious, or did he not give a damn about personal space? He really just colonized my whole lap like it was his god-given right. "I assume you won then," I say.

I give him grace. It's cramped in here.

He nods and waits expectantly, likely for me to say something like congratulations. I keep my mouth shut just to spite him. After a moment, he shrugs and looks away. We stay like that for a little while, mostly in silence, as he scrolls through his phone and I pick at a hole in my jeans.

It's only because this loser got dumped that I'm letting him hang out with me, I tell myself. Because I don't like him.

He gets up eventually. "I'll see you at the party thing."

"Uh huh."

He lingers by the door, watching me, and when I notice, he quickly turns away and leaves.

About two hours later, the kids are finally put to sleep. And that's when the juniors and seniors begin to quietly crawl out of their sleeping bags and sneak out the doors. Thyra finds me, grins, and holds my hand so we don't lose each other as we walk down into the woods to whatever these church-going, god-fearing teenagers have planned. I grin back.