2"Hey! Do you want to go listen to story time?" I asked him. "I can phone mom on the cell phone and tell her to come pick us up later!" I knew that Alex would want to stay, and would probably want to sit in the front. I was already dialing our mom's number as he exclaimed yes. Mom wasn't actually Alex's mom, but he was too young to understand all the idiosyncrasies of remarriage, so he referred to her as mom. It was kind of sad, actually, since the last time the court allowed him to see his mother, he didn't even remember who she was and started crying that he wanted his mommy. But to give you the short version, my mom, Lisa, and my dad, Bruce, were married and had me. Then Dad got into an affair at work, along with some other illegal things. He divorced my mom and married Rose. Together they had Alex. Soon though, Dad got busted for the other stuff I mentioned before, and decided to clean up. He still wanted to stay with Rose though, for Alex's sake. Rose didn't believe that he would actually stay faithful to her, so she turned abusive and threatened to kill us all if we ever said or did anything about it. Dad sent me back to live with mom for my safety, and I told her what was going on. I begged her not to tell anyone though, because I feared for Dad and Alex, and even myself, and I didn't know what would happen to Dad because of his previous offense. Well, one night, Rose went out and got drunk, and came home with another man. She walked up to her and Dad's bedroom with the other man, and found Dad lying in the bed watching TV, waiting up for her. After Dad got the other guy out, he and Rose got into a pretty big fight, and she tried to set fire to the house after beating Alex up almost to the point of death. Alex was only about one and a half back then. Dad had to jump out the window with Alex in his arms, which I would say was extremely heroic since Dad has always had acrophobia. Rose escaped, but had badly injured herself. Unfortunately, Dad was so scared that he told the police that he had no idea how the fire started, and that his and Alex's injuries were from trying to escape. He did however, tell me, and I told Mom. Mom went directly to the police, and after many months of feeling like I was on Court TV, Alex was taken away from Rose, and she was sentenced to jail for two years. During this time, Mom and Dad felt their old love blossoming once again. Since then, we have all lived together bona fide as though we were always a perfect family, and haven't doubted each other once. It's a wonder that Alex and I have turned out so relatively normal. I only hope that we will be able to maintain the status quo. Well, back to the library. Mom gave Alex and me permission to stay, and we joined the small children in their sedentary position on the floor, and to my delight, in the front row. All the children were mesmerized by the story, but I was busy studying the guy's many tattoos and listening to the euphony that was his voice, since I had already crossed the schism between childhood and. not childhood. I would say adolescence, but I hate that term for no specific reason. After the story was done, I noticed the boy, Tom, walking towards the poetry section. I was delighted, since I love poetry and therefore had a legitimate excuse to be over there besides to say that I had been stalking Tom. I walked over to the section, and was filled with euphoria when my hand touched Tom's reaching for the same poetry anthology.
"Oh, Hi!" I said. "You're Tom, right? The dude who volunteered to read to the kids today?" I asked him. "Yes, I am. Have you read this anthology? It's really a great compilation." Tom responded. He was holding a book of poems by authors that had gotten most of their recognition posthumous. Sad how the greatest authors never get the praise they deserve during life. "Yeah, it's one of my favorites. I was just going to check it out again to reread that poem about transposing time. I don't know if you remember that one." Tom replied, and I just sort of floated along through the conversation, memorizing what he was wearing. He had one Weezer-ish glasses and a black and white wavy striped tie. His shirt was a greenish color and he had on black pants. Under his shirt sleeves, I could see a lot of tattoos, but only one was below the end of the short sleeves, a black star on the underside of his wrist. I had always had a certain dislike for tattoos, but on Tom, they looked hot. Suddenly, he asked me a question about cosmology, but I thought that he said cosmetics. Obviously, I made a fool of myself, since applying lipstick and the study of the universe are nothing alike. Suddenly, I noticed the time, and realized that Mom was probably waiting outside for me and Alex, who was sitting bored next to me.
"Oh! I have to go now!" I told Tom frantically, and started to dash off towards the automatic check out machine. "Wait!" he called after me. "What's your phone number?" I slowed down and wrote my name and number down on a piece of paper, handed it to him, then dashed off again. "I'll call you!" he shouted.