Then, Gus turned her head and looked up at Wes.
As if he felt her eyes on him, Wes looked down at her and smiled.
Adam’s eyes filled with tears he quickly blinked away. Wes was practically a stranger—at most, a neighbor. Adam had no business expecting anything from him, no matter how damn wonderful he was being. Expecting things from people was how you ended up disappointed, foolish, and heartbroken.
Gus pulled them into her classroom and over to her teacher.
“Ms. Washington, Ms. Washington, this is my dad, and this is Wes, and that’s Bettie. She’s my show-and-tell.”
She pointed to the covered cage Wes held.
“That’s great, August,” she said brightly, bending down. “Is Bettie a hamster? A guinea pig?”
Gus reached out and before she could unceremoniously whip the pillowcase off, surprising Ms. Washington with a tarantula in the face, Adam grabbed Gus and threw an affectionate arm around her.
He gestured Ms. Washington away slightly and made a crawling spider with his fingers. Her eyes got very wide and she raised one elegant eyebrow. Adam inclined his head. I’m afraid so, his gesture said.
Without missing a beat, Ms. Washington said, “Why don’t you sit down, August, and your dads can wait in the back with—er—Bettie?”
Gus skipped off to her desk without correcting Ms. Washington.
From the back of the room, Adam could see how small Gus was compared to the other kids. He’d been small for his age too.
She was nearly bouncing in her seat, and she kept looking over her shoulder at them. She waved at Wes and he waved back—a tiny movement of his hand at his side.
Wes leaned in. “They’re so...little,” he mused.
“Yeah, isn’t it weird? You don’t feel little as a kid. You’re always the biggest you’ve ever been.”
Adam wanted to ask Wes what he’d been like as a child. Had he been an amateur scientist, fascinated by dinosaurs and insects, as Adam imagined him? Had he always been so quiet, so self-contained? Or had that happened later—the result of his interactions with the world rather than the cause of them?
When it was time for Gus’ show-and-tell, she ran to the front of the room, pulling on her explorer jacket and beekeeping hat as she went.
“My show-and-tell is named Bettie. She’s a tarantula!”
Gus was grinning, her eyes wide with excitement. This was the moment Adam had been dreading. Not all of her classmates were going to be pleased with this addition to their number, and he didn’t want to see the light in Gus’ eyes dim with their rejection.
A few of the kids exchanged scared looks, but many leaned forward, interested.
“Should I go up?” Wes murmured.
“I think so.”
Wes strode through the aisles of desks, looking like a giant in a land of Lilliputians. He stood next to Gus, awaiting her command.
Gus told the class a few tarantula facts that she’d read about in the insect compendium Adam had brought home from the thrift store, and more that Wes had clearly told her. Wes softly corrected her pronunciation of arthropod, and then it was time.
Adam pinched his arm, telling himself that Bettie was all the way across the room. She’d have to get past twenty second-graders to make it to him. Still, he let his eyes unfocus as the pillowcase came off Bettie’s cage.
It did help a little to think of her as Bettie, rather than a spider. Bettie lived with Wes. Wes held her in his hand. That meant it was all okay.
Adam was concerned that his brain had begun to equate Wes with Everything is okay.
Wes held Bettie’s cage up so everyone could see. Then he told them he would take her out, but they had to be very quiet and very still. His voice was low and soft, and not a child moved or made a sound as he opened the Plexiglas door and gently picked up Bettie.
He cooed to her and she stayed in his cupped palm. Adam focused on Wes’ face, pretending his hand didn’t even exist.
From across the room, as if he could feel Adam’s gaze on his face, Wes’ eyes snapped to his.
Wes’ expression was subtler than Gus’, but Adam saw in his clean, rough features the same joy, the same excitement, and the same desire to share that fascination with others.
It was beautiful. He was beautiful.
The children asked questions and Wes answered every one. He told them what Bettie ate, when she slept, and if she spun webs. When he told them that tarantulas shot silk from their feet, one of the boys called, “She’s like Spiderman!” and Wes said, “Spiderman’s like her.” The boy looked like his mind had been blown.
For all their fascination with Bettie, the kids were clearly nervous when Wes asked if anyone wanted to touch or hold Bettie. No one raised their hand. Gus held out her cupped palms and Wes placed Bettie into them.
Once they’d seen Gus touch Bettie and live to tell the tale, another girl’s hand went up, and Gus put the tarantula into her palm very carefully. “Don’t move, even when she moves,” Gus told her seriously, as Wes had once told her.
Once everyone who wanted to had held or touched Bettie, under Gus’ watchful eye, Ms. Washington called an end to show-and-tell. The class applauded and Gus stood, grinning from ear to ear.
As Wes and Adam walked out of the classroom and through the empty hallways, Adam touched Wes’ arm, the wool of his sweater as soft as he’d imagined.
“Thank you,” Adam said. “Thank you so much for doing this. It meant the world to Gus. And to me.”
Wes looked down at Adam and seemed at a loss for words. Clearly the experience in the classroom had meant something to him.
“They weren’t scared of her,” he said.
“Kids are brave. They mostly haven’t learned to be afraid of things yet.”
The lucky ones, anyway. The ones who didn’t have fear fed to them at home, where fear should never be.
“Like you said. I think we learn to be scared and then once we’re scared we hate the things we fear because it’s easier than working on our fear.”
Wes glanced at Bettie’s cage, once more covered with the pillowcase.
Adam reached over and very slowly, breathing deeply to ground himself, pulled the fabric away.
He felt his heart start to beat faster, Bettie’s movements triggering a long-held disgust deep within him. He let his eyes go a bit unfocused so he could see her through a haze. This was Bettie. Wes’ beloved pet. She was an animal, like a cat or a squirrel.
He watched her for a few moments, and thought neutral thoughts about her. He didn’t even notice he’d stepped back until Wes moved to put the pillowcase back over the cage.