True Mates Book One: The Setlist

Chapter One: BTS ABCs

"Miss McNamara!"

I sighed and turned around, prepared to be asked the exact same question that I had been asked over and over again, since my class started filing into my room this morning.

"Yes, Carson?" I asked, looking at the little boy with a smile. I knew that they were just excited.

"Do you think that it will be Jimin?" he asked me, a huge smile on his little face.

"MY Jimin!" Kingsley said from where he was sitting at his favorite yellow table.

"He's not just yours," Carson told him. "You have to share."

"I'm going to marry him," Kingsley insisted. "So he's mine."

"You can't just say he's yours," Jasmine said. "He's everybody's. Right Miss McNamara?"

I couldn't help but laugh at them. They'd had this exact same conversation since the beginning of the school year, when I first introduced them to BTS.

"But I saw him first!" Kingsley said, his voice getting higher than normal.

"Jas is right, buddy." I walked over to him and patted the top of his head. "Everybody has to share all seven of them."

"But do you think that it will be Jimin?" Carson asked again.

I swear, these kids. The Jimin Effect was strong with 5-year-olds.

"I don't know," I told him. "I was thinking probably RM or JK."

"Oh! JK!" Claire yelled from her seat. "I love JK! He looks like a bunny and it's my favorite animal, so he's my favorite."

"Okay, okay," I said, raising my hands up in front of me. "PreK Pause. It's Round Table time."

"Round table! Round table!" The whole class chanted as they pushed all of their little plastic tables to the center of the room, then formed them into a circle and sat around them.

In my classroom, Round Table is like Circle Time in a normal classroom. But that's not really me. I'm not normal. I like to do things my own way.

"Miss McNamara!"

"What, Laylee?" I asked the little blonde girl who had said my name.

"Can we have a dance break first?" she asked me in her sweet little voice. She was really shy, but she got super excited and came out of her shell during our random dance breaks throughout the day.

"Sure. What song?"

"Can we do the funny Butter where Jimin falls out of the chair?" she asked me.

I couldn't help but laugh. This was always the song that they asked for first. I knew that she was referring to the Butter Hotter Remix. When Jimin falls out of his chair, they always bust up in cute little kid giggles.

As soon as I put the song on, they all started singing along to it. When it was done, they all wanted me to play it again.

"No, we have to start class," I told them. "Maybe later."

"But I want to watch Jimin fall out of the chair again!" Maddie said.

"I can fall out of an actual chair if you want," a soft voice said from the doorway.

All at once, every single head in my classroom, mine included, snapped around to look at the door where the voice had come from. Standing there in all his adorable, sexy glory, was Park Jimin himself.

"JIMIN!" The kids yelled as they jumped up and ran to him, all of them trying to hug him at once.

Jimin laughed as they about knocked him over.