It seems everyone in town and then some has shown up to shop and eat their fill. An untamed energy runs like a current from booth to booth, sweeping up couples walking hand in hand and kids begging smiling parents to Look at this or Bring one of these home.

I tell myself I’m only taking pictures because it is helping Alex and Nolan and an underfunded elementary school library, but my camera and I know I’m lying. I keep obsessively checking my photos, unexpected pride filling me when I see that I’ve managed to capture a candid smile or a whiff of this place’s spirit through my lens.

I want the photos to be good and real for me.

Through the lens, I watch Mr. Larson dress up kids from the local elementary school as models for his knitted wares, lining them up in front of his booth with misshapen mittens crammed onto their small fingers and lopsided scarves fitted snugly around their necks. Wally sits obediently next to a girl in pigtails, sporting a blue knit collar and a rawhide bone.

Valerie’s students are playing an upright piano on a low wooden stage that has been set up at the center of the bazaar. She watches fondly, absently fiddling with her looped necklaces and giving a quiet smile. I snap a photo and call it The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

The wind blows hair into my face and I whisper, “It’s only one night. Nothing more,” just in case it is clever.

The wind must have other concerns, though, because I feel a slight tug on the thread connecting me to the boy who spends his nights reading aloud on the Orman room floor.

Help.

When I find him, Nolan is sitting alone at a table in front of a huge line, trying to sign the books of three squealing tweens who keep jumbling around the table to take selfies with his downturned head.

“This is going to get so. Many. Likes,” one of the girls says.

“Do you think Justine is going to be jealous? She’s going to be so jealous,” her friend responds.

I make my way through the throng to Nolan’s side. He’s got the world’s fakest smile plastered on his face and his eyes are wild.

“Where’s Alex?” I ask. “I thought he was going to stay with you for crowd control?”

“Popcorn emergency,” Nolan mutters. “Said he’d be back ten minutes ago.”

Their books signed, the three girls walk off, after dropping a couple of bucks each into the glass jar labeled “Library Donations.” It sits next to another jar that reads “3 tickets per signature.” That one is already half full of blue tickets. It’s been less than thirty minutes and Nolan has already seen half a jar’s worth of people.

I have to help him.