"The space between you and me is longer than forever," reads Pickle, a drag queen sporting a bedazzled denim jacket and blue and pink streaks in her hair.
Pickle is reading from "Firebird," the first of several children's books she will read over the next half-hour to dozens of kids in the audience.
Periodically, she invites them to engage by clapping or shouting out their names. But in front of Pickle, the director of Drag Queen Story Hour's Los Angeles chapter, the room is vacant.