"...Okay, well, when I was three, I was the cutest little girl anyone had ever seen. I had big curly black hair and pink dresses and an adorable pink persian kitten named Raja—"
"Pink?"
"...Eric dyed it orange so we redyed it white, but it just sort of faded to pink. Anyway, there I was, this adorable little toddler who everyone loved and thought was just so cute—"
"No one thought that!"
"Mom did."
"Mom doesn't count!"
"Hmph. Well, I was cuter than you ever were..."
*
"All right, thank you so much for watching all three of them. Since we're going out with the Halifaxes anyway, well, we thought it would be nice if little Jolene had someone her own age to play with, and she and Eric are such good friends..."
"Oh, it's no problem, Mr. Donnely," the baby-sitter, Karin, smiled.
"Well, they shouldn't be any problem. Lisa goes to bed at six, and Eric and Jolene at seven. The makings for peanut butter and jelly are on the kitchen counter, Lisa and Eric know where everything you might need is. The kids should be fine playing together, you won't hear a peep out of them."
"Oh, great! It'll give me time to finish all my homework for the weekend," Karin said, and Mr. Donnely grinned. She was a junior at DSA, and figured sucking up to the superintendent couldn't be a bad thing.
"Honey, we're going to be late!" Mrs. Donnely declared, as she walked past and pulled him after her. They were followed by Mr. and Mrs. Halifax, Jolene's parents, who waved at Karin and headed out.
Karin was about to go find the three kids, but Lisa toddled into the room, sucking her thumb with a teddy bear clutched under her arm and dragging an unhappy looking pink kitten after her by the tail. There were sounds of fighting from another room in the house.
"Eric 'n' Jolene're fighting," Lisa mumbled, around her thumb.
"Really, why?" Karin asked. She'd been told by one of her other friends at the school... Warned, really... that baby-sitting the Donnely children was a little more difficult than she might think. But apparently, her friend was too traumatized to explain further.
"Eric says th' the fifteenf digit of pi's eight 'n 'Lene says 's nine."
"They're fighting over what?" Karin asked, then shook her head a little. "Well, that's not too bad. We'll just look it up on a calculator, and—" she was cut off by the sound of a crash and shrieking, and dashed after the noise. Lisa watched seriously, but not very surprised, and toddled after.
They arrived on the scene a few seconds later, though Eric and Jolene were nowhere to be found. This seemed to be the Donnely living room, not the sort of room where most people would allow two unsupervised five-and-a-half-year-olds. At some point, not long ago, there had been a glass coffee table with several porcelain statuettes of musical instruments set on it, pristine white carpeting and couches and armchairs. Everything looked like it had cost over a thousand dollars and was white or silver or shiny and made of crystal. Or diamond. Either way.
Now, however, the room was in ruins; the coffee table had been toppled and most of the figurines shattered. What looked like purple paint soaked the couch and large portions of the carpet. In orange paint, on one of the chairs, was a large scrawled "9!!!!" and the initials J.H. Brown footprints of mixed orange and purple ran out of the room and upstairs.
"What the HELL?" Karin yelled.
Lisa nodded knowingly. "All th' baby-sitters ask that," she said seriously, as Karin dashed after the footprints. Lisa toddled along after her. Raja, the poor kitten, had squirmed out of Lisa's grasp and had fled; instead, Lisa had shifted her teddy bear and was dragging it by a leg.
The footprints lead upstairs into another room. The door was shut and there was an eerie silence. Karin put her hand on the door and glanced at Lisa, who shook her head and actually dropped her bear and took her thumb out of her mouth to cover her ears. Karin clenched her teeth and slowly, nervously turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.
Something exploded just in front of her, and she screamed. The carpet was on fire, but it was small and burnt out almost as soon as it started, leaving behind a charred, smoking mess. The room was a playroom, filled with various stuffed animals and puzzles, an Atari, and lots of wires and bits of metal. Jolene and Eric were in opposite corners.
Jolene was a petite girl, wearing a sun dress with her black hair in pig-tails; Eric was wearing a pair of black overalls and a black T-shirt. He was wearing a pair of thick glasses and had a rather large afro of black curls.
"I did NOT!"
"You so did."
"Prove it."
"I can't; you destroyed all the photographic evidence two years later."
"It never happened."
"See, I told you your stupid defense system was stupid and it wasn't gonna work," Jolene said. Eric stuck out his tongue.
"At least I'm not a dumb girl," he said. "I bet you couldn't even trigger the ignition without lighting a match."
"Could so!"
"Not!"
"So!"
"Not!"
Jolene started to yell "so!" again, then decided she had a better idea. She burst into tears and threw herself at the scared baby-sitter, sniffling that Eric was mean and he shouldn't get any desert and should have to go to bed when Lisa did because he was a baby who "couldn't even understand basic calculus."
"Um... I don't even understand basic calculus..." Karin said, too dazed to even wonder what was going on.
"Well, you're stupid, then," Eric said. "You're a dumb girl. Girls are gross."
"I'm not gross!" Jolene hollered and ran back across the room, picked up a sturdy wooden block and hurled it at him.
The missile hit Eric in the shoulder. He stood still for a moment, his lip trembling as if he were about to cry, but instead he ran out of the room yelling, "You'll pay for that!" and began laughing maniacally.
Lisa sighed and walked off to go find her kitten, while Karin just wondered what parallel universe she'd entered, how to get back to her own world, and whether or not the Donnely's would kick her out of school when they saw the mess.
*
Mrs. Donnely sighed. She'd wanted so very much to have a quiet evening out with her husband and friends, but for some reason, baby-sitters had all become hopelessly incompetent since she was young enough to be baby-sitting.
"Yes?" she sighed into the phone.
"Mrs. Donnely?" Karin asked hesitantly, sounding scared.
"Yes, what happened?"
"It's... The house was on fire."
"I see." Mrs. Donnely paused. "Why?"
"I'm not sure... I think... Eric and Jolene were fighting and then I guess he tried to set Lisa's cat on fire...."
"I see. Did she hit him?"
"With her toy train."
"I'm not surprised." Mrs. Donnely sighed again. "It's this phase Eric's been going through since she was born. He tries to get attention, you see."
"Shouldn't... Shouldn't you worry about it? If he sets things on fire a lot, I mean?"
"Oh, no, he'll grow out of it."
"Okay... Um..."
"Is the fire out?"
"Yes... What, did she get the number wrong?" Now Mrs. Donnely sounded scared.
"Well, no, but she's three! And she called the fire department and they all knew her by name!"
"And they charged it to our account?"
"Well, yes, but..."
"So everything's all right now, then?"
"Yeah, Lisa's asleep and Eric and Jolene are finishing dinner, and... Um, are you sure everything is all right? They're all acting like nothing happened."
"Well, this sort of thing happens a lot."
"Uh..."
"So we'll see you in a few hours, Karin?"
"Right...."
"No worries, then. Bye." She sighed. Baby-sitters always overreacted. Any day now, Eric would grow out of his tendency to blow things up.
fini... for now.
tell Becky that you love her
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