My Life Next Door(18)
How did I get to be Jase’s friend? I’ve talked to him twice. Wow, is Mrs. Garrett ever different from my mother.
Harry, who’s got green eyes but fairly straight dark brown hair and lots of freckles, looks at me challengingly. “Can you do a back dive?”
“Um. Yes.”
“Will you teach me? Right now?”
Mrs. Garrett interrupts. “Harry, we discussed this. Samantha can’t take you in the big pool because she has to keep her eye on the little ones.”
Harry’s lower lip juts out. “She could put Patsy in the BabyBjörn like you do and go in the water. She could hold George’s hand. He can swim pretty good with his swimmies.”
Mrs. Garrett glances at me apologetically. “My children expect everyone to multitask to an extreme degree. Harry, no. It’s this pool or nothing.”
“But I can swim now. I can swim really good. And she knows how to back dive. She could teach me to back dive.” While wearing the baby and holding George’s hand? I’d need to be Sailor Supergirl.
“No,” Mrs. Garrett repeats firmly. Then, to me: “A will of iron. Just keep saying no. Eventually he’ll move on.” She takes me back into the house, shows me where the diapers are, tells me to help myself to anything in the refrigerator, gives me her cell phone number, points out the list of emergency numbers, cautions me not to bring up the subject of tornadoes in front of George, hops into her van, and drives off.
Leaving me with Patsy, who’s trying to pull up my shirt, George, who wants me to know that you should never touch a blue-ringed octopus, and Harry, who looks like he wants to kill me.
Actually, it doesn’t go that badly.
I’ve mostly avoided babysitting. It’s not that I don’t like kids, but I hate the uncertain hours of it. I’ve never wanted to deal with parents arriving late and apologetic, or that awkward drive home with some dad trying to make small talk. But the Garrett kids are pretty easy. I take them over to our house so I can get our garden sprinkler, which is this complicated standing copper twirling thing. Harry, fortunately, thinks it’s amazing, and he and George spend an hour and a half playing in it, then jumping back into the baby pool while Patsy sits in my lap, gnawing my thumb with her gums and drooling on my hand.
I’ve finished doing the snack thing and am herding the kids back out to the pool when the motorcycle pulls in.
I turn with a tingle of anticipation, but it’s not Jase. It’s Joel who gets off the motorcycle, leans against it, and does that whole slow-appreciative-scan-of-your-entire-body thing. Which I get quite enough of at Breakfast Ahoy. “George. Harry. Who’ve you brought home?” Joel says. He is good-looking, but a little too much on the and-well-he-knows-it end of the scale.
“This is Sailor Supergirl,” George says. “She knows all about black holes.”
“And back dives,” Harry adds.
“But you can’t have her because she’s going to marry Jase,” George concludes.
Wonderful.
Joel looks surprised, as well he might. “You’re a friend of Jase’s?”
“Well, not really, I mean, we just met. I’m here to babysit.”
“But she went to his room,” George adds.
Joel raises an eyebrow at me.
Again with the full-body blush. All too apparent in a bikini. “I’m just the babysitter.”
George grabs me around the waist, kissing my belly button. “No. You’re Sailor Supergirl.”
“So where did you come from?” Joel folds his arms, slanting back against the motorcycle.
George and Harry run back into the copper sprinkler. I’m holding Patsy on one hip, but she keeps trying to pull off my bikini top.
“Move her to the other side,” Joel suggests, without batting an eyelash.
“Oh. Right.” Patsy, the baby with the one-breast preference.
“You were saying?” Joel’s still leaning lazily back against the motorcycle.
“Next door. I came from next door.”
“You’re Tracy Reed’s sister?
Of course. Naturally he would not have overlooked Tracy. While I’m blond, Tracy is A Blonde. That is, I’m straw and sort of honey-colored with freckles from Dad, while Tracy’s tow-headed with pale skin. She, unfairly, looks like she’s never seen the sun, although she spends most of her summers on the beach.
“Yup.” Then, suddenly, I wonder if my sister too has secretly interacted with the Garretts. But Joel isn’t blond, Tracy’s chief boyfriend requirement, right up there with a good backhand, so probably not. Just to be sure, I ask, “Do you play tennis?”
Joel looks unfazed by this non sequitur, no doubt used to flustered girls making no sense.