The Babysitter Murders - By Janet Ruth Young Page 0,11
in the living room. She has three precalculus work-sheets to complete.
“Give me a kiss,” Alex says to Dani. “Do you know you’re my favorite person?”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It is.”
“I bet your mom is your favorite.”
“You’re nicer than Mom.” He pinches one knee of her cargo pants.
“Maybe today I’m your favorite. Maybe right now. But I bet Mrs. Alex is your favorite most of the time.”
“You’re nicer than her. She gets mad sometimes. You never get mad.”
T H E B A B Y S I T T E R M U R D E R S
“Sometimes I do get mad. At my friends or people like that.
But I wouldn’t get mad in front of you. At least, I would try not to. For you I put on my special Alex face. I act my best, best, best.
But I don’t see you that much. Your mom sees you all the time, so she can’t always have her best face on.”
“Sometimes you do things that make me mad. But I put my good face on and don’t tell you.”
“Like what?”
“Like when you talk on your phone while you’re here.”
“To Shelley?”
“Yes.”
“But I do that when you’re asleep.”
“I only pretend. I can still hear you.”
“It bothers you when I talk to Shelley?”
“Yes.”
“I have other friends, you know. You’re not my only friend, Alex.”
“Okay.” He looks at the ground.
“You know how you have friends at school? I have friends at school too. Friends my own age. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. The more friends you have, the better off you are.”
“Do you want to play with Louie?”
“I’m not sure I have time. Oh, all right. For a minute.”
Dani sits at the computer with Alex on her knee. His rib cage feels as small around as a football. They play a game of picking blueberries and putting them in a bucket. Alex twists around.
“You’re not watching Louie,” he says.
Dani’s staring at Mrs. Alex’s Venus de Milo mousepad. The pic-37
JANET RUTH YOUNG
tures are in her mind again, of Alex lying on the floor, of her standing above him with a knife. She wonders if she could ever hurt a child, and what she can do to make sure that never happens.
“Sorry,” she says. Alex hands her the mouse. The timer starts and Louie goes berry picking. She pictures herself standing over Alex’s bed with a knife. She wakes him up and says, “I’m going to kill you.” She feels like there are two worlds, the one with Louie and the berries, and the one with Alex and Dani, in which everything has gone horribly wrong.
“Keep picking,” Alex says. “You still have ten seconds.”
The timer clicks. Louie’s point score goes up. Soon Alex can redeem the points to furnish Louie’s playroom. Dani looks in the fridge for dinner stuff. She orders pizza, salad, and soda for their supper, using the twenty bucks in her wallet.
Alex goes to bed and Dani starts her precalculus homework.
She looks at her hands and rubs them. She checks on Alex to make sure he’s still alive. She decides she must do something to prevent herself from possibly killing him—if, say, for instance, it’s a quiet moment like this and Dani finds herself—without really wanting to but on some kind of autopilot—heading upstairs with a knife while Alex sleeps. She looks through Mrs. Alex’s kitchen drawers to see if there are any knives that could kill someone. She finds three large knives, including a black-handled one that looks really deadly. She hides the knives in a box of crafts supplies in the garage. She locks the garage. She checks on Alex again. She waits to unlock the garage and put the knives back in place ten minutes before Mrs. Alex comes home.
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The next day in school, Dani’s French teacher shows a
film in which a boy is beaten by his father. This gets Dani thinking again about the guy who murdered his stepdaughter. His name, she knows by now, is Charles Bickie. Charles Bickie crossed a line, the line that separates non murderers from murderers. Once, for many days and many years, he was like her: a non murderer. But what he really was was a pre murderer.
His life was about to change—big time. She wonders if Charles Bickie stepped over that line by premeditated act or if he simply snapped. Dani tries to remember how Alex looked the last time she checked on him. She decides to call after school to make sure he’s okay.
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After calling Mrs. Alex (“He’s fine. Why, was