The Babysitter Murders - By Janet Ruth Young Page 0,24

try to match it?”

“It’s not that.”

“Grammy and I discussed it and she said she’d help. We both agree you’re the best possible sitter Alex could have. With Grammy contributing, and if I stretch a little, I can offer you—

nine dollars an hour.”

“It’s not that.” Dani squeezes her hands together. I don’t want to hurt anyone. “Other stuff is going on in my life.”

“Are you not getting your schoolwork done? You know, you don’t have to spend every minute with Alex. I’ve talked to him.

He knows you need homework time and you can’t entertain him twenty-four-seven.”

Dani shakes her head. “It’s not that. School is fine. I mean, I might hand in a late assignment like everyone else, but school is normal.”

“Then what is it? Tell me. Maybe we can work something out.”

She puts on a listening face. This is going to be tough, Dani thinks. I didn’t expect kindness and understanding. It’s clever of Mrs. Alex, who is a tough, wily survivor of difficult situations.

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“It’s not practical stuff. It’s something with me. An emotional thing I’m going through. I need to get away from here for a while.”

Mrs. Alex tucks one leg under her. She seems eager for a chat, the way Beth had been. Dani imagines her sitting like that with her sorority in nursing school. Her crowd club-hopped around Boston with guys from the nearby pharmacology school. At least if Dani was going to wreck her schedule by talking, Mrs. Alex probably thought, it would be a fun talk. “I hope you know you can always talk to me about emotional stuff. I was seventeen once, you know. Is it that boy you’ve been telling me about? The singer?”

Dani had mentioned that Gordy called and invited her over, but she had told more than that.

Dani pauses. In the pause Mrs. Alex seems cheerful but impatient. Her eyes drift upstairs, where the phone has started ringing. It must be Grammy, calling to find out what’s taking so long.

Alex’s voice comes on in the recording.

Dani’s eyes flick upstairs to make sure Alex is still in his room and not coming down the steps. She doesn’t want him to overhear, ever; she never wants him to know. Dani wanted to be businesslike and impersonal and not reveal any bad stuff. Life is bad for her, but the badness shouldn’t spread onto anyone else.

There’s no reason to alarm anyone if Dani can go away and deal with it on her own.

But Mrs. Alex isn’t letting Dani go. Mrs. Alex isn’t letting Dani handle it the way she thinks it should be handled. No matter what, this has to be the last time Dani comes here. What can Dani do or say to make sure she isn’t in this living room at this 84

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time tomorrow? There’s only one way to protect Alex. The only way out is through the middle.

“Okay . . . ,” she starts, and she’s as nervous as she’s ever been, that flying-up-out-of-your-body adrenaline fear that she and Shelley talked about, that occurs when you’re summoned to the principal’s office or have to speak in front of hundreds of people.

She needs a suitable expression on her face. She’s about to say something surprising and upsetting, and she needs to make it less scary. How can she put Mrs. Alex at ease? Try smiling when you say it, her mind tells her. Maybe that will help. That’s right, she thinks. I’ll try smiling. She hopes it isn’t the nervous smile she had as a kid when her mom was angry or caught her in a lie, because then she’ll seem like a complete psycho. She looks Mrs. Alex right in the face.

“I keep having these thoughts about killing Alex.”

Mrs. Alex’s head tilts to the side.

Her eyes widen.

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Oh no, Dani thinks. I never wanted to say “kill.”

Mrs. Alex sits with her head tilted and her chin pulled in.

“I guess I should go,” Dani says, reaching for her backpack.

Tonight could have gone better, but she’s leaving this nightmare behind, and the only person to have shared it was Mrs. Alex.

More people could have been dragged into it—Shelley, Gordy, Beth, maybe even Alex—but they weren’t. A contained nightmare of one night, with a beginning and end as crisp as a calendar.

“No,” Mrs. Alex says. “Stay a minute. Sit right there.” She