The Babysitter Murders - By Janet Ruth Young Page 0,32

necklaces.

Dani tells Dr. Kumar what Dr. Kumar has already heard from JANET RUTH YOUNG

Beth: that Rob Solomon moved out when Dani was eight to live with another woman and her three children and they all moved to Colorado together. Dani visited a few times and did outdoor things with her dad, but she didn’t feel like she belonged there.

For a while she was sad, but now all that seems like a long time ago. Beth was angry about Colorado, very angry, but she seemed to accept it once she met Sean.

“Are you experiencing stress at school? Are you going through a stressful period?”

She tells Dr. Kumar about the tough competitors she and Shelley may face in this year’s MIAA semifinals. About apply-ing to her mother’s alma mater, a great school, but also a couple of safety schools. About rehearsing with Gordy once a week, and how Shelley had a movie date with someone she likes who, Shelley just told Dani, touched her for no reason twenty to twenty-five times during the course of the movie.

It’s good having Dr. Kumar to talk to, so Dani schedules three more appointments.

She thinks she’ll enjoy coming back here and looking at beautiful things, including Dr. Kumar herself and her jewel-toned wardrobe. Being here has another advantage. Dani didn’t want to hurt Alex, but she was never a hundred percent sure that she wouldn’t hurt him. If anything ever does happen, by telling several people she’s spread the responsibility around. Mrs. Alex, Sergeant Mason, Officer Pinto, Beth, and now Dr. Kumar, even if they are shocked by her thoughts, are like legs that give her 114

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stability. Each of them, by knowing, is taking on a bit of the weight. As days go by and she doesn’t have to babysit, Dani’s hopes her strange other-side life with Alex might chip off like a chunk of ice that breaks off in a thawing river, and spiral away, never to be seen again.

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“Well?” Beth Solomon asks in the car on the way home from Dani’s appointment. Beth looks hopeful, like a little kid you would hate to disappoint.

“We talked a lot,” Dani answers. “I liked her.”

“I knew you would,” Beth says, looking satisfied. “Do you feel a little better?”

“Definitely. I made the same appointment for the next three weeks.”

“That’s great,” Beth says. She adds the appointments to her phone and then pulls into traffic. “Whatever this is, it didn’t flare up in a day, and it won’t take just a day to get rid of it either.”

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At their second rehearsal, Dani and Gordy watch Sonny and Cher sing “I Got You, Babe.”

“My dad loves this,” he says. “He and my mom used to sing it to each other.”

When the video ends, Dani and Gordy sing the song together.

She does the harmony differently from the recording. They look into each other’s eyes and swing their upper bodies from side to side as if they have long cascades of hair like Cher’s. The way Gordy does this doesn’t seem like a drag queen. It seems simulta-neously feminine, respectful, and athletic.

When they’re done, Gordy goes to the kitchen and comes back with two pints of premium ice cream, one of banana and one of Heath bar. Dani remembers the horror of Icey’s and Meghan. What a difference two weeks can make. They sit on the couch with their feet up and start eating one pint each, then trade. This is a time when Dani would normally have been babysitting.

“I’m free!” she says, waving her spoon in the air.

“How come you stopped?” Gordy asks. “They didn’t need you anymore?”

“It was getting to be too much,” Dani says. She shivers and shakes her head, mouths the word ugh without actually saying it.

JANET RUTH YOUNG

She’s thinking about the bad times, but maybe Gordy will think she just has an ice cream headache.

“Too bad. You seemed to really like that little kid.”

“I did. I started missing him on day one.” She considers telling Gordy about the time Alex used all his game points to buy Louie a Jacuzzi and then it turned out he didn’t know what a Jacuzzi was.

But although little kids say and do funny things, when you repeat them or act them out they don’t seem as funny.

She wishes Gordy hadn’t mentioned Alex. Because she’s picturing Alex’s body in the Alexes’ driveway after someone, it must have been Dani, backed the car over