The Babysitters Coven

by Kate M. Williams

  “You know,” I said, walking over to open the passenger door, “this is Spring River, so finding something ‘fun’ to do is asking a lot. I could take you on a tour of strip mall parking lots that have been home to abandoned-car fires, or would you rather visit chain restaurants known for food-poisoning outbreaks? I hear the Chili’s on West Street has a pretty good molten-chocolate-E.-coli cake.” I climbed in and heaved the door shut behind me, then fumbled for my seat belt.

  “Been there,” he said. “Still recovering.”

  “Congrats on the job,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Working for a contractor,” he replied. “It’s nothing special. Just working on a new housing development out west, building McMansions out of cardboard. But I’m going to learn a lot about drywall, which will be cool because I haven’t done much of that before.”

  “Oh, that’s awesome!” I said, probably a little too enthusiastically. I sounded like I was a huge drywall fan. I didn’t know what drywall was.

  Dion mashed the van into drive, and with a squeal pulled away from the curb. “Okay, so where are we going?”

  I looked out the window at the clouds racing through the sky like in a regatta, and had a breath of inspiration. I shifted in my seat so that I was almost facing him. “I have an idea. I’m going to take you to the one place in Spring River that might actually be considered beautiful. Do you want to know what it is?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Surprise me.”

  I nodded, and hoped he couldn’t hear my heart caterwauling around in my chest.

  * * *

  —

  If you started at the center of Spring River and drove in any direction, in fifteen minutes you’d be out of town, flying down roads that didn’t have curbs—nothing but fields, the occasional tree or the even more occasional cow on either side. I talk a lot of crap on Kansas, but backwards politics and the lack of good shopping options aside, it’s pretty okay sometimes. Like now. The sky is huge and close, as if you could touch it if you just found the right tree to climb, and the landscape is as subtle as no-makeup makeup. There are no mountains intimidating you into appreciating them, and there’s no ocean throwing itself on the rocks to demand your attention. The plains are just like, we’re here and we’re chill.

  Dion drove with the windows down, and the rush of air made the droopy ceiling liner flap like a one-winged bird trying to take off. I had to yell to tell him where to turn, but when we were just driving straight, I settled back in the seat and put my hand out the window so that my fingers could ride the waves. It was a little chilly, but I liked it, and just pulled my jacket tighter around me.

  We were getting close, and I made Dion slow down so I could read the street signs. It’d been years since I’d been there, so when I finally saw the one I was looking for, I told him to stop. I could see that he was confused about why I was having him stop in what seemed like the middle of a field, but I could also see a smile playing on the edge of his lips. He was intrigued. I’d done good.

  “We have to walk a little bit,” I said, trying and failing to open my door.

  “Hold on a sec,” Dion said, jumping out and running around. “It works, but it might be stuck.” I stumbled a bit when my feet hit the dirt, and without thinking, I grabbed on to his arm to steady myself. I pulled away just as quickly, as the ripple of muscle under his flannel threatened to make me woozy.

  Big, round hay bales dotted the fields like gumdrops, and the late-afternoon sun made their pale beige seem gilded. I started across the field toward a row of trees, picking out each step carefully since the ground was uneven and kind of wet. From behind me, I heard Dion say “ ‘Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold,’ ” and I spun around. The words practically knocked the breath out of me.

  “What did you just say?” I asked.

  He looked almost sheepish. “It’s a Robert Frost poem,” he said. “ ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay.’ I always think of it when the light looks like this.”

  “I know. Me too. It’s—it’s one of my favorites,” I stammered. It was almost like he’d read my mind. Was this what people were referring to when they talked about “having a moment”?

  “I’m not all literary or anything,” he said. “I just know it because of—”

  “The Outsiders,” I finished for him.

  He smiled. “Yeah, but you probably read the book. My dumb ass just watched the movie.”

  “I’ve read the book, and I watched the movie about three hundred times,” I said. “I know every line by heart. I used to want to be Cherry Valance.”

  “I used to have a crush on Cherry Valance,” Dion said. Swoon. He was looking into my eyes, but I quickly turned away. What was going on here? Was he flirting with me? I had no idea what being flirted with felt like, but maybe this was it? If I’d been cooler, if I’d been Cherry Valance, I would have flirted back, acted coy and playful. Maybe taken his hand and made him close his eyes, something to play this up and make it seem adventurous and romantic.

  Instead I just crashed through the bushes, caught my jeans on a twig, sneezed, almost fell down, and said, “Well, this is it.”

  At first he didn’t say anything, and I panicked. What if I’d misjudged, and this wasn’t his kind of thing at all? Then his eyes widened, and his mouth fell open a little bit. “What…” He slowly turned back and forth so that he could take it all in. “This is incredible. What is this place?”

  I couldn’t help but grin. “No one knows,” I said. “It’s been here forever. It’s kind of like the only magical thing in Spring River, since no one’s ever claimed it and it keeps growing.” It was a DIY sculpture garden of a couple of acres, with concrete statues placed every few yards. There were elephants, tigers, and giraffes. Greek gods, mermaids, and centaurs. Biblical figures, Shakespearean characters, and angels. They weren’t organized in any particular way, with a winged fairy next to a pickup truck next to a snake-haired medusa. Some were brand-new and still a smooth, pale gray. Others were decades old, their faces weather-beaten and falling away, and though there were a million theories about who had built the sculpture garden and why (my favorite was that it was an old man whose wife had died young, and he added a sculpture every year on her birthday), none had ever been confirmed. It was a mystery of the best kind.

  We split up to wander, and I watched Dion smile as he ran his hands over a devil’s broken horns. “How’d you find this place?”

  “My mom loved it,” I said. “You know, she’s in a facility now.” Dion was nodding like he knew what I was talking about, which didn’t surprise me at all. “But we’d come here for family picnics, and Dad and I came a few times by ourselves. I was, like, four years old, and some of the sculptures scared me.”

  “Like this one?” he asked, pointing to the devil.

  I shook my head. “More like that one,” I said, pointing to one of Adam offering Eve an apple. We didn’t talk much as we wandered through, and I noticed that Dion took out his phone to snap pictures of a couple of the statues. Finally we met at a cement bench in the middle of the garden. The sun was starting to set, and the shadows were growing longer. A slight breeze left a trail of goose bumps along the back of my neck, and I involuntarily shivered.

  “Do you want my flannel?” Dion asked.

  If I’d been a hot girl, I would have scoffed at this rote method of seduction. But since I was just his little sister’s friend, I only shook my head. “No, because then you’ll be cold,” I said.

  He laughed, and then the unthinkable happened. He put his arm around me and pulled me into him. I tried not to hyperventilate at his heat or his smell, and tried to seem relaxed, even though I felt like I was being electrocuted. Was I supposed to do anything? Was I supposed to say anything? I opted for nothing, as that seemed like the safest option. We sat in silence, watching the sunset, and I really, really hoped that Dion
wouldn’t know I was freaking out. He spoke first.

  “I don’t have that many memories of either of my parents,” he said. “But I remember Cass’s second birthday. Mom made her this banana cake that she just smashed everywhere. Then my parents and I joined in. All four of us were eating cake by the handful.”

  I nodded against his shoulder. “It definitely tastes better that way,” I said. “What was your dad like?”

  “He was cool, I know that,” he said. “He had a motorcycle, and he was in a band for a while. If I remember right, Mom was kind of all over the place, but Dad really held it down. It sucks to not have gotten to know him, you know?”

  “I feel the same way about my mom,” I said. “My dad and I have nothing in common—I mean, everything he wears is moisture wicking. So I have to think I’m more like my mom, but I might never know for sure.”

  “When I was younger,” Dion said, “I spent a lot of time daydreaming about how my life would have been different if my parents were still alive, my dad especially. Their car caught fire when it wrecked, and burned up so bad that it was hard to identify the bodies. So I’d tell myself that maybe it wasn’t really our parents in that car, and that someday I’d walk out of school and Dad would be waiting for me.”

  I felt like I knew exactly what he was talking about, how hope could lodge in your chest and then harden until it felt like a thing that was weighing you down instead of buoying you up. “I used to think stuff like that about my mom,” I said, “like maybe she was just pretending, or playing a joke.”

  “But you grew out of it, didn’t you?” he said, and I nodded. “Cass didn’t,” he continued. “She still thinks our parents might be out there somewhere, and she can’t accept that they’re gone. It’s all part of her thinking there’s something special about her.”

  Almost against my will, my body stiffened and pulled away from him at those words, because, well, what a weird thing for him to say. “There is something special about her, Dion,” I said. “I mean, she can set things on fire. That’s going to mess with her head a little bit. It’s hard to feel like you’re just…”

  He put his other arm around me and pulled me into a hug. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s not what I mean. I didn’t mean to sound like such an asshole. There’s something special about both of you. You especially. You’ve got all this crazy stuff going on around you, but you’re still really…”

  I sucked in my breath as anticipation ballooned in my chest. I was freaking out inside, wondering what he was going to say. I was really what?

  “Nice,” he said.

  I exhaled. Balloon deflated.

  Nice—it’s the chicken Caesar wrap of compliments. Acceptable, but never very exciting.

  “Thanks.”

  “Come on,” he said, standing up. “We should get going.”

  “Righty-o,” I said, and didn’t even worry that it sounded stupid.

  Dion dropped me off at home, and I went in and sat down on a chair in the kitchen, and stayed in the dark for several minutes. I felt stupid, yet relieved that I’d kept my stupidity to myself. I didn’t have much experience with guys, but I did have enough to know that guys like Dion were not into girls like me. He was so hot, you could probably use his driver’s license photo to make s’mores. And me? On my good days, when I woke up early and had no zits and my hair was cooperating and I managed to blend my under-eye concealer just right so that I didn’t look like a ghost or a panda and I’d stopped myself from eating a sixth piece of pizza the night before, I could pass for cute.

  Cute and smoldering were not in the same orbit.

  Besides, Dion was an adult. Sure, he was basically only a year older than me, but he owned a house. And a car. He could leave to go buy Flamin’ Hot Cheetos at two in the morning, no questions asked, and no one was garnishing his babysitting wages to pay for a driver’s ed disaster. There was a snow cone’s chance in hell that anything would ever happen between us. So why had I spent all afternoon waiting for him to kiss me? Shouldn’t I have known better?

  I heard Dad’s car turn into the driveway, and moments later the slap of the screen door announced his entrance into the house. He flicked on the kitchen light, and jumped when he saw me sitting there. “Geez, Esme, why are you sitting in the dark?”

  “I was trying to decide what to eat for dinner,” I said.

  I could tell by the flush in his cheeks that he’d been at the bar. He had a Styrofoam take-out container in his hand, and he dropped it onto the table in front of me. I opened it up—chicken fingers and fries. Brown and brown.

  “So, I met up with Brian for a beer,” he said as I picked through the browns, looking for the least soggy fry.

  “Oh yeah? How’s he doing?” I didn’t want to let on that I had any reason to fear Dad spending time with the school’s athletic director.

  “He’s good. He thinks we’ve got a good chance at going top three in the state this year. Our offensive line is full of juniors too, which bodes pretty darn well for us next year.” Sometimes I had a hard time understanding how Dad and I were related. Like when he used the term “us” to talk about the high school football team. “You know, you’d probably know that if you ever went to a game,” he continued.

  “You know me and football, Dad. We don’t mix.” I took a bite of chicken.

  “Yeah, but Brian’s a good friend, and he’s really been there for our family. Even if you’re not into it, it’d be nice for you to show some support.”

  I was starting to get an inkling of where this was going. Then Dad turned around and set his plastic cup of water down on the counter, a little harder than he needed to.

  “He also tells me you dropped gym.”

  I groaned and rolled my eyes. Every time I thought that maybe it wasn’t totally a bummer that my dad was friends with a teacher at my school, something like this happened. It felt like being spied on. “I didn’t drop it. I’m going to take it later. It just didn’t work with my schedule this year.”

  “Esme, you can’t just go through life avoiding everything you don’t like.”

  “Dad, it’s not that. It’s…complicated.” Like, in an I-outed-myself-as-telekinetic-in-dodgeball kind of way.

  “If you were having problems with the other students, you could have talked to Brian about it. I don’t like seeing my daughter run from bullies.” Crap. How the heck did Brian even know that Stacey Wasser was the reason I’d dropped gym? I hadn’t even told Janis.

  “I’m not being bullied.” I stood up and slid the chicken fingers back toward him. “Like I said, gym just didn’t work with my schedule this year.”

  I left Dad standing in the kitchen and headed to my room. My phone started to ring, and for a second, before I could stop it, my heart leapt with the hope that it was Dion.

  Instead the screen said it was Janis. I answered with a groan, knowing that she’d ask what was wrong and give me a chance to vent about Dad and his weird obsession with gym and all things Coach Davis.

  “Esme?” She was whispering, and her voice was small and shaky. I froze instantly, every hair on my arms standing on end.

  “Janis? Are you okay?”

  “There’s someone in the house.”

  Instantly my mouth went dry and my heart started to race. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m babysitting, and there’s something in the house.” Her whisper was urgent and came out with a scared hiss.

  “Oh my God, Janis. Where are you?”

  “I’m with Andrew. We’re hiding in the closet. I locked the bedroom door.”

  I didn’t tell her she was imagining things. I didn’t tell her to hang up and call the cops. “Stay there,” I said instead. “I’m on my way.”

  Then I turned around and ran right out the front door.

  I was already at the end of the block when Dad realized what had hap
pened, and I heard him screaming from the porch. He’d probably never seen me run so fast in my life. He’d probably never seen me run.

  But I kept going, even when I heard a bark behind me.

  Great. Now I was being chased by a dog.

  I glanced over my shoulder, and it was Pig, ears flapping in the wind as she raced through the dark to catch up with me. I didn’t have time to turn around and take her home, so I just called out to her to keep up.

  Andrew’s house was less than a mile away, and as my combat boots slapped the sidewalk, my lungs hurt so bad that it felt like I was inhaling pure gasoline and sandpaper. I didn’t dare stop, though. I ran through an intersection and dialed Cassandra.

  “Janis is babysitting, and something’s happening,” I gasped as I nearly collided with a Subaru. “We need to save her!” I flipped the driver the finger as he laid on the horn. I yelled the address into the phone.

  “I’ll meet you there,” she said, and hung up without asking any questions.

  When I turned onto Andrew’s street, every muscle in my body was on fire, but I didn’t stop running until I was on the front porch. I went to pound on the door, and it swung open as soon as my fist hit it. I stepped inside and surveyed the hallway to see what sort of heavy object I could swing through the air if I needed to take somebody out. A brass umbrella stand would have to do. I grabbed it with one hand, and with the other told Pig to sit and stay. I felt better knowing that she was guarding the front door.

  The house was quiet, and all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. The living room and kitchen were both empty, and I made my way slowly up the stairs. The door to Andrew’s room was open, and in the glow of his night-light, I could see that the window was wide open. It gave me the creeps, and I used my powers to slam it shut and lock the night outside. Then peeked in the closet. Empty.

  The bathroom was empty too; the only room left was his dad’s at the end of the hall. The door was shut, and it was locked. I assumed this was where Janis was hiding, but I still didn’t dare to call out to her. If there was someone else in there, my best bet was to surprise them. I put my hand on the knob and concentrated on unlocking it, until it turned under my fingers.