A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting #1

by Joe Ballarini

  Tammy slapped her hand on my notebook page.

  “I know the perfect job for you!” she exclaimed. “Babysitting.”

  I stroked an invisible beard on my chin, like a wise wizard considering his options. “Here’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t really like kids. And they don’t really like me.”

  “Aaw. Kids are so cute.”

  I winced, like I had just devoured a bagful of Sour Patch Kids.

  “Have you interacted with a child?” I asked. “Their little raccoon claw-hands are constantly covered in peanut butter. They all have rabies.”

  Tammy shrugged. “Details.”

  I tucked my Camp Miskatonic notebook away and shook my head.

  “They just watch cartoons and eat cereal and play on their iPads all day,” I said. “They don’t have to study or get good grades.”

  Tammy scrunched up her nose. “Kell, are you jealous of five-year-olds?”

  Am I peanut butter and jelly?

  Yes, I am!

  “Bet your butt I’m jelly. I never get to hang out and just watch TV and eat loads of snacks,” I said.

  “You could if you were a babysitter. And you’d get paid for it. Boom.” Tammy dropped an invisible microphone and snapped her fingers.

  “And”—she nudged closer to me—“my second cousin Shelly posted on Facebook that she just bought a car with all the money she made babysitting. That’s big money.”

  I tried to tell Tammy she was crazy, but the more I thought about it, babysitting, compared to my other jobs, sounded like a breeze. I mean, “sitting” is in the job title itself. You play with the kid for an hour, maybe read it a book, plop it in front of the TV, feed it pizza, make sure it brushes its teeth, and then send it to bed. While it sleeps, you’re on the phone, bingeing your favorite Korean soap opera on Netflix (Tears of Flowers and Fish? Soooo good).

  You basically get paid to chill out in someone else’s house like it was a minivacation, waiting for the thing’s parents to come back and give you some cash.

  How hard could it be?

  2

  As we walked into school, I tied my scarf around Tammy’s waist to hide the gum splotch on her jeans. She wore it well. Not that anyone noticed. In return, Tammy snuck into the yearbook office before class to post about my new career online: “Responsible babysitter: Ready to watch after your child.”

  She included a picture of me smiling and looking very responsible.

  I shared the post with my mom and dad (yes, Tammy is friends with them online), and they shared it with their combined fourteen followers.

  By fifth period, no one had responded. No likes. No shares. No online love.

  No problem. I wasn’t sold on taking care of monstrous little children. I felt destined for greater things. Relieved, I practically skipped down the row of red lockers, smiling at goblins, superheroes, and a dude dressed like a banana.

  The sea of kids parted for Deanna and the Princess Pack. They were fresh-off-the-pages-of-Teen-Vogue shiny, living a music video made just for them. I glanced down at my dirty green puffy jacket, my patched-up jeans, my worn pink Converse, and my nubby knit sweater that I had nicknamed “Itchy,” and I tried to blend in with the lockers as, to my total horror, they circled me with satisfied grins.

  “Babysitting’s the perfect job for you, Kelly,” Deanna said.

  My stomach twisted, like a bag of cold linguini, but I tried to sound flattered. “Oh, you saw my post?”

  “Nothing goes online that I don’t know about,” Deanna said with a wink.

  The three girls that made up the Princess Pack stared me down. One of the princesses crossed her arms and tapped her bedazzled pink Ugg. They all smelled like coconut shampoo and money. I felt like I was living an episode of Shark Week.

  “You have met the other babysitters, right?” Deanna asked with pointed curiosity.

  My stomach sank.

  The babysitters?

  I looked down the row of lockers to see three of our school’s most notorious Invisibles huddled together, carrying their giant, overstuffed backpacks.

  How could I be so stupid?

  There was Cassie McCoy, whose braces made her spit and whose bangs were so sharply cut they looked like the edge of an ax. She was speedwalking to class, bellowing “Move!”

  Then there was Berna Vincent, an African American girl with wild puffy hair and big thick glasses, who constantly chewed gum and wore shirts emblazoned with anime unicorns. It was rumored that she could make one piece of gum last an entire month.

  Lastly, there was Curtis Critter. So help me, that was his real last name. One lazy eye, one crazy eye, a crew cut, a chipped front tooth, and camouflage cargo pants tucked into high laced black combat boots. Not exactly mall-crawl material. Kids whispered that Curtis’s father hunted squirrels for meat.

  They were always together, and it was understood that you didn’t hang out with them unless you wanted to become one of the misfits of middle school. I mean, there are misfits, and then there are the borderline mutants that are the babysitters.

  And now it looked like I wanted to be one of them.

  Noooooooooooooo!

  What have I done?

  “They are a total rando trifecta,” said Deanna.

  “Toooootally.” I was happy to shift the attention away from myself.

  “They have zero followers on Instagram,” said Bedazzled Pink-Ugg Princess.

  “Fuh-reak show,” said Deanna.

  “Totally,” I repeated.

  For a moment, the Princess Pack and I were united in our collective snarky judgment of a common weirdo. This is not something I’m proud of. I did it merely for social survival.

  “They’re one step below quiz bowl or Mathletes,” Deanna despaired.

  “They’re so weird!” I said.

  “Exactly.” Deanna smiled. “Perfect job for you. Ciao.” Deanna and friends waltzed away, like they were going to the ball. They were toying with me. Like I was some red-headed court jester. I turned and walked to algebra, feeling each of the babysitters’ eyes following me, even Curtis’s lazy one.

  After class, Tammy took me by the arm and walked with me down the hall.

  “Major scoopage! Jesper Tanaka’s parents are going out of town tonight, and he’s throwing a big-time Halloween party.”

  Tammy then let out an excited “Eeee!”

  I gave her an exhausted look. “But tonight’s cookie dough and Netflix at your house.”

  “Tears of Flowers and Fish will have to wait,” she said, shaking me with excitement.

  “Don’t you want to know if Kim Shan ends up with Lee Min?” I was only half joking. If I’m not working, I’m studying. When I’m not studying, I’m sleeping. Cookie dough and Tears of Flower and Fish are my go-to escape from my own personal hamster wheel.

  “Kell,” Tammy said. I sensed a lecture brewing. “We’re eighth graders, and we’ve never been to a party with more than two people.”

  “We go to parties,” I said.

  Tammy’s eyes shot sour daggers at me. She tightened the knot on my white scarf that was still tied around her butt and then swept her hand across the swarm of students.

  “Kelly, it’s Halloween. The one night you can be anything you want. Anything in the world.”

  I looked around at the endless possibilities. Grim Reapers, pirates, witches, superheroes . . .

  What did I want to be? A glittering forest pixie? A dark, sad vampire? A unicorn? All three?

  “‘To be, or not to be—that is the question . . .’”

  We were in honors English, and Victor was reading out loud in front of the class. The entire room was silent as we all listened to him recite Hamlet with grace and confidence.

  Sigh.

  “‘Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them?’” he read slowly and thoughtfully.

  Victor has black hair, and these enormou
s puppy-dog brown eyes, and this little sideways smile that makes him look like he’s keeping a secret.

  Once upon a time, at the beginning of the school year, Victor and I sat across from each other in Spanish class. My heart would race whenever he spoke his native tongue. His family moved here from Guatemala when he was two. I know this because he did a report about Guatemala in social studies class (not because I’ve stalked him online or anything), and he pronounced it “Whaataamaala.”

  In Spanish class, I made some joke about “vamanosing to the playa,” and Victor laughed. It was a soft and warm laugh, like his eyes. He glanced at me, as if to say, Who is this weird thirteen-year-old with wiry red hair sitting across from me? My blood rushed and my eyelids widened as we held each other’s gaze. This is going to sound weird, but I swear I hear echoes of a Spanish guitar playing somewhere in the distance whenever I see him.

  Shortly after that, Victor was removed from Spanish class and placed in the advanced Spanish class, since he knew the language better than the teacher did. I thought it was really unfair, and I told Mrs. Bowen that yanking Victor out of our class was discrimination against Whaataamaalans. Mrs. Bowen gave me detention for disrupting class and spreading misinformation.

  When most kids read out loud in front of the whole class, they fidget or mumble while the other kids doze off or make fun of whoever is reading. Not my Victor. He read with such confidence and power that everyone was in awe of him. I’m not kidding. When he finished, the entire classroom burst into applause. Me included.

  “Thank you, Victor,” said Mr. Gibbs. He was deeply moved. “Such passion. Such . . . fire.”

  Victor just gave a bashful shrug, said “gracias,” and took his seat.

  I saw Deanna lean back and whisper to him, “I wish we were reading Romeo and Juliet.”

  Oh, barf.

  The back legs on my chair lifted as I leaned forward to eavesdrop on Deanna and Victor. “Do you need a ride to Jesper’s party tonight? My mom can drive us.”

  NO! SAY NO, VICTOR!

  I twisted my number two pencil in my hands, as if it were Deanna’s neck.

  “Bien,” Victor replied.

  No bien! NO BIEN, VICTOR!

  “Bien it is,” Deanna smiled, and winked. So help me, she winked. “Wait till you see my costume,” she whispered to him.

  Victor’s eyebrows raised. The pencil snapped in my hands.

  After class, I grabbed Tammy by the arm. “We are going to this party.”

  Tammy gently tapped her fingertips together, like an evil scientist watching her experiment come to fruition. “Yes we are!”

  3

  “Mom! Major costume crisis!” I shouted over the music.

  All my clothes were scattered across my room, making it look like I’d triggered my closet’s gag reflex. Tammy’s mom was coming to pick me up in two hours, and I had zero idea what kind of costume to make out of my limited wardrobe, budget, and time.

  My Spidey senses told me that something might happen tonight. I’d see Victor. He’d see me. The eye contact would be strong. And then, after two hours of Tammy psyching me up, I would squeeze up next to him and say something clever, like “¡Hola, amigo!”

  Okay, not that, but something superclever that Tammy and I would have agreed upon after discussing it for the entire night. Then I would tell Victor about the terrible injustice that had been done to him in Spanish class and how things just weren’t the same without him.

  Again, not that, but something good.

  I was going to have fun tonight, or at least try. This was a real party—not a pity party.

  I rushed into the living room to find my mom pouring a bag of candy into a large salad bowl. She was dressed in a denim shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. She had put a fake tattoo of an American flag on her right forearm. Her hair was tucked under a red bandanna. She wore welding goggles around her neck.

  “Mom, I need a costume that says fun but cool, not desperate but cool, and I need it now.” I dragged her into my room.

  “You could go as Frida Kahlo or Amelia Earhart,” my mother said, picking through my clothes.

  “I need a costume, not a history lesson.”

  “Oh! Edith Cavell. In World War One—”

  “She helped more than two hundred Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium and was shot to death by a German firing squad for it,” I said, finishing her sentence. My mother is a huge history nerd, which makes me one too. “I was thinking more like a Catholic schoolgirl.”

  “Young lady. You are thirteen. Not some music video dancer. You don’t have to objectify yourself for other people’s gratification.”

  “I know,” I sighed. “But once isn’t gonna hurt.”

  My mother stood behind me and looked at our reflections in the mirror. Her hands were warm on my shoulders. We looked similar, but she’s much prettier. I like it when people say I look like her.

  “Kelly . . . what do you want to be?” she asked quietly.

  I shrugged. “Cool?”

  “You are cool, honey!”

  “Doesn’t really count when you say it, Mom.”

  My mom straightened up and threw her shoulders back with powerful pride. “You’re right. It only counts when you say it to yourself.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Just because you read a bunch of life quotes on Pinterest doesn’t make them true, Mother.”

  Her cell phone rang with the dreaded ringtone that she uses only for one particular person: her boss.

  “Ice Queen alert,” she said nervously. “Why is she calling here now? Focus on my breathing . . .”

  “Don’t let her intimidate you,” I encouraged her. “You’re Rosie the Riveter!”

  My mother flexed her American flag forearm and answered the phone with a fake cheery voice. “Hiiiii, Mrs. Zellman. Peter and I are just getting ready for the company party tonight! How can I help you?”

  She wandered out of my room and paced the hall, rubbing her bunched-up forehead. I followed her into the living room, where she kept looking back at me and nodding.

  “Well, yes, she is very responsible,” said my mother. “Sure, she loves kids.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Something was fishy. My mother kept staring at me and nodding. “Well, I think Kelly’s busy tonight—”

  Something was definitely up. “Yes! She’s very busy!” I said, walking toward her. “She’s going to the biggest party of the year!”

  “An emergency?” My mother gave me a big apologetic look, and I stopped in my tracks. My fate was sealed.

  “Six o’clock? Great. See you at the party. No, thank you. Bye, Mrs. Zellman.”

  I stared at my mother and said in the most dramatic way possible, “Mother. What hast thou done?”

  “I . . . booked you a babysitting job for tonight?” She winced.

  “But—”

  “Mrs. Zellman’s sitter canceled at the last minute, and she saw your ad that I posted, and she’s heard me bragging all about my wonderful, brilliant daughter, and you said you need the money, sooooo . . .”

  “So you let her boss you around?”

  “She’s my boss! That’s what bosses do.”

  I dropped onto the couch and writhed around in agony. “Mom. This was my night.”

  “I tried to say no, but . . . the big company party’s tonight— She planned it, and she runs the company, and she can’t just— I can’t j-just—” My mother began to stammer, pacing quickly around the living room, pretending to light a cigarette. She quit smoking a long time ago, but she still sneaks a few when she’s superstressed, even though she knows she’s inhaling toxic waste.

  “She’s my boss, Kell. If I call her and tell her I screwed up, then what does that say about me?”

  I flopped onto my back and looked up at the ceiling.

  “This is the Ice Queen we’re talking about,” my mom said. “She’d fire me over something like this, and we can’t afford that.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but I knew wh
at my mother was saying. She needed her job, and if I bailed on the Zellmans, then, well, that job that helped put food on our table and a roof over our heads (but still isn’t enough to send me to summer camp) might go away.

  “Okay, Mom,” I said quietly in my most “I’m being supercool and understanding now, but you owe me later” voice. “I’ll go.”

  She hugged me, squeezing the breath out of my lungs.

  “Thank you! You’re going to make a great babysitter!” she squealed.

  “Please don’t say that,” I moaned.

  “I’ll tell your father he’s got to drive you,” she said.

  I slumped back into my room and pulled on ole Itchy over my faded NASA T-shirt.

  Who was I kidding? Whispering jokes back and forth with your best friend does not prepare you for actual social interaction with a boy.

  I may as well become a babysitter.

  4

  My father drove me in the family clunker into the part of Mercy Springs, Rhode Island, I call “Storybook Land,” because of its redbrick mansions and perfectly manicured lawns. Here, the Halloween decorations looked like they’d been handcrafted by Ralph Lauren. Posh trick-or-treaters strolled down the clean sidewalks.

  “Not like our neighborhood, huh, Kell?” my dad snorted. Air wheezed under bits of tape covering tears in his blow-up Godzilla suit. I reached out and pressed down on a piece of tape, blocking one tattered, grimy hole. “And don’t tell the Zellmans any of the stuff your mom says about Mrs. Zellman being an ice queen.”

  My father meant well, but my parents’ laser focus on everything I do puts a lot of pressure on me to be the perfect kid. I guess that’s another reason why Camp Miskatonic appeals to me.

  My dad stopped the car in front of a pristine three-story house on the bay side of the street and whistled. “Must be nice.”

  He waited as I walked up the fancy gravel driveway. A cold rush of air curled off the bay and brushed its chilled fingers across the back of my neck. I rang the polished brass doorbell and heard it echo through the house.

  The red door opened.

  Mrs. Zellman was wearing a white gown with snowy-gold lace. A headdress of fake icicles clung to her hair. Her eye makeup was arctic blue.