"I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!"
That line from the white rabbit from the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland kept cycling through my head. I felt like how Alice did when she hurled down that rabbit hole as I was hurling full speed toward the Newton's house on my bike. I'm cutting it kind of close for my sitting job with Jamie and Lucy. The Babysitters Club members are sticklers for punctuality, I thought, as I gritted my teeth and aimed my concentration towards the finish line. And then Jamie's usual greeting of "Hi-hi!" popped into my head. It was followed by Tweedledum and Tweedledee bursting onto the scene in my mind, bouncing up and down in an alternating fashion while repeatedly uttering Jamie's favorite salutation. The cacophony coming from them irritated me to no end as it hounded me throughout my commute. All of a sudden, a kid just appeared out of nowhere in front me causing me to brake really hard. I half-expected him to brightly chirp out "Hi-hi" but he didn't.
It was Sean Addison.
"Uh, hi, Sean," I said unsure of why he had parked himself in front of my oncoming traffic.
"Hi," he said. He stood there beaming for about a second before running off. I watched as he scampered down the sidewalk.
I shook off this odd incident and rode off.
I stopped on the curb after riding down two blocks. I felt the wind in my blond mane and narrowed my eyes against the glint of the sun. I felt the whisks of wind caress by me. I felt the slither of it on the different areas of my body. I felt it swept by my hand like a parting gesture before I embark on the last leg of my journey. I felt it brush by the front part of my hair like a boyfriend running fingers through it.
Then I looked down and it was Sean again! He was peering up at me. How long had he been standing there? Then I gasped: had he been the one that was touching me when I had thought that it was merely the wind? I shrug off the notion since I didn't know how to find out and I was cramped for time.
"Hi, Sean," I said smiling but gesturing gently yet insistently with my eyes to get out of my way.
He wore a glossed-over facial expression as if he was gaga over something while looking up at me.
"You're pretty," he said, blushed, then ran off and hid behind a bush.
"Aw," I said to myself, touched, and rode to the Newtons.
When I rang the doorbell, I heard the onrushing footfalls of little sneakers behind the door before halting before it. I loved hearing little Jamie hurrying to answer the doorbell. It reminds me of cowbells and how the men come running like cattle if you are a woman and you ring it announcing supper. It made smile and feel empowered.
"Hi, Jamie," I said brightly to his sweet-looking face as he looked up at me while standing in the doorway of the halfway-opened door.
I ruffled up his hair. He's a good kid.
Then he gasped holding his gaped mouth open.
"What is Jamie?" I said innocently.
"You're wearing a lot of, of, of colors. Those colors. That you wear over there. Right?"
"Where? What are you talking about Jamie?" I responded nervously. Even though I wasn't sure, I had a suspicion about what he was referring to. And also, I was wearing quite a bit more make-up than I usually do.
After I had been let in and Mrs. Newton had dashed off with Lucy for her doctor's appointment, I bent down to Jamie's eye level with a big smile on my face: "So. What do you want to do today?"
A mischievious look crept up on Jamie's face until it reached full bloom. "Stacey?"
"Yes?" I answered with a go-on expression.
"Um . . . can, can I be your boyfriend?" He asked stretching out a wide grin.
"Uh," I replied taken aback a little. "Sure." I was a bit unsure about that answer but then what harm could it really do to humor him a little.
He then snatched my hand which surprised me.
"Let's go for walk, Stace. I want to show you off." He said innocently.
My eyebrows raised.
"Um, Jamie. We could go for a walk but you are NOT showing me off." I gently chided.
While we were walking on the sidewalk, Sean Addison jump out from behind a tree and pinched my butt.
"Nice and firm, toots," Sean remarked.
I turned to Jamie. "Hey Jamie, my boyfriend. He touched me where he shouldn't touch me. What are you going to say about that." I chuckled.
To my surprise, Jamie got down on his knees in front of Sean and started kissing his shoes. "Please, please, please, forgive my bad girlfriend. I beg of you. Don't get mad at her. Get mad at me. Please." He said, prostrating on the cement with his forehead placed on top of the toe cap of one of Sean's sneakers.
"Uh, c'mon Jamie," I said gently jerking him up to his feet. "And Sean, don't ever touch a girl like that ever again, ESPECIALLY in that area. Do you understand?" (I said "especially" with a flash of the eyes.)
Sean just grinned impishly than ran off laughing in a cackling way. I sighed to myself; I don't think that I had gotten the message through to him.
After the walk, I fixed Jamie a snack of peanut butter and crackers, which he scarfed down. As he chewed, he looked around with his eyes, of which were filled with much worry.
"What's wrong, Jamie?" I asked concerned.
"I, I don't know," he replied quavering.
"Okay," I said, feeling uneasy about leaving this unresolved.
Then he pushed his plate away, folded his arms of which he plopped onto the tabletop and buried his face in it. He started sobbing.
"What's wrong, Jamie? What can I do for you?" I asked alarmed and with much concern. Should I call one of the sitters, I thought. I might need help teasing the source of the problem out of this poor boy.
"I, I don't know," he said, his words muffled. "Ever since that kid slapped your butt and what I did when you asked me to do something about it . . . ooohh."
"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked soothingly.
He shook his head which looked like a mop of hair moving back and forth atop folded arms. Hmmm, Jamie has some serious soul-searching to do.
Finally, Jamie lifted his head with red-rimmed eyes.
"Stacey?" He began with a shaky voice. "I'll be a better boyfriend next time. Can I go to the bathroom?" He rushed the last sentence.
I nodded and watched him trot off towards it. I felt sorry for him.
After awhile of being in the bathroom, the door of it opened. Jamie was standing with his pants down around his ankles while wearing his t-shirt.
"Hey honey," he said with a wink. "You don't need to fix supper tonight. I have some making up to you to do. Do you like what you see?" He periodically wiped his butt as he said this.
I looked on with a queasy expression on my face as I caught glances of the poop smears on the toilet paper that he had used to swipe his four-year old butt-crack. At least he had become pretty adept at this part of potty-training. That's a plus.
Then I drifted into remembering something that I had seen from a few nights ago when I was watching a scary movie. I was flipping through the channels and had landed on a scene where a serial killer was about to stab a male teenager. It just showed a silhouette where the victim was on the ground with the predator standing over him with a knife poised about to strike downward.
"I thought only big-breasted whores get chopped up by serial killers," he screeched. Then the knife plunged into him. He kept repeating the line as he was getting stabbed over and over again. Even when he was too weak to say it fully, he kept trying to utter as much of it as he could muster until he finally went limp. He kept trying to spout out that line until the very end. I felt a twinge of admiration for his dedication.
Big-breasted whores, I thought, and serial killers. Big-breasted YOUNG whores, I thought feeling a little alarmed. Young ones are probably included. Big-breasted young whores AND serial killers . . . like peanut butter and jelly. Then I imagined a dark red jelly being spread on a piece of bread. The jam is so thick . . . like arterial blood. Then I thought: I'm not big-breasted. Although, they DO fill out nicely in a bikini.
I felt shivers start welling up inside of me until it had suffused over most of my body. I pressed my tongue against the inside of my right cheek. Something definitely was making me feel REALLY nervous.
About a week later, I was hanging out in Claudia's room before the start of a Babysitters Club meeting. She was giddy and seemed to be smitten.
"What's up?" I asked. My eyes were smiling. "Is there something that you would like to share?"
She sighed. "Well, you know about Ross Brown's brother?"
"No. What about him?"
"Well, he's a professional MMA fighter. He came over to pick him up at school in his motorcycle. He is sooo cute!"
"Oh," I said a little disappointed.
I had hoped that Claudia had made a love connection. I had hoped that she had found a date but yet again she's only crushing on someone.
"Wow. He sounds like a big deal."
"Well . . . he sort of is. Probably just a local celebrity. Erica told me that she's been to one of the shows that he was fighting in. I think in New Hope."
"What's his name? Maybe I'll look him up to see if he's as cute as you say he is." I chuckled in a teasing fashion.
"Let's find out," Claudia said smiling.
She turned on her computer and logged on to the Internet. She found his Facebook page through Ross's. I gasped when I saw his picture.
"Claudia. I think I know who that is." I said with a corner of my mouth creeping up a little.
"Yeah?"
Claudia got excited, reached underneath her pillow without even looking and snatch out a bag of Reeces Pieces, and began eating eagerly awaiting my story.
"Well . . . when I had gotten home from school one day, he was on my bed. He looked up at me and I could tell that he had been crying. Sobbing! And he was this huge muscular guy with tons of tattoos. And a mohawk. He was sniffling as he talked. He said that there was this girl on this online Judy Blume forum. He said she had written on that forum that she was thirteen years old and he had completely fallen head over heels for her. He says that during his free time, he would stare at the Forum Games section waiting for her to post there since that's a subboard that she often frequents. He discovered her Twitter account and would often tweet to her. He would stare at his account waiting for a notification indicating that she had responded to his tweets. He said that he would bury his face in his pillow at night and cry in it since she rarely responds to them. And ever since he's been playing a lot of forum games, she has been on there a lot less. And to top it all off, he doesn't even know what she looks like." I said, rolling my after I had finished my spiel.
"What are Forum Games?"
"Oh. They are word games on forums. For example, the topic could be "post the first thing that you think of after seeing the previous post." The first post might be "apple." The next, in that case, would have to be the first thing that you think of after seeing the word apple. And so on." I explained.
She chewed on a bite of candy slowly and deliberately, mulling something over in her head.
"Hmm. So. How do you know him?" She asked pointedly.
"Mm. I'll show you."
Claudia and I were in Troy Parker's kitchen/dining room, seated at the dining table. It was his parents' house. After he had been suspended for three days for propositioning seventh and eighth grade girls at Stoneybrook Middle School, he just never came came back. He figured that he didn't need the education since he already knew what he wanted to do for a career and was well underway in doing it. His parents were even his employees.
Claudia was still grumbling about having to sneak out of her parents house even after I had reasoned with her about how she had done it for Mary Anne when the Babysitters Club members all snuck out to a graveyard around midnight in order to counter-surprise attack Cokie and Grace who were planning an ambush there. She didn't have an answer for that so responded by pouting and periodically mumbling complaints under her breath throughout the entire car ride over here in Troy's dad's pickup. Troy's dad who very much was the professional as the chaffeur didn't seem to mind Claudia's grouchiness. He seemed upbeat at receiving what he had thought was a new cash cow for his son's enterprise. After we had stepped out of our conveyance, he donned the mantle of the bouncer and stood by the door with the air of one that's very vigilant in his duties.
"Wow! Peter Hayes is here." Claudia whispered to me, shocked. "So is Howie Johnson and Rick Chow."
She then scrunched up her nose in disgust and I took a guess at what she was thinking.
"Don't worry. Alan Gray, Justin Forbes and Cary Retlin are not allowed in." I assured her. "Did you see Ross Brown? I think I spotted Lew Greenberg, too. I think he still likes you."
She took a peek from behind the door frame that looked out into the living room where clusters of male SMS students sat on the various furniture laid out in there. It was a makeshift audience area where folded chairs were set up to accomodate the number of attendees that over-capacitated the regular living room furniture. Only male customers were allowed. She scanned the crowd. I bet some spied her roving eyes and tried to catch her eyes with lecherous ones of their own. She then pulled back her head.
"Did you see him?" I asked maybe a little too excitedly.
She nodded with her eyes shiny. Alright! She still liked him. That could be the fall-back plan. If this whole venture goes south and she ends up being ticked off with me, I could always try to steer her in Lew's direction either here or at school. If she had already hooked up with Lew, I could remind her of a good thing that came out of the mess.
Then Troy's mom bustled into the room. She was holding a tray of empty soda cans and wearing an apron over a blue t-shirt and black jeans. After she had discarded them, she piled full ones onto the tray and went back out to dispense the new batch. Claudia was holding a smile the whole time that she was in here and following her with cordial eyes, but she didn't even notice.
"Relax, Claud," I teased. "You don't have to be uptight. Everybody's friendly here."
"Hold on, Stace," she said. "I like this song." The stereo in the living room was now playing You're The One That I Cherish by Blade. She sat back and a contented look washed over her face.
Errip! The music got cut off. I've become accustomed to that cue. I peeked in the doorway and saw Troy standing in front of a clamoring throng of eighth graders. Some were drooling with anticipation.
"Are you ready, everybody!" He yelled.
"YEAH!' They chorused.
"Here she comes!"