Babysitting a Scoundrel

My gaze scanned the hordes of people milling through the street, trying frantically to find my younger brother. I’d been left in charge while my parents went out to a meeting, and this was my first real test as a babysitter. I’d passed the babysitting class just one week earlier and I was more than ready to prove myself, but I must have forgotten how wild Jake can get, when I agreed to stay home alone with him for four whole hours. All it took was me going to the bathroom for two minutes and when I came back out, he was gone. I’d searched the entire apartment and he definitely wasn’t in there, but he'd left the front door wide open as a sure clue of where he had gone. But why would he have gone outside? I glanced behind me, up into the apartment windows, just to make sure he wasn’t up there laughing at me while I searched, but I didn’t see his maniacal grin in any of the windows. He must really be down here, then. Should I call the cops? If he were really missing, I should call for help, right?

I searched the depths of my memory for any lesson from the babysitting course that might be useful now. “If the kid you’re watching goes missing, do everything in your power to find them,” Mrs. Staci had lectured. “Are there any places they like to hide? A fort in the backyard? If you’re in a crowded place though, you can never rule out kidnapping. Always keep the children in your line of sight…” It was my fault. All my fault! I had looked away for two minutes and he was gone! Had he been kidnapped? Had I even locked the door after my parents left? What if while I was in the bathroom someone had come in and snatched him, and they were already taking to away to- Where? What would a kidnapper do with my brother? Hold him for ransom? He was only eight, so he really wouldn’t be much good for anything else.

“Jake!” I called. “Jake, this isn’t funny anymore. I need you to come back!” An old lady passing me by gave me a quizzical look, but I didn’t have time to be embarrassed. If he went missing while I was in charge, I’d never be allowed to babysit again. My career would be dead before it even started. Dead. Like Jake might already be.

Stop! I chided myself. Panicking won’t help anything. A good babysitter keeps a calm and level head in a crisis. What would Jenny do?

I took a deep, calming breath and tried to envision Jenny, who had been our babysitter all the way up until I passed the big babysitter’s test. She would try to lure him in with a treat. That’s what she always did, when Jake misbehaved. Offer him cookies. Maybe her bribery was why he was so poorly behaved, but I was willing to try anything at this point. “Jake, if you come home now, I’ll let you eat as many cookies as you want!” I yelled down the sidewalk. I looked around, expecting him to come running right out of some hiding spot behind a trash bin or something. He had to be lurking just out of sight, right? But he didn’t come.

“Jake!” I tried to keep the quaver out of my voice. If I cried, then he would win. And I couldn’t let him win, because then he’d tell my parents and they’d never let me babysit again. “Jake!” I called again, trying to make my voice a firm bark, like my dad’s when he told us off for misbehaving. Still nothing. I felt my breaths growing shallow, my chest constricting until it was hard to breathe, and my vision starting to go fuzzy around the edges. Was this a panic attack?

I felt a tap on my shoulder and my adrenaline kicked in, spurring me back into action. I spun around, already telling Jake off before I’d gotten eyes on him. “You poopy little brat-” but my remonstrances stopped short when I realized that it wasn’t my brother tapping on my shoulder, but a short and skinny girl with straight brown hair who looked exactly like- “Who are you?”

“I’m you,” she said, as though that were obvious.

“But I’m me. You can’t be me, too.” Nothing in all of babysitting class had prepared me for this.

“Well, I’m not exactly you,” the girl said. “But basically, I’m you. My name is Rebekah Shields too, and I have a twerpy little brother named Jake just like you. But I’m actually a good babysitter. I babysit for four different families and I make twelve dollars an hour.”

My jaw dropped. “Who are you?” I asked again, unable to comprehend what she was saying.

“Well, I’m you, just from an alternate reality. I’m the version of you where you find Jake before Mom and Dad get home and they never find out he went missing.”

I gaped and took a step back to take a better look. She really was me. But when I looked closer, I saw subtle differences. Her hair was a bit longer and fuller, less stringy than mine. And she had braces on. I didn’t have braces yet, but the orthodontist had been telling my mom I’d need them soon. Her clothes looked cooler than mine, too, and she was holding a smartphone- which was about a million steps up from the family emergency phone, a decrepit flip phone, that I had stashed in my pocket. “And what happens if I don’t find Jake before they get home?”

The girl, I, whoever she was, pointed at another girl sitting on the stoop and looking more angsty than I ever thought I could look. She had cheap headphones plugged into her ears and her hair had been dyed black. She looked angry and resentful, even at a glance. I knew for a fact that I’d never be friends with a glum girl like that, never mind become one. “That’s you from the alternate reality where you never find Jake. Not even after Mom and Dad get home. Soooo, you’d better get searching.”

“Are you gonna help?” I was too overwhelmed to try to mask the desperation in my voice.

“Well, I can try, but I’m pretty busy. I’m going to meet my friends for a movie, because I’m popular, in my timeline. Not just a dork anymore, like you.”

I scowled, but moved onto the more pressing matter. “Where am I supposed to find him? Why did he run off?”

“Probably because you’re such a bad babysitter. Had you thought of that?”

Man. This version of me was a real jerk. I wanted to tell her to go mind her own business, but since she was the only help I had, I passed up the opportunity. “Is he hiding somewhere?”

She shrugged. “Why should I know?”

“Didn’t you find him, in your alternate reality?”

“I’ll go check upstairs. He’s probably just hiding in the apartment and you didn’t even see him.”

I decided to let her go. There was no point telling her he wasn’t up there, and I wanted her gone, anyway. I’d be better off searching alone, at this rate. But now I had even more motivation- I had to find my brother, just to prove to her that I could be just as good a babysitter as she was. I looked up and down the street again, but this time my eyes alighted on the bakery. They sold day old cupcakes there that were cheap enough to buy with our fifty-cent-a-week allowance. I jogged down the sidewalk and pushed through the door, the cheerful little chime above my head seeming to mock me as I charged in. An employee looked up and smiled in greeting. “Have you seen my little brother?” I asked, not giving her a chance to greet me like they always did here.

Her smile faltered. “I did, but that was ten minutes ago. Jake, right? He bought a cupcake, then ran out and went that way.” She pointed down the road, away from the apartment and the preppy version of me that I had already come to hate so deeply. How could I become that shallow and self-absorbed?

Barely sparing a second for a “Thanks,” I sprinted out the door and down the sidewalk in hot pursuit of that little jerk. He just didn’t want me to be allowed to babysit, because he’d always had a crush on Jenny and he wanted my parents to hire her again, instead of me. I knew that’s why he was doing this. I scanned the storefronts, trying to find his next most-likely stop. As I searched, I saw another girl just like me and the other Rebekah and the me with dyed black hair. But this girl looked completely distraught, and her eyes looked odd, almost unfocused. At a glance, she looked like a lunatic, but I could see me through those eyes. I ran up to her. “Rebekah?” This was so crazy, so completely ludicrous that I wanted to keep running and pretend I hadn’t seen her, but something in those eyes stopped me. “Are you Rebekah?”

She looked up at me and tears welled in her eyes.

“What happened?”

“I watched him die,” she said. “Right up there, just minutes ago, he was hit by a car. I couldn’t get there in time, couldn’t save him, and- oh!” She let out a horribly pained gasp. “Run! Save him for me, if you can. I couldn’t, but maybe you can!”

I looked up, searching every face on the bustling sidewalk. I saw a brown-headed kid about his height, but he turned his head and I caught a glimpse of a long, pointed nose. Not him. Where was he then? “Yell if you see him, will you? I just need to find him!”

My heart was pounding fit to burst now as I searched the storefronts ahead. He had to be somewhere close-

The pet store. He always loved going into the pet store and checking out the ferrets and kittens and gerbils, because our parents never let us get pets. I half expected to see him trying to stick his fingers through the bars of the parrot cages like the dumb little kid he always was, but he wasn’t there, so I headed straight to the register.

“Hello!” It was Steve, the store manager who was always here. “Your brother was just in.”

“How long ago? Where’d he go?” My words were quick and slurred together, and I knew I looked sweaty and nervous.

Steve looked concerned. “Everything alright, Rebekah?”

“No, he ran away and I’m supposed to be babysitting him and I’ve lost him! He’s going to die now, and it’s all my fault!” My voice was choked now, and I was struggling to hold back tears. My anger with the other me, the first me, had faded immediately upon meeting the third me, and was replaced by worry for my little brother again. Sure he was a little menace, but if something happened to him on my watch…I could never forgive myself. Never, in a million, gazillion, years.

Steve gave hurried instructions to the other cashier, then jumped out from behind the counter and rushed to the sidewalk with me. “He ran up this way,” he said, pointing still further from the apartment. “We’ll find him, don’t worry.”

Steve rushed me up the street, peering inside the shops and restaurants as we passed. “He was here only a few minutes ago, so we’re hot on his tail.”

“There!” I shouted. “I bet he’s in the toy store!”

As Steve hurried ahead, I lagged behind, looking for any other store he might be in. The music store? He loved banging on the drums as long as he could, before he got kicked out. Maybe the pizza place. He couldn’t even afford a single slice, but maybe he went just to look. The art gallery? Sometimes he liked to look at the paintings with me and mom. Maybe- but then I saw him. A streak of brown hair, sprinting down the sidewalk with something in his hand. His eyes were fixed on something down the road- a pigeon- and he looked completely unaware of his surroundings. He was sprinting all out and headed straight for the road, just like the last me had said he would-

A car was coming, driving way over the speed limit. The driver would never see him, the short little eight-year-old darting out after the pigeon, the pigeon who had wings and could fly out of harm’s way-

I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to watch, and braced myself for the impact, the squealing brakes, screeching tires, my brother’s scream as he was run into the ground. But it didn’t come.

I opened my eyes. He had stopped. Pulled up short on the sidewalk, turned away from the road, and was looking over his shoulder at me.

“Jake!” It was a girl’s voice shouting Jake’s name, shouting it for a second time, now. Because she had already shouted once, hadn’t she. I turned back to see the third me, the me who had watched him die, who had followed me and Steve from the pet store, followed us all the way, looking out for Jake, and shouting for him when I couldn’t.

I wanted to turn, to thank the other version of me, but there wasn’t time. I sprinted to Jake and swooped him up into my arms, squeezing him tight and with tears spilling down my face. “Jeez,” he said, looking a little sheepish. “What’s with you? You look like a madwoman.”

I wiped my streaming eyes and pulled him back from the edge of the road, all the way back against the buildings. “If she hadn’t yelled, I mean, I thought you were done for. I thought you were a goner, and it was all my fault!”

“She? Who’s she?”

I turned back, looking for the other me to show Jake. I needed someone else to see her, someone to understand and believe me. But she wasn’t there.

“It was you who yelled. I heard you. I wasn’t gonna go in the road though, I’m not an idiot. Who are you looking for?” For I was still looking, still trying to pick her out of the crowd. But she had vanished into thin air.

I rounded on my brother, my idiot, eight-year-old numbskull of a brother. “What were you thinking, running off like that? You’re such a jerk sometimes, you know? You could’ve gotten yourself killed. Kidnapped. Run over by a car.”

“I can take care of myself! I don’t need you to babysit me like I’m some sort of…some sort of…baby!”

I was positively seething, as I linked his arm in mine and marched us back to the apartment ten minutes later, after thanking Steve profusely for his help. “You are in so much trouble, mister,” I said, trying to channel our mother’s voice, but I couldn’t hide the relief that he was still alive. As we climbed the stairs, I thought of all the other versions of myself, and swore I’d never become any of them. A good babysitter keeps a calm and level head in a crisis, I thought again.

I thought about telling Jake the truth, that it hadn’t been me who shouted for him to stop before he ran out into the road, but I knew he’d never believe me. And anyway, when I thought about it, it really had been me who had yelled after all, hadn’t it? Maybe not this exact version of me, but they all were part of me, weren’t they? But I still had my decisions, and the ability to make my life, to shape myself, how I wanted to be. Even as he yelled “Ick, ick! Get off me!” and “Gross, cooties!” I swept Jake back into my arms at the top of the stairs.

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again, got that? You can be a real butthead sometimes, you know that?”

Jake grinned. “Never knew you cared, sis.” And with that, he pushed me away. “Think Mom will ever let you babysit again?”

I shrugged. “Probably not, but that’s fine. I don’t think it was worth the hassle anyway.”