For Better or Cursed

by Kate M. Williams

  I was walking to the bus to go to the McAllisters’ house when I heard Cassandra calling my name. I turned around and she was strolling toward me, clutching something to her chest with both arms. When she got closer, I could see what it was: a three-ring binder.

  “So, either you decided to step it up in the hole-punch-and-homework department, or—”

  “Yep,” she answered before I could finish. “Coach HGTV is at it again.” She flipped open the binder and held it out to me. “He says we’re supposed to get all this stuff today.”

  “It’s an entire binder for a shopping list?” I asked, surprised, but not really.

  Cassandra pointed to a page with pictures of paper plates, cups, and utensils, each with a number underneath it. “Yes. The entire binder is a shopping list,” she answered. “He told me, and I quote, to ‘put it on the gift card.’ ” She flipped to another page and read off Party Town’s address.

  “I know where that is,” I said.

  “Well, come on, then,” she said. “I’ve got the van and you’ve got the card, so let’s go.”

  “Not so easy,” I said. “I have to babysit and it’s too late to cancel. It’s for MacKenzie.” At the name, Cassandra’s face softened a bit, no doubt because of their shared experience in the Negative.

  “How is she?” Cassandra asked.

  “Good, I guess,” I said. “I mean, every time I’ve seen her, she’s seemed fine. I’m taking her to her hip-hop dance class today.”

  Cassandra snorted. “MacKenzie’s taking hip-hop?” I nodded, and I couldn’t help but smile. Cass smiled back, and then she got serious again. “You should watch her,” she said. “To make sure that what’s happening to me isn’t happening to her.”

  “I will,” I said, and nodded to the binder. “So, the list?”

  “We’ll go when you’re done,” she said. “Text me, and I’ll pick you up.”

  “Are you okay to drive?” I asked.

  She grimaced and pulled a piece of paper out of her back pocket, unfolded it, and scrutinized what she’d written.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I started writing dates and times down, and I don’t see much of a pattern. Nothing has happened today, but I’m not taking any chances. Fortunately, Dion has nothing better to do than be our chauffer. So when I said, ‘I’ll pick you up,’ I meant ‘We will pick you up,’ but I didn’t mention Dion, because Dion’s not worth mentioning.” She spoke ten miles a minute, and it was conversations like that, that made me wonder what Cassandra would be like if she did drink caffeine.

  “Got it,” I said. “I’ll text you when I’m done.”

  * * *

  —

  Janis and I started our babysitting club in seventh grade, after Janis came up with the theory that the Baby-Sitters Club books were really about entrepreneurship and economic autonomy as a way to topple the patriarchy. Janis’s parents were college professors, and her bedtime stories were by bell hooks.

  My motives for babysitting were less noble than Janis’s—I saw it as a way to have fun and make a few bucks. I didn’t really like people my own age, and I was pretty meh about most adults, but I’d always liked kids. They were like the more authentic, more honest version of humans.

  Also, I wanted to do it because of Mom. I knew now that, like me, Mom was both a Sitter and a babysitter. I didn’t know that at the time, of course. I just knew that, weird as it sounded, when I was chasing a three-year-old around a swing set, I somehow felt closer to my mother.

  When Janis and I started the club, we had four members. Cassandra briefly joined when she arrived in Spring River earlier this year, but she was 100 percent Sitter and zero percent babysitter. She’d sooner get chopped into a million pieces by a Hash demon than help wipe one toddler bum. And after the events of Halloween, Janis was too freaked out to babysit anymore, even if she didn’t totally remember why. Now, she had a thriving Depop store. Maybe it was thriving too much. Janis loved thrifting, styling, taking photos, and posting things to the internet. What she did not love was going to the post office, and it turned out that when people buy things online, they actually want to receive them. She was a seventeen-year-old sorely in need of an assistant. So now the babysitting club was a club of one: me. At least it means meeting minutes are super short.

  MacKenzie McAllister’s family lived in a super-posh part of town that looked like the inside of a snow globe this time of year. There were white lights on everything, and I would not be surprised if some of the neighbors had snow trucked in so that their kids could be the first on the block to serve up a Frosty. MacKenzie was an only child, and both her parents were lawyers who worked all the time. When her mother asked me whether I would be up for a regular gig taking MacKenzie to dance classes, I said yes right away. Easy money—I’d just sit in the back of the studio. I thought MacKenzie’s mom was talking about ballet; I had no idea she meant hip-hop. MacKenzie taking hip-hop classes made me bite my lip to keep from laughing. She had braces, glasses, and freckles, and she was all lanky spaghetti limbs. She was also very, very into her hip-hop classes.

  When I rang the doorbell, MacKenzie answered dressed for class and ready to go. Today, she had on high-top sneakers with neon pink laces, baggy purple shorts that came down past her knees, sweatpants underneath them, an oversized T-shirt with Daisy Duck dressed up like Left Eye from TLC (I have no idea where she could have gotten something like that, as it was actually pretty cool), and a flat-brimmed baseball cap that she wore cocked to one side. She liked her outfit so much that she put up serious resistance when I told her she had to put a coat on over it.

  “I won’t get cold,” she said, stubbornly.

  “It’s a ten-minute walk to the dance studio, M,” I said. “Put on a coat, or we’re not going.” Finally, she sighed, disappeared down the hall, and came back wearing a red-and-black plaid peacoat. I tried to keep my face totally neutral because I could see why she didn’t want to wear the coat. Still, backing down would be bad for babysitters everywhere, and MacKenzie may have looked like a hot mess on the way to dance class, but at least she would be a warm hot mess.

  At the dance studio, I sat in the back with all the mothers and babysitters, and for an hour and a half, I resisted the urge to cover my ears, as the “hip-hop” that the kids danced to consisted mainly of remixes so bad I wanted to remix them back to normal. Poor MacKenzie had about as much rhythm as you’d expect, but at least she managed to not trip over her own feet. And, I had to give her credit, she wasn’t the worst in the class either—that title belonged to a curly-haired kid with a red-and-green cast on his left arm who did manage to trip over his own feet in the middle of a rap version of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” He seemed like the kind of kid whose reality show audition would someday go viral.

  The class ended with a dance-off, which was basically ten minutes of chaotic flossing to “Christmas in Hollis.” It was all I could do to keep from finding something sharp and repeatedly ramming it into my ear canals. Then things got better, because MacKenzie and I went to the ice cream shop down the street. MacKenzie didn’t like candy, but she did like ice cream. Not normal-kid flavors, of course, so she got a triple scoop of matcha, lavender, and cardamom, and shot me a look when she saw me raise my eyebrows at her order.

  “I can eat it all, Esme,” she said, taking off her hat and swiping at her bangs, which were plastered to her forehead with sweat even after a freezing block-and-a-half walk. “I really worked up an appetite today.” I said nothing further, because while I may insist on bundling up, I was most definitely not the kind of authority figure who would try to come between a girl and her junk food.

  The ice cream shop was surprisingly crowded for such a cold day, but we found a seat by the window and settled in. MacKenzie had already finished the matcha and started in on her scoop of cardamom. “So,” she said, her gaze flicking out the window, “you mu
st be quite the heartbreaker, Esme. It’s something I also aspire to. When I’m your age, of course.”

  “MacKenzie, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, taking a lick of my own double scoop of espresso chocolate cookie crumble.

  “Your boyfriend,” she said. “Or ex, I assume. Considering that he’s following you around and you’re ignoring him.” With that, she pointed behind me, and I turned, my gaze following her small, skinny finger. It was the guy from the library parking lot. He was leaning against a stark, leafless tree. Still in all black with the red beanie. Still looking cool, and hot. My mouth fell open, mid-lick.

  “He was outside of hip-hop too.” MacKenzie must have misinterpreted my shock as apprehension. “Don’t worry,” she added. “I won’t tell my parents. He doesn’t look scary, and he’s kind of a dreamboat.”

  For a split second, I met the guy’s eyes and had that same belly-flop feeling, though this time it was like I had landed in ice water. A sharp sound made me look away, but it was just MacKenzie’s chair scraping as she pushed away from the table, and by the time I looked out the window again, the guy was gone, no trace of him left, just the white fairy lights looping through the trees. The back of my neck started to buzz.

  “You can finish your ice cream on the way home,” I said to MacKenzie as I hurriedly gathered up our stuff. “We should get going.”

  “My mom said we don’t have to be back until dinner,” she protested. I didn’t answer as I helped her put her coat on, and even though her hand was sticky, I held it as I pulled her out of the shop, and I didn’t let go, the whole way back to her house. The guy might be hot, but I didn’t know who he was or what he wanted, and when it comes to the kids I’m babysitting, I don’t take chances anymore.

  * * *

  —

  When MacKenzie’s mom got home, I hung out for a few minutes while MacKenzie showed off her new moves. From what I could tell, the routine they were learning was a mix of viral video routines and country line dancing. By the time Mrs. McAllister paid me, I was super ready to get out of there. I was feeling really anxious, and it wasn’t because there were demons to hunt down or because my mom was cursed or because my dad’s whole life was a lie or because I lied to my best friend about seventy-two times a day. Something else was making my stomach do a floor routine, and I didn’t know what it was.

  I texted Cassandra that I was done, and then walked to the corner to wait. Once I got there, I pulled my coat tighter and texted Janis before I really thought about it.

  I saw him again

  Who?

  The guy from the library

  The cute one

  Did you talk to him? What’s his deal?

  No

  No what

  I didn’t talk to him

  So….

  I looked up from my phone and sighed. There was no sign of Dion’s van, and I felt like I might cry. There was no way I could keep this up. There was no way that Janis’s and my friendship was going to survive me being a Sitter. Even when I wasn’t lying, there were things that Janis just wouldn’t understand, and that I couldn’t make her understand.

  For her, seeing a cute guy you’ve never seen before twice in one week was a pleasant coincidence. For me, there was no such thing as coincidence, and I didn’t trust anyone. Fortunately, Janis knew that I was a tortoise when it came to guys, so she chalked my reluctance up to my awkward shyness, and started texting me about a pair of leggings she was trying to tie-dye when a gunshot-like backfire let me know that my ride was approaching.

  The van stopped and Cassandra jumped out of the passenger side to open the sliding door so that I could climb in the back.

  “Hey, Esme!” Dion called from the front seat. “It’s good to see you!”

  I guess I too would be very cheery if memories of all the bad things I’d done had been erased from my mind.

  “Uh, you too,” I mumbled, as Cassandra slammed the door closed and I took my place on the floor. Dion’s van was basically rust held together with rubber bands, but it was clean as could be, and I was the dirtiest thing on the floor.

  “So, you’re planning a party for your dad, huh?” he asked. “That’s so cool.” Cassandra turned around in the passenger seat and caught my eye.

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s his birthday. I mean, anniversary.”

  “Anniversary of what?” Dion asked.

  “His, uh, knee surgery,” I said. “Three years since he’s been able to walk in a straight line again.”

  “Good for him!” Dion said as he forced the van away from the curb. “Guess what?” he asked, then answered his own question when neither Cassandra nor I showed any interest in playing along. “I got the radio fixed!” He reached over and turned it on, and the sounds of “Jingle Bell Rock” filled the van. Cassandra reached over and turned it off.

  “I hate Christmas,” she said.

  “Me too,” I interjected from the backseat floor.

  “Why do you both hate Christmas?” Dion asked, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

  “You know why I hate Christmas,” Cassandra said. “Because it has always sucked. No matter where we were living, we were last on everyone’s gift list.”

  “Yeah, but that was then,” Dion said. “We’ve got our own place now. We should put up some lights, get a tree, hang some socks. All of it.”

  Cassandra was looking out the window, and to my surprise, she nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe we should.”

  We pulled into the Party Town parking lot, and Dion drove us up to the door. “So, text me when you’re done, and I’ll come back for you,” he said.

  “No, you’ll wait here,” Cassandra said, holding her hand out, palm facing him and her fingers toward the sky. “In the car,” she added. “No radio, no phone, you just stare out the window and think about algebra.”

  “Got it,” he said. “Will do.”

  I grabbed my bag and jumped out of the van, following Cassandra toward the store. I looked back right before we were about to walk in. Sure enough, Dion had his hands on the steering wheel at ten and two, and he was staring out the windshield, a slightly confused look on his face. I wanted to laugh, but at the same time, it sent chills down my spine. There was no way this was legal in any universe.

  Inside, Party Town looked like someone had just detonated a holiday bomb—it was dripping with fake trees, fake snow, fake mistletoe, fake holly, fake icicles, fake reindeer, and even—for all the nonbelievers out there—fake reindeer poop. “Wow,” Cassandra said, taking in a cardboard cutout of Mrs. Claus that looked like it had been modeled on Lizzie Borden. “This place is a circle of hell.”

  It took almost all the strength I had, and I seriously had to resist breaking out my powers, to dislodge a shopping cart from the train wreck it was part of. I steered the cart out of the way and Cassandra deposited Brian’s shopping list binder into the child seat. I pulled the binder out and flipped through it as Cassandra grabbed a cart of her own.

  “Wow,” I said, skimming the list. “I don’t know why I’m surprised, but the man is thorough. So, it looks like we need seventy-five slate-blue plates and seventy-five slate-gray plates.” I looked closer at the list. “That’s basically the same color. And he wants us to get one hundred and fifty napkins in a color called ‘ash,’ and then all the cups should be ‘puce.’ ” I looked up. “He is planning a party that is Fifty Shades of Grey.”

  Cassandra pushed past the holiday sputum and turned her cart down a fiesta-themed aisle. “Right,” she said. “So, seventy-five gray plates, and seventy-five more gray plates.”

  “I guess,” I said, turning my cart to follow her and continuing to read from the binder. “And fabric holly and greenery, but no plastic flowers. He put that in all caps, twice.” Cassandra, though, wasn’t listening, and as she walked, she stuck o
ne arm out and started shoveling everything into her cart: cactus pitchers, tiny sombreros, donkey piñatas, serape-striped place mats, everything.

  “These,” she said, “are amazing.” She turned around wearing a pair of avocado-shaped sunglasses. “Too bad they only have about twenty pairs—people will have to fight over them.” She threw all of the sunglasses into her cart. I pretended to flip through the binder.

  “Ah yes, food-shaped eyewear,” I said. “It’s right here on page nowhere.” I picked up a maraca from Cassandra’s cart and shook it at her. “Seriously, Coach is not going to be happy about any of this stuff.”

  Cassandra yanked the maraca out of my hand and shook it at me. “Come on, Esme,” she said. “Of course he’s not going to be happy about any of this stuff. But you know who will be? Us!” She reached across the aisle and grabbed an entire rack of unicorn horn headbands and tossed them into my cart. “So let’s just get it all!” She gave her cart a big shove and it rolled down the aisle, knocking into a cluster of fake palm trees. Cassandra grabbed an armful of leis, and instead of putting them in the cart, she thrust them over my head.

  “If we’re planning a party, which is supposed to be fun, we might as well have a little fun,” she said. I was about to protest again when I spotted an aisle of wigs. I walked over, grabbed several, and tossed them in my cart. Cassandra had a point.

  * * *

  —

  By the time we were finished, Cassandra and I had five incredibly unorganized carts and one incredibly unhappy cashier staring us down. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said as he sized up our purchase.

  “Nope,” Cassandra said. “Bag it.” I had managed to find a few things on Brian’s list: white pillar candles and a pack of gray napkins. And by gray, I mean printed with manatees. As a concession to the season, I picked up a lime-green adult onesie with a Grinch hood and STINK STANK STUNK printed on the front in all caps.