Jenny (Babysitter's Club 5)

I blinked her into focus and tried to bring my mind back from the abyss. “What? I’m sorry mom, what did you say?” She shook her head and just turned and walked away. I shook my head as if coming out of a daze and looked down at my homework.

I’d started a thesis on the anatomy of a crush. This had nothing to do with my homework. I’d lost time again. This was happening more and more frequently, this loss of time, of knowing. It was lucky for me that my time in high school was almost at an end and that I had already fulfilled my academic responsibilities because I felt myself getting closer and closer to that deep dark hole that had opened up in front of me.

Am I crazy? Or close? Why can’t I stop myself from falling even though I see that it’s about to happen? Even when my mind tells me that it can be avoided? I know I’m at a crossroads. There’s a fork in the road, some of those lanes leading to very dark places.

As someone who wants to study the psyche of others, I cannot draw back, cannot shy away and pretend that this is not happening. It may be useful in the future. Before me, there were two very distinct roads. I can hold on to my unreciprocated childhood feelings and let everything that had happened, including my bitter disappointment, turn me into something ugly.

Or I can stay away from that dark maw and try to cut out a new path for myself, try to start over. I didn’t know yet which one I was gravitating towards a few weeks later when I got the call from Mrs. Masters. Apparently, she needed me, after all.

DERRICK

Lauren wore me down after all. Once she assured me that these outings weren’t going to be a weekly occurrence, and once I met the elder and more experienced Mrs. Cummings. She was the sitter the agency sent over among the other three that had graced our door during this period when my wife swore she would go stir crazy if we didn’t have a date night.

I was still not too jazzed, but I have to admit to feeling much better with her choice of babysitter this go-round. True to her word, we kept the late nights out to a minimum, and we settled into a nice little routine. It helped that I’d installed about a hundred nanny cams all over the house and could monitor them all from my phone. I could even leave the app open and hear when my little ones cried.

I was just getting used to the idea and no longer stressing each time we walked out the door when the inevitable happened. It was my parents’ anniversary, and they had come back stateside for the party of the year, to be held in their honor at the country club amidst their friends and colleagues that they’d accumulated through the years.

This was no ordinary anniversary get together with a few of your closest friends. This was a gathering of the crème de la crème the who is who in the international architecture community. Dignitaries were on the invitation list, and most, if not all, had already RSVP’d.

These are the kind of situations that make my wife Lauren breathe, or as she puts it, gives her life. In other words, she lives for such things, and there is nothing short of a meteor hitting the earth that can keep her away.

And so with shoes and the new designer gown bought, all accessories present and accounted for, new Tux bought because the one I wore to our wedding just a few short years ago is apparently outdated, she floated around the house on air for days leading up to the event.

It’s all she would talk about. I can’t say that I blame her, she cleans up real nice and why begrudge her the chance to get dolled up and show off her magnificent body that had bounced back so well after having not one, but two children. No matter that I’d have much rather stayed home had it not been for the fact that this night was for my parents.

And so it was, as luck would have it, that Mrs. Cummings, the ever-reliable and ever- available Mrs. Cummings came down with a dreadful virus and would not be available that night. This in itself would not have been so bad had we gotten the news a bit earlier.

As it was, the agency was booked to the gills, everyone who needed one had hired a babysitter to attend my parents’ party. “I know!” My wife busted into the room all wild-eyed. She’s been looking a bit frazzled ever since the phone call. Her dreams of a splendid night rubbing elbows with the rich and famous disappearing right before her eyes was not something she was equipped to deal with.