Falling for the Babysitter

Chapter 1

1

Remy

The trash smells disgusting. “God, did something crawl in there and die?” my friend Clara says beside me as I wheel the trashcan out to the curb. She’s stayed over for horror movie night, a monthly tradition we’ve held since we were twelve.

I hold my breath, face scrunched up tight. “Yeah, whatever that thing was my mom tried to feed us last night.”

“What was that?” Clara says.

“Tofu.”

“Is that some kind of bird, because if it is, it should be hunted until it’s extinct.”

I laugh. Poor Clara. Her family is strictly meat and potatoes. She never even saw a Brussel sprout until we met. She thought it was the cutest little baby cabbage until she actually tried it. Now she calls them devil warts.

“It’s made from soy beans, I think.”

just risen. There’s a mist curling off the cement as the day warms up. The sky, with its layers of vibrant orange and

across the lawn in bare feet to get to the newspaper before it’s ruined. No matter how many times my mom complains,

deep rumble of a pickup truck. I watch as it pulls into Sam’s—my neighbor’s—driveway. But my neighbor drives a Toyota Prius, so I know it’s not him, unless he got a new car. With his office geek appearance, he

vehicle. Then Deacon

god,” I say, standing there,

toward my neighbor’s house. “Holy

Don’t stare!” I grab her by the shoulders and twist her body

talking,” I

“We are talking.”

so I can stare without being obvious I’m staring,” I say as I watch him

hurry up. It’s

I remember sitting in my old tree house, watching as he loaded his boxes into the U-Haul, half tempted to go next door and put each box back in the house so he couldn’t leave. That was

maybe, and thicker with muscle than I remember. Clearly that confident swagger never went away.

the back seat of the truck. I squint to see better. Is that the top of a

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