The Babysitter

Chapter 41
The Babysitter, Part 41

Part 41

It was difficult to imagine that Noelle didn’t care.

Her immediate dismissal was more likely a combination of not taking the Violet problem nearly as seriously as I was, as well as the fact that she was under the impression that I was a girl who could just as easily be trying to somehow trick her.

I was back to square one. Arguing with Noelle was out of the question; all I could do was rinse everything that could go in the dishwasher before tackling everything that required hand washing. All the while, I shifted from foot to foot in discomfort as I continually felt the double pull-ups between my legs; they were impossible to ignore now I was concerned about Paige learning about them while I had no choice but to keep them on. 

Once she was done clearing off the counter and tidying up the rest of the kitchen, Noelle joined me at the sink and grabbed a towel to dry the dishes I had already taken care of. The moment we were done with the last part of cleaning up after breakfast, I tried again. “Noelle-”

“Come with me.” She turned for the living room, though kept me partially within sight and at a reasonable distance. As always, making sure I didn’t have ideas about running away. As if I could efficiently do something so athletic when stuck in padded underwear. Paige and her friends were no longer lounging in there, which I could have guessed by how quiet the main floor was. That’s not where we were headed, however. Noelle led me back upstairs, which gave me hope, until she stopped at my sister’s room. The door was partially ajar, though Noelle knocked anyway. “Hey, Paige? Can I borrow you for a minute?”

The voices in the room trailed off for a second, only for Annika to blurt out, “Ooh, someone’s in trouble!”

“Grow up,” Paige scoffed, “Of course, Noelle.” She hopped up from where she had been lounging on the bed. Joining us in the hall and closing the door since this was something that Noelle called her over for instead of just saying it in front of her friends, she asked, “What’s up?”

“Miley said Violet might have seen something earlier?” Noelle said.

Wait. I hadn’t expected her to actually confront Paige about it. That was the exact opposite of what I wanted!

I could tell that Paige was thrown off, too. “Umm, yeah,” she replied. Managing to recover fairly quickly, she said, “She told me. Is everything okay, Miley? You haven’t wet the bed in, like, three months.”

There were a lot of things I had anticipated, but that certainly wasn’t one of them. My eyes widened and I exclaimed, “Paige!” Flushing when I realized that such a reaction could just as easily be interpreted as freaking out about a ‘secret’ being revealed, I rushed to follow it up with, “What are you talking about?” It was just like all the other lies she had fed to Noelle, except this one was well beyond something the real Miley would have going on. 

“She was having pretty regular nighttime accidents a while ago,” Paige simply said. Ignoring me, she just told the false history to Noelle. “Stress of a new school, or something? We never officially figured it out.”

“She’s lying!” I protested. The words escaped my lips before I could fully think them through, and I regretted the accusation immediately. It sounded so immature, and would be yet another instance of ‘girl who cried wolf.’ Because I did wet the bed last night, and Paige had done nothing to make Noelle distrust her.

Noelle calmly said, “Your parents didn’t mention anything about that.”

Because it wasn’t true! Not for me, and not for Miley. At least, I had to assume. I couldn’t picture a girl like her wetting the bed, or any girl her age for that matter. Paige didn’t seem worried about the minor skepticism. “I mean, we all thought she was done with all that. Like I said, three months. Maybe four? Honestly, I can’t remember.”

“Well. I’m glad someone told me this wasn’t a completely random occurrence. Still, I wanted to let you know that the reason she’s wearing pull-ups is more for the sake of discipline than it is for anything else. I’m assuming Miley is more than capable of making it to the bathroom during the day.”

“Huh. Well, Violet told me in private. No one else has to know. And hopefully this is a one time thing. I’d hate for Miley to have to start wearing diapers to bed again.”

I just stared at her in disbelief. This was bullshit! But how could I make Noelle believe that when saying the wrong thing could result in me getting punished?

Noelle nodded. “I appreciate you and Violet being discreet. Will you all be around for the rest of the day? Miley has a lot of homework to take care of; I want to make sure she has a productive spot with as few distractions as possible.”

Just like that, they were moving on. “We’ll probably be up here for the rest of the morning,” Paige said, “Then I think we’re going to have a little picnic at the park. You and Miley are welcome to join us, of course.”

“We’ll see. Some fresh air couldn’t hurt, but it really depends on how much she gets done before then. I told your parents she would make a good dent in her summer assignments by the end of the weekend.”

“Okay! Just let me know before noon, so I can pack enough food for everyone.”

“Got it. Miley? Come on.” Rather than being taken to my room like I had initially anticipated on the way up, Noelle took me back downstairs and had me sit at the kitchen table all over again. Once I was seated and dealing with a second round of awkwardness that came with having the embarrassing padding between me and the chair, she said, “Now, since I never specifically asked, I’m not going to get on your case for not telling me about your former accidents. However, I’m adding an hour to your time in pull-ups for calling your sister a liar.”

“But, that’s not fair!” I objected, “She-”

“Let’s make it two hours,” she said, “Unless you want to keep arguing?”

That shut me up. Wearing pull-ups for even longer was bad enough, and I was also still trying to show Noelle that I was more mature than she perceived me as. I was fully aware that behaving ‘properly’ wasn’t much better when I had been compelled to do so, yet it was definitely the lesser evil. 

“That’s what I thought. You may change back into your normal underwear at 2 PM, provided you continue to be a well behaved girl who always tells the truth. Speaking of which, what would you like to work on? Your lines, or your summer assignments?”

Did she even need to ask? “My assignments, please,” I said, flushing a bit at how my attempts to sound polite sounded a lot more forced than usual. As for my choice, I was wishfully thinking that I could prove that I was way smarter than Miley was. Though the Science handouts had been painful thanks to how long it had been since I had studied that kind of material, I had to assume that Math and English would be more intuitive. Unfortunately, History would probably be as tedious as Science in terms of having to look up information I no longer had stored away. 

Luckily for me, Noelle let me pick the subject. I opted for English first, as that had to be the most straightforward. No forgotten formulas to deal with, even if the majority of the problems would be manageable off the top of my head. When Noelle handed me the first few handouts, I saw that maybe the work wouldn’t be quite as simple as I expected. There were different kinds of clauses and modifiers to identify, sentences to label, and . . . what on earth was an ‘appositive?’ Thankfully, each page seemed to focus on one or two concepts. Once I looked up a term once, answering each question felt more like busy work than anything particularly stimulating. 

Similar to the previous day, Noelle pulled out her laptop to work on whatever she needed to work on while I was busy with Miley’s homework. She seemed to effortlessly pivot from ‘regular babysitter’ to ‘last resort babysitter.’ As long as I wasn’t doing anything she disapproved of, she was content to quietly supervise me. And since each page didn’t require much mental focus, I attempted to spend the rest of the morning coming up with some out of the box solution that I hadn’t considered throughout my last few brainstorming sessions. 

The idea that eventually came to me made me feel stupid for not immediately thinking of it earlier. Paige invited us to go out. To a park. And the one thing I could count on the suburbs for was that there were always familiar faces around. A former classmate, one of our parents’ friends, someone from my ballet studio. All I needed was a single person who knew who I was, and Paige would no longer be able to keep Noelle from learning the truth. 

I was tempted to blurt out my interest in the picnic the second it crossed my mind. Resisting that urge, I instead started working more seriously on the worksheets in front of me. Like Noelle had implied earlier, I would only be given a break if I made a good amount of progress on Miley’s schoolwork. Surely a high school graduate like myself could manage something like that if she put her mind to it. 

Glancing up at the clock and seeing that it was nearly 11 AM, I made short work of the last few problems on the page about modifiers. Two handouts down. How many to go? Noelle had handed me four, though I had absolutely no idea how extensive each subject’s packet was in the binder she was holding onto. 

Before I could complete the round of work I had been given, I heard a single someone coming downstairs. I didn’t have to wonder for long. Paige stepped into the kitchen with a ‘friendly’ smile, breaking what had been an extended period of peaceful silence beyond the sounds of Noelle typing and me flipping through Miley’s textbook. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, “Do you mind if I make a few sandwiches in here while you work?”