Z O E Y
Sam opened the door for me almost immediately after I rang the bell. I was surprised his parents had called me to babysit him again, because I had forgotten all about his bedtime last time and let him stay up reading comics with me. He had pretended to be asleep when they got home that night, but I had been pretty sure they had seen right through it.
Apparently not, because when they called they said I had been great, so great that Sam had asked when I would be back, which was a first, because, apparently, Sam never got a liking to any of the babysitters his parents had gotten him over the years.
"Hi!" he said as soon as he saw me in front of him again, a big, big smile on his face. "Can we please, please, please go finish that book we started â"
"You didn't finish it yet?" I asked.
"I was waiting for you."
I could cry, "Really? That's one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me."
"You have really low standards," was Sam's immediate conclusion.
"What do even you know about standards?" I laughed, following him into the living room.
"Well, Tristan says dad's standards are the lowest they can get because he married Linda," he said, looking guilty right after, "I probably shouldn't have said that."
"Oh, Linda's not your mom?" I asked. Maybe I shouldn't.
"No," he said, shaking his head very matter-of-factly. "She's my step-mom. I do call her mom though, but only to make dad happy."
"That's very nice of you," I said.
"Tristan doesn't like it." Tristan seemed to be the main character of Sam's life.
"Well, we can't please everyone, can we?" I asked, letting him drag me down the hall. I stopped him when he tried to take me up the stairs, pointing at the dining table in the living room where he had dropped his school bag and his blazer jacket. His shoes had been left by the door this time.
He frowned, "What?"
"You don't have homework?"
He frowned some more, "Tristan says homework's stupid."
"Because it is," someone said from behind me. I cursed under my breath and prayed Sam hadn't heard it. By the kitchen door, Tristan seemed unimpressed by the apple he was eating, or forcing himself to.
I decided not to entertain him, thinking he would get the hint and just walk past us and into his bedroom like last time, but he didn't. He just stood there, slowly chewing. I realized too late that he had a pocketknife in his hand. He was using it to cut the apple, like a walking cliche.
"Tell her why," Sam said. I wished he hadn't.
Tristan ate another piece of apple, straight from the knife's blade, and said, no, just like that. I almost laughed. Except I would be laughing at something Tristan said, and I would rather hold it than give him that kind of satisfaction.
Instead, I started, "Well, I personally think if you do your homework now, tomorrow, when you go over it in class, you'll get to participate, and show your teachers you're a good student. If you keep doing your homework and participating, your teachers will eventually declare you as one of the good ones, and that comes with a lot of privileges. It means you do not need constant supervision. It means your teachers will assume you know the answers in class, and so they won't ask you questions in front of everyone when you least expect it. You know, stuff like that. Plus, if you do your homework, you won't need to study so much when your exams come. You're helping the future you, Sam, think about it."
Sam looked like he was. He smiled suspiciously, "Do you do that?"
"I do. You can ask Tristan. We have some classes together."
Sam looked at Tristan, who looked at me, and said, "I didn't even know you existed before you showed up at our door the other day."
I knew he would say this. I didn't care. I would actually prefer that we went back to him not knowing I existed, but that would probably be impossible if I kept coming over to his house to babysit his brother.
I looked over at Sam and smiled, "I guess you'll just have to trust me then."
He should believe me. I was a pleasure to have in most classes. Not all of them, no, but most. Sam thought about it and finally shrugged.
"Sure, we can try it your way."
"Good, go get your things. We'll study in your bedroom." There was no reason to move locations, we could study just fine at the dining room table. It was just that Tristan was still standing right next to it, and so I preferred to be as far away from it as I could.
Luckily for me, Sam didn't object. He just got up to go get his backpack and then led the way up the stairs. Tristan moved to the couch behind us. I didn't say anything. Sam asked him not to watch some show without him, probably that horrible adult cartoon from last time, and Tristan said he would try his best.
We did homework for hours, so much that I was starting to regret not having just agreed with Tristan's take on it. This was just too much.
"Why does this seem more like a punishment than a genuine attempt at helping children learn better?" I asked eventually.
"Well," Sam said, falling back on his chair. He had been bent over his desk for hours, tongue out, hand holding his pencil way too hard. I had told him to sit straight and loosen the death grip already, but every time he had to focus a little extra hard, he went right back into it. He took a deep breath and finally said, "Because it is, Zoey."
"What did you do?"
"In my defense, the teacher is not a very nice person."
I frowned too, "What did you do?"
He put his pencil down. I stopped him.
"You're gonna have to talk and work, buddy. Otherwise, we'll be here until tomorrow."
"I can't do that. I put on my jeans one leg at a time. I'm only a child, Zoey."
"Well," I said, trying not to laugh. "You'll have to figure that out yourself. Tristan can do it. I've seen him talk and work plenty at school."
This was true. Once in class, he had to go up to the board to write down something about the war on drugs, and he had done it all while telling the teacher the whole thing had actually been a ploy for mass incarceration, which Allora had agreed with, and extended on for the rest of the class in a back and forth with the teacher that almost ended badly.
Sam grabbed his pencil again and leaned back over the exercise, "I didn't think you had that in you."
"That what?"
"That coldness," he said under his breath, but he was smiling. Smiling and solving a math question very successfully.
"I'm a little box of surprises," I said with a smile on my own face. "Now tell me, what did you do to make the teacher upset?"
"I can't," was all he had to say.
"Why not?"
"I just can't. My brain can only focus on one thing at a time. It's just the way it is." He shrugged.
"Sam, you're doing it right now. You're talking to me and you're doing your homework at the same time."
He put the pencil down again, "Zoey, come on, telling you these things is not the same as telling a story from beginning to end. Storytelling is an art, dad says so."
"You know what? You're right. I apologize."
"Apology accepted," he said, going back to the exercise.
"Fine, how long is this story though?"
He smiled in triumph, putting the pencil behind his ear, and leaning back on the chair, "Not long at all. Are you ready?"
I smiled and said yes.
"So, we have a new gym teacher, right? Last week, in class, she started splitting up the girls from the boys. The girls got to learn this fun dance and the boys had to go outside and chaise a ball."
"You mean play soccer?" I asked.
"Yes," he said very fast. "See, I didn't mind it so much when she split us up the first time, but then she kept doing it!"
He sounded very outraged. I was started to feel some rage myself.
"Doesn't sound fair to me," I said.
"Well because it's not! So the other day I asked one of the girls, Lily, if she wanted to switch. I asked Lily specifically because last year she was one of the best soccer players in our class. She said yes, of course. So we switched our gym uniforms. I wore her skirt, and she wore my shorts. I admit it wasn't very smart, but oh well. We're nine."
"So she gave you a bunch of extra homework for wearing a skirt?" I asked, actually outraged.
"Well, she said it was because we tried to trick her. Said it was disrespectful."
"Sam, I'm pretty sure there is an anti-discrimination law somewhere that could get her and your school in a lot of trouble. Does your dad know this?"
"Oh no, no, no, no," he said. "I am keeping this a secret and so are you. Please."
"No, but Sam, you're not in the wrong here. First of all, your school is allowing discrimination left and right. I mean, they shouldn't have been splitting up the boys from the girls and teaching them different things in the first place. That's illegal, I'm pretty sure. Second of all, I don't care how your teacher spins it, you essentially got in trouble for wearing a skirt at school â"
"And Lily got in trouble for wearing shorts!" he added enthusiastically. "That's weird too."
"It is! This is a free country!"
The door opened then, and Tristan showed up on the other side, "Why is this door closed, and why are you screaming?"
I didn't like what he was implying so I just ignored him.
"Sam, you need to tell your dad about this," I told him. Sam was looking very seriously at me.
"About what?" Tristan asked, playing with his lip ring. I waited for Sam to tell him. I knew he would if he hadn't already.
"That gym class thing," Sam said, scratching the back of his head.
"Oh, that you got grounded cause you wore a skirt to school?" Tristan said. I smiled. For once, we were on the same page.
"The teacher said it was cause I tried to trick her," Sam said again, but he was just trying to convince himself at this point.
"She's a bigot, Sam," Tristan said. I didn't think Sam knew what that was, but I agreed.
"She's forcing him to do all this homework now," I said, pointing at the pile of worksheets Sam had been sent home with. "Pretty sure this is child labor at this point."
"Yeah, the thing is," Tristan started, "Sam goes to a very prestigious private school. I doubt they'll be worried about gender equality, much less gender fluidity."
"I don't think so," I said.
"Of course you don't," he countered, rolling his eyes. "You accepted candy from strangers when you were a kid. You're delusional."
"You did?!" Sam asked me, eyes wide open, eyebrows high over them.
I frowned. This conversation was starting to make no sense.
"Of course I didn't," I assured him, "and you shouldn't either."
"Yeah, I know," Sam said, like it was obvious. I was glad it was. Tristan was making everything harder than it had to be.
"She totally did," Tristan went to. "Look at her t-shirt, Sam. She probably tried to be friends with the monster in her closet when she was a kid too."
I looked at my t-shirt. I loved it. I had bought it at a second-hand shop. It was oversized and it had a big print on it with the worlds healing the earth together.
"What's wrong with my t-shirt?"
"So much," Tristan said. "Have you seen the news lately? Climate change is pretty much irreversible at this point."
"So you would rather we all just... What, give up?"
"Sure," he said, like it was obvious. "I say we speed up the process. Right, Sam?"
Sam's eyes had been going from me to Tristan, and then back to me, again and again. He stopped at the mention of his name and looked at his hands on his lap instead.
"Wouldn't that mean we would all just die?"
"Yeah!" Tristan said. "Fun, right?"
"Don't answer that," I told Sam, pointing at the pile of worksheets. "And don't finish those either. I'll talk to your dad when he gets home. I'm sure he's a reasonable man."
"He's not," Tristan said before disappearing into the hallway again.
Of course, Sam was happy not to finish his homework and go watch tv downstairs instead. Tristan stayed somewhere upstairs. I didn't care. I would rather he wasn't in the house at all.
I ordered pizza with the money Sam's dad had given me and we ate it in the kitchen. This time, Sam fell asleep on the couch, his head on my lap, his favorite tv show playing on tv. I turned it off once I realized it. It was past his bedtime, but I didn't have it in me to wake him up and make him walk up the stairs to go to bed.
Could I carry him? I didn't think so. Was I going to try? Absolutely yes. I wrapped his arms around my shoulders and his legs around my waist and started making my way to his bedroom. I was already struggling by the time I made it to the stairs.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Tristan asked. I almost dropped his brother. He was standing in the dark, looking down at me with a confused look on his face. I hadn't turned on the lights downstairs so as to not wake up Sam, and I supposed Tristan hadn't wanted to turn on the ones upstairs so as to scare me. Well, we had both succeeded, hadn't we?
"Are you just gonna stand there?" I asked when I realized he hadn't moved at all.
"I'm not just standing here. I'm also judging you."
I kept going. Tristan kept standing there, even after I walked past him and into Sam's bedroom, my legs hurting, drops of sweat accumulating on my forehead, and frustration gnawing away at me.
I put Sam down on his bed and changed him into his pajama without walking him up. I did everything in the dark too. I hadn't carried him all that way for nothing. When he was all tucked in, I made my way back downstairs, collapsed on the couch, and entertained myself skipping through the channels. I had already watched most of what was on.
Just before midnight, a sound came from somewhere in the hallway. I turned the sound all the way down.
"Sam?"
No answer.
"Tristan?"
No answer either. I doubted he would answer me even if it really was him anyway. I got up from the couch. The sound came again, this time closer. I grabbed something from the coffee table. My heart was beating too fast. The palms of my hands were sweating. When something moved in the distance, I couldn't help myself. I threw what I had been holding at it as hard as I could.
"What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you stupid?!" Tristan screamed, turning on the lights. At his feet, a candle rolled away from him and towards me. A candle. I had thrown a candle at him.
"If I was stupid, I would have missed, wouldn't I?" I screamed back, except mine was more of a whisper and his had been an actual scream, "And don't scream, Sam's sleeping!"
"You hit me in the chest," he said, matter of fact. I doubted he had a heart, and his lungs had probably shrunk to the size of raisins from years and years of smoking so much, so really, he had nothing to worry about.
"Well, you scared me," I said, matter of fact too.
He kept walking my way. The light coming from the tv created off-putting shadows on his face, still twisted in pain. He his hand on his chest and I noticed the tattoo on it, one letter for each finger. It spelled fuck.
I took a step back, and he smiled, and said, "Are you scared of me?"
I didn't answer. I was scared of things moving around in the dark, yes, I didn't know if I was scared of him, not yet. But he took a step closer, and then another, and another, and suddenly he was right in front of me, smelling like what I suspected was weed, his ice-cold eyes staring right at me.
I took another step back, and he showed me another smile, and said, "Good."
Then he turned towards the kitchen and disappeared inside. I let myself fall backward on the couch and took a deep breath before bringing the sound of the tv up again. Eventually, Tristan walked past the living room again with a box of cereal under his arm and a bowl with a spoon in it in his hand. He flipped me off when he caught me looking, just like last time. I thought this was a hostile work environment but didn't say it.