Mirror // Van McCann

2. A Proposition

"Jess, I want to ask you something," my mom said as she got home. She took her jacket off and hung it on the coat rack.

"Sure, what is it?" I asked. I was flipping through the channels absentmindedly looking for something good to watch. There was nothing good to watch.

Dinner was a disaster after I brought up the bullies. I'm still kicking myself in the butt for bringing it up. After I was done eating, I just wanted to go home so I did.

"That was brave of you to tell Liz that her son was being bullied. If I were in your position, I would've done the same thing."

"Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?" I asked.

"No. There's something else as well. After you left, Liz told me she got another job. This woman is working two jobs now and won't have time to take care of her son. She was wondering if you could watch him for a couple hours during the day. You know, make sure he's eating and is okay."

"You left me home alone when I was ten. I turned out just fine. This boy can take care of himself," I said. My mom put her hands on her hip.

"Why are you being so rude? She's been nothing but kind to us."

"I'm not being rude, mom. I have a lot of things going on right now. I have the MCAT to study for and grandma to take care of."

"He'll be easy to watch. You can study while you watch him."

I sighed. She had a point.

"He hates me, mom. Remember what happened earlier?"

"You can use this opportunity to fix things between the both of you." I stayed silent and thought things through. "She wants you to watch him Monday through Friday from 2 to 8. He'll have dinner with us and we'll leave some food for his mom as well. You'll be paid $10 an hour. Please think about this, Jess. She really needs your help."

I sighed. "Fine." My mom smiled and ran up to give me a hug.

"I love you. Thank you so much for doing this."

.

.

It will work out. I can do this.

Every day I'll visit grandma for one hour. Then I'll go home and study for a few hours. When it's 2 PM, I'll head over to the Fuller's house to take care of Ryan and sneak in a bit of studying. I'll eat dinner and then have a couple hours to myself at the end of the night. Seems simple enough.

I don't start babysitting Ryan until Monday next week. This gives me the weekend to think of how to apologize to him. What can I do to fix things between the two of us? I played multiple scenarios in my head but most of them went to a dead end. The best solution I could think of was to straight up tell him he may not understand the benefit of letting his mom know about the bullies right now, but down the road, he'll eventually understand and will hopefully forgive me. There. That should work.

Now that my mind was clear again, I decided it was a good time to continue studying for the MCAT. I fished out my physics textbook and flipped to the page where I left off. I read the hockey puck question again and had the sudden urge to face palm myself. This question is easy! Why couldn't I figure it out before? I quickly worked through the problem and ten more before going to bed.

-

I suddenly opened my eyes and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that littered the ceiling of my bedroom. I absolutely hated it when I woke up in the middle of the night for no reason. I turned to look at the clock which told me it was 3:03 AM and willed sleep to come again. Right as I was about to drift off to sleep, I heard hushed talking downstairs. At first I thought I was imagining it, but they got louder. Curious as to what was happening, I got out of bed and crept out of my room into the hallway as silently as possible. I hung onto the railing and could see that the kitchen light was on.