The Good, the Bad and the Bossy (Best Babysitters Ever)

Dot stared into her beaker with the same intensity her mother (a practising clairvoyant) used to gaze into her crystal ball. Most likely, it was growing up in a home surrounded by crystals and candles and charts about meridians and chakras that had pushed Dot toward her love of hard data and irrefutable facts. While she excelled in all subjects, from literature to algebra to Latin, science was her thing. Dot preferred the school’s science lab to all other places. To her, there was nothing more satisfying than being surrounded by test tubes and chemicals and scales, conducting experiments that would ultimately lead to only one right answer.

Today, her chemistry class was working on a very simple assignment, the distillation of wood. Dot already knew the outcome: after the wood was heated, it would decompose, forming charcoal and vapours. Still, she completed every step, charting her progress along the way.

Dot was glad that today’s assignment was such a simple one because she was tired. She had spent the previous night babysitting for the Gomez family, new clients they had taken on to help drum up money for Veronica concert tickets. Dot didn’t like to take jobs on school nights, especially two nights in a row like she had this week, but she supposed it was worth it until the concert.

To be very clear, Dot did not care about Veronica. She hardly ever listened to her music, except sometimes ironically. Okay, fine, Dot could admit that some of the songs were catchy, and even that they had the ability to put her in a sort of infectiously good mood. There was a time and place for Veronica music, like when attempting to exercise or perform a mindless task. But Dot was most excited about the concert itself, because the venue had excellent junk food – popcorn, funnel cakes, and the best chicken fingers you could imagine. Her mom hadn’t made any progress on her rules against allowing gluten or animal products or processed sugar into the house, so Dot needed to seize every opportunity she had.

“Looking good,” said Mr Frang, nodding as he passed Dot’s lab table. The head of the science department, Mr Frang was a tall man with a grey beard that reminded Dot of an elf. It was obvious that Dot was his favourite student, though she knew he tried to act impartial.

Dot squinted her eyes, concentrating with laser focus, but her mind wasn’t on today’s experiment. In truth, it was somewhere else entirely: thinking about the upcoming science fair.

The middle-school science fair was a very big deal, as it was the gateway to everything important in the science community. The winner of the school fair would go on to compete at the regional level, followed by the state level and, eventually, against the entire nation. Students who competed at the national level were scouted for special programs and awards, and were often the ones who were awarded scholarships when the time came to apply for college.

Dot knew she was only in middle school, but still, she liked to plan ahead. Despite her mom’s psychic abilities, it would be hard for her to afford college tuition, and Dot was determined to work it out on her own. This was just one of many factors that made it particularly troubling that she hadn’t yet come up with a winning idea.

Luckily, the other students at Playa del Mar weren’t particularly competitive. She could already predict what everyone else would do. All the usual suspects would be covered: a homemade radio, a chart of the various types of fingerprints, an exploration of how a blindfold changes the relationship to taste and smell. That was all fine and good. But she needed to innovate. She needed something that would trump them all.

This was game time. Crunch time. Go time. All of the times. This was it.

Just as Dot was getting lost in a daydream in which she won the national science fair and was receiving a medal of honour at the White House, the door to the science lab creaked open.

Principal Davies set one foot inside the room.

“Everyone, I’d like you to meet a new student here at Playa del Mar.” She stepped aside to allow said student to enter. “This is Pigeon de Palma.”

Dot looked up to see a very pretty girl. She had super-long, wavy brown hair, almost like a darker version of Dot’s hair. She wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with a faded golden lightning bolt, black skinny jeans, and the coolest ankle boots Dot had ever seen. They were black leather, with teeny tiny gold studs snaking all around them, in complicated designs. Around the ankles, they had three thin straps, each ending with a delicate gold buckle. Dot had seen shoes like that in magazines but never in person.

“Hi, everyone,” Pigeon said, offering the classroom a little wave. Her voice was sort of low and gravely, but very cute. “I’m so excited to be here.”

“Welcome, Pigeon!” said Mr Frang.

Dot wasn’t sure what to make of this Pigeon person. It was very rare for Playa del Mar to welcome new students after the start of the school year. It was even weirder for them to look . . . cool.

“Pigeon just moved here from New York City,” added Principal Davies, which was pretty much the only thing she could have said to push Dot over the edge. It was Dot’s dream to live in NYC someday – heck, at this point it was her dream even just to visit – and Pigeon had spent her formative years there? This was so unfair. No wonder she seemed so sophisticated. No wonder her boots were so cool. “I’m sure you’ll all do your best to make her feel welcome,” the principal concluded, leaving Pigeon to fend for herself.

Pigeon circled the lab tables, looking for a place to sit. Dot turned her attention back to the distillation of wood. There would be plenty of time to analyze the new girl, but for now, there was work to do.

“Do you mind if I join you?” said a gravelly voice.

Dot looked up. Pigeon was speaking to her.

“Um, I don’t really do group assignments,” Dot said. She wasn’t trying to be rude; it was true. Unless the experiment absolutely called for lab partners, Dot always preferred to work alone.

“It’s all right, we already did this experiment at my old school,” Pigeon said, casually tossing her long, wavy hair. A spicy fragrance wafted through the air. Dot immediately recognized it as a designer perfume her own hippie mother wouldn’t let her buy.

“Well, the experiment is basically completed, so there’d be nothing left for you to do anyway,” Dot said.

“I can just observe,” Pigeon said as she pulled up a chair.

Dot inhaled, trying not to let her newfound audience faze her.

“At my old school, distillation of wood was actually a sixth-grade experiment,” Pigeon said. Her condescending tone was not lost on Dot. “I wonder if I’ll be repeating a lot of the old curriculum here. Especially because science has always been kind of my thing.”

“Science has always been my thing,” said Dot. “Which is why, outside of the school’s curriculum, I’ve been conducting research on my own for years now.”

Pigeon impatiently tapped her fingernails on the lab table, breaking Dot’s concentration. Dot noticed they were painted a sort of green metallic oil-slick colour that Dot had never seen before. Even Pigeon’s nail polish was fancy.

“So, where in New York did you live?” Dot asked.

“We lived on the Upper West Side,” Pigeon said, “but my school was on the Upper East.”

“Wow. That must have been amazing,” said Dot, while her head kept singing unfair, unfair, unfair.

“This town seems . . .” Pigeon trailed off, as though searching for the right word. “Cute.”

The way she said the word “cute” made it clear it wasn’t a compliment.

Dot wanted to leave this town more than anyone, but she didn’t appreciate this stranger rolling up and trash-talking it on her very first day. Who did this person think she was?

Dot’s hands flew across the equipment, attempting to complete the assignment as quickly as possible so she could be free of this situation.

“I’m going to start handing back the quizzes from yesterday,” said Mr Frang. “Please don’t let them distract you from your experiments. If you have any questions, of course I’m available after class.”

Dot didn’t even bother to look when the paper landed on her table. She never got anything less than an A, especially in science.

“Hm. B-plus,” said Pigeon, staring at the quiz.

“What?” Dot snapped to attention. “There must be some kind of mistake.” Dot did not get Bs, ever. She hardly ever got A-minuses. Bs were for the hoi polloi. The fact that Dot even knew what “hoi polloi” meant only further cemented her status as an A student.

But sure enough, there it was: her quiz, with a big red B-plus on top of it.

How had this happened? She knew she’d been kind of exhausted this week, with babysitting eating into her homework time, but still. This was unprecedented.

Once again, Principal Davies appeared at the door.

“Pigeon, I’m sorry. As it turns out, I need you to come with me. I forgot I have another part of the orientation packet to go through together.”

“You know, I actually interned for Elon Musk last summer,” said Pigeon as she stood and pushed her chair in. “You know, the guy who started SpaceX? And Tesla? And who is, like, an investor and businessperson –”

“I know who Elon Musk is,” Dot interrupted, annoyed.

“If you ever need somebody to tutor you, I’m sure we could work something out.”

Dot was flabbergasted. Pigeon smiled. “It’s been awfully nice chatting with you. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” And with that, she turned and walked away.

“Yeah, likewise,” murmured Dot.

Dot kept her eyes on her beaker, fighting the urge to watch Pigeon as she walked away.

Dot knew one thing for sure: she did not like this Pigeon person. It wasn’t just her ridiculous first name, although that probably didn’t help. It was – Dot couldn’t believe what she was thinking, was she turning into her mother? – her aura.

Pigeon had very bad energy.

You’re being ridiculous, Dot thought. You don’t even know her. It’s her first day at a new school and she’s just trying to be impressive to make friends.

Still, this felt like that moment in a movie, where the main character meets her nemesis. Dot wanted to remain open and kind. She wanted to know her story. But she was, Dot hated to admit, experiencing a feeling she had never felt before. She was intrigued. She was jealous. She was conflicted. For perhaps the first time ever, she was seriously intimidated.

Malia watched as Connor Kelly sauntered across the cafeteria, blue plastic lunch tray in hand. He gave her a slight nod and then sat down with the other boys on the soccer team. Malia sighed. He was so close and yet so far away.

Malia remembered a time, not too long ago, when she and Connor barely exchanged words. Back then, she sometimes wondered if he even knew her name. Now he said at least three sentences to her each week. That, Malia thought, was progress.

Still, so much about Connor remained a mystery. He was like some exotic endangered species Malia could only observe from a safe distance. Across rooms . . . on social media . . . but rarely up close and personal. But now she had places to run into Connor – like the cafeteria, or the Gregory house, or, if everything went according to plan, the Veronica concert.

She had spent all of her waking moments (and also some of her sleeping ones) dreaming for the past three days about the concert and how it might go. The darkness, the neon lights, the fog, the music, the dancing. Malia shivered. The thought of dancing in Connor Kelly’s proximity was almost too much to handle.

But of course, before that could happen, she had to buy the tickets. Malia had lined up jobs like crazy, posting on social media to drum up some new clients. Plus, Bree’s mom agreed to let her babysit her brother, Bailey, three days a week, and Mrs Gregory had booked Malia for three upcoming jobs, which meant money and a potential Connor sighting in one.

Shoko and Mo arrived at the table, placing their trays down with a clatter. Shoko and Mo were pretty much inseparable, and they always sat at the same lunch table as Malia and Bree. Malia snapped out of her daydream.

“What are you wearing to the concert?” asked Mo urgently. The entire school had caught Veronica fever. The concert was all anybody could talk about.

“I don’t know,” said Malia, though she had, of course, been obsessing about this very topic for days. Maybe if they had any money left over from buying the ticket, she could get a new outfit. “What are you guys wearing?”

“Ugh, who knows? It’s such an event. We’re going shopping this weekend!” said Shoko, waving her hands around as if she found this stressful. Her parents gave her a seemingly unlimited allowance to spend on things like concert wear. Malia wondered, as she often had, what that must be like.

“Hiiiii,” said Bree, suddenly appearing with her lunch. She put her tray down and pulled up a seat next to Malia.

Bree removed her studded jean jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. Malia noticed that she had tiny little scratches all over her arms.

“Oh my god, what happened to you?” said Malia, with genuine concern.

“Oh, just Veronica.” Bree sighed. “There was an incident this morning, involving glitter eyeliner and a very violent feline outburst. That cat’s claws are no joke.”

“Wow. I’m . . . sorry to hear that,” Malia said.

“It’s okay,” said Bree with a shrug. “I mean, it’s actually not okay. But I’m fine.”

Dot approached the lunch table and put her tray down next to Malia’s.

“Can I sit with you guys?” she asked.

This was an irregular occurrence. For as long as Malia could remember, Dot had always sat at a different lunch table, with the honours students who thought they were a little bit smarter than everyone else. Malia had learned not to take it personally, as lunchtime politics were complicated.

“What? You’re deigning to sit with the non-honours students?” Malia teased. “At LUNCH? What is going on here?”

Dot rolled her eyes. “This annoying new girl is sitting at my table, and I just . . . can’t.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Malia said, “Because we were just talking about gearing up for the Veronica concert and I have booked all the jobs in the land.”

Dot took a deep breath.

“Okay. To be clear, I still need time to focus on homework right now. Not to mention the science fair.” She paused before adding, “And for the last time, I do not like Veronica.”

“To each her own,” said Malia. “But I, for one, will babysit every second I can until we are all sitting front row at that concert.”

And she meant every word.

Malia arrived home floating on a cloud. She had taken to listening to Veronica on her way to and from anywhere, as she found it inspired her to make her dreams a reality.

“I saw your face on my phone. You just won’t leave me alone,” sang Veronica. Of course, this made Malia think of Connor. “Social me-me-me-me-media. But everything’s about you.”

Malia felt so joyful that she almost didn’t mind when she bumped into her sister, Chelsea, the seventeen-year-old human equivalent of an evil snake, making her way through the front hallway.

“Why, if it isn’t the smaller version of me!” said Chelsea. This was her idea of the ultimate compliment. It was also a stark contrast from the usual insults Chelsea flung Malia’s way.

Immediately, Malia was suspicious.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“The real question is: what do YOU want? What do you want, little sister, from your life?”

Yes, Chelsea was up to something. But really, Chelsea was always up to something. Previously, she had formed a rival babysitting business and attempted to put Malia and her friends out of business. Who knew what sort of terrible scheme she was devising now.

“Right now, all I want is to go to my room,” Malia said, then added, “where you aren’t allowed.”

Malia’s eyes landed on the large framed family portrait that hung near the front door. The entire family – Mom, Dad, Chelsea, and Malia stood dressed in white and beaming for the camera. It looked so happy, and so misleading. Malia could barely remember another time when she had been in Chelsea’s presence and made that same expression.

“Oh, Malia. When I was your age, I was so ambitious. I was already mapping out my future. I think it’s about time you started to do the same.”

Malia tried to go around her, but Chelsea blocked her path.

“MOM!” Malia yelled, which was the easiest way she could think of to make this situation stop.

“Yes?” called their mother. Moments later she appeared, with a celery stalk in her hand.

“Chelsea is harassing me about my future again,” said Malia.

“That is an unfair assessment. I was just trying to offer Malia a chance to follow in my unusually accomplished footsteps.”

“I can make my own footsteps!” Malia protested.

“By joining our team at Abernathy Inc.” Chelsea paused, waiting for a reaction.

“Wait, what?” asked Malia. This was news to her.

“Ramona and I are looking for a new junior intern,” Chelsea continued, “and I think Malia would be a perfect fit.”

Chelsea had recently accepted an internship with Ramona Abernathy, a retired tech mogul and the wealthiest woman in all of Playa del Mar. Even though she was technically retired, Ramona was still a very busy woman. As Chelsea explained it, she worked as a consultant on all sorts of projects and sat on the board of many organizations. Malia didn’t quite understand what that meant, but she gathered that it was important. And working for Ramona was impressive, by any measure.