The Small Things

-4- the rebel babysitter

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 CHAPTER FOUR: PRE-THIRD GRADE 

 D A T E : June 2004 

 ✖ the rebel babysitter ✖

 Actually, a lot of stuff happened between second and third grade. That summer I spent a lot of time with Bluebell because the Walton's took a month-long trip to England to visit their family on Mrs. Walton's side. Parker was so excited for it that he started packing over a week before the trip, and taught himself how to use Mr. Walton's fancy camera so he could take pictures and send them to his friends.

Bluebell's babysitter was pretty lenient about everything we did, so I learned how to bake a lot since she made cookies and cupcakes when her parents were gone. "Hey, remember that lemonade stand you and Fynn had?"

"Yeah, that was fun."

"Yeah, it was," she said as she opened up the oven with a mitt on her hand. "You know what would be fun? If we sell cupcakes, cookies, and lemonade."

In the other room we heard her babysitter laughing on the phone, and the dull background noise of the television on playing a Full House marathon. I looked over at Bluebell and smiled. "Let's do it."

So we made another two batches of bakery goods and started the makings of a sign ten times better than the one Fynn and I made all those years ago. It had glitter and puffy glue on it, and smelly markers saying Bluebell & Skyes LEMONADE STAND. It was so perfect Bluebell went to fetch the digital camera her parents got her for her birthday and took a picture of it.

"This way I can print it out and put it on my wall, and it won't take up so much room," she told me. I'd already seen her room. Since she'd gotten her camera, one of her walls had a collage of pictures of her and her friends from school. I recognized every one of them. There was Heather and Julie, and Victoria. I knew Victoria pretty well, because every now and then my family would get together for Halloween or Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter, and as it turned out, she was always there because she was my cousin. Most of the time, though, I saw her on the Fourth of July, because her parents had the wildest party with the craziest fireworks.

We dragged out a fancy wooden counter-slash-table from the garage, and since it was on wheels it cruised down the driveway fairly nicely, and stuck into the grass just as well. We attached the sign to the front and went back inside to make the lemonade.

"You know, when I was in Hawaii, they had this really awesome drink--it was like Kool-Aid and they put orange slices on the glasses."

"What if we made Kool-Aid?"

She gasped and said it was the best idea I'd ever come up with. We went inside and made a batch of Kool-Aid in a big glass jug, and lemonade in another. They were so heavy, I almost dropped the Kool-Aid on my way back down the driveway. We set the jugs onto one of the shelves underneath the counter. After making signs and wheeling out the bakery products in a red wagon, we were ready for business. Bluebell's babysitter pulled out a lawn chair and sat next to the stand with a magazine in her hand.

As it turned out, there weren't as many runners this year, and while it was warm out, the lake breeze cooled down most of the heat. I was about ready to quit after two costumers came and went before Bluebell groaned and marched over to her babysitter.

"Nobody's out today," she told the teenager, who rolled her eyes and flipped a page in the magazine.

"What'd you want me to do about it?"