Imagine

Chapter 11- Babysitting

“ See ya this weekend babe.” he called to me and then drove away. 

My heart went to mush again, the babe thing never got old.  It felt great to finally have a boyfriend. The moment was ruined by my aunt swinging open the front door. 

“ Oh Jennifer, thank god your home! Come in so I can explain everything to you. I wondered why she wanted me home and what there was to explain. So I walked in and sat down at the dinning room table.

“ Jennifer, Cassandra has a ballet recital today and I have to take her, Uncle Chuck is at work and well Max doesn’t want to go.

“ Sure, I’ll watch him” I said trying to make this conversation short as possible. 

“ Well Max  has a babysitter, it’s just Max went to the doctors  the other day and he may have asthma. The doctors prescribed him a puffer but he is embarrassed  to tell his babysitter. So can you watch them and if Max  feels he needs the puffer he’ll ask you?” she smiled at me while finally taking a breath. They wanted me to baby-sit the babysitter  and Max. How crazy is my Aunt? As much as I hated her, I kind of liked hanging with Max.

“ Fine” I replied. 

“ Great, Aiden will be here any second”  She said while rushing out the door. When I heard his name, I froze. Now this was going to be interesting. 

I heard knocking at the door and knew it was him.  What were Max, Aiden and I going to do? Two enemies and a seven year old, what a great combination.  I opened the door to see the one and only, staring back at me with a smug smirk on his face. “ Are you going to invite me in?” he asked taking a step closer to me.  I let out a sigh and opened the door wider.  Max came flying down the stairs and leaped into Aiden’s arms. 

“ Hey buddy, what do you want to do today?” Aiden asked him setting him down and giving him a noogie.

“ Lets go to the zoo!

“ Then the zoo it is!” Aiden high-fived Max.  I hadn’t planned on going anywhere, but now it seemed like I was going into a gated area with a whole bunch of bratty kids and Mr. I love myself. Will there even be enough room with his huge ego.  I went into the room to get Max’s puffers to take with us Max began to whisper , but you know how little kids whisper you can hear them clearly.  

“ I kind of have to bring Jenny, Mom’s orders, I told her it was guy’s day out but she just didn’t listen.” 

Aiden looked at me and smiled. “ Come on Jenny, we’re going to the zoo” he jumped up and down like a little kid. 

“ Just let me get ready and we’ll leave shortly” I looked at him unimpressed . I walked up stairs and put Max’s and my stuff into my purse. Yes, I own a purse. I don’t normally use one, but I didn’t have time to make my backpack legal. I was heading down the stairs and Max began to shout “ Come one Jenny, if you don’t hurry, the animals will already be sleepy and all the other kids would have fed them and they will be full and not eat my food!” he stumped his foot at the end of the run along sentence. “ I'm coming", I insisted, well secretly hoping the animals would be hungry enough to eat Aiden if I pushed him in. 

Two bus rides and three blocks later we were at the zoo.  Max ran  around in amazement, as Aiden and I walked behind.  It wasn’t awkward as long as Max kept talking and knowing him that was very unlikely.  We looked at gorillas, lions, giraffes, zebra and species animals that me and Aiden  didn’t even know existed.

 “ What’s  that?” Max pointed to an animal.  Aiden looked at me not knowing, I opened my eyes wider  as I hint that I didn’t know either.