"You're the one that I want" by Lo Fang
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"And they don't even have a cat," Sophia told her siblings, her eyes wide. The rest of the week slowly crept by. Mr. Bradshaw asked Sophia's father if she was available to babysit the following Friday, but due to Sophia's extreme dislike of watching over the fifteen-year-old boy, her father politely made up an excuse that she wasn't free. She was, Sophia just couldn't bear to experience another encounter with Blake.
Alex glanced up from her laptop, her dark brows furrowing as she processed this. Sophia had already explained to her siblings everything that had happened while watching Blake. She explained the eerie looks and the hissing cat before the loud noise hit. She even told them about the blood-splattered pants. Gruesomely, Alex had suggested the strange boy murdered the cat, but Sophia and Colin waved this off as Alex's overactive imagination she held due to writing short horror stories for school. There was no way the boy would kill a cat in his room and get away with it. His parents would know if he was a deranged individual.
"You never said they didn't have a cat," Alex pointed out.
"Yeah, Mr. Bradshaw said they do NOT have a cat. So, what do you think...?" Sophia asked, shrugging. Maybe Dan Bradshaw was lying...? But that did not make sense; why would he?
"The kid was probably just trying to scare you," Colin offered, glancing at his watch. "I'm gonna have to get going. If you hate the job so much just don't take it again."
Sophia nodded slowly. Luckily, she got out of watching Blake again this week, but that didn't guarantee Mr. or Mrs. Bradshaw wouldn't ask again this week. "Won't it look weird that I'll babysit for other people in the neighborhood, just not the Bradshaw's...?"
Colin did not get to answer as he was already headed out the front door with his backpack. Alex yawned. "The Dan guy asked dad if you were free. Next time he does, we'll just have dad say that 'he' personally doesn't feel comfortable with leaving two teenage kids alone together..."
"Ew!" Sophia squealed. "But that makes it seem like I find the creeper cute!"
Alex merely shrugged her shoulders. "It's either that or you just keep dodging them until they finally get the point. Relax, Soph. It was just one silly babysitting job, you don't have to go back."
Sophia grimaced as she spared the trampoline outside a quick glance through the window. "Now it's going to be awkward having to go outside while they know I don't want to watch their kid."
"Eh, he's a big boy who can watch himself," Alex snorted, typing again on her laptop. "Like really, what's the worse that could happen?"
***
The following week passed by uneventfully. Sophia kept herself busy with school and nightly dance classes. Very rarely did she spot any member of the Bradshaw clan with the exception of early mornings when they all seemed to be leaving the house at the same time. Sophia didn't see the boy at school, either. Being a year older than Blake, he was in the Sophomore building of their high school while Sophia was in the building that exclusively held juniors and seniors.
On a very warm Friday in the fall one afternoon, Sophia took the opportunity to spend some time in the sun jumping on the trampoline out in her backyard. Being a former gymnast, she loved every opportunity to practice any flips and tricks. Today specifically, she was working on her back-handspring full. Out of the six Summers' children, only three were outside while the other three were away at work or somewhere inside the house.
Sophia was very thankful her father managed to wiggle her out of babysitting Blake yet again. Just that morning he had told Mr. Bradshaw that Sophia would be busy babysitting her own siblings and wouldn't be able to come over. Eventually if the Bradshaw's kept asking her to watch Blake, she would have to use Alex's idea of claiming their father found it inappropriate a teenage girl was alone inside a teenage boys house.
Sophia did not spare the neighbors yard even a glance as she readied herself for another backhand spring. The whole family was simply bizarre. Blake gave her the creeps. The mother was borderline inappropriate and was always trying to talk to Sophia's teenage brothers or her older son's friends when they would visit. Jenny Bradshaw would giggle and attempt to touch their arms, or, she would wear clothing that was inappropriate for any girl to wear let alone a forty-something woman. Mrs. Bradshaw was trying to hard to be noticed, and, it was creepy.
The father and the middle son seemed the most normal in Sophia's opinion. The dad would mostly work inside his garage tinkering away on his cars. The older boy mostly kept to himself or played basketball in the backyard with his friends. The family always seemed very active, just never with each other. The only time Sophia ever really saw a member of the Bradshaw family with another member was in the mornings when they were leaving for work or school.
After executing a very perfect backhand spring, Sophia thought she would complicate the trick by adding a back tuck at the end. She had just the right amount of space on her trampoline if she played it right. Getting a nice height, Sophia flipped backwards, and completed the handspring perfectly. Right as she was about to throw herself into a back tuck, a basketball hit her squarely in the face. Sophia went down, hard, awkwardly landing on her back while her left wrist somehow managed to hit the metal of the trampoline in her fall.
Pain shot through her wrist and upper arm as Sophia released a surprised gasp of breath. She lay stunned in an odd sprawl, thankful she did not break her neck. Her sister Annie sprint through the yard to reach the trampoline. "Are you okay???"
By what could only be the grace of divine intervention, Sophia was. If that basketball had hit her just half a second upon throwing the back-tuck, the surprise could have quite literally broken her neck. "What happened...?" Sophia rasped, thankful to find her wrist was not broken. It was, however, quite bruised and beyond painful.
Given her parents were not home, one of Sophia's little brothers had taken to running into the house to get the oldest person who happened to be home. Slowly blinking away the shock, Sophia sat up, and looked towards Annie. The girl held a basketball in her hands. The odd part of her holding such an item was that no one in the family played basketball. No one even owned a ball. "I didn't see what happened," Annie exclaimed. "One minute you were flipping, and the next, you were went down after the ball hit you..."
"Hey! Can I have my ball back?" A very familiar voice called from just beyond the Summers' yard. Given how close the trampoline was to the Bradshaws garage, it became obvious not only where the ball came from, but also, who threw it. Blake Bradshaw stood perfectly under the basketball hoop in his driveway, sparing a blank expression towards the two Summers girls.
He did not looked dressed to be playing ball. The teenager wore blue jeans, a forest green polo with pen pockets on the chest, and loafers. Not to mention, he didn't look to be breaking a sweat. "You hit me to the face," Sophia said through gritted teeth, not being able to keep the glare off her face. Her wrist was in serious pain, not to mention, she was very lucky she didn't have a broken neck!
"Did I...?" asked Blake, making his way into their yard and towards their general direction. "Wow, I'm really sorry about that, it must have gotten away from us while we were playing."
"There's no one else outside," said Sophia coldly, knowing automatically he was lying. Given Annie was listening to her iPod at an insanely loud volume, all she had really seen was when the ball had hit Sophia. Her dark eyes shifted back and forth between her sister and the neighbor, not quite knowing what to do as Blake took the ball from her.
"Yeah, my brother went in," Blake answered smoothly. "We were really playing dirty so I can see how the ball got away."
This seemed like a very large lie. There was not a drop of sweat on the boy during this very warm day to promote that story. "Sorry about that," Blake said again, batting the ball back and forth between his hands. He winced while glancing at Sophia, tsking under his breath. "You should really get some ice on you, your face looks like its swelling."
With that, the teenager headed back to his yard. Even though the conversation was very, very, brief, Sophia had a very bad feeling the boy threw the ball at her purposely.