Beware The Babysitter (Sweet Valley High Book 99), page 4
But Maria wasn't listening. She was on her knees, cuddling the pink-and-gold baby and babbling softly in what sounded to Winston like gibberish.
"I can't believe it," Winston grumbled under his breath, shaking his head at Maria, who paid him no attention. "Just one look at a baby, and you lose every shred of dignity."
Josh Smith squinted into the late-afternoon sunlight. In the distance, lush green hills rose under a spotless Sweet Valley blue sky.
Josh had arrived that morning and had checked into a motel. Now he was taking a walk to familiarize himself with the town.
He gazed around at the quiet, tree-lined street. The shops and restaurants were brightly painted; their doors stood open, invitingly. Young people, their clothing as colorful as the feathers of parrots, laughed and talked as they strolled along the sidewalks—probably on their way home from a nearby high school, Josh figured.
He stared carefully at every girl who passed by. The age was about right, he decided. But he didn't see her—not here, not yet. He hadn't really expected to, so soon. But he knew Margo was nearby. He could feel it.
It was a beautiful place. Everybody looked happy and relaxed, but Josh frowned. He couldn't bear the thought of this lovely town becoming another site of Margo's murder and vengeance.
He balled both of his hands into fists and made a silent vow. This time, he would stop Margo—if it was the last thing he did.
Chapter 4
"I know who you look like, Marla!" boasted four-year-old Angie Amadi on the playground at Little Darlings Day Care. She held her hands linked behind her back as she looked up at the new teacher's aide.
"Who?" asked Margo, not believing her luck.
"It's a secret."
"If you tell me your secret, I'll tell you mine."
"OK," Angie agreed happily. "You look like the two girls that live on my street. I live on Calico Drive—Mommy made me remember it in case I get lost. The two girls are teenagers! They look just like each other, and just like you, too. Except that they have straight yellow hair and you have curly brown hair."
"Do you know their names?" Margo asked.
"Yep," said Angie proudly. "Jessica and Elizabeth. They come over to baby-sit me sometimes. They're pretty, and they have a big dog named Prince Albert. I have a cat named Kitty. Do you have a cat?"
"No, I don't have a cat," said Margo. "Prince Albert, huh? Is Prince Albert a mean dog?"
Angie giggled. "Nope. I pet him sometimes when they take him for a walk. Their daddy says he's really a pussycat. Isn't that funny? Prince Albert is a dog but their daddy says he's a cat. He's funny."
"He must be very nice if he stops to talk to little girls," Margo said.
"Yep. My mommy says him and Mrs. Wakefield are about the nicest people in town!"
"What else does your mommy say about Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield?"
"She said they were gonna get a divorce once. My mommy got a divorce. Mr. Wakefield moved away, but he came back. And now they aren't gonna get a divorce."
"How terrible," said Margo, feigning shock. "I'm glad they aren't going to get a divorce anymore."
"I told you my secret," Angie interrupted. "Now you tell me your secret, Marla."
'This whole little talk is my secret," said Margo.
The girl turned her head. "What?"
"Well, you told me about the Wakefield family. Let's make that a secret. Nobody else will know that we had this little talk. It'll be our secret. Can you keep a secret?"
"I think so," said Angie, grinning.
"You think so?" Margo asked sharply. "Do you know what happens to little girls who can't keep secrets?"
Angie shook her head slowly, eyes wide. Margo crossed her arms and glared at the little girl, enjoying the effect. Angie put a lock of her black, curly hair into her mouth and sucked on it, hard, as she stared up at Margo.
"Sometimes, their kittens get drowned," Margo said darkly. "But if they tell a really important secret, little girls can get all burned up!"
A tear ran down Angie's face. "I can keep a secret, Marla. I'm sure I can."
"You know, Angie. This is a really important secret!"
"I won't tell anyone," Angie said solemnly. "I promise!"
Suddenly, Margo was all smiles. "I knew you wouldn't tell," she said. "You and me are going to be great friends!"
Angie smiled back with a mixture of adoration and terror.
"Aren't kids wonderful?" Margo said aloud to no one in particular. "I think I'm going to like working here!"
Elizabeth sat at her desk that evening, catching up on some homework.
"Elizabeth?" Jessica asked tentatively, stepping into Elizabeth's room through the door from the twins' bathroom. "Would you mind if I borrowed your new cotton sweater? The one that matches my—uh, our eyes? I hate to ask, but I'm going out with James, and the sweater I wanted to wear has ketchup stains on it from the Dairi Burger the other night."
Elizabeth shook her head, laughing. "I never thought I'd hear myself saying it," she said, "but it's great having you poke your head in here, without knocking, to ask if you can wear everything in my closet. It's just like old times!"
Jessica sighed, relieved. "Yes, it is great," she agreed. "And it expands my wardrobe potential immensely. Does that mean I can borrow the sweater?"
"Well—" Elizabeth began slowly, trying to cover a grin. "Do you promise not to get it dirty? And to wash it and fold it neatly—by tomorrow?"
"You weren't kidding when you said this was just like old times!"
Elizabeth walked to her closet, pulled the new sweater off a neatly arranged shelf, and held it up. "But there's one more condition," she said.
Jessica sighed impatiently. "What now?"
Elizabeth tossed her the sweater. "No ketchup!" she said.
Jessica giggled as the sweater hit her in the face. "It's a deal! I won't eat anything that isn't the exact same shade of blue-green as this sweater," she promised after she had undraped it from around her neck. "You know," she said, changing the subject suddenly. "Lila is having a bunch of friends over on Saturday afternoon for ice cream. It'll be kind of a pre-costume-party bash—"
"I know," Elizabeth said. "She invited me—through Enid, of all people."
"She did?" Jessica asked. "Through Enid?"
"Yeah, I know. Since when are Lila and Enid even talking to each other?"
Jessica beamed, and Elizabeth smiled back. She suspected that her own friends and Jessica's friends, as different as they were, had come together in an attempt to bring the twins together again. Obviously, the cold war had been hard on everyone.
"You're going, aren't you?" Jessica prodded.
Elizabeth shrugged. "To tell you the truth, I wasn't planning to. I didn't think you'd be too thrilled to have me there."
"But I'd really like it if you came, Liz," she said, brushing at an imaginary speck on the sweater.
She looked up, and Elizabeth smiled at her. "OK, then. I'll plan on it."
The doorbell rang and Jessica jumped. "Oh, no!" she cried. "It's James, and I'm not ready!"
Elizabeth watched, laughing, as her sister ran out of the room. "Same old Jess!" she called after her. Maybe things really were going back to normal.
Five minutes later, Elizabeth heard Jessica greeting James. When the door shut behind them, Elizabeth walked to her window to see Jessica—stunning in the blue sweater and a pair of tight black jeans—strolling down the front walkway with James's arm around her waist. Jessica smiled radiantly as he gazed down at her, and they laughed together at something he said.
Elizabeth turned away. "I'm happy for her—really I am," she said aloud. "But I'd like to go out with someone special, too."
Her mind drifted to the Fowler wedding. She had gazed into Todd's deep brown eyes and felt his strong arms around her. . . .
"No!" she told herself. "Not Todd. He blew it! He proved that he doesn't care anymore."
"It's almost like having a whole new wardrobe," Jessica explained to James as they sat in a back booth at the Dairi Burger. "It's been ages since Elizabeth has let me borrow a sweater! For a few minutes in her room tonight, it was just like old times."
She paused so that James would ask her to continue, as he always did, but he picked up his milk shake instead and took a long sip. Jessica shrugged and continued speaking.
"I had thought we'd never be close again. I was so angry, and I felt so bad about what I did—"
She stopped, flustered. "I just felt so bad," she concluded. She looked down at the french fry she was absentmindedly dragging through the dollop of ketchup on her plate—Elizabeth would never know, she had figured, as long as she was careful with the sweater.
Jessica liked the way James always hung on her every word, always wanting to know more. But now she wasn't sure how she would answer him if he asked her why she felt bad. She'd tried for so long not to think about what she'd done . . . about how she had secretly spiked Elizabeth's drink the night of the dance.
But James didn't ask. Jessica felt confused, but she pushed the nagging fear to the back of her mind and continued with a smile.
"I know it may be hard for other people to understand, but my relationship with Elizabeth is the most important thing in my life. It sounds corny, but being twins is like being two halves of the same person. Sometimes we even pick up on each other's feelings."
James narrowed his eyes. "You mean like telepathy?" he asked skeptically.
"Not exactly. It's just a feeling I get sometimes that Elizabeth is in trouble. Like the time she was kidnapped. I was at a party, Elizabeth was late, and I had this nagging feeling that something was wrong."
"That's amazing," said James."What did you do?"
Jessica looked at the table and shook her head. "Not enough," she admitted. "There was this guy I wanted to impress, so I kept ignoring the feelings I was having about Elizabeth—until Todd shoved me into the pool! He made me realize that something was really wrong. But we eventually managed to rescue her."
James took her hand. "I hope she wasn't too mad that you ignored what you were sensing."
"Not Elizabeth," Jessica said firmly. "She was just grateful that I helped find her. Usually, Elizabeth is the one who gets me out of trouble. I don't know what I'd do without Elizabeth. She's my anchor."
James listened thoughtfully but didn't reply.
Jessica was stumped. It wasn't that James was ignoring her. Not at all. He'd been completely attentive the entire evening—kinder and sweeter than usual, even. He let her choose the movie, and he'd even squeezed her hand when she cried during the sad part—instead of making a joke out of it, as Sam used to do.
After the movie, James had walked around the mall with her, waiting patiently while she admired a dress at Bibi's and fell in love with a shimmering scarf at the Lytton & Brown department store. Sam had always hated going shopping with her—even window shopping.
But James had been quieter than he usually was on their dates, and he didn't seem as curious to know everything about her. Is he losing interest? Jessica felt her heart racing desperately at the thought. She couldn't bear to lose James now.
No, she told herself, trying not to think about the hike in the mountains and the steep ravine beneath her feet. There's nothing to worry about. James loves me.
"Are you okay?" Jessica asked him, leaning across the table toward him. "You seem a little—I don't know, quiet or something. Am I boring you?"
He smiled gently and traced the lines of her face with his finger. "Never," he said. "I'm just a little tired. Let's call it an early night, OK? I've got an early practice tomorrow. . . ."
Jessica smiled back. "Sure," she agreed. But she had the distinct impression that James was lying.
Elizabeth paced around her bedroom.
She glanced over at her desk. There was the soccer article she'd been editing for The Oracle, Sweet Valley High's student newspaper. Sports wasn't Elizabeth's usual beat, but she was helping her friend Penny Ayala, the editor-in-chief. It felt good to be "dependable Liz, the writer," again. In fact, she was getting a lot of satisfaction these days out of the little details of her life that she had taken for granted before the accident and its aftermath.
"Almost having to spend six months in reform school will do that to you," she said wryly, still pacing.
But Elizabeth was too restless to sit still and edit a story about the upcoming soccer playoffs. And she had finished all her homework before dinner. She looked around the room, searching for something else to keep her occupied. As usual, everything was in perfect order.
"Laundry!" she said suddenly. She had been meaning to do a load for two days now. She stopped in front of the mirror and addressed herself. "Jessica is out on a date, and I'm home doing laundry." She shook her head. "Liz, you're a wild woman!"
As long as she was doing a load of laundry, Elizabeth decided she might as well throw in some of Jessica's stuff, too.
She remembered the beach party months earlier—before the Jungle Prom and its tragic aftermath—where she had promised to stop looking after Jessica and start putting herself first. "Well," she told her reflection. "Old habits die hard!" But she was smiling as she said it.
Elizabeth stood in the middle of Jessica's room a few minutes later, shaking her head. It had been a long time since she'd been in her sister's room. It almost felt good to be standing ankle deep in the layer of debris that always covered Jessica's bedroom carpet.
"I never thought I'd be feeling nostalgic for all this," she told herself with a smile, gesturing around the room. "How does she find anything in here?" She knelt down and slipped her hand under a stack of Ingenue magazines—to yank out the infamous ketchup-stained sweater that was underneath them.
"That's easy," she said, answering her own question. "She doesn't find anything in here. She comes to me and borrows whatever she can't put her hands on in her own room."
She reached for a pair of psychedelic stirrup pants that were entwined around the bottom of a bedpost. As she tugged them loose, a wrinkled envelope sprang out from under the bed.
"That's just like Jessica," she said. "Losing a letter in this mess . . ."
Elizabeth lifted the envelope off the floor and was about to toss it on top of the jumble of papers on Jessica's desk, when the name on the envelope caught her eye.
It was her own name, and the handwriting was Todd's.
Elizabeth dropped the stirrup pants and pulled out the letter. It was dated two weeks earlier.
"I'm watching the sunset, Elizabeth,'" she read aloud, '"and I wish I could write as well as you do, so I could tell you how beautiful it is, because beautiful sights always make me think of you—'"
She collapsed onto the bed, not caring that she was crushing the half-dozen blouses that Jessica must have tried on before deciding what to wear that night.
Elizabeth read quickly, tears forming in her eyes.
"I can't believe it," she marveled, when she had finished the letter. "Todd still loves me. He always loved me! And he wants to know if I forgive him!"
Elizabeth stared at the page in disbelief for a minute. Then she reread the last paragraph, aloud:
"'I can't believe I've wasted so much time, Liz—time we could have spent together. I wanted to be there for you. I've been too blinded by pride and jealousy and anger. It may be too late, but I had to let you know that you are the only person I have ever loved. I don't blame you if you never want to see me again....'"
Elizabeth looked up, trying to control the storm of emotions that whirled inside her. Todd still loved her, and she knew in her heart that she had never stopped loving him.
But Jessica had betrayed her. Jessica had known about the letter but had kept it from her. Elizabeth pounded the pillow with her fist. How could Jessica do that to her? Why would she want to hurt her like that?
Elizabeth threw herself against the pillow, sobbing.
So much love. So much wasted time.
James pushed open the door of Kelly's Bar and scanned the smoky room. He'd dropped Jessica off at home and headed straight there.
"Hey, dude!" called a familiar voice. Leroy, one of the bar regulars, sat on his usual stool at the corner of the bar. "Where you been lately, Jimmy boy?" he said, slurring his words. "You gone uptown on us?"
James waved without looking toward him. Then he spotted Margo in a booth in the back of the room. He made his way toward her—sidestepping a drunk who was dancing by himself, oblivious to the lack of music.
What a sleazy place, James thought as he slid into the booth. He shifted his weight to avoid sitting on a slit in the dirty brown vinyl. James had hung out at Kelly's for at least a year, but after an hour at the clean, light-filled Dairi Burger, this place felt like an alien planet.
Maybe I am going uptown, James mused to himself, wondering if that was good or bad.
Margo was slowly entwining a lock of her long hair around her finger. James was startled. Her hair was as black as the night sky, but the gesture was pure Jessica.
"What took you so long, James?" she asked, with a very Jessica-like pout. "I got out of cheerleader practice positively ages ago!"
James stared. This girl could be Jessica's twin. Heck, she could be Jessica herself. She even sounded like Jessica. And she was wearing a tight, bright-pink tank top that looked just like one Jessica had worn a few days earlier. What is this sick girl up to?
"Cut the crap, Mandy," he ordered, stifling the urge to add or whatever your real name is. "Besides," he added, "I'm a half hour early. It's only nine-thirty."
"I know," said Margo in her usual, expressionless voice. She stared at him with eyes that were just like Jessica's, but colder. "Why?" she demanded.
"We went to an early movie," James said. "Besides, she was getting on my nerves."
"I pay you to put up with her," Margo reminded him sharply. "I pay you to listen to her."
James put up his hand. "I know, I know," he said. "But she wasn't talking much tonight. She seemed kind of tired. So I got bored, made up an excuse, and took her home."
