AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Honey, are you coming down? She should be here any minute.”
I made the mistake of telling Libby on Friday that Skylar was coming over to see her today, and she’s been asking me, “Is it Sunday yet?” ten times a day every day since.
I look up to the top of the stairs to see that Olivia has changed into her Halloween costume, a frilly pastel blue concoction that’s no doubt fashioned after some Disney princess. It’s still got chocolate smeared on it from last week.
Nice.
She’s also made an attempt to do her hair with what looks like twenty sparkly clips tangled up into a rat’s nest, and is that lipstick on her lips? Where the hell did she get that?
Right as I’m heading upstairs to get her cleaned up and looking the way she did twenty minutes ago, the doorbell rings.
Perfect.
“Uh, hi.”
Her smile is practiced and uneasy as she returns my greeting and hands me a plate wrapped in plastic. “I like to bake so, um, I made carrot muffins.”
“I love carrot muffins!”
Skylar turns in the direction of Olivia’s voice and then covers her mouth to stifle her surprise. And she’s good, I’ll give her that, because I’m finding it hard not to laugh at my daughter in her current state. She looks like a slightly deranged, washed-up Hollywood starlet looking to make an entrance as she saunters down the stairs.
“Wow. That’s some dress, Libby.”
“It’s my costume.”
“It’s fabulous. And I like your sparkly clips.” Skylar unclips one from the side of her own head. “I have these boring old brown ones, same color as my hair. Maybe I should get myself some of those.”
“I think you should wear purple.”
“Yeah, I like purple. Maybe you can do my hair someday.”
I notice that Skylar’s got a heavy bag slung over one shoulder so I gesture to help her with it. “What’s all this?”
She barely gives me a passing glance as she hands the bag off to me, turning her attention back to Olivia when she says, “Just some stuff to play with. Art supplies, flash cards…Lots of stuff.”
Olivia comes over and peers into the bag. “Do you have dolls?”
“No, but I bet you have some of those in your room, right?” When Olivia nods her head, Skylar says, “Me and my sister used to play school all the time when we were little. We’d sit our dolls up in chairs and pretend we were the teachers.”
“I like to pretend.”
“Me too.” Skylar finally looks up and makes eye contact with me. “Do you want to play, too?”
Her question confuses me for a split-second before I understand that she’s asking me how this is supposed to go.
“Uh, I have some work I need to get done if you two don’t mind playing without me.”
Olivia is already trying to sling Skylar’s bag over her shoulder and lead her upstairs. “You wanna see my room?”
Skylar looks back to check and see if it’s all right with me, and I nod my head once, feeling more than just a little uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t trust Skylar, for some reason I instinctively do, it’s just that I feel awkward. I’m in my own home, interviewing her for this job, and yet I’m the one who feels off-kilter. It’s like I’m eager for her to approve of me when it should be the other way around.
I do have work to do, but I spend the next twenty minutes moving about the house restlessly, wondering what it is that I should be doing.
Should I be standing outside of Olivia’s open bedroom door, watching the two of them interact? I felt intrusive the one time I paused in the doorway so I moved on, pretended I had to put in a load of wash. Going downstairs and totally being out on the action doesn’t seem right either, and I certainly don’t feel like I can plop down on the rug and join in on this game of school they’ve got going.
I settle on standing in the hallway out of sight like a creeper. And within two minutes I’m smiling, the sound of Olivia’s laughter lighting me up from the inside. She’s a happy kid by nature—it’s not like this Skylar girl is performing some kind of magic trick by making her laugh—but I have to admit that I like what I’m hearing. Skylar is kind to my daughter, she’s attentive and she’s kind of goofy.
And seriously, my alternative is Maureen, so short of being an absolute mental case, acing this interview won’t be all that difficult. Maureen has set the bar pretty damn low.
