Evidently the rest of her gang had similar thoughts as they hung up their flyers.
“There’s this wicked jacket at Jeans Experts,” Brittany said. “It’s got, like, all these hanging chains. It’s wicked.”
“I saw that!” shouted Sarah, her eyes wide open, fully immersed in the vision of the jacket in her mind. “That would look real good on you!”
“Don’t you have a jacket like that already?” Jennifer asked.
“Yeah, so? What are you gonna buy? Books?” Brittany snorted with a laugh.
Of the three other girls, Kaitlyn felt the closest to Jennifer. During the summer, she really seemed to mature right alongside her, so she felt that, if she had to branch out of the group, she would at least have someone to take along.
“I’m saving up for a trip to Toronto!” Jennifer replied. A nice, financially solid decision, Kaitlyn thought. She was about to say so when Jennifer continued. “And if you like the jackets they have here, you wouldn’t believe the stuff they have in Toronto. My daddy gets me a new one every time he goes there on business.”
Kaitlyn decided to hold off on her compliment for the time being.
“How much do you have saved already?” Sarah asked Jennifer.
“Almost two hundred bucks,” Jennifer replied with a smile.
Kaitlyn was thrown off, but only a bit. That made sense: Jennifer’s family was rich. Her allowance was probably something like $20 a week, and she probably got a briefcase full of cash for her birthday.
“I’ve only got a little over a hundred,” Brittany said in reply. “The leather jacket I want is, like, almost three hundred, so yeah. Come on, babies! I’m gonna sit on ya!”
That threw Kaitlyn off entirely. Brittany’s family was no better off than hers. Probably even less. Before she could stop herself, she burst out, “How did you guys get so much?”
All three girls looked at each other. Brittany stared at Jennifer and raised her eyebrows knowingly. Sarah, doing pretty much anything that Brittany did, followed suit. Jennifer sighed. “We ... have been getting babysitting jobs for a while, Kait. I’ve been doing mine for like a month now. My aunt kinda has me on retainer.”
“Why do you want a retainer?” Sarah asked.
Jennifer shook her head and continued. “But yeah—we just didn’t know if you were, you know, ready. But, now we’re gonna help you out, and soon you’ll get the hang of this! You are gonna, like, rule at this anyways, and soon you’ll be rolling in it.”
“And then you’ll get to visit Kirk whenever you want!” Brittany added with a laugh. The rest of the girls quickly followed, and the conversation soon drifted back to who was hot, who was gross, and what Mr. Leblanc’s problem was with the way they all dressed.
To herself, Kaitlyn thanked her friends for looking out for her. She knew she would get the hang of babysitting once she got back into it. She wasn’t even disappointed that they had held out on her and secretly got jobs. After all, she had done the same herself.
She got a few jobs from Ms. Taylor, her next-door neighbour. No sense in telling the others about that job—Ms. Taylor had asked her before she even got a chance to advertise. She was just the nice, responsible fourteen-year-old next door who could probably use a couple bucks. That’s how Ms. Taylor had put it to her, anyway.
It had been a pretty easy job, too. Just one kid—Patrick—who was well past the diaper stage and, although he was probably the most hyperactive kid she had ever met, Kaitlyn had lived next door for literally his entire life and knew how he worked. For example, she knew that he would do anything for a rocket popsicle. Even the promise of one held considerable weight for him. She always made sure to get her mom to buy a box right before she had to babysit. She would take half the box to the Taylors’ and reap the profits of a simple job.
But, she hadn’t gotten a call from Ms. Taylor in over two months, and she doubted very much that she would in the near future. The last time she babysat Patrick, there had been issues. Really it was only one issue, and it was hardly her fault at all.
It was true that she had been on the phone with Corey O’Neil, but it was for homework! She had promised she would call him about an upcoming project and she needed some quiet time to do that. The fact that she had a serious crush on Corey and the phone call lasted over an hour was irrelevant—it was a necessary homework call.
And yes, she had given Patrick a rocket pop to leave her alone while she did that. Ms. Taylor had never told her to give Patrick popsicles, in fact she had told Kaitlyn numerous times to limit Patrick’s sugary snacks, but the fact that Kaitlyn had done it before with no issues meant that she could do it that time as well.
She even checked in on him quite a few times—the cord on the Taylors’ phone was really long and could stretch to pretty much anywhere in the downstairs of the house. Each time she checked, he was eating his popsicle. Maybe all the checks happened in the first five minutes, but that wasn’t Kaitlyn’s fault either. Corey had some really important questions to ask, like if she had ever seen the movie C.H.U.D. Since she had never even heard of it, he had to explain the whole plot to her.
It wasn’t her fault that Patrick liked to run around either. He was just a little kid. That was something that little kids liked to do. And they’re not very careful about it, so she could hardly be blamed for that.
When she found him, lying unconscious after he ran into the radiator in the Taylors’ kitchen and cracked his head open, Kaitlyn understandably freaked out. After all,
