if the conveyor belt pushed its way to our door instead. It’s not that I was jealous, but I wondered. Hannah said the babysitters let her stay up late and drink soda. Some of them even let her curse.
Now that we’re actually getting one, though, I’m not wondering so much. Instead I have this little squeezing feeling in my stomach. There will be someone staying with us who won’t know all the things that Will likes and doesn’t like. Someone who won’t know all the important things there are to know about Will.
I go into Mom’s room and sit on her bed while she packs. There are at least four pairs of jeans laid out on the bed. It looks like she dumped her whole underwear drawer on there, too. I’d rather not look at Mom’s underwear, so I scoot up by the pillows.
“Mom,” I say, “what if Will doesn’t listen to the babysitter when you’re gone?”
Mom looks at me as she folds and refolds a black sweater before putting it into the suitcase that already looks too full.
“Shelby,” she says. “Her name is Shelby. And he will. He’ll listen.”
I pick up one of her pairs of socks and squeeze it.
“What if he throws things in his room again while you’re gone?”
Mom sighs a little and holds one of Dad’s T-shirts in her hands.
“She’s studying to be a Special Ed teacher,” Mom says. “I told you this already. Remember?”
I lie back on the pillow and press my face against the comforter. I squeeze the ball of socks and think about what she told me about this babysitter, Shelby, when she first brought up the idea.
She puts Dad’s T-shirt in the suitcase and looks at me. She tells me again that the babysitter is not a stranger, that she’s the daughter of some old friend of the family. We did meet her, but I had a social studies test the next day and wasn’t paying much attention. I remember she had long red hair. Will stayed on his iPad the whole time watching videos. When Mom asked if it was okay with Will if Shelby came to babysit one day, Will didn’t look up from the iPad.
“Will,” Mom had said, “can you look at Mommy?”
He looked up and blinked.
“Is it okay if Shelby comes to babysit you and Mia next week?”
Will lifted the collar of his shirt into his mouth and chewed on it a few times. I remember I wished he would stop eating his shirt and went back to studying for social studies.
“Yup, it’s okay,” Will said. “Yup.”
Will always says “yup,” “never,” “yeah,” or “yes.” It’s just one of the things he does.
“Shelby is an aide in a classroom for kids on the spectrum,” Mom tells me. She shoves more shirts into the suitcase. “She knows all about Will.”
There’s something about those words that I don’t like. On the spectrum. They always make me think of some cheesy rainbow drawing full of yellows and purples and reds. I don’t like anything that’s cheesy. It’s not like I love the word autism, either. If I had to pick between the two, though, I guess I would choose the word autism.
“Okay,” I say, “but what if . . .?”
Mom doesn’t let me finish and sits down on the bed next to me.
“Mia,” she says, “you have to stop with all the ‘what-ifs.’ That’s what moms are for, right?”
I say, “Right,” but I don’t stop, not really.
“Look, honey,” she says with her hand on my leg, “I’m a little nervous, too. We’re only going ten minutes away. It’s going to be fine.”
I want to know why they have to bother going at all if they’re only going ten minutes away, but I don’t say this to Mom.
Instead I just say, “I’m not nervous.” Then I leave her there to deal with all of her underwear and socks and the millions of other things she’s stuffing into her suitcase.
What if Shelby doesn’t know that Will needs to line up his stuffed animals on his dresser before he goes to bed? What if she doesn’t know how to make his frozen pizza, that it has to be just the right amount of crispy? What if she doesn’t know what he means when he says things from TV and movies and the iPad? What then?
Chapter 3
I decide to play Minecraft with Will while we wait for the babysitter—Shelby—to get here. Will loves Minecraft. Before Minecraft he played Super Mario, and before Super Mario he only played with Thomas the Tank Engine. He used to build tracks all over the house. Some of his tracks would reach all the way across the living room rug, then go up one side of the couch, across the top, then back down to the rug again. With his tracks all over the place, we couldn’t watch TV in there or sit on either of the couches. Mom would take pictures of the tracks before she vacuumed so she could remember how to put them back together just the way he left them. If she put them back the wrong way or forgot a piece, Will would freak.
Mom doesn’t say “freak.” She says “meltdown.”
One day I heard Will ask Mom if Thomas the Tank Engine was for babies.
“Thomas isn’t for babies,” she said. “You love Thomas. Are you a baby?”
I didn’t know any boys who still wore Thomas shirts to school. Usually I don’t pay much attention to what other people wear. I knew none of the boys in my class had worn Thomas shirts since around first grade. Maybe even since kindergarten. So, I decided to tell Will myself. I went into his room after Mom tucked him in, and I told him.
“Will,” I said, “Remember what you asked Mom about Thomas?”
He was lying in his bed with his Thomas blanket and Thomas pillowcase and Thomas stickers on the walls. I knew Mom would never tell him the truth. Someone had to.
“It’s true,” I whispered to him. “Thomas is for babies.”
“Thomas is for babies?” he said.
“Yup,” I said.
I kind of expected he might start crying and run and tell Mom. Instead he just turned over and faced the wall. Really quietly he said, “Thomas is for babies. Thomas is for babies.”
“Right,” I said.
The next day he took apart the tracks from all over the couches. He didn’t freak out, not even once. When Dad asked where he wanted to put all his trains and tracks, he said, “Down in the basement. Thomas is for babies.”
Later Dad stopped me outside my room and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Tell me the truth,” Dad said. “Did you tell him that? That Thomas is for babies?”
For a minute I wondered if Dad would be mad at me. Then I remembered what I’d heard Mom say once on the phone to one of her friends. “The problem is,” she said, “that Will wouldn’t even know if he was being made fun of.”
“Dad,”
