October Halloween 🎃🍭👸 Exclusive - "Catching" - Part 1

And...we're...off!  From now on, if a story is based on a special helper suggestion, I'm going to put their idea at the end. So if you want the spoiler in future, you can find it at the end. 

One

October 31, 2:30 AM

“I scared.”

Two words, whispered in the darkness. Two words, the grammar gone to hell.

Harper opens her eyes and peers at the four-year-old girl standing beside the bed. “Avery,” she replies. She groans. “You gotta stop doing this.”

Avery should go back to bed. Her own bed, in her own room. She should be fast asleep because it’s…what time is it anyway?

Harper reaches for her phone, blinks at the screen. “Uh.” It’s way too late for this.

Avery is not her kid. But she’s definitely her problem.

“I scared,” says Avery again.

Scared of what? Scared of being four years old? Scared of pre-K? Scared of hugs and kisses and cupcakes and rainbows and all the other wonderful things she has to deal with?

Suddenly, finally curious, Harper asks the question, and Avery replies, “Hadda a bad dweam.”

Harper exhales. What happened? She almost asks, but then doesn’t. She turns the phone to bathe Avery’s face in light, making the child flinch. “If I take you back to bed, are you going to come back in five minutes? Are you going to keep doing this all night?”

Avery looks down at her feet. “I scared,” she says softly, plaintively.

“Do you do this to Mommy and Daddy?” asks Harper. “I bet you don’t. I bet you’re good as gold for them.”

Avery shrugs her shoulders.

“You’re not a baby,” says Harper, although she’s close enough. “You’re a big girl, got your own big girl bed.” She reaches and strokes Avery’s auburn hair. Hair that curls as it reaches her shoulders. Cute kid, with those freckled cheeks, that button nose. Cute, annoying kid. “Don’t you want to tell Mommy what a big girl you were for me?”

Avery shakes her head.

“You don’t?” Harper’s tone rises in theatrical disbelief, but she’s surprised in reality as well. Wasn’t that the whole selling point?

“Honey, if you go back to bed and stay there, I tell your mommy that you were good as gold and the Mommy gets you that pencil case you want.”

Not just any, garden-variety pencil case. The reward for being good while her parents are away overnight is fuzzy, pink, and a unicorn.

It’s got a gold strap! I can carry it like a bag!

The girl likes unicorns. Judging by the brain-melting cartoon she watched when Harper turned on Netflix, judging by the onesie she’s wearing right now. Judging by the little girl’s entire, epic, four-year-old life.

Isn’t that enough? Won’t that do the trick?

“She’s got a gold horn, right?”

Avery nods, hair in her face.

“And gold hooves.”

“Huh?”

Her feet. They’re good too.”

“I know.”

“So go back to bed and tomorrow you get the pencil case.”

The little girl shakes her head. She reaches for Harper’s arm, pats it, ready to grab, to hold on and not let go. “I scared,” she says.

Harper groans. Dumb little baby. She puts her phone on the bedside table and then lifts the comforter. “Come on, then.”

Avery looks up, her mouth opening in surprise, and Harper gets the feeling that the little girl wasn’t expecting to win this battle.

Too late. Avery scrambles into bed and puts her arms around her babysitter. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“Go to sleep,” says Harper grudgingly, but in truth, the little girl’s is warm and secure against her, the fuzzy onesie making her more like a warm blanket. Harper smells the girls hair, still strawberry-scented from her bath.

It could be worse. She could be sharing a bed with Dylan, who isn’t warm and fuzzy. Dylan is a thoughtless jerk. Dylan is a mistake, an ex she can stop crying and moping over.

“You’re my fav’rite baby-sitter,” Avery murmurs.

“Go to sleep.” Harper strokes the girl’s back. “Go dream of unicorns, pink fluffy ones.”

The child doesn’t respond. She’s snoring already. Of course she is. It’ll be Harper who lies awake until morning. Because how can she sleep, with this brat lying on top of her? Even though she’s admittedly fuzzy and warm, even though her hair is so soft and smells of strawberries.

And Harper is willing, now that it’s dark again, now that she’s warm and peaceful, to feel sorry for Avery. Not because the girl is without loving parents – the opposite is true; Avery’s mother and father clearly both dote on her. Not because the girl is poor or disadvantaged – hardly; Harper’s own parents have been friends of the family for years, and they call come from the right side of the tracks. This little girl wants for nothing.

But Harper can feel sorry for Avery because this is the year of the virus. Because A.P.P. has turned America upside-down, with the virus transforming adults into children and babies.

Who catches it? Most often, people Harper’s age, in their twenties and early thirties.

What causes it? No one’s quite sure – or at least, no one is willing to say – but suspicion has been heaped on real children as being primary carriers. Hence the desperation of Avery’s mother, trying to find someone to watch her daughter when she travels overnight.

So Harper can feel sympathy for Avery – a four-year-old girl who isn’t getting to trick-or-treat this Halloween. Because who in their right mind wants a bunch of kids knocking on their door? The city banned it, and tomorrow night there will be police patrols enforcing the ban.

Which is over the top. Which is crazy. Which is so ‘this year’.

So the little girl snoring on top of Harper will have to make do with five-dollar pencil case she saw in Walgreens.

Still, she’s too young to really know what she’s missing. Besides, thanks to the wonder of creative parenting, Avery will have a good time at home on Halloween night. Because while Avery knows that she’ll be dressing up as a unicorn, wearing the same PJs she’s sleeping in right now, she doesn’t know about her mother’s costume.

Harper sniffs with amusement, thinking of the outfit hiding in the mother’s closet.

It’s going to blow Avery’s mind!

Yeah, it probably will. And who knows, maybe next year everything will be back to normal, and Avery will be able to go trick or treating.

The kid is small, but the kid is warm. Actually, the kid is kinda hot. Harper eases the little girl off and to the side. She strokes the girl’s strawberry hair, wills her to stay asleep.

Harper looks into the murky darkness of the bedroom. Is she crazy to be babysitting in the middle of a pandemic? It’s not just the United States anymore; whatever began in some crazy scientists lab in America has now spread overseas. But despite Harper’s age, her risk-profile came back low. No one with her A negative blood has caught A.P.P., either the physical or mental strains. That’s around 1 in 16 adults who don’t have to worry about returning to childhood.

Blood matters, as it turns out. Two months ago, Harper wouldn’t even have been able to say what blood type she was – but her mother knew of course. Because dear Mom knows these things. And even though Harper is twenty-five, with her own apartment, her own job, her own life, there’s no way Mom would have let her do this spot of babysitting if she’d had a different blood type. In fact, it was Mom who came up with the idea.

They’re absolutely desperate, honey. And with your blood type, you know you’ll be safe. I mean, I don’t think it’s the kids who are spreading this awful thing anyway, but you won’t be at risk. And poor Doug and Tina, they’re just desperate!

Desperate to go to a family funeral. Not exactly a romantic getaway, sans kid. So even though Harper doesn’t really need the money, even though Harper never enjoyed her time as a teenage babysitter, and even though the Internet says that A-neg blood doesn’t guarantee a daman thing, Harper could hardly say no.

Because money is always handy. Because Avery isn’t a bad kid. And because the Internet is full of garbage.

She can buy two new tires for her Subaru Impreza. She can bedazzle a four-year-old in the morning with her French Toast-making skills. And yeah, there are so many APP rumors and wild conspiracies online that, well, if Harper believed even a small fraction of them, she’d never leave her apartment.

“Don’t worry,” she whispers, hugging Avery. “You won’t wake up next to a baby.” She strokes the little girl’s back and then wonders, when her hand gets to Avery’s rear, if it’s going to be a dry night. She pats the Pull-up she can feel underneath Avery’s pajamas, and whispers, “I’m not worried about catching APP, kiddo, but you’d better not wet the bed.”