Babysitters: Gamer Girl, Part 3

Madison could feel Joshua under her toes as she locked her bike up outside the building, although she did her best to lift them up so that he wouldn’t feel like he was being walked on. It was a kind gesture, in theory, although shoes weren’t made to be roomy so it only made a minor difference. From the boy’s perspective, he couldn’t even tell that she was trying to make things easier for him at all, since he was still stuck beneath the tip of the giant girl’s socked foot, trying to decide whether it was worse to be smushed against the shoe’s musty insole or Madison’s slightly damp toes.

He could tell they’d made it back to her apartment, and he eagerly awaited the moment when her foot would suddenly pull away, letting a barrage of light blind him to let him know that it was finally time to come out. But that moment never came. He heard the door to the building open (confirming that she really was home, if the feeling of Madison semi-walking over him hadn’t been evidence enough), and he realized that he should probably just give her a few more minutes. Maybe she has to wait til she’s actually back in her bedroom to take me out, he wondered, hearing the sounds of people talking outside the shoe and knowing that she couldn’t just retrieve him with other people around to see. Just a few more minutes, he told himself, trusting his babysitter not to abandon him in the foul-smelling darkness.

As Madison made her way into the building, up a flight of stairs, and headed down a hallway, she grew increasingly nervous by the ever-presence of people surrounding her. Not that the building was packed, but there were people leaning against walls in the halls, sitting on the stairs, chatting on the balcony (not to mention the array of people outside). She could tell before she even entered her family’s unit that it was the kind of party where the attendance was larger than the available space, resulting in people overflowing outside where it was cooler, or less packed, or they could smoke. When Madison finally made it home—the front door was wedged open—she was greeted with several dozen people milling about her family’s apartment, chatting and drinking and mingling with each other. Her parents were super social, and this definitely wasn’t the first party of such size that they’d thrown, but the presence of having so many people around was going to make the rest of the day a lot more tense unless she wanted anyone finding out she’d be harboring a shrunken boy in her room. Feeling Joshua squirm beneath her foot zapped her out of her momentary freeze, and she side-stepped all her parents’ friends to make a quick beeline towards her bedroom, where at least she knew nobody else would be.

Madison breathed a sigh of relief as she closed the door to her room, hearing the hum of the party suddenly dull now that she’d shut it out. “Sorry about that,” she began to say, and lifted her leg, about to take her shoe off, when she noticed movement in the corner of her eye and she turned to see her brother suddenly crawl out from under her desk and stand up.

“Oh, hey,” he said, clearly surprised that she was home. “I thought you were babysitting someone today.” He noticed she wasn’t on her phone, and was confused who she’d apologized to. “Who are you talking to?”

Madison’s eyes widened, and she groaned in exasperation at how close she’d come to having her secret with Joshua discovered. “Casper, what are you doing in here!” she exclaimed, her toes unconsciously clenching in frustration. Joshua had been lucky enough not to be caught between them, but he still saw the end of her massive foot squeeze together above his head, causing him to shudder at the thought of being caught between.

“Jack has a bunch of his friends over in our room, so Mom and Dad said I could use yours to play my Switch.” Madison’s two younger siblings happened to be twins, and since the family lived in a 3 bedroom apartment, Casper and Jack shared a bedroom since they were boys, while Madison got her own since she was a girl (and the eldest child).

“Well, I’m not babysitting after all,” she responded, “and I’m home now, so I’d kinda like some alone time.”

“It’s not like I ever get alone time,” her brother grumbled. “I just wanna play Pokemon somewhere that it’s quiet; I promise I’ll be quiet!” he pleaded. An immediate tinge of guilt plagued Madison, since she knew Casper was pretty introverted. She’d let him hang out in her room in the past when Jack had had friends over, and normally she wouldn’t have had a problem this time. But even though she loved her brother, she wasn’t sure that she trusted him to not tell anyone about Joshua—and Casper would definitely find out about the boy she was supposed to be babysitting if she let him stay in her room.

She took a deep breath, feeling bad for kicking her brother out, but she told herself that it had to be done. “Any other day, I’d let you hang out in here for as long as you want, but I have a tournament in literally a few minutes. With actual money on the line. So I need my space to focus.” It was a lie, since she’d be wearing headphones anyways, but she still opened her door and ushered her brother to unplug his charger from under her desk and take his game out into the hall. “Why don’t you see if Mom or Dad will let you hang out in their room instead?” she offered.

“There’s people in there too,” he said quietly, and she shrugged, grimacing and feeling bad but slowly closing the door anyways.

“Well, I’ll get you when I’m done, or something
” she told him half-heartedly, and closed the door so she could finally be by herself.

Just don’t think about it, she internalized, figuring that that was what selfish people did who didn’t care about others. She collapsed backwards on her bed, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths to try and reassure herself that she wasn’t a bad person for kicking her little brother out, and was about to finally rescue Joshua when she heard a knock at the door. “Oh my God,” she muttered, and sat up to watch it swing open before she could even ask who it was.

“Did you kick your brother out of your room?” Madison’s mom was standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips as she glared at the teenage girl. Casper had tattletaled on Madison, and was standing behind their mom while she reprimanded his sister for him. “Dad and I said he could hang out in here so he could have some time by himself since Jack and his friends are in their room. Also, what happened to babysitting the Hendersons’ kid?”

“They had to cancel,” Madison told her mom, squeezing her eyes shut and hating everything about how this afternoon was going. “And I told Casper that I wouldn’t care normally, but I just, like, needed some alone time today.”

“To play your video game? Just put your headphones on. What you want isn’t any more important than what he wants.” Madison rarely ever won an argument with her parents, and she definitely wasn’t about to today since she barely had a good excuse. She watched as her mom stepped aside, nodding her head to direct Madison’s brother in. “You know, some families only have a single room that they all have to share together. You should be grateful that you get this one all to yourself most of the time.” After a beat of silence, their mom glanced down at Madison’s feet. “And take your shoes off, you’re gonna get the carpets dirty.” With that, she closed the door, leaving Casper standing awkwardly with his gaming device while his eyes averted from his older sister.

At this point, Madison wondered if she should just head back to Joshua’s house, since it seemed like there was no way she’d be able to retrieve his body and allow him to hang out in safety. But the gaming tournament was too important. There has to be a way, she thought, eyeing her brother as he meekly waddled to the corner of the room. His attention will be focused on his Switch, at least. That might make things a bit easier. “Sorry for being kinda rude earlier,” she told her brother. “Mom was right, I guess it won’t really make a difference once I put my headphones in.”

Casper perked up a bit at hearing Madison apologize, and was glad to not feel so guilty anymore. “That’s okay. I get it.”

“Um, I do kinda need to change though since I just got home, so can you give me a minute for that? I’ll knock when you can come back in.”

Having warmed up to Madison after her apology, Casper nodded and agreed to her request, setting his game down before heading back out into the hall to give Madison the room. As soon as the door had closed, she immediately slipped her shoes off, and lifted up the one with Joshua in it so she could tip the shoe over and let the tiny boy tumble into her palm. “I am so so so so sorry for how long that took,” she whispered down at him, feeling genuinely bad for how long he’d had to spend cozied up to her sock. Once again, he tried responding, but it would’ve been nearly impossible to hear him even if there wasn’t a faint murmur of voices and music outside. “In case you couldn’t hear what was going on, basically, I have to let my brother hang out in here since there’s a party going on and he’s kinda antisocial. So that means I can’t let you just hang out on my desk in the open like I was planning on.” She looked around her room, trying to quickly think of other hiding spots. “But I also don’t think it’d be a good idea to hide you somewhere else, since I’m gonna have my headphones in and won’t be able to leave the game. You have to be somewhere close-by.” God, I wish I could just leave him in my shoe. I’d always know where he was. But it’d probably smell pretty shitty to stay inside them.

Turning her attention to her desk and the options it presented, her eye was caught by her slippers sitting down by her computer. If Madison hadn’t been distracted by her one-track mind, she could’ve thought of putting on a hoodie and keeping Joshua in the pocket, or bunching up a blanket with the boy somewhere beneath the folds. But instead, her pair of fuzzy blue slippers caught her eye, and the first thing she thought was how they’d probably look like a cave from Joshua’s point of view, a cave that Madison could turn away from where her brother would be sitting. So instead of taking just a few more moments to think of something better, her stress and anxiety gave the poor girl tunnel vision, and she picked one of the slippers up to peer inside and give it a quick sniff. It didn’t smell great, cuz it was still a piece of footwear, but it could’ve been worse. At least it’s not as bad as my shoes
 I think.

Joshua had remembered that Madison couldn’t hear him at his size and had given up trying to talk to her about his predicament, but he was at least glad to be back in the open air. Although it was a short-lived relief when he saw her lifting up the slipper and setting it on her lap. “Here, this’ll be big enough for you to stand up in, give you a bit more room to move around. But I have to let my brother back in, so unless you wanna be discovered and get us both in trouble, you have to stay hidden inside. Alright?” She turned the slipper around so that its opening was facing away from the rest of her room, and carefully lowered it back to the floor. “Remember: I’m still gonna take you out for ice cream when this is all over, and I’ll let you watch Deadpool and whatever else you want for the rest of the weekend once we’re back at your house. But for now, you’re just gonna need to hang in there for, um
 a few more hours.”