I couldn’t quite bring myself to explain to my little cousin that her weak will was bringing shame on the family, and that Ellen would never want her at this rate. Instead, I grabbed the neck alongside her. “Here. Put one finger here on the fifth string. Remember which one that is? Perfect. And then this one”—I grabbed her middle finger and raised it—“up here on the sixth string. I’ll hold this one down here. Remember which string this is?”
“First.”
“Great job, right. Now, do you think you can give it a strum as well?”
“That’s too far, Ollie. You do it.”
“I do it,” Dylan interrupted. Up until now he’d been playing some pig-based game on his iPad near his bed like a good twenty-first-century toddler. I should’ve known he was following along with what Crista and I were doing on the guitar. If Crista was doing it, Dylan wanted to do it, too. Luckily for the sanity of everyone in the family, Crista didn’t mind indulging him. Once or twice, I’d actually caught her staring at him while he slept with a slightly deranged expression, while whispering, “Sleep well, Anna,” to him. I assumed Crista was probably Frozen role-playing, so I didn’t ask. Well, that and because I was secretly terrified she’d come out with something horrifying, like, “Anna was the girl who lived here a hundred years ago, and is currently sleeping next to Dylan right now.”
All I’m saying is, I’ve seen enough horror movies to have a healthy mistrust of kids.
“Pinch your hand like this and play it, Dyl,” Crista instructed. Dylan did as he was told, and honestly it wasn’t half bad. Maybe I was putting my Ellen hopes on the wrong cousin, here.
“Awesome, guys. That’s what a G-seven sounds like.”
Crista’s grin was so big you’d think she’d wrapped up a performance in a sold-out amphitheater. “Can you play the song again, please?”
“Which one?”
“The one that goes daa-da-daa-da-da-da.”
Unfortunately, Crista’s singing abilities were questionable, so I remained lost. I shrugged, while Dylan absent-mindedly strummed the guitar. “I’ve, uh … forgotten that one.”
Crista sighed, like I was the biggest idiot she’d ever met. Oh no, not her, too. “The one with all the chords.”
Right, that one. That really narrowed it down.
“Because you showed me the C, and the A minor, and then I couldn’t do the G one, and you said you’d show me that tonight.”
Suddenly it clicked. She wasn’t talking about an actual song I knew, just a progression I’d made up on the fly the other night while I was keeping an eye on the kids in the tub. I grabbed the guitar and played what I could remember, narrating as I went. “So it’s C … A minor … F … and G-seven, like you guys just played.”
Crista jumped up and started spinning in circles, her tight curls splaying out behind her. “It sounds like ‘Let It Go’!”
I mean, not really. No. “Oh yeah, I can see that.”
Why do we lie to children?
I kept playing the progression, and Crista pretended to fling off an imaginary glove, with Dylan twirling around behind her now. Before Crista could burst into song, like I was 90 percent sure she wanted to, Aunt Linda pushed open the door. I hadn’t even heard everyone come home. It was impossible to predict how long I’d be babysitting when Aunt Linda had appointments in oncology. Sometimes she and Uncle Roy would be home in half an hour, sometimes I’d get a text with her credit card details asking me to order Chinese for delivery. Hence, why I’d started leaving a guitar here. Figured I might as well give myself something productive to do if my shift got extended.
“Hey, munchkins,” she said as she scooped Dylan into a hug. “What are you still doing up?”
“Well, funny story,” I said, letting Crista take over the guitar. “I went to the bathroom for one second, I swear, ten seconds at most. Then when I came out, a quarter of the Nutella jar was magically gone.”
“Magically gone?” Aunt Linda repeated, raising her eyebrows. Neither Dylan nor Crista met her eye.
“Magically,” I confirmed. “I know it had nothing to do with these two, because they told me it didn’t, and I know they’d never lie. Then, Aunt Linda, the funniest thing, after I’d cleaned all the Nutella off their faces and hands, they had all this energy. Almost like they’d had a whole heap of sugar.”
“How mysterious,” Aunt Linda said, putting Dylan back down. She seemed out of breath, just from holding him for that long. “And I’m sure the Nutella on their faces was a coincidence, too?”
“Total coincidence.”
Aunt Linda shared a conspiratorial glance with me. I could tell she wasn’t pissed, but looking at her, I felt guilty for not trying harder to get the kids to sleep on time. Her eyes were all puffy and red, and the wrinkles on her face seemed more obvious than usual.
“Okay, guys, time for bed,” I said, getting up. “For real.”
“It’s okay, Ollie, I’ll take it from here,” Aunt Linda said. “Roy’s ready to drive you home. You’ve been here for too long already.”
“I don’t mind, really,” I said. “It’ll take me five minutes. You haven’t even taken your jacket off yet.”
That was another thing. It was eighty degrees today. No one in their right minds needed to wear a jacket in this kind of weather, but Aunt Linda always seemed to need a jacket or coat these days. The sundresses she used to live in when I was little were banished to the back of the closet.
Aunt Linda hesitated. She totally wanted to take me up on the offer. So I launched into the bedtime routine, which was pretty familiar to me these days. “Hey, Crista, finish getting into your jammies. You’re not sleeping in that shirt. Dyl, go grab your chi chi.” His chi chi was some raggedy, woolly, bacteria-filled thing he carried around for comfort. I think it was supposed to resemble an animal, but mostly, it resembled my nightmares. To each his own.
The kids did what they were told. Like I said, they were pretty much saints. Aunt Linda told me once they weren’t always so well behaved. They seemed to sense that she needed a break.
Aunt Linda hovered, then cracked. “All right, well, I might go put on some tea, then. Thank you, Ollie. You’ve been such a help.”
“It’s cool, really.”
She smiled and rested her head against the door frame. “I heard you playing. I’m so glad you kept it up. You’ve always been so talented.”
“Not really. I just like it. But thanks.” Even as I said it, I knew I sounded like Juliette.
“Mama, Ollie taught me how to play ‘Let It Go’ on guitar,” Crista piped up in a muffled voice as she pulled her pajama shirt over her head.
Aunt Linda shot me a look that was half sheer terror, half witch hunt. The face of someone at peak Frozen saturation.
I didn’t, I swear, I mouthed, making chopping motions by my neck.
I was saved by Dylan returning with his chi chi, which he’d apparently found in the pantry, next to the Nutella jar. Aunt Linda retreated to the kitchen, and I worked through the bedtime routine of checking under the bed for monsters (while making zero jokes about the chi chi being the real threat) and reading the same fifty-word picture book approximately fifty times.