#totally not listening to Kid Cudi's Day 'n' Nite rn

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Agnieszka is available, actually, likely because our family pays her more than most people pay babysitters. I don’t think they’re being deliberately generous to her or anything, it’s more likely that they don’t really have a concept of how little babysitting teenagers earn. Recently Ivy asked my father what minimum wage was after hearing it discussed on the morning radio and he suggested that it was very little money. Something like thirty euros an hour, probably. 

She arrives in her usual furry coat and uncomfortable looking high heeled boots with the chill from outside clinging to her, and I invite her. I give her the awkward spiel about being allowed to watch any of the channels on TV and take what she likes from the fridge as though I am a fully grown adult, not a school boy two whole years younger than she is and then finally, forty five minutes later than I had planned, I leave the house. 

It’s Jen who answers the door when I knock, and she has an amused look on her face, “I thought you’d chickened out.”

“No,” I shiver as I step into the warmth of the hallway, kicking off my shoes and shrugging out of my coat and bag “It was my mom. She decided she had plans and left it to me to sort out a babysitter at the last minute.”

“Colette had plans?” 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, she doesn’t have any friends, I don’t know what the hell she was doing.”

Jen leads me into the kitchen where she fills a glass of water for me, “Is it a work thing?”

“On Saturday?”

She shrugs, “Maybe she’s having an affair.”

I take the water and chug it, parched after my sprint down the seafront, “Yeah. maybe.”

“Good for her.”

I snort.

“There’s potential in this, I think we could run with this theory.”

“I love how much you love theorising about my parents. But they’re just not interesting enough to do any of the crazy things you like to think they do.”

“So you don’t think your dad is fucking the babysitter?”

I pull a face, “No. Why would she fuck him?”

“Uh! Because he’s a stone cold fox.”

“Ugh.”

“When you remove his odd personality from the equation, like, yeah, he’s objectively hot. Michelle and I had a conversation about this a while ago, and of all the parents we know, your dad is the most physically attractive.”

“God!” I let a full bodied shudder rip through me at the thought of anyone having ogled my father when he ventured downstairs to frown at us when we made too much noise at home.

“Oh don’t be so disgusted, take it as a compliment. You’re all him. You’re just like a mini Christopher.”

I’m aware of this, of course I am, but still, hearing this fact aloud makes me queasy. All I’ve ever wanted for myself was to be so supremely unlike Christopher that similarities were nowhere to be found, for people to say ‘No way. You’re related to that guy?’ But looks, my colouring, my height, my bone structure and that slight romanesque curve of my nose give it all away, these things I cannot easily change. I’ll always be recognisably Dr. Christopher Turner’s son, and every teenager in Clontarf is going to think so when they're lying in his chair watching him tighten their braces.

I shake the thoughts away, “Have you started the movie yet?”

“Started it? We’re like halfway through now.”

“I didn’t expect you to be so punctual.” 

“Half seven means half seven.” She points out, “You snooze, you lose. But still, come into the living room and watch the end of it. You might be lost but that’s not my fault.”

We creep into the darkened room together, where the only light is from the glow of the TV. It’s a particularly quiet scene in the film, and all of the emos snap their necks around to glare at me as I create noises of disturbance with my entrance. 

I whisper that I am sorry and find a place to sit on the floor near that girl with the pink hair. I touch her accidentally with my elbow and she flinches away like I am an escapee of Leper Island so I shift a good metre to the left in case I inflict myself upon her again. 

Wow. I think to myself after five minutes of concentrated silence. They’re really, actually watching the movie. Whenever I hang out with my other friends we just blab our way through it, making stupid jokes and saying ‘that’s you’ whenever someone ugly comes on screen. I don’t know what this movie is but at some point a zombie with bits of rotten flesh hanging off his face claws his way through the earth to stagger toward an oblivious canoodling couple, and I bite my lip to try and stop myself from saying it to Jen. I know it would be so funny but she would be the only one to think so. 

It’s a long film and I never fully understand what is happening, so I’m glad when the credits roll and I can get up to stretch my legs. The lights come on then and I get to see them all in their outfits, and me in the middle of them all in mine: tracksuit bottoms and a football t-shirt. The fact is that when we’re in our uniforms it’s way easier to ignore the contrasting details about us, but now as I look at them and they all stare back at me I wonder if there is true merit to this deep seated feeling I keep getting that I naturally belong in that reeking changing room, discussing the Premier League and the merits of Kid Cudi's Day 'n' Nite music video with the rugby boys instead. 

“Are we out of snacks?” Jen says as she peers into empty bowls dotted around the floor, “Damn, okay, I’ll run down to the shop for more before we start the next film, I suppose.”

“I’ll come too,” Michelle raises herself up from the couch, all legs in her fishnet tights, and then Evan does too, and I know I’ll have to go with them in case the rest of the room starts feasting on my innocent flesh while I’m left alone and vulnerable with them. It works out well this way, because there was something I was planning to talk to Evan about. 

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