Ahhhhhhh!” Sara yelled so loud I thought the neighbors down the block might
hear her.

I ran into the living room to see the cause of the screaming.

Sara, one of the kids my sister and I were babysitting, had disobeyed us.
And it had turned into a disaster!

Earlier that day my sister Kim and I had listened as the Latimers stood in
front of us and asked us to babysit their four children for the afternoon.

Kim looked at me and said, “Sounds easy enough. What do you think, Roxi?”

I hesitated and then replied, “Let’s do it. We could use the money to buy
those cute shoes at the store.”

“OK, great. We will be gone from around 1:00 to 4:00,” the parents said as
they smiled at each other.

That afternoon, Kim and I waved goodbye to the parents as they backed out
of the driveway. Then we turned to the kids.

“Hey, do you want to swim in your blowup pool?” I suggested. “It’s so hot
you could probably make scrambled eggs on the sidewalk.”

Sara gave us the most snotty look that a 9-year-old could make. “Look, you
guys think you’re in charge here, but really I am, and I say what happens
and what doesn’t. Got it?” she snapped.

I watched as Sara walked inside the house and slammed the door behind her.

“This is going to be the longest three hours ever,” I said as Kim looked at
me with terror in her eyes.

The other children–Steven, Stacy, and Macy–weren’t interested in swimming
either, so they each went to their rooms to play with their dolls and cars.
Kim and I went to sit on the couch in the living room to watch the clock
tick.

After a half hour, I decided I to check on the twins while Kim checked on
Steven. We knew that Sara was in her room on the phone talking to a friend
about boys, so we let her be.

I peeked in on the girls to see them having fun, playing with dolls.

The twins’ room had pink pastel walls with butterfly decorations. And they
had bunkbeds like what my sister and I had when we were growing up. Stacy
had brown eyes and brown, curly hair with pink rosy cheeks. Her sister Macy
looked nothing like her. She had blonde, straight hair with freckles on her
nose and cheeks.

As I started to walk back to the living room, I heard them arguing.

“Hey! That one’s mine! Your Barbie is the ugly one. Mine is the one with
the blue dress! Give it to me or I’ll scream!” Macy yelled.

I stepped in the room right in time to see Macy throw the Barbie at her.

“I didn’t want to play with it anyways!” Stacy said, sticking her tongue
out.

Then they grabbed each other and pinched any arm and leg they could get
ahold of. I rushed toward them and tried to pull them apart. “You two need
to get along! You’ll have more fun that way too.”

“We don’t care what you have to say. You’re not the boss of us!” they both
said with gritted teeth.

I didn’t know how to solve the problem of the twins, so I went to check on
Sara. She was in the living room tinkering with the piano. “How’s it going
in here?”

“Do you see any problems?” Sara asked with a smug look on her face. “No. So
you don’t need to check up on me. I’m not a baby.” As she played a few
notes on the piano, the top part of the white key came off, falling on the
ground.

Sara’s face went white as she looked at me. “I didn’t mean to do that!” she
said. “Honest!”

“Don’t worry, Sara. We will just put the white part that fell off on top of
the piano and have your mom fix it when your parents get home,” I assured
her, hoping to calm her down.

Sara didn’t like my answer. “I can fix it with Super Glue! That way, Mom
wouldn’t even have to find out. She loves this old piano and would kill me
if she knew I broke part of it!”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetie,” I countered. “You could get it
on your skin and stick your fingers together, and that wouldn’t be fun.”

“Fine. But you’re telling my mom that you did it!” Sara yelled in
my face and stomped back to her room.

I decided to let her calm down before talking to her again about telling
her mom what happened. So I wandered into the backyard, where Kim and
Steven were playing catch.

That’s when I heard another scream.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

I ran into the living room to see the cause of the screaming.

Sara was sitting on the piano bench crying and covering her right eye with
her hand.

“What happened?” I said, thinking, This can’t be good if she’s holding her eye!

Through sobs and whimpers, she said, “I was going to glue the key back on
the piano, so I went to get the Super Glue. When I squeezed the Super Glue,
it shot up and got me right in the eye!”

Panic struck me like a baseball bat as I thought about what to do. It was
3:45. Her parents would be home in fifteen minutes to see their daughter
with Super Glue in her eye.

“How bad does it hurt?” I frantically asked hoping she would say “Not that
bad.”

“It hurts really bad! Get it out!” Sara cried.

I quickly tried to think of something that would help. Then I remembered
the eye wash rinse we had in our science classroom in case of emergencies.

“You could try flushing it out with water!” I exclaimed.

Before I knew it, we were all outside watching Sara hold a giant blue bowl
of water, dunking her entire head in it. She did that over and over again,
trying to get the glue out.

“I think the glue might be coming out of my eye. It doesn’t hurt so bad
now,” Sara said.

“Aren’t you glad I was here to help you know what to do when you got glue
in your eye?” I smiled.

Sara pulled her head out of the bowl of water again so she could speak. “I
suppose so, but I still think it’s the glue’s fault,” she said grudgingly.

“Well if your eye is feeling better, we could all play a game in the pool.
How about Marco Polo?”

Sara rolled her eyes and said, “Might as well since I’m already halfway
underwater from dunking my head in this bowl.”

The twins looked at each other and starting giggling. Soon all of us, even
Sara, were laughing together about the whole event.

“I’m glad we learned together, Sara. I don’t always know what’s best, but
sometimes there is a better way to do something with a little help,” I said
as I put my hand on Sara’s shoulder.