An opportunity

Bree

The little girl across the kitchen table was crying because I had cut her sandwich into triangles instead of squares.

I stared at her, then at the sandwich, trying to figure out exactly where I had gone wrong because, as far as I was concerned, I had followed her mother's instructions to the letter. 

I had used the good bread, removed the crust because apparently children under six considered crust a personal attack, spread the peanut butter evenly, added precisely two spoonfuls of strawberry jam, and even remembered not to let the two touch the edge of the bread.

And since I was feeling extra creative, I had made the terrible mistake of cutting the sandwich diagonally.

“You've ruined it,” Emily sobbed.

I looked at the sandwich again.

“It is still a sandwich, Emily.”

“It doesn't look like Mommy makes it.”

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “Your mother has ruined you.”

Her crying stopped for a moment as she stared at me in confusion.

I smiled.

“I'm joking. Your mother is lovely. Slightly terrifying, but lovely.”

Emily sniffed, and I pushed the plate a little closer to her.

“Look at it this way. You get to eat it from corner to corner. That's basically a sandwich adventure.”

She considered my argument with the seriousness of someone making an important life decision before picking up one of the triangles and biting into it.

“It's good.”

“I know.”

She took another bite, and just like that, the crisis was over.

I leaned back with a quiet sense of accomplishment. Another child successfully prevented from starving to death. Some people went to college for years to build careers, while I had somehow made mine out of cutting sandwiches correctly and preventing toddlers from sticking crayons into electrical sockets.

It wasn't exactly what I had imagined for myself, but I was good at it.

My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter, pulling my attention away from Emily. I reached for it and saw a notification from my social media account.

That immediately made me smile.

My page wasn't exactly famous. With a little over four thousand followers, I was nowhere near the level where people stopped me on the street, or brands sent me free products. Still, it was enough people to make me occasionally forget that most of the world had absolutely no idea I existed.

I had named the page Bree Being Bree, mostly because I couldn't think of anything better when I created it.

I talked about my weight journey there, although I refused to pretend it was some perfectly inspiring transformation story where I woke up one morning, drank green juice and suddenly fell in love with squats.

Some days I was motivated. Other days I ate an entire box of doughnuts and considered the experience a perfectly reasonable emotional investment.

I talked about clothes, food, body confidence, bad dates, expensive groceries and the general struggle of trying to become a functioning adult without knowing what I was doing. I had also learned that people loved giving unsolicited advice, especially when they were safely hidden behind a screen.

I opened the latest notification and immediately found an example.

You're pretty for a big girl, but you'd be prettier if you lost weight.

I stared at the comment for a few seconds while Emily happily licked strawberry jam from her fingers.

Then I typed my response.

Thank you. You're pretty for someone who spends her free time discussing another woman's body. Imagine what you'd look like with a hobby.

I posted it before I could change my mind, locked my phone, and returned my attention to the child in front of me.

“Bree?”

“Yes?”

“Can I have another sandwich?”

I smiled.

“Of course.”

She grinned, and I reached for the bread.

This was how most of my days went. I looked after other people's children, they tested the limits of my patience, I made them laugh, and their parents paid me at the end of the day. Then I went home and did it all over again whenever another family needed a babysitter.

It wasn't the career I had dreamed about when I was younger, but there was something about children that made me feel comfortable in a way adults rarely did. 

They didn't give a fuck that I was plus-size or that I didn't have a university degree.

They didn't care that my favorite shoes had seen better days or that most of my clothes came from clearance racks.

If I listened to them, played with them, and treated them like actual human beings instead of inconveniences their parents had accidentally created, they were happy.

Adults, on the other hand, came with expectations.

My phone rang before I could finish making Emily's second sandwich. I picked it up without checking the screen because there was only one person who would call me in the middle of a babysitting job just to ask where I was.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?”

I smiled. “Working.”

“Are you done?”

“Almost. Why?”

“I need you to come home.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“Because I have something to tell you.”

“That sounds threatening.”

“It isn't.”

“Are you pregnant?”

There was a stunned silence on the other end.

“What?”

“Are you dying?”

“Bree!”

“Then what?”

“I found us a job opportunity.”

I straightened in my chair. “What kind of job?”

“A very good one.”

“How good?”

“Twenty thousand dollars a month.”

The second the words left her mouth, I nearly dropped my phone.

I looked at Emily, who was busy trying to lick the jam off her fingers again.

“Leslie.”

“Yes?”

“Is the child sick?”

“No.”

“Does he bite?”

“No.”

“Does he have behavioral problems?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Is he secretly an adult man pretending to be a child?”

There was a long silence.

“Bree.”

“I'm asking reasonable questions.”

“No, you're not.”

“Twenty thousand dollars is not a reasonable amount of money to watch one child.”

“It's a nanny position for the nephew of a billionaire.”

I sat there for a moment, trying to process that information.

“A billionaire?”

“Yes.”

“Like billionaire-billionaire?”

“How many types of billionaire are there?”

“I don't know. Maybe fake billionaire.”

Leslie sighed. “I heard the interview is tomorrow morning.”

“You have the interview?”

“We have the interview.”

I laughed. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Leslie, I don't think billionaires want people like us looking after their children.”

“Why not?”

I glanced down at my faded jeans and the old sneakers I had been wearing all afternoon.

“Because I own exactly one pair of shoes that doesn't make a suspicious squeaking sound when I walk.”

“That has nothing to do with whether you're good with children.”

“It has everything to do with whether a billionaire wants me near his nephew.”

“You're good with kids.”

“So are you.”

“I know.”

“Then why me?”

There was a small pause before she answered.

“Because I know you can do it. Give you ten minutes alone with that child, and you'll have him eating out of your hand.”

I sighed, knowing how right she was. 

Leslie had always been better at seeing the things in me that I struggled to see in myself.

“Fine. We'll go,” I said.

“That's my girl. Be ready when I get home in the morning, and don't stay up all night reading those stupid online stories.”

“They aren't stupid,” I protested. “They're emotionally necessary.”

“Whatever. Goodnight, Bree.”

The call ended.

I stared at my phone for a moment, letting the reality of what I'd just agreed to sink in.

A five-figure nanny job.

For a billionaire.

The thought was both exciting and terrifying, mostly because I couldn't imagine someone like that looking at me and thinking, Yes, that's exactly the woman I want taking care of my nephew.

But Leslie believed I could do it.

And maybe, just this once, I could borrow a little of her confidence.