Chapter Text
Misty Quigley was ten years old the first time it happened. It didn’t occur to her that anything could be wrong with it. Not at first. She was playing in the woods behind her aunt’s house with her cousin, Dee. They’ve been climbing trees for most of the summer. Her mother had dropped her off, stayed for a cup of coffee and whispered “I’m so glad you’re taking her. I can’t take it anymore.”. When she said goodbye, her hug was short, light, impersonal and one-armed. Now, Misty recognizes this kind of hug when girls hug boys they find creepy. It hurts every time she sees it.
Dee was climbing up a very gnarly, old tree. She picked it because it was the only one without leaves. She claimed it suited her best because there were no leaves in the way as she searched her way up. Misty intervened, said: “that means it’s dead”, but Dee just hit her on the arm and said “you’re stupid. Trees can’t really die. They are not animals.”, and Misty didn’t dare correct her. Dee had been nice all day. Misty had managed to avoid mistakes, avoid being weird, or too smart. She wasn’t going to risk another wave of punishment from Dee.
As Dee climbed, Misty watched. Unblinking eyes fixed on muscles and feet and twigs and branches. Waiting, tense. She wasn’t afraid, not really. A strange excitement went through her like an electric current, entering at her fingertips. It was strong. It wandered through her, thin like a needle. Through her arms, shoulders, broadening as it went through her chest, into her stomach where it settled. It left goosebumps in its wake, her hair stood up, her mouth left slightly open. She was attentive, felt every bone and fiber in her body, felt alive.
Twigs started to break off under Dees feet as she got higher. The branches became more dead and dry, and Misty’s mouth dried out along with them.
A belief settled inside her: she was going to witness an accident. Her child’s brain was aware that every adult has witnessed an accident in their lives, perhaps several. It’s part of the growing up process, she was convinced. This realisation made her feel calm. It was time for her to pass over into a new chapter, one closer to adulthood. As she mused on this, a branch cracked loudly. Dee had dared to step on it fairly far away from the trunk. A bad mistake. She was holding on to a branch above herself, but it was thin.
As Misty swallowed, knowing it was her last time swallowing as a child, Dee’s branch broke off, causing her to sink lower. The thinner branch in her hands didn’t even seem to try to carry her entire bodyweight. It broke off, too.
It was not a deep fall. The gnarly branches, the rough bark and the broken off twigs seemed to try to catch her, lower her momentum, but they were as successful as a coarse child trying to relocate a bug and squashing it in the process. Misty watched Dee’s hand catch in a fork, saw her arm scrape past the sharp stump of a twig. It felt like it happened in slow motion, taking ages. As if gravity took its time with Dee.
Misty recognized a gift when she saw one, so she drank it in. No branch, no twig, no leaf managed to prevent the ugly cracking of Dee’s impact on the forest floor. It was her ankle that caught most of it, breaking in the process. For a moment, Dee was very quiet. Misty took that chance to wonder: Should the first accident be fatal, or would a progression be preferable? She predicted that car accidents would be the pinnacle, seeing as driving cars was the most adult thing to do. It felt premature to witness death first hand so early on, so she accepted it gracefully and seriously: If the powers that be saw her as mature enough, she would prove them right.
Just as she was about to try on her adult face, meant to close her mouth and un-widen her eyes, Dee began to scream. Loudly. Her voice broke. The multitude of big and small injuries all demanded their own scream of terror, fear, pain, shock and confusion, causing them to unite in one broken, jumbled mess of an outcry.
And then the blood came. There was a white streak leading from Dee’s wrist up to her elbow. Misty saw the red pearls forming, growing out of Dee’s arm. Like rain on a car window, they needed a certain size to move. To drop. But they reached it quickly, united and became streams. Dee was covered in scratches and her foot was the wrong way: The toes were where the heel should be and the heel was where the toes should be. Time was so, so slow. She looked at the skin above Dee’s foot, looked at the bones that didn’t break through, but dented it in odd shapes. She looked at her socks, thick, white ones, that were now stained red from a cut in Dee’s leg. Looked up, up, pas the scratches and blood, up to Dee’s face.
Her mouth was open wide, her teeth shaking from a scream Misty didn’t hear. The skin of her cheeks was covered in red and white and pink patches, tears and dirt. Her eyes weren’t closed, they were open and looking at Misty, screaming for help.
But Misty didn’t move. She stood, she stared, she felt that rush, that needle-thin current of electric excitement circle from her fingers to her arms, through her chest, into her stomach and back again.
She didn’t look away, didn’t run for help, didn’t scream and didn’t cry. She just stared, her face a mask, stuck somewhere between excitement, surprise and the serious face she had meant to put on. That’s how the adults found them: Dee screaming herself hoarse and Misty unmoving.
She didn’t talk for a few days. The memory circled through her mind, sat in front of her eyes, blinded her to the world. Every time she remembered the impact, she heard the crack and felt the vibration in her feet. Smelled moss, leaves, blood and fear. And every time the excitement returned.
And that was it: She found the feeling she'd chase from now on. She just didn't know it yet.
She went to the library and got a book: First Aid for Kids: A Guide for the Prepared and Curious.
Misty Quigley was thirteen years old when she participated in the Red Cross Baby Sitter Course. Participants would receive enough knowledge and training to put a band-aid on a schoolyard scratch, keep bystanders from moving badly injured children until an ambulance arrives and to know better than to remove an object from a stab wound. Misty inhaled every piece of information. She asked about bandaging techniques, rescuing missions, what to do in case of mutilation, how to recognize and prevent blood poisoning, the relevancy of tracheotomy in everyday first aid situations and anything else she could come up with.
At first, the instructor felt good about this curious student. He didn’t believe in talent, but he believed in curiosity. A good baby sitter keeps their eyes and ears open for any potential injury and danger, any trick that might save a life. Thus, he responded to the questions, told tales and showed advanced techniques. However, he quickly found that the depth of Misty’s curiosity knew no bounds, grew with every answer and moved into a direction he didn’t like. Soon her wondering moved on from bandages and on to detailed questions about wounds, broken bones and shattered bodies- far, far away from children pushing a pea up their nose. She asked about accidents, whether a broken wind shield’s cuts caused more harm than a badly dented door. She couldn’t hear enough of it. She started to creep him out. He avoided her questions, explained that they had a curriculum to catch up to, or that they had to focus on domestic accidents. He started to look for excuses: After class, there was a call from his wife, or a sports class he had to attend to. One time he even asked his friend to call him five minutes before the course ends so he could end it early for a pretence emergency.
And still, Misty raised her hand, answered his questions, followed by yet another question from her. She meant business. If asked, she would be concerned for the lives on the line, the children lost to lack of knowledge, to thoughtlessness. But nobody asked, so her explanation remained unspoken, and her reputation remained questionable.
The Red Cross Babysitter Course is not simply a well of knowledge, but an opportunity: the best graduates will move on into the Wiskayok High Babysitting Service. The instructor advised against it, so Misty didn’t move on to the school’s pool of well-trained babysitters.
Bitter but unshaken, she enrolled into the course a second time. The instructor felt a small surge of terror when he met her eyes on the first day. She didn’t ask a single question, but her eyes remained attentive, unmoving. After the course, she went up to his desk, put her hands flat on its surface. Looked at him and said: “I’m so glad that you’re giving me another chance to learn. I really would love to become the best babysitter there is. I even started to go to the park and just watch the children play, always ready to help those in need. And I was surprised to see you there with the music teacher, Mrs Lynch last week! I’d hate to tell your wife and kids about that, but I am so bored without any babysitting gigs”
Her words seeped into his ears, then his mind, and then down his spine. Cold, sticky and dangerous. The cold glint in her blue eyes drove her point home: She was serious, and he was afraid.
The conversation with Mrs Reynolds, the teacher overseeing the Babysitting Service was dreaded, but much shorter than he thought.
“I think you should add Misty Quigley to the pool”, he said over the coffee machine.
“Are you sure? I thought she was ‘terrifying, annoying and a pain in the ass’?”, she asked with a smirk.
“I was wrong. Misty Quigley is perfectly suited to sit any babies in need of sitting.”
“If you say so.”
And with that, Misty was in.
Seeing as the Babysitter Service was something her school took great pride in, they even had a little room that served as their “headquarters”. It contained an old sofa, a desk, a filing cabinet and some first aid supplies. It was next to the nurse’s room and had a window that overlooked the courtyard. Misty spent most of her lunch breaks in the WHSBSHQ (she was the only one calling it that, shortening Wiskayok High School Babysitting Service Headquarter like that would be considered “cringe” now, but was considered “weird” and “over the top” back then. The others just called it “The babysitter’s room”.
Over time, she became friendly enough with the nurse to assist on increasingly frequent occasions. The nurse was a grumpy alcoholic that preferred “watching over” children with stomach aches and swindle.
Misty, however, enjoyed the rush of a well-placed band-aid. A bandage bound just so. A child whose tears have dried. And so, she would quickly eat her lunch and then wait around until something happened.
It was rewarding:
A school is a place where ailments are common and tears are big. A child falling off the slide is surprised, terrified and crying loudly. A soothing word and a band-aid sometimes are the only thing that helps. Children fighting, breaking noses, scratching knees. She’d be there, maybe too quickly, ready to put her skills to use.
And yet.
There wasn’t much thanking involved. She’d tend to their wounds, say the right words, give them the best care she could. But the children looked afraid. They ran, or they were left behind by their friends. Misty watched, observed. Whenever one of the babysitters helped another child, they received something in return. It might be chocolate bars, molten from being held all day by a child that’s nervous about the upcoming exchange. Little kids with kitty band-aids mumbling thanks. Shy smiles that would be exchanged for years to come whenever their eyes met in the hallway. Friendships growing out of it.
That didn’t happen for her. They avoided her. Didn’t really reply when she asked about the healing process. Declined any offer to check their wounds. She never received a chocolate bar.
“I don’t like it. The way she smiles. As if she just received a lifetime supply of candy. Staring at the wounds. Touching them.”
“I saw her lick blood off of her own knee once, in third grade.”
“See? I bet she’s a vampire.”
“Those don’t exist. But she sure thinks she is one”
Misty turned and ran away from the conversation she’s eavesdropped on. She ran and hid in a bathroom stall and cried. Another mistake. Wrong smile. Too much interest.
She got so excited. The blood, the smell, the electricity. She loved the shapes and colours of wounds. The way they bleed, scab over and bruise. She loved every colour of the bruise rainbow.
Once, she helped an older girl that tried to walk on top of the monkey bars for a dare. She fell and hit her arm on the way. It was nothing. It’d bruise and sting and that would be it. Misty gave her an ice pack and they bonded over a crime novel series as the girls’ tears dried. Three days later, they happened to end up in front of each other in the cafeteria queue. They chatted and Misty couldn’t help herself, looking at the girl’s arm. “That’s a very pretty bruise, Shauna.”, she said. Shauna smiled, “Thanks, I get a lot of them at soccer practise”. Misty felt a connection to this girl, someone who understood her fascination. She was about to ask for Shauna’s opinion on a murder in the crime novel series, but someone else joined their conversation before she could speak: “What the fuck are you talking about? You look so stupid. Everyone can see that you lost truth or dare”, said the intruder, “Boys hate girls with bruises”.
Shauna frowned, “Maybe I don’t care about that”.
“Not yet anyway, you’re just not ready for boys yet.”, said Jackie, the intruder and squeezed herself between Shauna and Misty, effectively ending their conversation so she could continue talking about boys and bras and soccer. Misty tried to remain a part of the conversation, but every time she even tried to speak or react, this girl shot her a glance. Deadly, cool, repellent. She didn’t dare, and so she just listened as the queue moved forward.
At some point, their conversation moved on to past soccer games. From epic goals to horrendous haircuts, all the way to injuries. Jackie mentioned a particularly nasty sliding tackle that scraped the skin off of a girl’s leg from her ankle to her knee.
The electricity that shot from her toes through her legs into her stomach, branching out into her arms and fingers made her knees weak. She inhaled sharply, earning her another glance. She didn’t care. This was the strongest current so far.
So she went to the library and got a book: Blutgraetschen: A History of Soccer told by Fouls.