The babysitter had one long black eyebrow like Bert on "Sesame Street" with yellow hairs on her chin and orange hair on her head and a brown mustache. She was Elliot's mom. She was a werewolf. The werewolf in the Backstreet Boys video looked like her, but that werewolf had different colored hair.
   She and Elliot came over because my stepmom, Lucy, had to do stuff. Lucy had big nails, and she put glitter on them, and she smelled like baby powder. One time she dropped me off at school and I called her Lucy and a teacher heard and she yelled at me. So I called her Miss Lucy, and the teacher still yelled at me. Lucy said I should just call her "Mom" when that happens.
   Elliot picks his nose a lot, and he has a BB gun. He didn't bring his BB gun over today. One time he showed me a pile of roaches in his basement and he said he shot them, but I knew he was lying because there was no blood. When he came over this time he said, "I shot a squirrel."
   "You can't. The gun's too big," I said.
   "I did it with my Dad, ask him."
   "Where is he?"
   "He's home. You eat crap."
   "What?"
   "You eat crap."
   "I do not."
   "Denial."
   "Elliot's mom! Elliot said I...."
   She grabbed my arm hard and got close to my face. "What did you say?"
   I told her, "He said I ate crap."
   "What did you say before that?" she said. "You said Elliot's mom. My name is Mrs. Stone."
   "Okay." She was still holding my arm.
   "Anne, say 'Yes, Mrs. Stone.' "
   "Yes, Mrs. Stone."
   "Lucy, I don't know how you can stand her. The devil is in her."
   "Honey try to behave for Mrs. Stone, okay?" Lucy said. "There's some spaghetti in the fridge. I'll be home around four."
   Elliot leaned in close. "Don't mess with her, she's scary." The Werewolf got mad at Elliot all the time. He got held back in kindergarten because he got caught cheating on a spelling test.
   "Yeah she is," I said. Then Mrs. Werewolf went in the living room to watch soaps.
   "I have a squirrel too," I said. "It's buried."
   "Where?"
   "In the yard, want to see it?"
   He picked a giant gray booger and flicked it on the carpet. It had black spots inside. "She'll yell," he said. We colored for a while through Judge Judy, but that was boring. He colored Pikachu puke green and then he colored Squirtle brown.
   "Why's it brown?"
   "I saw a Squirtle on the road, it was brown."
   "Elliot, that was a dead possum, not Squirtle," Mrs. Werewolf Stone said. "Squirtle isn't real and Jesus-Mary-And-Joseph could you two block my view a little more." We moved to the bathroom because we could see the yard from the window.
   "The dead squirrel's out there," I said. Elliot looked outside a long time. His hair was red at the tips because Mrs. Werewolf dyed it for him while she was dyeing her hair.
   "It's under a rock, we buried it."
   "I don't see it."
   "It's the rock in the cemetery. We buried it with a gravestone. It's by the rock the cat is under." He was standing on the toilet to look out at it, but he jumped down fast.
   He said, "You can't bury animals that aren't pets. You'll go to hell." We went outside and looked at the gravestone. I had written "Squirrel 1998" on it.
   "If you go to hell my mom will yell at you," he said. So we dug up the squirrel. We were going to hide it by the creek where there are dead pines and bushes. In the grave the ground was wet and all the nightcrawlers were out. It smelled like mold and rain and new tires.
   Lucy had said she and Dad put the squirrel in a box, but it wasn't in a box. Elliot and I uncovered the leg and then the tail. It was dried up, flat and stiff like raisins that get smashed between couch cushions. He picked it up by the leg. It had no left eye. It was greased out. The right eye was closed.
   Mrs. Werewolf came outside. "You two just attract shit like magnets don't you?" She dragged us back inside, locked the door and went back out. She picked up the squirrel and threw it in the road. A blue car ran over it. Then she spanked us and told us we were going to hell. Elliot didn't come over after that, but I saw him in school. He said he was glad we dug it up because he liked looking at it. He said it was good that the squirrel was on the road because now birds could eat it. I asked him if we were going to hell, and he said probably.

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