So Random

It starts with a 2-pack of shirts.

You see a random shirt sale and you think: Hmm… but I like to know what I’m getting. And yet, the allure of it overrides your usual desire for order, and you hit buy.

The shirts come shortly thereafter, and, lo and behold, they’re great. You love them. In fact, you love them so much, you start to look for more ways to surprise yourself.

On the way home, you see a road, one you’ve never driven down. So you turn onto it, and you follow its winding route through mansions with lush gardens and manicured grounds. Only, it’s a dead-end street, and so you try to turn around in the driveway of the final house, which stands taller and looks even more stately than the others.

Before you can get your car out, a stern woman appears at the door.

“You must be the new nanny,” she calls.

And now you truly surprise yourself. “Yes,” you call back through the rolled-down window, though you are no such thing.

And, as it turns out, you might not be the only one telling lies. For, when your new employer introduces you to the child in your care, it turns out to be not a child at all but a nutcracker painted to look like a boy.

“This is James?” you say.

“Yes,” says the stern woman, “and he likes you. I can tell. Far more than all the others.”

You think: your new risk-taking personality has paid off again! You’ve been meaning to quit your job, and you have so much reading you’d like to do. Yes, the family is obviously batty, but that’s nothing you can’t put up if it means collecting a paycheck and getting free room and board to do nothing.

You take the role and feel relieved when no other nanny shows up. You sit in the room with “James” reading your books, paying little attention to your charge.

But a week in, you wake up with a start. You’ve rolled over in your bed onto something sharp. Pulling it out from under the sheets, you find a piece of a shattered walnut shell. There, upon your bedside table, James looms.

You raise this with Greta, the stern woman, the following morning, asking who came into your room at night.

“James, obviously,” she says, sipping her tea.

And when you push her, she replies only, “It sounds as though perhaps James hasn’t had enough activity during the day. And with all that pent-up energy, well, he can become quite mischievous when the sun goes down…”

A chill runs through you. You avert your eyes from Greta, looking at your lap. Which is when you see the shirt you’re wearing, one of the random ones you received from an online sale. If only you’d never bought that shirt. If only you’d stuck to your risk-averse ways.

But it’s too late now. James relies on you, and trust me: you don’t want to let James down.