Anchor (Book 1)

Chapter Nine

I pulled the doors of the daycare open on my first day on the job. I was told to arrive thirty minutes early, so no kids had shown up yet.  I looked around the place. Boy, did it look old. The walls were covered in faded flower wallpaper and the gray carpet was in desperate need of a repair. I turned the corner into the play area, which unfortunately didn't look any better. I think I even spotted a spider web in one of the corners, maybe even more than one, but I held no desire to look any closer. I really couldn't envision parents being okay with dropping their kids off here, but it wasn't my place to wonder such things. I was just to work this job in hopes that it'll finally make Kane leave me alone.

I heard voices coming from the back room and followed them. There was a sign on the door labeled "employees only" and since I assumed I was considered an employee, I walked through it. Inside, two ladies were huddled around the stove probably preparing the day's lunch.

"Hi I'm Natalie. It's my first day working here." I introduced myself kindly.

The two ladies turned around. The older one extended her hand, "Hello, I'm Kathy and this is my daughter Julia." She said motioning her hand towards the young woman.

"It's nice to meet you both. I'm looking for Kane. Is he here?" I asked, partly praying they'd say no.

I'd rather work double shifts than work  the same shift with him. To my dismay, Julia pointed further down the room.

"Go out this door and to the left. The door you find there should lead to the playground. He's setting up out there for the day."

I followed her instructions and when the door opened to the playground, I saw him right away, fiddling with a swing that looked to be broken. He turned around as though he sensed my presence.

"I'm so glad you decided to show up." He remarked, in a sort of mocking tone.

"Cut the facade Kane. Really, cut it out "I demanded, "You know I don't exactly have a choice. Show me where I need to go."

He laughed and crossed the playground. He led me back through the door and into the room with the spider webs in the corners.

"This is where you're working. You'll be supervising the children as they play to make sure they don't hurt themselves or anything."

Screams were heard outside the entrance of the day care.

"They're here." Kane said leaving me alone.

A few minutes later, about twenty toddlers scampered into the room. I bent down and introduced myself to each one of them, but it was hard to retain their attention for long.
After about an hour, every toy the daycare owned was scattered all over the room. For the first thirty minutes, I'd been following the kids around picking up after them each time they dropped something, but it got too tiring and my back started to really hurt, so I stopped. I figured I would take care of the clean up later.  One kid came up to me complaining of hunger so I visited Julia and Kathy in the kitchen and told them the kids were hungry. They acted upon it immediately, bringing out some chicken nuggets, carrots, and apples. The kids attacked the food like it was their first meal while I sat down for the first time in hours. I jumped at the sound of Kane's voice behind me.

"Crazy kids."

I nodded in agreement but it didn't erase the anger I still had for him.

"Julia and Kathy are nice." I said, trying to act pleasantly for the sake of making the best first impression. I didn't think acting snotty to one of the employees would help my situation whatsoever.

"Yeah they are. Kathy is my aunt and Julia is my cousin." He told me.

"Wow," I asserted, "Your family is so nice, but you enjoy threatening people, how does that happen?" I guess I couldn't help being a little snotty, but I tried to do it in a way that no one but Kane would catch it.