Mrs. Taylor towed us over to them anyway. “Chelsea, have you met Elise yet? She moved in a couple days ago.”

“Hi,” Chelsea said, then went back to pouring candy corns into a bowl.

Mrs. Taylor smiled at Elise. “We’re so glad you could help us out tonight, and it’ll be fun for the girls to get to know you better. Your mother tells me you surf.”

“I used to,” Elise said. “The only place to surf around here is the internet.”

“Surfing sounds fun,” Mrs. Taylor said. “Don’t you think that sounds fun, Sam?”

“Yeah,” Samantha said in voice that didn’t show any enthusiasm.

Mrs. Taylor surveyed the room. “Well, I think you have everything you need. We shouldn’t be gone more than a few hours. Call if you have any problems.” She then glided up the stairs and disappeared.

Elise and I set up folding chairs around the tables. By the time we were finished, five more kids came. Most were in the four-to six-year-old range, although there was one boy who couldn’t have been more than two. He wouldn’t let go of his sister’s hand, and followed her wherever she went.

Samantha briskly divided the kids into two groups and sent the younger ones over to Elise and me. She and Chelsea didn’t really talk to us after that.

The crafts went bad quickly. The children managed to get frosting everywhere. They didn’t like the licorice pieces we’d set out to use as mouths, and they made vampire teeth out of the candy corns. I took the bowl away when a freckle-faced boy tried to shove some up his nose.

None of the kids wanted to make ghosts, although the same boy entertained the other kids by shoving a succession of marshmallows into his mouth until I took that bag away too. I was afraid he’d either spit out a huge marshmallow blob or choke on them.

All of that took about a half an hour. Then the kids were bored.

“Story time!” Elise told them and made them sit down in a semicircle at the far end of the room. She rifled through the diaper bags until she came up with a few picture books. She handed me the first one.

I put on my cheeriest face. “Do you want to hear the story of Danny and the Dinosaur?”

“No,” the marshmallow kid said. “I already know how it ends. He learns how to play baseball.”

I ignored the kid and peered down at the other faces. “How many of you like dinosaurs?”

The marshmallow boy wiggled his feet so they hit the boy sitting next to him. “Dinosaurs can’t really play baseball. They’d eat people.”

I was beginning to remember all of the reasons I hated babysitting.

Elise stepped in front of the kids. “Do you know the reason you’ve never seen me before?”

Half the kids looked at her blankly. The other half shook their heads, clearly not grasping the nature of rhetorical questions.

“I’m Santa’s helper from the North Pole,” she said. “I’m here to check and see whether you’re being naughty or nice.”

Five pairs of eyes grew wide. Marshmallow boy’s eyes grew narrow. “Santa doesn’t send people to check up on you.”

Elise nodded in agreement. “Usually he doesn’t, but you’re a borderline case. Santa can’t decide whether to give you presents or coal. He told me you didn’t share the toys he gave you last year and you also sass your mother.”

The boy gulped and sat very still. He didn’t say a word for the rest of story time. The other kids, however, wouldn’t stay quiet. All through my reading of Danny and the Dinosaur, they kept interrupting me to ask Elise questions about the North Pole.

“Where does Santa keep the reindeer?” one girl asked.

“We used to keep them outside, but they kept flying away and getting lost, so now they’re inside.”

“Inside the house?”

“Sure. It’s a big house. They’re like pets, only they leave hoof prints on the ceiling sometimes. It bothers Mrs. Claus when they do that.”

When it was Elise’s turn to read, she picked a book of classic fairy tales but changed the stories. She was in the middle of telling how Cinderella told off her wicked stepsisters, took one of their dresses, and went to the ball on her own, when a girl raised her hand. “My little brother did a doo-doo.”

Elise regarded her patiently. “Santa’s special helpers don’t change diapers. But do you see that girl over there?” Elise pointed to Samantha at the craft table. “She’s common, ordinary rabble, and she’d be happy to take care of any doo-doo you’ve done. Boys and girls, repeat after me: Samantha does the doo-doo.”

The children chorused, “Samantha does the doo-doo,” while the girl led her brother over to the craft table. I did my best not to smirk at Samantha’s facial expression.

Elise opened the book of fairy tales again. Now then, back to Cinderella. What have we learned from this story?”

The children stared up at her with blank faces.

“We’ve learned you can’t trust fairy godmothers to get you to the ball. If you want to go someplace in life, you have to get there yourself.”

After Elise finished discussing this principle with the children, she went on to tell them the story of how Snow White left the seven dwarves and got a degree in advertising. The kids began yelling out questions about other story book characters. What happened to Shrek? To Mulan? To Rapunzel?

“Rapunzel went to beauty school,” I said. “So she could finally give herself a decent haircut.”

The children laughed, but they weren’t the only ones. I heard deep male laughter and looked up to see Josh carrying a little girl. Another of Elise’s sisters trotted along beside him, half skipping as she came over to us. Josh plunked the littlest girl into our semicircle of children. “Abby and Olivia were convinced you were having more fun here,” he said. “I had to bring them.”

“How thoughtful,” Elise said. “You know how much I love entertaining kids.”

“You’re a natural,” I told her.

“I’ve had a lot of practice.” To the seated children, she said, “Do you know who this guy is?”

“Josh!” her little sisters chimed together.

“That’s right!” Elise said with excitement. “It’s Josh, Santa’s bouncer. He does security at the North Pole.” She gestured to him. “He’ll show you some of his tricks. You guys can try to tackle him, and he’ll show you what he does to the rowdy elves.”

The kids jumped up and swarmed him with glee.

“Thanks,” Josh told Elise, but he got down on the floor and wrestled with the kids, laughing. I guess he’d had lots of practice too.

Abby and Olivia weren’t interested in wrestling with Josh, so Elise got out cookies for them to decorate. I sat down on the floor with Josh and the kids and did crowd control—keeping too many kids from crawling on him at a time. When Josh had had enough of that, he told them we would play rock-a-bye-baby with them. This consisted of him taking a blanket from the couch and holding on to one end, while Elise held onto the other like it was a hammock. I put a child inside, and they rocked him back and forth while we all sang the song.

The kids loved it. As I sang along, I watched Elise and Josh, entranced. Usually I’m fine with being an only child. Sometimes I’m even glad that there’s no one else around to bother me. But right then I felt the loss. This is what having brothers and sisters would have been like—this fun, this noise. I envied Elise the inside jokes she shared with Josh. I envied the way her little sisters looked up at her with admiration. I would never have any of that.

The older children abandoned their crafts and came over asking for rock-a-bye-baby rides, so Samantha and Chelsea got another blanket and formed a second line. We swung the kids until the first mother came by to pick up her children; then Samantha told the kids if they helped us clean up, they could have some cookies to take home. While Elise and I folded up the chairs, Samantha sidled up to Josh with a gleaming smile. “I don’t think we’ve officially met,” she said. “I’m Samantha Taylor.”