After school that following Friday, Jesse and Siobhan arrived at the Vanderwebb house on Moonset Drive at five o’clock sharp. Instead of Cynthia greeting them, or her husband David, whom they’ve never met in person before, it was Hank Harwood.

  “Heya, kids. Cynthia told me you two would be taking over babysitting duties in the evenings. Why don’t y'all come on in.” He ushered them into the house.

  It was larger on the inside than Jesse had been expecting, though he supposed it made sense. Cynthia’s spider body took up a large amount space, so she must need wide rooms and hallways to get around easily.

  “They’ve already left for- Hey! Mason, get that out of your mouth!”

  He rushed past where a pair of tiny spiders were crawling around on sheets of paper left on the coffee table, leaving colorful streaks behind them (finger painting, Jesse realized), and over to a third spider who had his fangs gripped around a tv remote. He easily plucked him up and gently set him down next to his siblings.

  “As I was saying,” he continued, wiping the remote down with a sanitizing wipe. “They’re already gone for the weekend, but Cynthia left some, ah, rather detailed instructions for you. They’re on the counter.”

  Siobhan picked up the instructions; a stapled pile of at least four pages. “Wow, these are...”

  “In depth,” Jesse finished for her.

  “Yeah. I don’t know how Tyra does it.”

  “Tyra?”

  “She’s the Vanderwebbs’ usual babysitter,” he explained. “But she couldn’t make it this time. Had an important trip of her own over in Boston. I’ve got five kids myself, so I figured I could easily fill in for her, at least the day shift, but between you and me, these children make Rory and Leah seem like little angels in comparison.”

  “I’m gonna tell mom you said that!” one of the spiders had apparently scuttled over to listen in on what they were saying. She quickly scurried away to avoid retribution, rejoining her siblings on the coffee table.

  “Darn it, it’s always the little ones you gotta look out for. They’re the ones that slip under your nose and get up to no good. Why couldn’t Cynthia have taken these three and left her older kids behind?” Hank checked his watch in the middle of his grumbling. “Shoot, I gotta get going to work now. Sorry to leave you two high and dry, but all y'all really gotta do is get the kids fed and into bed by seven thirty.”

  “I think we can manage that,” Siobhan told him as they followed him back to the front door.

  “Just in case, I left my phone number along with Cynthia’s. Call or text if y'all need anything, alright?”

  “Will do! Bye.” After closing the door on Hank, she whirled around to fix a glare on Jesse. “You didn’t tell me we’d be watching literal spiders!” she hissed.

  “Cynthia’s a spider, what did you expect?” But truthfully, he was also surprised. He remembered seeing one of her other kids, Emily, at the costume contest on Halloween, and she had been much bigger than the three tiny spiders they were currently babysitting, about the size of a corgi. If they didn’t have the ability to talk, he would have assumed that they were just regular spiders. But they were still larger than any spider he’d want to see in his house.

  Maybe it’s just because they’re younger? And when they reach Emily’s age, whatever that is, they’ll be just as big as her? The thought sent an involuntary shudder through his body. Or maybe the world doesn’t need any more giant-sized spiders.

  “I don’t know what I expected,” Siobhan admitted. “Like maybe three mini-Cynthias? Actually, maybe this is better. Still, though, a little warning would have been nice.”

  “Look, they’re just a bunch of tiny little spiders. What could possibly-”

  CRASH!

  He spun around towards the source of the loud noise. “What was that?!”

  “He did it!”

  “She did it!”

  Jesse was already having doubts. “Okay, maybe this will be harder than expected.”

  “Siobhan, are you almost done in there?!”

  “I’m trying my best!”

  While attempting to fix dinner for the kids, they had messed up what was supposed to be a simple mac and cheese recipe twice already, having to start all over each time. It didn’t help that all the kids had some sort of stipulation; Jeremy had to have extra cheese, but Charlotte didn’t want too much cheese, but Mason needed more house flies in his because he was a growing boy but wouldn’t eat it without a helping of ketchup as well. Jesse vowed to apologize to his mom for every time he was a picky eater. In hindsight, he should have known that three spiders would need to be fed insects, but neither Cynthia nor Hank mentioned anything about it until they got to the second page of instructions. He guessed they would have just assumed he’d know. Yet another instance of their lie about being monsters coming to bite them in the butt.

  While Siobhan was busy working on their third attempt, he was trying to distract the hungry spiderlings by playing various games, which was easier said than done. Thay all had a collective attention span of about five seconds, and the only games that could get them to focus for longer than that were the physical ones.

  Which is how he wound up playing tag with a trio of spiders who were only a couple of inches tall, at most.

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  “Got you!” he said, as he, as gently as he could, tagged the oldest of the kids, Jeremy.

  “No fair,” he complained. “You’re all big!”

  “One day you’ll be as big as me and then it’ll seem more fair.”

  “Really?” The spiderling seemed excited at the prospect.

  God, I hope not. Jesse did not want to see a spider as big as he was anytime soon.

  Jeremy suddenly sniffed the air. “Is something on fire?”

  “Siobhan?”

  “Okay, tag out! You take over dinner.”

  The two high fived as they switched places, Jesse sliding into the kitchen as Siobhan rushed to where the kids were, careful not to let any of them out of their sight for a single second.

  What the heck was she doing in here?

  It looked like she had accidently thrown the packets for the cheese in with the noodles, paper and all, and the pot was somehow both cold and hot. He made a mental note to never let her cook for him before setting to work.

  He’d had a lot of experience cooking simple dishes for himself while his mom worked late hours at the clinic, so he was able to finish off what Siobhan had started, turning it into something edible.

  Well, he thought, as he added the dead flies from the Vanderwebb’s pantry into the mixture. Not edible for me, but the kids should like it.

  “Okay, food’s ready!”

  “Thank god.”

  With dinner finally ready, the kids practically zoomed into the dining room, Jesse setting their respective dishes in front of them. As soon as the bowls were out of her hands, they were digging in. Except something was missing.

  “Where's Jeremy?”

  “Over here! Look what I drew.”

  They looked over to the corner of the living room ceiling, where Jeremy was suspended from a single strand, different colors of paint dripping from the tips of his legs. He had painted a picture of Cynthia, clearly devouring both Jesse and Siobhan.

  “Uh...”

  “How’d he even do that so quickly?” Siobhan demanded. “I took my eyes off of him for two seconds.”

  “He’s not supposed to be up there!” Charlotte, the second oldest of the bunch (with a propensity to tattle, Jesse noticed), called from between bites of mac and cheese.

  She sighed. “I’ll get the ladder.”

  “Jeremy, get down here and eat your dinner.” Jesse tried to sound as stern as possible, channeling his inner Carmen Grahame.

  It didn’t work.

  “I’m not hungry!”

  “It’s going to get cold if you don’t-”

  “We’re done!”

  As he had been trying to coax Jeremy down from the ceiling, the rest of the kids had finished their food, running off in different directions now that their energy had been replenished.

  “Oh, come on!”

  The spiderlings were small and fast and now that they had been fed, had seemingly endless amounts of stamina, effortlessly dodging Jesse’s attempt to corral them both back into one spot. Eventually, he resorted to asking for Siobhan’s help.

  “Just put on Bluey or something!” she yelled down from the ladder, where she was still trying to clean up the mess that Jeremy had made. “Kids love that show.”

  Jeremy, for his part, had scuttled over to a different part of the ceiling where she would be able to reach him, settling in to watch them both struggle from afar.

  Jesse fiddled with the remote before finding the cartoon, apparently a frequently watched program in the Vanderwebb house, judging from its saved position on the menu.

  As the catchy theme song started playing, the two youngest came rushing back in.

  “I can’t believe that actually worked,” he said, in awe of the cartoon’s ability to completely captivate the spiderlings.

  “Wait, I wanna watch too!” Jeremy yelled, crawling down the wall to get a better look at the television.

  “No, no Bluey for you until you finish your dinner.”

  Those were apparently the magic words, as the spider chomped down on his little helping of mac and cheese and flies before joining his siblings in the living room to watch TV.

  “What is this, permanent paint?!” Siobhan was still trying to get the drawing cleaned off, but was having no luck.

  Jesse grabbed some cleaning supplies from the kitchen. “Here, tag in.”

  He took over cleaning duty while she settled on the couch with the kids, all utterly transfixed by the cartoon dogs. After finishing up, he joined her for a few episodes as the kids were blissfully silent and still, simply watch the family of Australian dogs.

  But all good things must come to an end.

  “Okay everyone, time for bed,” Jesse announced after a glance at the clock.

  “Awww, can’t we watch one more?”

  “You asked that three episodes ago. No more TV, it’s way past your bedtime.”

  They rounded up the kids and herded them into their bedroom upstairs. Jesse had no idea exactly how many kids Cynthia had, but apparently it was a lot, as Jeremy, Charlotte, and Mason all shared a room with what looked like fifteen other siblings, if the number of webs strung up as hammocks for the kids to sleep in was any indication. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a lot for one room, and reason to call child protective services, but given the fact that all the hammocks were doll sized, they fit quite nicely.

  “Okay, one, two-” Siobhan counted them off. There were only three of them, but they had figured out pretty quickly that they could never be too careful. Case in point, “Where’s Mason? I swear I saw him crawl into bed.”

  Before Jesse could respond, they heard a high-pitched giggling from the doorway behind them. It was the most noise that Mason had made all evening, and it echoed down the hall as he skittered away.

  “I’ll get him,” he told Siobhan. “You make sure none of the others decide to sneak out.”

  But trying to find one spider in a giant house turned out to a challenge. After a few fruitless minutes of searching the individual rooms, that had plenty of nooks and crannies for a small spiderling to tuck their self away in, he decided to switch tactics.

  “Hey, Mason!” He called out from the living room. “How about we make a little deal? Let's play hide and seek. You stay wherever you are right now, and if I don’t find you in the next ten minutes, you don’t have to go to bed yet. Sound good? Tap once for yes, twice for no.”

  Immediately, he heard a tapping sound from the kitchen, where the spider had hidden behind the sponge in the sink.

  “There you are.” He scooped up the spider. While dealing with the kids over the course of the evening, he had gotten over any hesitation he might have previously had over handling the furry arachnids with his bare hands.

  The youngest spiderling looked up at him, and he could practically see the indignity gleaming in his many eyes.

  “Your mom wants you in bed by this time,” he reminded him. “You don’t want to disobey your mom, do you?”

  Mason sulked, but didn’t try to escape from him either.

  Good. This better be the last surprise for the night, he thought to himself.

  He made his way back to the bedroom. “I got hi-”

  “Shhhh.” Siobhan held up a finger to her lips. By some miracle, while he had been gone, she had managed to get the other kids to sleep, and they were all snoring away peacefully in their hammocks.

  After putting Mason to bed with them, they closed the door as gently as they could, and only once it was shut did they finally let out a sigh of relief.

  “We did it,” Siobhan breathed out. “The first day’s over.”

  “Only two more to go.”

  She let out a groan as she slid down the wall. “I don’t think this is worth a hundred dollars, man.”