My Babysitter Asks Me to Bury Her Beneath Oranges in the Bathtub

My mom keeps all these oranges in the kitchen to slice into baggies for my middle school’s soccer team, for whom I sit the bench and provide water bottles and oranges, and mom buys them in bulk, all these orange mesh bags of oranges, smelling up the first floor of our house, and my babysitter picks one up, sniffs it, You know, Aiden, I saw on TikTok orange peel’s great for skin, then takes my hand and leads me upstairs, peels her t-shirt off, stands in her orange bathing suit, I’ll lie down in the tub, and my job’s to bring bags of oranges and dump them on top of her until she disappears underneath all these oranges--It feels good; I’m taking off my bathing suit—which are piling up, overflowing, Aiden, don’t stop, but she’s having trouble, buried so deep, where I kept pouring more and more oranges, Help me up, so here I come digging, gripping and squeezing each round and pert orange, tossing them over my shoulder, Hurry, rubbing the rinds, peeling into them with my thumbs, the slick, sinewy flesh, dribbles of juice sticky on my fingers, but I can’t find her underneath all these oranges, Aiden, I’m under here, her words bubbling up through the pulp until I reach the dingy, ringed tub bottom, scratch at it with my nails, maybe crying a little. 

I take an armful of oranges downstairs, some half-squeezed, some firm, and eat these oranges that have rubbed her bare skin, nipples and everything, get pith between my teeth, and I keep spitting seeds, lips and chin tacky with citrus, then rush outside to be sick in the ferns by the swimming pool because I don’t want to go back into the bathroom, but there on the patio, sun glistening on her tanned-orange skin, my babysitter’s lying out on a towel, tanning topless, shiny and smelling like oranges, beckoning me with a bottle of sunscreen, and I lose control and puke orange into the pool.