Take a Sad Song and Make It Better

Bailey's POV

He knew. Alex knew. How did he know? Why was Jade crying? Did he make her cry? He knew? When did he find out? How and where? Out of anyone, Alex knew?

I looked as his shadow retreated in to Jade’s room, leaving me to walk slowly in to my neighboring room and pace the floor. There were so many questions rolling around in my head. The first one was Jade. She was crying. And not just a couple sad tears, it looked like she had been crying for a while. Her eyes were red and puffy and her cheeks were tear streaked down her face with little red blotches on her forehead. Her sleeves were also wet from wiping her nose and eyes.

What could have possibly have happened that made her break? I hadn’t seen Jade cry in so long so what sparked the waterworks?

I lay on my back on my bed and looked up at my ceiling and thought about the boy that had seen Jade cry. The name “Sam” rolled off Alex’s tongue so easily, like he had talked and thought about him before. If Alex knew, how many other people knew about Sam? Everyone? I figured maybe if anyone was to know it would be Melanie, since her mom and Clara talk once and a while. But Alex? Did he tell everyone? Was the only reason I had the friends was because they pitied me all this time? They felt bad and were worried so they befriended me and hung out all the time just to make me feel better?

My thoughts continued becoming more and more dangerous but they were interrupted by a soft knock on the door and Alex poked his shaggy haired head through the crack in my door. “Bailey? Can I come in?”

I sat uneasy, but nodded a silent “yes”. As he walked over to my bed, I sat up and looked around awkwardly, trying to avoid his stare when we approached me.

“Can I sit?” I nodded again and moved my feet aside so he could sit on the edge of my bed. I felt like a child about to get broken bad news by her father, instead Alex sat a couple feet away from me.

I looked at him intently, waiting for him to say something but he didn’t even look up at me. He looked at a loss for words, taking a breath and seeming like he would say something but instead stayed silent and let the breath out slowly. Then he started picking at his fingers that lay in his lap, causing his hair to fall over his face when he looked down so I couldn’t see his facial expressions anymore.

I couldn’t ever read his faces anyways. Jade and Alex spent almost everyday together and seemed so close, but I had rarely talked to Alex unless we were in a big group and hanging out. I didn’t feel awkward in the situation per se, but I definitely didn’t know how to act or what to say.

He started running his hands up and down his thighs and sometimes reaching over and clumsily smoothing over the bed covers that bunched around him.

I moved closer to him and decided to say something; I couldn’t take the silence especially with all the questions that I was desperately wanting to figure out. “So…um--”

“I know about Sam, Bailey.” Alex uttered directly. He turned his face to me and his deep brown eyes stared so intently in to my green ones, I felt he was looking through my eyes and cutting in to my soul.

I quickly darted my gaze away from his somehow, pressure bearing stare and started picking a scab that was on my arm. So many questions were still jumbled in my head that I was having a hard time choosing one to ask.

“W-what, how did you…I--”

“Jade told me.”

I nodded slowly, digesting his words. I thought back to a couple weeks ago when Alex and Jade were fighting and I told Jade to tell Alex about Sam. I tried to remember my reasoning: One, I didn’t think Jade would actually do it; she never listened to me. Two, Jade would have given a watered down version of the story.

I didn’t think my sister would share so much with a new friend, so assuming Alex didn’t know the things I hoped he didn’t, I spoke carefully. “Oh yeah, he’s um, he is our brother and--”

“Bailey, cut the crap,” he snapped at me, seeing through my lie. “He was your brother.” Alex had never spoken to me like that; I took the smile off my face and an image of Sam ran through my mind.

“Jade has talked to me about Sam.” I frown became apparent on my face and I looked at him, waiting to continue, but he didn’t.

He just sat looking back at me, as if those six words could just clear up my mind. “So you think you just know everything now then,” I said bitterly.

Alex looked taken aback with my tone that I rarely used on anyone but my sister and raised his hands in the air innocently. “Hey, I never said that, Bailey. Chill.”

“Then why, why are you so…relaxed? How much to you two talk about this? Is this why Jay’s crying? Did you make fun of her? How long have you known? How many people have you told?” I asked desperately.

I heard a barely audible chuckle deep from his throat. “Bailey,” he said calmly, outstretching his hand to mine, but retracting it and instead, clumsily trying to comfort me by placing his hand on my thigh. Realizing that was even more uncomfortable, he settled on gripping my shoulders tightly and turning my body to face him square on.

“Bailey,” he repeated firmly. “This isn’t a joke to me. You need to understand that. I-I know I come across as a stupid douche who seems like he doesn’t have a care in the world and thinks every thing is a fucking joke. But I’m not. Well, at least not all the time.

“You need to trust me; I’m not going to mock you, or make inappropriate jokes. Most importantly, I’m not going to poke and prod you about it. I see you when I’m around you; you don’t like people bugging you about this whole subject of “home”. You’d rather everyone live like nothing ever happened.”

I continued looking at Alex’s eyes, darting between the two. How could he read me so well? Was this a joke?

“I haven’t told a soul,” he swore. I nodded and lifted the corner of my mouth a little. “But it’s pretty obvious to the others that something is up with you and Jay Bird.” I nodded again in understanding. I’m sure our friends were wondering; we never actually told people why we came and we never talked about home. We barely talked to our parents and Jade and I always exchange certain glances that can’t be deciphered, but I’m sure people knew they mean something important.

There was something about Alex, the way he just…understood.

I hesitated before I spoke, “Does Jade talk about Sam a lot?”

“Never,” Alex answered immediately.

“Hmm.” I pushed the hair out of my face to reveal my shimmering eyes that were sparkling because of the layer of water that coated them. “H-How much do you know?” I stammered out.

“Well,” Alex cleared his throat uneasily and shifted on the bed a little. “Um…she pretty much told me…well everything.” He ran his fingers through his hair nervously. “Like, um, how you called her because you found Sam…” he finished carefully, wondering if he needed or even should to say more.

When he mentioned the phone call though, my mind drifted back to that day. I shuttered just thinking about what I had seen. The bathtub tucked in the corner and Sam’s lean, limp body hanging halfway out of it. Instead of water being the contents, his blood was running down the sides, filling the bottom. I remembered how instantly my mood changed; from bouncing around in the kitchen to music as I did the dishes, to falling on my knees and wailing. The thick dark liquid stunk up the bathroom and my nose and taste buds quivered from the stench of old copper entwined with bitter salt causing my body to shake with pain. I recalled not really thinking it was true. Maybe it had been a nightmare; it was too real to be reality.

The only two sounds I remembered were my unbearably loud shrieks and screams and Jade’s frantic voice as I forced myself to painfully crawl over to my beloved brother.

“…Bailey?” Alex asked worried, holding the top of my arms firmly and trying to get me to focus on him. I lifted my eyes, causing my tears to fall out of my eyes. “…Are you…oka--”

“Yeah,” I said loudly, wiping my tears with the back of my hand. “I’m fine.” He gave me an uneasy look. “It’s just, I don’t really ever let my mind focus on him. And now that I have, I can’t stop,” I whispered hopelessly and Alex signaled understanding with a bob of his head. His long arms wrapped around me tightly, taking me off guard, and he gave me a squeeze, letting me know he wasn’t letting go. Surprised by the action, I sat ridged in his embrace for a few seconds but when I felt his warmth surround and engulf me and I let myself rest my head on his shoulder.

Just like when a person takes a falls, gets up and feels fine, but starts crying because someone asked them sympathetically if they were okay, Alex’s grip around me felt like that. All of a sudden I felt the couple heaves in my chest from trying to hold in sobs and moments later I let loose.

I didn’t think Alex would be able to hear me through my tears, but I told him what I was feeling anyways. “It just haunts me! That image of him lying there dead,” I wailed loudly, finally wrapping my arms around his middle and squeezing, thinking maybe that would stop playing the picture of the bloody bathroom in my head. Alex moved his head against mine and I felt his chin dig in to my shoulders when he nodded in acknowledgment. “I just want the thoughts to stop…just stop…” I muttered miserably.

Alex stroked my hair as I thought about the situation. It reminded me of Essex. All those months of crying. I was always crying because of the wordless dinners, the silences between me and my sister, the music-less, friend-less, brother-less room across the hall from mine. The beating in my gut of a thousand bricks pounding at my heart, yet I felt so light that my head was spinning and I couldn’t feel, took over. That was the feeling I had felt everyday since Sam had passed, and returned to me, like I was reliving my pain all over again.

Minutes past and my crying eventually calmed to sniffles, which then later stopped and when it did, I just laid there with my forehead resting atop Alex’s boney shoulder. When he finally realized that my crying had stopped and my breathing was normal again, he broke apart and sat up to get a good look at me.

My eyes darted away from his gaze to anywhere that wasn’t his face, trying to get the awkwardness feeling that took over me again to go away. I liked that Alex didn’t ask me questions, he just listened. It was unexpected, but nice. He reached up and fixed a piece of my hair that had been pushed out of place which brought my eyes back to his and He smiled sheepishly causing me to shrink back and smile shyly in return as well.

After a bit of a silence, Alex spoke up. “Can I ask you a question?” I nodded. “Jade mentioned something earlier. And I’m confused about it.”

“Yeah?”

“She said something about…things being messed up and her going in reverse when she arrived in Lutherville. What does that mean?”

I thought about what that could have meant. I didn’t think things had been messed up since coming to live in Lutherville, in fact, I felt so much better. I was truly laughing and letting myself have fun. Sam sometimes slipped my mind and I forgot why I came in here in the first place, to try and push through living without him. All the new people I had met and the things I had been doing were making these days actually bearable.

“I don’t really know,” I offered, my voice a little raspy from earlier. Today was the first day I saw Jade cry in months. Once Sam died, her heart became guarded and she liked to hide her emotions instead of feeling pain. “I think maybe she feels weak and I think maybe she thought she would feel the same here as she did back home with all of her other friends; laughing and having a good time, not thinking about how much she really misses Sam.” Alex muttered an acknowledgment after I told him what I thought..

I smirk started creeping to my lips, “But you guys are different.”

Alex tilted his head in confusion. “What?”

The smile I had been holding back found its way to my face.

“You guys are different,” I continued, a smile fully reaching my lips and I reached out and grabbed his hands then gave them a comforting friendly squeeze. “You guys…you guys make me happy.”

The atmosphere in the room changed immediately and Alex chuckled freely, smiling hard down at me. “I’m glad. Because you make us happy!” he asserted, taking a hand away from me and poking me in the stomach. I giggled lightly and swatted his hand away. I had never been so free and so myself in front of Alex before. I never thought he would be the one to make me feel so weightless, but he did and most importantly, he understood.

“Should we check on Jade?” I asked Alex, not ever really figuring out the reason Jade was crying in the first place, except for the subject of Sam.

Getting off the bed, he grabbed my hands and pulled me up after so I was standing next to him. “Yes, ma’am!” He started for the door and I followed. “And let’s get some food while we’re at it because I’m so fucking hungry!”

When I came to Lutherville, I was hoping for a change and I never thought that change would involve me talking about my feelings that I hid deep down, but now that it was all out and I had shared, even just with one person, I was content. I was comforted by the fact at least someone knew me and Jade’s story. I didn’t need anyone to else to know what was going through my head, just having one person knowing what was deep in my chest was more than enough. If was such a relief.