Take a Sad Song and Make It Better

Bailey's POV

“I was here first!”

“You got up! It’s my turn!”

“I was going to come back!”

“Obviously not fast enough…”

“Jade! Get up!”

“Make me.”

“Do you guys ever shut up?!” a raspy voice erupted through me and my sister’s fight. I directed my attention to the intervening voice where Sam was plodding down the stairs grumpily. “I can here you all the way in my room. Jesus Christ.”

I glared down at Jade who was seated in the recliner that I had been sitting in five minutes prior. She looked back at me with a giant smirk plastered to her face.

“Jade is sitting in my chair.” Sam walked over to where we were fighting and starred at us blankly, completely uncaring at the typical occurrence.

“She got up!” Jade defended, like I had just tattled to our parents.

“I went to get the phone! Since you are a lazy ass.”

“I am not a--”

“Shut! UP!” Sam interrupted, “ It’s eight in the morning on a Saturday.”

“Yeah, Bailey, it’s eight in the morning on a Saturday. Shut up.” Jade’s smirk got bigger.

I opened my mouth to protest again but Sam cut in, “No. No more talking. I want one day without you two fighting.” He looked between us and we held blank faces. “Good. Now go make me some pancakes, bitches.”

I laughed at my brother and stepped out Jade’s line of vision of the T.V. and dragged Sam into the kitchen with me so we could make our usual Saturday breakfast together.

I started taking out the ingredients we would need to make the pancakes and Sam got the stove ready.

“Bailey Olivia!” I heard Jade yell from the living room. “Where is the remote?!”

I snickered to myself and patted my sweatpants’ pocket where the chunk of plastic was resting.

“You are such a mean sister,” Sam joked and ruffled my hair before starting to stir the ingredients in the giant mixing bowl.

I smirked and swatted his hand away, “I know.”

After spilling the bowl full of batter down my front, Sam burning his fingers and breaking one of our mother’s special plates, we finally got the pancakes baking. I didn’t mind all the troubles though. Even though pancake Saturdays went a little smoother than that, I still enjoyed baking with my brother.

“Are the pancakes ready yet?” Jade asked bored, dragging out the syllables.

“Yep!” I carried the plate of pancakes over to the table, Sam grabbed the peanut butter and syrup and Jade grabbed the plates and silverware.

“Okay!” Sam clapped his hands together and looked around the table. “Jade, chocolate chip pancake for you. Plain pancake for Jazz. And blueberry for me!”

“Thank you Samuel,” I said with a high pitched voice as I batted my eye lashes at him. He sneered back at me for using his full name with his green eyes that were the exact same color and shape as me and Jade. His hair bridged the gap between Jade’s thick, dirty blonde hair and my dark, stringy brown strands. Sometimes it felt like he wasn’t two years older and was the triplet of Jade and I never had.

“Where’s mom?” Jade asked with a mouth full of fluffy pancakes.

“Work.”

“Dad?”

“Work,” Sam replied wryly. I laughed a tiny bit under my breath. We usually got the house to ourselves Saturday afternoon to hang out without being bothered by our friends or doing homework.

I felt my phone vibrate against my leg in my sweatpants and I reached in to get it.

“Hey! You have the remote!” Jade yelled and pointed an accusing finger at me. I looked down at the supposed-to-be phone in my hand which instead held the T.V. remote.

Sam was chuckling beside me and Jade reached across the table to try and grab the remote that I stole from her instead she knocked over Sam’s glass of milk with her elbow.

“Jade!” Sam yelled surprised and stood up quickly to avoid the milk spilling over the edge of the table.

“Oops,” Jade smiled cutely and I just laughed at the two.

“You suck,” Sam stated, a smile peeking through his statured face.

“You love me.”

Sam glowered a bit but then broke in to his cheeky grin, “Yeah…I do.” He started wiping his pants with his napkin and then proceeded to throw it at Jade’s head.

“Ha ha, Sam peed his pants!” I giggled and pointed at Sam, taunting him.

“Hey, shut it, Jazz.” He ripped a piece of his pancake and flung it at me. Smiles broke out on all our faces and we each reached towards the center of the table to grab the pancakes of the plates and started throwing little dry chunks at each other. The feathery cut up pieces were getting stuck in my bed hair and going down my baggy sweatshirt causing the smell of the pancakes to overwhelm the kitchen and flow into my nose along with the warm smell of sweet butter and the sound of all of our laughs that swirled around in the air.

With the smell of the rich Saturday pancakes Sam always made crawling in my nose, I sensed a smile warming on my lips. I inhaled a deep breath and was blasted with the smell of jolly ranchers and faded Axe. I felt my eyes peel open, which I didn’t know were closed in the first place, and sat up. I looked around the familiar room and took in the surroundings that I hadn’t laid eyes on in almost a year, but yet, it seemed like I hadn’t left at all.

My eyes looked back down at the bed I was sitting on. It wasn’t my own. I didn’t know when I wandered in to Sam’s room last night, but waking up in it was surprisingly comfortable. Shockingly, the console of Sam’s room calmed me, something that wouldn’t have happened 3 months ago.

I heard my stomach send me a morning greeting when I sniffed another wave of pancakes in. It felt weird to be in Sam’s room with him gone. Usually when I was in there, his smiling face was looking back at me, not me looking around uselessly at the empty corners. Now, he was nothing but air, just silence. The kind of silence that drives you crazy because you’re waiting for something to sound. Like when I’m listening to my iPod and an elongated silence settles between songs, and all I can do is listen to the silence. The more I wait, the more I get irritated at the absence of sound.

That’s what I felt like standing in Sam’s room; irritating peace. But this time I knew it would never end and a new song wouldn’t start playing. Even though the silence was nerve-wracking, I felt tranquil, something that I liked feeling and that had been missing over the past couple weeks back in New Jersey.

I guess that was why I drifted in last night, to be comforted by Sam’s presence, even though it really wasn’t there. But his smell in the sheets was enough.

The next whiff of breakfast being cooked downstairs finally got my attention and I decided to get up and get some food.

“…Um. Hey Jade?” I said surprised to see Jade standing at the stove. One, she was up before me even if it was a school day. Two, she was actually cooking.

“Hey Jazz,” she smiled groggily. I eyed the stove top with a raised eyebrow. Jade saw my questioning expression and flipped the pancake over before turning to me, “I had this sudden urge of pancakes. So I’m making pancakes. Want some?”

“Yes please.” I got out two glasses and two plates for us. I actually had a weird craving for our famous pancakes too…” Jade smiled perceptively at me and dished a plain pancake for me on my plate and chocolate chip one on hers.

We ate in a comfortable silence, once and a while making a small comments and then settling back in to quietness.

Jade scooted her chair out from under her and picked up her plate to bring it to the sink. “It’s seven now. Wanna leave in thirty minutes?” I responded silently with a nod and finished my breakfast while Jade went to her room to get ready for school.

After I finished eating, I did all the dishes quickly so our parents wouldn’t come home from work and see the mess we made in the kitchen. My last task was to put the pan away. I looked up at the cupboard above the fridge and then back down at my short legs. I stood on my tiptoes, straining my legs, back and arms to push the pancake pan up in the cupboard.

“Damn it!” I screamed and jumped back so the pan and all the other things that were sitting on the fridge didn’t land on my toes as they fell and clattered to the ground. “Damn it. Damn it,” I muttered, bending down to pick up the pan and set it on the counter. I collected the all the papers that scattered everywhere and set them back on top of the fridge. And then I looked down at the broken glass jar and the scattered scraps of post-it notes and ripped paper. “Damn it!” I groaned, throwing my head back and staring at the ceiling.

“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it,” I continued mumbling under my breath. Realizing I had to pick up the broken glass, I went down on my hands and knees and starting gathering the pieces.

After getting the glass cleaning up, I went back on my knees and examined the papers that fell out of the jar. After unfolding a couple of the small papers and reading them, I finally realized what they were. They were my family’s New Year’s resolutions. Our family always submitted a New Year’s resolution every year into the jar and then reread them at the end of the year to see if we actually accomplished our goals that we set.

This past New Year’s Eve, the jar wasn’t even looked at. I sighed at how our family was falling apart, ever so slowly.

I picked up some faded papers and read them over:

I’m going to get all A’s this year in school
Bailey, 2001

I’m going to lose weight
Mom, 2000

I’m going to work a lot so I can buy my own car
Sam, 2003

I’m going to learn to paint
Bailey, 2002

I’m going to write in cursive
Jade, 1998

I searched through all the papers, smiling amused at some of the goals we had all set. I looked through all of them, trying to find the ones we all had made for last year.

I’m going to get a job and start saving for college. Apply for scholarships and get accepted in to college by Thanksgiving
Jazz, 2005I’m going to make new friends that actually care about me. Keep my room clean
Jade, 2005

I’m going to live everyday to the fullest
Sam, 2005

How fucking ironic.

All of our resolutions were failures. Last year was a failure.

For some reason I became furious. It made me want to scream. I didn’t know what I was feeling, but I was mad. I hated Sam for doing this. Look at what he did to me. I hated him. I hated this place. Everything about it made me confused, enraged, sad and reminiscing all at the same time. I wanted to thrash and kick and yell as loud as I could. I felt tears well up in my eyes and I wanted to sob into someone. I wanted someone to tell me it would be okay. I wanted them to tell me when it would get better. No one understood. I needed someone to understand.

I picked up the last piece of paper and read it quickly. It was the only paper that was put in for this New Year’s and I didn’t even know anyone was actually doing the New Year’s Jar anymore, but this one must have gotten snuck in.

Listen and be there for Bailey.
Jade, 2006

I felt my anger and confusion falter and I reread Jade’s words. I softened up and smiled through the tears that were sitting in the rims of my eyes.

The sentimental moment was broken with Jade’s stomps down the stairs. She pulled a hood over her head and picked up her bag off the kitchen table. She was about to turn when she saw me crouched on the ground.

“Jazz, aren’t you ready yet? We’re leaving in like…ten minutes.”

“What? Oh…right. Yeah. Sorry, I just got distracted.” I secretly wiped my nose and eyes and then scooped up all the little papers in my hands and tossed them in the garbage, saving the last one I read and slipping it in my pocket before scampering up the stairs.

==========

Back at school, things were different. I felt like all eyes were on me and Jade. Before winter break, there were two seats empty in our classes where we used to sit before we ran off to Maryland. Then, everyone returned back to school after the holidays and those two seats were filled again.

People were in our faces asking us the details and prodding in to our lives and then there were people that just stared from the distance, judging us with looks. I ignored all of them, absorbing myself back with my old friends.

As we all sat at lunch, I listened to Kayla talk about her weekend and I watched Courtney absorb every syllable that left Kayla’s mouth. Finally I couldn’t stand listening to Kayla brag about her mom’s new necklace so Morgan and I started watching funny videos on her phone.

I couldn’t remember why I got along with these girls so well before. I realized that I had changed and I didn’t follow them now. I had my own mind and didn’t live in their world so I actually had friends. Now, I like my friends in Lutherville. I had defined myself and created a better life for me there.

I lost track of what Kayla was talking about while I joked around with Morgan, but when our conversation ended, I turned my attention back to Kayla.

“And it just kept coming! Oozing this chucky, smelly stuff and I couldn’t get it to stop!”

After those words left Kayla’s mouth, my eyes bulged out of their sockets and I almost spit out my water. It took all my might to hold in my laughter at what Kayla had just said.

Of course, she kept rambling, not realizing what she had just said. I was just waiting for Jack to pop out and yell “That’s what she said!” at the top of his lungs like he always did, but it never happened. Even I had the urge to scream the words out, but I knew Kayla would roll her eyes at me. Morgan and Courtney would think it would be funny, but I knew I shouldn’t say it.

They were boring. Half the time I walked around school expecting random burst of inappropriate words and dirty jokes during the situations I saw, but it never came. I couldn’t believe I was actually one of them.

==========

“Can Jade just turn off her music for one second? Jeez.”

I looked over at Courtney who was lying beside me studying her physics book.

“It’s not even loud, Courtney.”

She looked taken aback at me snapping back at her, but shrugged it off. “I can hear it. It’s loud.” I starred at her as she did a calculation on her calculator and then turned back to my book that I was reading. “It’s crappy anyways…” she trailed off, barely audible and I wasn’t supposed to hear.

I strained my ear to hear Jade’s music. I recognized it as one of the CDs the boys made for us of a couple of their songs. I smiled, picturing them practicing as I sat on the floor of to the side, watching them.

I used to watch the guys practice every week. With Jade. I had barely hung out with Jade since I had arrived back. I got to be around her all the time as school during classes, but I never actually got to talk to her like I was used to. It was back to just seeing each other at home and on weekends.

I couldn’t stand my friends anymore. Two weeks back was enough for me to realize how their constant nagging drove me crazy. It was enough for me to see that I didn’t have real friends; just friends that I used to follow around until I found out what real friends were.

It was strange to go back to this. I missed my friends. I missed my sister. I missed my home. I needed to go back. The only thing was I couldn’t. I couldn’t live a life where I went back and forth whenever I changed moods. If I missed my parents, I couldn’t just come back to Essex. If I wanted to talk to Kaylie, I couldn’t travel the long drive back to Lutherville. It wasn’t that simple. I had to decide what I wanted. But now I knew what I wanted. Essex had showed me what I really wanted.