Take a Sad Song and Make It Better

Bailey's POV

I, Bailey Olivia Bates, had not unpacked yet. Still. There were a couple boxes stacked in the corner and my closet was empty. My walls were bare and there was nothing to even make my room messy. All my junk was packed in boxes. The only things that sat out were a couple school books on my bed. I had been so caught up in reuniting with everyone that I hadn’t let my mind wander to it.

Even Jade had unpacked already.

I glanced around my room and started to dread the next few hours. “Jade?!” I called and walked out of my room and through the hallway to find her. “Jade?!”

“Yep?” Jade popped a head out of the hall closet enthusiastically. I didn’t even want to know what she was doing in there.

“Wow, you look nice. Did you change?” I looked over her cute top dark wash jeans, hair tamed and make-up perfected.

“Maybe…” she smiled bashfully. I gave her a look, demanding information. “Alex and I are going to hang out for a bit.”

“…So you changed?” I smirked.

“Well yeah, I was wearing sweats. And who knows where we will go or what we will do.”

I raised my eyebrows and grinned. Jade didn’t need to say anything; if I wanted to keep my face, I would shut up. I nagged Jade too much about Alex. “Well, you look pretty. Do you think you could put a braid in my hair quick before you leave?” She agreed and dragged me to the bathroom.

“Here, hold this,” Jade mumbled, a couple bobby pins between her lips. She handed me the chunk of my half braided hair and ran to the door, where the doorbell sounded.

I plodded down the stairs a couple seconds later and smiled at Alex as Jade swung the door open to let him in.

“Hi Jay Bird. Hey Bails.”

“Hi Alex. And…everyone else.” Jack, Rian, Kaylie and Melanie pushed through the doorway in a big heap behind Alex. They shivered after getting out of the cold and started to take off their jackets.

“Woo! It is cold out there tonight!” Jack yelled dynamically, his voice bouncing off the walls.
They hung their jackets on the railing posts and kicked their shoes in the corner, making themselves right at home. Jade had the same shocked face on her face as I did: confused at why five people showed to pick her up instead of one.

“Sorry about them.” Alex pointed behind him with a smirk. “They came over after school and have followed me ever since. I can’t get them off my back. I keep trying to get away, but they just keep following me. I’ve done everything.”

Jade snickered but Rian smacked the back of Alex’s head as he walked further in the house and Melanie kicked his shin.

“Hey Baybay,” Jack jumped to my side. “Ready to hang tonight?”

Jade started to slip her jacket on. “Well we’re leaving. You kids have fun,” she mocked.

I sneered at her as Alex followed her out the door. I looked at the half braided hair in my hands pathetically and let it back down. “Wellp, I guess you guys are helping me set up my room,” I smiled at them and bounced up the steps.

Jack let out a long whine. “Nooo, Baybay. That’s boring.”

“You’re still not unpacked?” Melanie laughed.

“Well the first time Jade and I moved here, I barely took anything with me. But now that we are staying with Clara for sure, I took everything from the house in New Jersey and brought it here.” I led them into my small, red room. “I got so caught up, I didn’t unpack.”

Rian immediately ran and jumped on my made bed, messing up the covers and pushing my books off with his feet. Jack followed shortly after. I gave them a look but they didn’t pay attention.

Kaylie trotted around the room looking through the stray boxes and pulling out her phone to text every so often. Melanie went to the container of make-up and jewelry on my dresser and started to scrounge through it.

“I think your room is even emptier than before. If that’s possible,” Kaylie commented. I shrugged and walked over to a box and unfolded the flaps.

“Jack likes short shorts,” Jack slurred from his spot on the bed. I made a face at him and put the pair of shorts I folded in a pile with the rest of my summer clothes I was sorting through. The sun had already gone down and there was only artificial light in my room, but it was only six in the evening. I stood up and took the pile of my summer closet to stash away in my closet for later.

“You know, it doesn’t hurt to help.” I eyed Rian and Jack who were still lounging around. Jack groaned and pulled himself up and grudgingly plopped himself in front of piles of paper. I smiled at him in thanks.

“Wow, you have a lot of crap,” Rian stated bluntly, looking over Jack’s shoulder.

“Gee thanks, Ri.”

“Just saying,” he smiled. I glanced over at what Jack and Rian were looking at. It was my memory box. It was filled with books, elementary art projects, trinkets, baptismal souvenirs, cards and pictures. They all had some sort of significance that I never wanted to forget. Jack had dumped it all out on the floor and it was at that moment that I realized how many keepsakes I had. It had never occurred to me that I had so much to be appreciative of and I knew the pile would only get bigger.

Living happily hadn’t crossed my mind that much over the past year but when I scanned over the collection, I noted that there was hardly anything to even signify my existence in 2005.

Jack picked up a photo album of me from elementary school and started flip through it, smiling once in a while at how funny I looked or a cute pose I was strutting. There were a lot of photos. My parents used to take pictures all the time and so did I. Hundreds of pictures that had been previously stacked in the box were now spread out across the carpet and I suddenly became very aware of them.

“You don’t have to go through that box,” I said hurriedly. I crawled over to the box quickly and started to scoop up the items and put them back. “They’re just nothings. I’ll go through it later.”

Rian, Jack and now Kaylie were immersed in the hundreds of photos to really take notice and Melanie didn’t protest to taking a look either. “Really, guys. We can just put this stuff back.” I took the book from Jack and threw it in the box.

“Aw come on, we wanna look!” Melanie protested. “You were cute!”

“Yeah,” Kaylie and Rian voiced.

“It’s just--”

“Who is this guy?” Jack interrupted me. “He’s in a bunch of these pictures…” The other three squished closer to Jack to try and sneak a peak of this “mysterious guy” in the pictures Jack was flipping through.

I cringed.

“He’s cute,” Kaylie observed simply. “Who is he?”

I looked at all four of the expecting faces. I felt…guilty. I had become best friends with these people, but I hid this “secret” from them, which shouldn’t have even been a secret in the first place.

“He’s no one.” I tore my eyes away from theirs, avoiding eye contact and continued to gather all the loose pictures in a pile.

“He’s in like, every picture,” Rian observed, flipping through a stack. I nodded my head slowly. “Seriously. Who is he?”

This was the moment. I was going to tell them everything I had been hiding. At first Jade and I had kept the secret because we didn’t want to seem weak. Every time someone asked why we moved to Lutherville, we made up a shitty excuse or avoided the question. We continued doing that and soon it just spiraled out of control. There was never a good time to tell them. So we kept the secret. It just made sense. But with the whole running away thing, we knew they were suspicious. They asked us all the time. “Homesick,” was our response. It was only a matter of time, I guess.

“Who is he, Bailey?” Rian repeated slowly, a scared look on his face. I must have looked distraught or anxious because worry flashed across all their faces for a second.

“He’s my brother.”

There was a silence. “You have a brother?” Melanie broke the quiet after processing the information.

My voice cracked, “Yeah…”

“Well what’s his name?” Kaylie asked excitedly.

“Sam.”

“I never knew that…” Rian trailed off into thought.

“Yeah.” I shifted awkwardly on the floor. “Jay and I don’t like to talk about him that much.”

“Why? Do you guys not get along?”

“No, we did. He was the best.”

“…Was?” Jack asked slowly. I nodded my head slowly and looked down in my lap.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t feeling the emotion that usually bubbled up inside me when I let my mind settle on Sam for too long. I didn’t have the urgency to lock myself in my room and crawl under my covers for days. I didn’t want to scream. Sam’s name just rolled off my tongue. Sam. Sam. Samuel James Bates.

I did, though, feel horrible. I felt so stupid just telling them now. Yeah, Alex knew about Sam for a while now. But now Jack, Rian, Kalie and Melanie knew. It was weird. I didn’t want them to pity me. I didn’t want them to say something and then catch themselves and apologize ceaselessly for something that might have offended me, like my other friends had. I just wanted to be normal to them. Because I was. And I knew once the words about Sam left my mouth, I was normal again. It was up to them now.

I looked up at the four of them. None of them were catching on. Jack looked at me, waiting for a story to come pouring out about where Sam was and what he was doing. Rian and Melanie were probably still processing the idea of me having a brother.

Kaylie looked at me strangely. I finally knew what teachers were talking about when they say that students have a look that washes over them when they finally understand something. Because Kaylie finally caught on.

“He…Oh, Bailey,” Kaylie said sympathetically. She quickly scooted over to me and wrapped her hands around my shoulders tightly, never going to let go. I felt tears stinging at my eyes and the more I thought about Kaylie’s embrace, the more I wanted to cry. I closed my eyes and buried my head in her hair.

Soon I felt another pair of arms around my back and I immediately recognized the scent of Jack. I let a couple tears fall, not exactly sure why I was crying. The sentiment in the room, the memories of Sam. Soon we had formed a giant ball of bodies, hugging.

Someone started stroking my hair, another rubbing my back. “You guys, I’m okay,” I protested. “Really.”

Slowly we broke apart and I smiled shyly at them. I don’t think they knew how to act around me, but I didn’t want them to feel that way so I picked up a picture and studied it for a moment.

“This was Sam.” I laid the photo flat in the middle of us all. It was taken about a year and a half ago in the park. Sam had his skateboard in hand and Jade had attacked his back for a ride. They were both squinting into the bright afternoon sun. I stood off to the right with sunglasses, around Sam’s height due to the roller blades that were strapped on my feet.

“He looks awesome!” Melanie said, grabbing the picture to examine it closer. Probably due to the fact Sam had a skateboard.

I picked another one off the ground and smiled immediately. Sam and I were in front of the Christmas tree before Christmas last year. He stood behind me with bed head hair going in every direction as he used my head as a chin rest. I laughed at the memory of me complaining because every time he had talked, he chin dug into the top of my skull.

“I think there are older ones of us in here…” I mumbled quietly, digging through the scrapbooks.

“Wow, he looks just like you,” Jack observed. He held a picture of him up to my face, tickling my cheek. “It’s Bailey and Jay smashed together without a vagina.”

Melanie started howling and I giggled, trying to picture Jade and I morphed into one body. I guess Jack’s statement was pretty valid. Sam was the medium of me and Jade. I think that’s why we got a long so well.

“Is this him too?” Rian asked curiously, eyes focused on a little six-year old boy with flower clips in his hair and Pretty, Pretty Princess jewelry clipped on his ears.

“Oh gosh. Yeah, that’s Sam alright! He always played anything with us.”

“He must have been one great guy,” Rain said forlornly. I nodded slowly.

“W-What...what happened?” Melanie asked, tentative to ask.

I glanced up at four pairs of shimmering eyes. I could tell they were anxious. So I told them. I told them about Sam first, and how he was the best brother. I told them about pancake Saturdays and how we always followed him to the skate park. I told them about how we spent our summers together and how we were a happy family.

And then I told them about April 2, 2005. I told them about the blood and the tears and the horror. I told them about the trauma and how I was never myself. I told them I cried all the time and was miserable.

Rian, Kaylie, Melanie and Jack sat by me, taking it all in. I’m sure it was a lot to process in one sitting. Hell, it took me almost a year to.

But then, I told them about moving. I told them that we moved to Lutherville so I could stop being unhappy and Jade came with me. I explained that I became happy here.

“Then…why did you leave again?” Jack asked, sounding a little hurt. “I don’t get it. You said you were happy here.”

“Well,” I smiled, “Jade moved all the way down here for me. She wanted to move back? I moved with her.”

Rian was the first to speak after another wave of silence. “It all makes sense now.” I looked at him confused. “Everything just, just falls into place and just…makes sense.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but Kaylie and Melanie shook their heads in agreement.

“Well, we should hang some of these pictures up!” Jack said excitedly, after yet another silence.

A huge smile washed over my face. I don’t know why I doubted these people in the first place. Of course they wouldn’t treat me any different. They wouldn’t judge, or pester. I loved that they could just accept this.

They deserve to be mad at me. I knew so much about them and all this time I’ve been lying and making up cover stories. But instead, they simply just understand. It had to have been too easy.

A warm sensation came over my limbs at the thought of this all as the smile that played on my lips widened even more. Jack picked me up from the floor and dragged me to my dresser, where Kaylie and Rian had already piled photos and were starting to go through to pick out the best ones.

Each time I looked over a picture of me, and looked into those green eyes; I saw life. Sparkling, shimmering emerald happiness. I looked up at the mirror on top of my dresser and into my eyes. There weren’t dull anymore. They were sparkling, shimmering emerald happiness.

Things were going to be alright.