When I opened my eyes, I was in was in my own room in my bed. The sun shone brightly through my opened window. Remembering what happened last night, I quickly sat up and looked around the room for any signs for Jasper, but he was nowhere to be seen. “It was only a dream,” I told myself, soothingly. “Jasper really couldn’t fly.” But what did really happen last night? One thing for sure was I didn’t remember coming home from the mall. A cool breeze flew through the window to my chilled body. Shivering, I rubbed my bare arms. I ran over to my window and slammed it shut. Sitting down Indian style on my bed, I thought back, trying to remember exactly what happened, but this strange dream kept coming back to me. As I slightly closed my eye, I began to see flashbacks of me riding onto Jasper’s back as he soared through the air. It had felt so real, but how could it be? My eyes shot back opened, when it struck me. What if it wasn’t all a dream. What if Jasper flew me to the top of that building, waited until I fell asleep, and then took me home, thinking I would think it was all a dream. I smacked my head with the palm of my hand. How could I not see that coming; he almost had me that time, but man is it going to be fun proving him wrong. I couldn’t wait until our date tonight. Sighing happily, I laid back down on my bed. I flipped my cell phone opened to find an unread text from Jen.
It read, “Thanks for the help, Liz!!! I sent u most of the report by e-mail.”
Groaning, I rolled out of my bed. I slipped off my light Jeans revealing my dark green underwear. As I was examining the large stain in the right leg of my jeans, the door burst opened. “Holly crap!” I shouted, bending down on my knees, startled. When I realized it was only my nine year old cousin, I stood back up and starred back down at the stain on my jeans, slightly embarrassed from my reaction. She only stared at me awkwardly.
“What the?” Bailey asked, shaking her head. She was wearing a large pink coat, some light blue jeans, a pink hat, and was dragging a Hello Kitty suitcase. Her long blond hair was placed in to perfectly good pigtails.
“Sorry, I thought it was someone else,” I muttered.
“Who were you expecting?”
“Nobody; come here.” Dropping my jeans, I went over to Bailey and wrapped my arms around her, grinning. Bailey only stood there with her arms to her side, as I squeezed her tightly, her face smashed against my chest.
“OK, this has been officially awkward,” she mumbled.
“Come on, Bailey. I haven’t seen you in forever,” I whined.
Bailey sighed and wrapped her arms around my waist. However, within seconds she shoved me away. “Now get some pants on, you freak!” she shouted. Laughing, I went over to my dresser, pulled out a pair of white sweat pants, and yanked them.
“So what’s going on? What happened to you?” I asked, staring at Bailey up and down.
“Sarah and Bill let me come and stay with you for the weekend, but they turned me into girlzilla,” she exclaimed, taking of her hat and yanking out her pigtails. I laughed as Bailey shook her long blond hair everywhere. Glaring at me, she stood up straight and placed her hands on her hips. “You haven’t seen nothing.” Bailey slipped off her pink coat, revealing a pink frilly dress covered with pictures of tiny daisies and a large bow tied in the back. Trying to hold back laughter, I quickly placed my hand over my enormously large mouth and huddled over. “Very funny,” Bailey smirked, her hands back on her hips. “Do you have a tight shirt I can borrow?”
“Yeah,” I chuckled, pulling a small dark blue shirt that said, “Guys like girls with a sense of humor,” out of my dresser and tossing it to Bailey. She pulled the dress over her head, but it wouldn’t go.
“Uh, a little help, here!” Bailey shouted, stumbling over. Laughing once more, I pulled Bailey’s dress down and unzipped it. “Thanks,” she muttered, her cheeks turning slightly pink. She pulled the dress over her head and put on my dark blue one. “So do you want to go out today somewhere. Maybe grab a bite to eat? Your fridge is completely empty,” Bailey groaned in agony, holding her stomach.
“I can’t, I’m broke,” I sighed.
“That OK, cause….” Bailey reached into the front pocket of her suitcase and pulled out two twenty bills. “I got money.”
“Oh my god! They actually gave you money?” I stared at the money in her hands in shock.
“Yeah, their pretty cool. I mean for foster parent. So are we going to get something to eat or not?” Bailey stared me down with her arms folded across her chest.
“Yeah, I just have to finish a history report real quick.”
“Whatever,” Bailey shrugged, plopping down on my bed and pulling out one of my magazines.
Sitting down in my black rolling chair next to my computer, I downloaded the history report Jen sent me. After I took notes of everything Jen already put in the paper, I googled The French and Indian war and placed a bunch of facts that Jen didn’t get in the paper. “OK, just let me take a shower and then we’ll go over to Burger King or something and then go see a movie,” I told Bailey after clicking on the save button on my computer.
“Hurry up I’m starving over here,” she complained, not taking her eyes off the magazine. Rolling my eyes at her, I quickly slipped into the shower in the bathroom down the hall.
Twenty minutes later I came out of the shower and went back into my room in a red robe and a white towel twisted in my hair. Bailey was laying on her stomach on my bed still flipping through magazines. She took one look at me and groaned, impatiently. Ignoring her I grabbed my blow dryer and went back to the bathroom. After I blow dried and ran a brush through my hair and scrubbed my teeth, I pulled on another pair of holey jeans and a shirt like the one I lent Bailey except it said, “Kiss me or Beat it!” It was nearly one o’clock when I finished blackening Baileys and my eyes out with makeup. Grabbing the keys to my parents greenish grayish odyssey, we went out into the cold, snowy outdoors. Once again the harsh freezing wind blew hard against our backs. Bailey wore my blue Aeropostale jacket (that was rather big on her) instead of her pink winters coat and I clutched tightly to my brown American Eagle coat. Shivering all over, we climbed into the van and turned the heater up full blast. My parents usually spent their weekends at the bar, so they really didn’t need the car and never noticed when it was gone. Bailey turned up the radio to our favorite gangster station and started bobbing her head and shifting her hips to the music. She stared singing along to the song, but the music was too loud for me to hear her. Ginning, I drove over to the nearest Burger King only a couple miles away. When we walked inside, we found that there was hardly any people; only one quiet couple and a mother with three kids. One of them was screaming his head off and the other two were playfully tossing food at each other. The mother looked like she was about to pull out all of her nearly gray dried up hair. The place smelled of freshly made hamburgers and French fries. Besides the screaming child, you could only hear some county music playing softly throughout the restaurant. There was no line so I walked right up to the counter and glanced up at the menu.
“What do you want?” I asked Bailey.
Clearing her throat, she walked up next to me and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m buying,” she claimed holding up the two twenty dollar bills.
“So,” I snapped, pursing my lips together.
“So I’m ordering.” I folded my arms across my chest as well. I should have known it would come down to this. Bailey always loved to be in charge of things and she pursued any chance she got.
“But, I- uh, fine,” I grumbled.
Bailey stood in front of the counter. She had to stand on her tippy toes just to get her chin up there. “What do you want?” she asked turning towards me.
“Um, a number seven with the meal,”
“One number seven with the meal and one number five. Make them both small,” she told the red faced lady at the counter with dark brown hair placed in tow braids and pointy glasses.
“Will that be all for you?” the lady asked in a dull boring sort of tone.
“Yeah,” Bailey replied, a large grin on her face.
“Five ninety six.” Bailey handed the lady one of the twenty dollar bills and she gave Bailey her change. When we got our food, we filled our cups with cokes and sat down in a booth by the window as far away from the rowdy kids as possible.
“So how’s life?” I asked Bailey, taking a large bit of my sandwich.
“With the Carington’s? Pretty sweet. I mean, I’m finally the only child for once and get most of the attention. All Sarah’s fussing and attempts to trying to turn me into a girl can get annoying at times, but at least they’re not yelling at you twenty four seven for the stupidest things,” Bailey exclaimed as she stuffed her face.
“Or ignoring you,” I added, glumly.
“Hey, you get to do whatever you want and your parents never say a thing about it,” Bailey wined, placing her head on her hand.
“Yeah, how do you think I turned out like crap?” I stuffed a bunch of fries into my mouth and washed them down with a swig of coke.
Bailey stared at me, unbelievably. “You didn’t turn out like crap,” she protested.
Sighing and shaking my head, I turned away from Bailey’s sharp glance and began eating the rest of my sandwich. Bailey opened her mouth like she was about to say something, but apparently thought better of it and shoved the rest of her sandwich into her mouth instead. The mother and her three children finally left the restaurant, leaving it in complete silence. After we finished eating, we got a refill of coke and left the restaurant. When I turned on the car the music blasted full volume, making both of us jump two feet out of our seats. I quickly turned it down, and gave a sharp glare at Bailey. She only smiled sheepishly as she turned it back up a notch. As I drove all the way on the north side to the movie theater, I bobbed my head and sung along to the music with Bailey.
When I drove into the parking lot, I found that it was packed and I had to park way in the back. We ran as fast as we could in the blistering snow, blowing hard on us. When we reached the theater are hands and faces were already numb and red. Unlike Burger King the movie theater was packed with people in line to get tickets or popcorn and other junk foods. Kids screamed and whined about silly things they wanted or groups of teen all huddled together in groups chattered away about the movie they just saw.
“What do you want to see?” I asked Bailey.
“How about The Under World?” she asked, hopefully.
“Um, I think I have to be eighteen to get you into that,” I sighed. “How about twilight?”
“Seen it,” Bailey groaned.
“Bedtimes stories?”
“That’s a kids show,” she said, shaking her head.
I laughed. “You are a kid.” Bailey folded her arms across her chest and shook her head once more. “OK how about Marley and Me?” I suggested.
“That movie looks gay.” I glared at Bailey disbelievingly until she laughed.
“OK, OK, we’ll go see Marley and Me,” she sighed, smiling up at me.
When we walked up to the counter to buy the tickets, I remembered what happened at Burger King and let Bailey in front of me to get the tickets. After we bought the tickets, we bought a tube of popcorn, a large soda to share, and a large box of dots to share and went into the earliest showing. Luckily, the movie hadn’t even started yet. when we walked into the dark theater with are load of junk food, we discovered that most of the seating was occupied so we sat down in the very top row.
