Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 (2 page)

“Baby.” Mom grins. She grabs my hand and places it over the spot where the baby is stirring.

Night owl
, I think,
we’ll get along just fine
. I keep my hand pressed against her stomach as my eyes start to close. The thoughts cluttering my mind blend together like every color of the rainbow and melt into a puddle of indistinguishable brown.

“Sleep well,” Mom says quietly as I drift off to sleep.

A baby boy enters my dreams, a boy with grubby hands and green snotty nose, dressed in a soiled onesie. The spitting image of his father, possessing just my mother’s eyes.

A wailing, ill-tempered infant that pulls on my hair when I hold him. I put him in his crib and sing him a lullaby, but his wailing persists and the more I sing, the louder it gets.

He cries all night, his tears somehow falling from his crib and wetting my own face.

I wake up with a throat sore from screaming and my cheeks damp with tears. The Vicodin and alcohol take the sharpness off my depression but can’t clear it away completely. Every time I close my eyes, it rears its ugly head again.

Spencer is the only medication that can truly suppress the grim feelings.
Spencer with his diaphanous voice and arms that tower over me when I need to feel safe again.

I don’t enjoy making Bailey cry. After hurting her I am always left with a feeling like my insides have been replaced with dirt and earthworms. But it has to be this way. I don’t choose to be vicious or cruel, any more than one chooses what kind of family they are born into. My heartlessness is innate. I’m a monster, caged in a world full of humans. Loving, caring, feeling, despicable humans.

I need to be let free.

Free of my dad’s abuse, free of my conscience, which tells me I should kill Bailey, free of my hands that break through bone and hardened exteriors like hollow chocolate bunnies.
Free
, the word I wrote on my wall in blood the same day Clad and Bailey came to school with loaded guns.
A bullet for me. A bullet for Bailey
.

I saw her in the hall, the barrel of Clad’s gun pressed against her forehead. Hand buried in the front pocket of a black, over-sized hoodie, clutching what I believed to be a pistol. Hardly able to stand on her own, face drained of blood and eyes full of determination; she was on a mission — probably to kill me, probably to kill Trenton. Clad would have been a miniscule distraction if he hadn’t pressed his Beretta between her eyes. Here was the boy that had been in love with her since kindergarten, ready to blow her head to bits.

At the time, I speculated what would happen if Clad were to pull the trigger, releasing the bullet that would shatter Bailey’s skull and force her brain out her ears, like hamburger meat through a meat grinder.

I was ecstatic.
Thrilled
. For the moment, Bailey was alive. I had spent the previous night bawling in my bed, hyperventilating because I had killed her. Now, the breakdown was a far off memory as she stood before me. She looked at me for but a second; my eyes snapping a picture and inputting every detail of her. Sweatpants soaked through with blood, hand curled in an unusual fashion, knuckles purple and yellow.
A beautiful wreck
.

Her eyes were alight with a fire, ignited by me and so many others who had tortured her. How could people so cold spark such flames?

Kill me,
I thought
.
Go ahead, put me out of my misery.
Put you out of your misery.

She didn’t see the pathetic expression on my face, or the tears pooled in my eyes. She could not hear my internal plea, screaming at her to end me. Bailey’s fire-eyes were focused on Clad as if he were the only thing in this world she could see.

I balled my hand into a fist and bit my knuckles. I so desperately wanted to scream at Clad, “
You love her, you fool! She’s your everything!
”

His lips moved, mouthing something to her, the gun leaving her face. She stared at him, her eyes and mouth open wide in shock. Taking one quick glance at me, she pivoted, bolted to the door and then threw herself down the main staircase. I watched her flowing black hair chasing after her, a black cloud of doom as she scrambled out of the school building. It took the sound of Clad’s gun going off to wake me from my stupor.

Bang
. I began to run full speed from its range. Fear seeped into me and ran cold through my body, screams of terror and the reverberation of gunshots pushing me, as well as everyone else, out of the school. I hit the back doors with my fists in panic before they opened up to the outside.

Spinning around, I tried to catch another glimpse of Bailey making off on her white horse of surrender, but we had exited the building opposite ways. My heart sank as it came to me that I would never see her again.

Choosing to also leave, I passed by the front of the school and witnessed a SWAT team burst through the front doors and swarm in like a militia of black sugar ants on a piece of unwrapped candy.

When I got home, my heart fell at seeing Papa’s truck parked in the driveway.

Papa stood with his back against the front door. I immediately wished I could turn back and return to school, unseen.

“What are
you
doing home? You’re supposed to be at school.” His hardened face brightened at the prospect of beating me for playing hooky.

“I – we got let out early. There was a shooting.”

He laughed at this, his stomach jiggling and his yellow, cracked teeth exposed as he threw back his head. Tears dotted the corners of his eyes, he laughed so hard.
Tears dotted the corners of my eyes, too.

“Every time you get more creative with your lies.”

“I’m not lying!
It’s true
, turn on the news and you’ll see.” I fought him.

“Get inside, you little bitch!” He proceeded to pull me through the door and into the kitchen by my ponytail. Then he tossed me to the floor.

I picked myself off the ground, bringing a hand to my lips, I wiped at what I thought was spit. I looked down at my shirt stained with drops of red. Blood dripped from my chin.

Papa’s strong hands gripped my shoulders, making me face him. “
Go to your room
,” he said in a voice so cold that I shuddered as its iciness overcame me.

I stood my ground.

“Now!” He shoved me in the direction of my room. I picked up my feet and he followed.

With Papa only a step behind, I ran ahead and barricaded my bedroom door with spread-out arms. My gaze shifted to an empty pack of cigarettes that I had left laying on my vanity in plain view.

“They weren’t mine, they weren’t mine!” I screamed as Papa hoisted me up and removed me from the doorway. He picked up the empty cigarette box and chucked it across the room. Then he came back at me in a rage, shoving me backward into the vanity. My head broke the mirror.

“Just like your mother, smoking and lying all the time,” Papa said.

I shook my head. “No, I’m not anything like Mom. Mom never put up with your bullshit, she had the balls enough to leave you.”

“You ever try to leave,” he said, his cheesy breath curdling as it hit the air, “and I will hunt you down!”

“I hate you! You fat, hideous jerk!” I screamed after him as he slammed my bedroom door shut.

I collapsed on my bed, the broken mirror reflecting my pitiful face in every fragment of glass. Two dozen crying, bleeding Miemahs. I could never hate the look of my face more than I did in that moment. Trapped and grotesque.

I ran my fingertips over my swollen lips, coating them with blood. Rising from the bed, I pushed my vanity aside to clear a spot on the wall. With bloody fingertips I wrote something I knew I could never be:
free
.

I pushed the vanity back into place.

Humans are not related to monkeys, we are related to flowers. Yes, flowers. Growing from a tiny, insignificant seed, and then spending the rest of our days struggling for nourishment from the soil and breath from the sun, pushing between sidewalk cracks, bricks and mortar, to be seen. We are all flowers, on the surface thin and frail, the petals and stem. But beneath the soil we have strong roots buried deep, mooring us down.

I wanted to be dead; I lamented that I had not died when Trenton drowned me in the retention pond. I stumbled through the door a zombie, covered in blood, clothes falling off my body like rotting skin.

Mom was in my bedroom making the bed; I dropped her Walther to the ground and went down with it. Bullets clinked as they rolled out of Clad’s hoodie, stopping at her feet.

“What have you done?” Mom asked, quietly at first. “What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” Her voice grew louder and louder, like the siren of an ambulance, urgent and demanding.

I lay on the ground, my breathing ragged, eyes trying hard to stay open. I had lost so much blood. The cut on my thigh could not clot because I had kept running.

She saw the blood on me and thought it belonged to someone else. “Who did you kill? You’re not my daughter! I don’t even know who you are, anymore!” Mom said, shaking me. She removed her trembling hands from my shoulders and covered her face.

“It’s my blood, Mommy,” I said in-between restricted breaths. “Only my blood… I didn’t hurt anyone.”

She flipped me over, saw the long gash on my thigh and dissolved to tears. “Why didn’t you kill them?” she demanded. “
You should have killed them!
”

I should have, but
he
stopped me. My mind slowed down and trickled out on the floor with my blood, leaving me breathless. Mom grew fuzzy and grey around the edges, and then everything went black like I had closed my eyes.

Mom would later tell me they were still open.

I was airlifted to Lee Memorial Hospital. “I’ve never ridden in a helicopter before,” I can recall Mom saying thoughtfully, as a paramedic pumped air into my body.

As soon as I came to, I was bombarded with questions from men in black and women bleached white. My head spun, dizzy at all the questions. How was I to answer?

How could I tell the police about Miemah and Trenton without fear of revulsion from the Allie? Without fear of being arrested for assaulting Miemah with a broken golf club?

Sure, I could easily argue self-defense, but couldn’t Miemah argue the same? And what if she had seen me in the hallway at school with a gun in my hand…and then, there was Clad to worry about—he knew I had gone to school with a gun, even if Miemah didn’t.

I decided it would be so much easier to just tell them I had no clue what happened. That I barely knew my own name, let alone how I had ended up on a stretcher, tubes invading my every body cavity.

I faked amnesia, which wasn’t so hard because I really
had
blocked out most of the ordeal from memory. When their questions started to flood me, I made my eyes grow large and rested my head in my hands, pretending to know nothing of what they asked. I told them that I was Bailey Angel Sykes, and that I was in a
lot
of pain. Upon seeing my distress, the nurses would shoo the investigators away.

In the time I spent in the hospital recovering, my case seemed to drop away from everyone’s minds. I threatened Mom that I would let the officers in on her abuse if she pressed the case or gave any information other than that I had miraculously showed on our doorstep half-dead and bloodied.

If investigators did go to Surfside High, I’d bet money that none of the counselors, teachers or students admitted to knowing I had been viciously bullied before this most recent attack. That would make them liable for not believing me in the first place, all of them except one.
The bird lady
. I can’t remember her name now, but I could never forget her gentle touch, kind face, and sincere voice:
I believe you
.

But, did I believe
myself
? Did I really believe that I was pretending to not know of what happened for fear of revulsion?
Not a snowballs chance in hell
.

I couldn’t decipher the cause of my silent mouth. Maybe fear, but fear of what? If not of revulsion…
then what
? The more I thought about it, the more confused I became.

It was like Miemah’s attacks had been salt: you keep sprinkling it on your food not knowing you have until that first salty bite, and then you are forced to finish your meal one salty bite at time. The attacks kept coming and I tasted them, all right.

With my suffering came a sick sense of pride; I was an unbreakable superhuman, having survived not only Mom’s beatings, but Miemah’s too. I had become the strongest girl alive. No one was going to take that away from me, pinning me as a helpless, shattered victim. After all, Miemah had collected many victims. I wanted to be her first
survivor
.

I remained in the hospital for a few weeks and had a lot of empty hours to ponder over the consequences of almost bringing my Bullet List to life. I had essentially rid myself of Miemah, Cecil, Nessa, Latcher, Stewart and Trenton. However, in the process of doing so, I had accidentally rid myself of Clad, too. I prayed to God to bring all my tormenters back, just so I would not have to be without Clad. The thing is, I didn’t realize how much I had been leaning on him until he was gone and I dropped to my knees without his support.

He shot at the ceiling for me, drywall falling into his hair, his face clear of all emotion. I ran like there was a derailed freight train headed for me. He had no intention of shooting me.
Of course not
; he was too smart for that. Clad, with his huge heart and Einstein brain, had figured out a middle ground.

No one has to die
. It was a win-win situation. He tricked me into thinking I’d die if I went through with my Bullet List. I was a turkey with its head cut off, running circles at the sight of his gun.

It took me until I got home to see through the plan he had negotiated with himself: scare Bailey off, then fire the gun, the SWAT team will come running in and she won’t be able to come back into the school.