Between Us (12 page)

Hannah jerked towards Bailey, teetered—then her feet came down.
Splat! Splat!
“That's not fair,” Hannah said, raw egg spreading into little puddles around her heels. “I only wanted some paper. And Olivia
asked
me what was wrong.”

“Olivia, your new best friend,” Bailey snapped. “Who you stole!”

“Nobody stole me!” Olivia yelled from the sidelines. “I'm mad at you because you lied about me! I'm mad at you because of what
you
did—not because of anything Hannah did.”

The words were like a slap. Bailey's knees gave way.
Splat! Splat!

She was out too.

She'd lost the competition for her grade!

1.
    
If you can, talk to the person face-to-face.

2.
    
Think about what you want to say in advance.

3.
    
Say what you did wrong.

4.
    
Don't make excuses.

5.
    
Say you're sorry.

6.
    
Promise you won't do it again.

7.
    
No matter how it goes down, don't gossip about it with other people.

Bailey stopped by the scoreboard outside the cafeteria at the end of the day. She couldn't stop herself. The seventh graders had moved into second place. Her grade was last! She felt sick inside.

But if she was honest with herself, losing the competition was only part of what was making her feel
so bad, the smallest part. Olivia was furious with her; so were Tess and Vivi. Bailey wasn't sure they'd ever want to be friends with her again. And everyone in the sixth grade was mad at her for making them lose the competition.

Why had Hannah had to move here? She'd ruined everything.

“Thanks for nothing, Bailey,” Taylor from her homeroom muttered as he passed by. “We could still be tied for first if you hadn't messed up.”

Bailey didn't answer. He was right. She'd lost focus. She'd let herself get distracted. Olivia shouting about how mad she was at Bailey had forced all thoughts of the competition out of her head.

So shouldn't people be blaming Olivia too?

You started it. You distracted Hannah first,
that little voice in the back of Bailey's head commented. She was so sick of that little voice. The most annoying thing about it? It was always right. Bailey
had
distracted Hannah. She could have waited to talk to her about what she'd done, how she'd stolen all Bailey's friends, until after the contest was over.

Bailey started the walk home, all by herself. It felt like the sidewalk had turned to quicksand. Each step took so much effort. All she wanted to do was talk to
Olivia. That's what she always did when something was bugging her. But how could she talk to Olivia about a problem that
involved
Olivia?

She half expected for her mother to start yelling at her as soon as she walked through the door. If Hannah had complained to her mother, Aunt Caitlin would have called Bailey's mom for sure. But when Bailey called out “I'm home,” her mother just called a “Hi” back.

“How'd the competition go?” her mom asked, stepping into the living room.

“Okay,” Bailey said. “Well, not okay really. We lost. The contest was who could stand on tiptoe the longest.” She hoped she sounded normal. She didn't want a lot of questions from her mother.

“Who comes up with these crazy things?” her mom asked.

“Who knows?” Bailey said. “I guess I'll go knock out my homework.” She hurried into her room and flopped down on her bed. Something was poking into her spine. She dug under her back and pulled out her spiral-bound polka-dotted notebook.

She started to throw it onto the floor, then flipped it open instead. She'd bought a new notebook especially for her first year of middle school. She'd known she'd need lots of lists. Sixth grade was an important year.

Looking at the first list made her feel a little sad. She'd made a big checkmark next to everything she'd come up with to make her first week epic. It had been great too. Now it felt like that first week was the best the year was going to be. Everything from now on was going to be awful.

She flipped the page. The next list was the one about making Hannah feel incredibly welcome. She'd been sincere when she'd written that one. And the one about making that welcome lunch perfect.

She kept flipping, pausing at the one about how to deal with Hannah annoying her, then continuing to the page with the list of how Bailey's life would be better without Hannah around.
If you'd seen a list like that about you . . . ,
the insanely annoying voice in her brain began, but Bailey willed it to a stop.

The list was fair,
she told herself.
Hannah practically destroyed my life.
She'd . . . She'd . . . For a second her mind went blank.

Okay, for starters, she'd tried to get into every single one of Bailey's classes—and she'd ended up in four of them. She'd bought a scarf that was almost identical to Bailey's and painted her nails like Bailey's. And she'd agreed with Bailey a bunch of times.

Was that it? There had to be more!

She'd gotten Granddad to paint Bailey's mural on
her
walls. But Bailey hadn't said that bothered her. Hannah would have picked something different if she had. Bailey had to admit that.

There had to be other things. . . .

Hannah had let herself have an allergy attack at Kitty City. That was dumb of her. She'd drunk that watermelon lemonade, even though she didn't like it. It's not as if pretending to like something you were served at someone else's house was evil. It was actually basic politeness. Ignoring one of your allergies wasn't evil either. But it was dumb. It just was.

Oh! She'd glommed on to Gus.

After Bailey had introduced them and arranged it so they'd have to spend time together.

She'd made Bailey's friends sneak around behind Bailey's back.

But they'd realized that was wrong of them, and they had apologized.

What was Bailey going to do? She'd messed everything up. Everything.

She had to start with the worst thing she'd done. She had to start with Hannah. Olivia, Tess, and Vivi had already given her the solution.

Bailey sat up and grabbed a pen from her desk. She turned to a fresh page in her notebook and began a new list:
How to Apologize
. When she finished, she sent Hannah a text.

can i come over?

The reply came back almost instantaneously.

no.

to apologize. then i'll leave.

Bailey had to count to almost two hundred hippopotamus before the answer arrived.

whatever.

That was close enough to a yes for Bailey. “Mom, I'm going to Hannah's, okay?” she called as she burst out of her room. She didn't wait for an answer. It was always okay to go over to her grandparents'. It was basically part of Bailey's own house.

When Bailey arrived, Hannah was waiting outside, the way she had so many times when Bailey showed up to walk to school with her. “I don't want my mom or our grandparents to hear,” Hannah said. “That's why I'm out here. I don't want you to accuse me of tattling again.”

“It's not tattling to talk to your friends,” Bailey answered. This was hard. Harder even than she'd
expected it to be. “And Olivia, Tess, and Vivi—they
are
your friends.”

“They already admitted they met up behind your back so they could have some time without me,” Hannah told her.

“I'm sorry. I'd have shriveled into a little puddle of goo if anyone had said that to me. It would have hurt so much,” Bailey answered. “And anyway, now they realize you were just nervous and uncomfortable when you first started school. Once you relaxed a little and they started getting to know the real you, not the you trying to be me, they all really liked you.”

Hannah crossed her arms. “But you didn't.”

No lying,
Bailey told herself. “No, I didn't. That wasn't because of you, though.”

Hannah snorted. “Right, that's why you made that list about how to deal with how annoying I was.”

“Okay, yeah, I did think you were a little annoying,” Bailey admitted. “I guess you've noticed that I like to make plans.”

“Yeah. Hard not to,” Hannah said.

“Well, I had all these plans for my first year of middle school. And—”

“And I ruined them,” Hannah interrupted.

“Not ruined. But like I thought I'd take drama this
year and I'd show the drama teacher what a great actress I was, and then maybe next year she'd give me a supporting part in one of the school plays, and then in the eighth grade I'd get the lead. So when you wanted to be my partner, it's like I couldn't do what I'd planned. No offense, but you aren't the best scene partner.”

“I know. I hate that class!” Hannah burst out. “Or I did at first.”

“I know! So why'd you join? Just so you'd know somebody in class?” Bailey asked. She really wanted to understand.

“Partly. But partly because I wanted you to like me,” Hannah said. “That's why I did the same nails too.”

“And why you choked down my watermelon lemonade?” Bailey asked.

Hannah nodded.

“I don't really choose friends based on if they like the same flavor of drink I do,” Bailey said. “Or if they do their nails the same way. Olivia and I wouldn't be friends if that's how it worked. We're totally different.”

Hannah sighed and sat down on the grass. Bailey sat down across from her. “It wasn't just that. My mom kept telling me how many friends you had. She was trying to make me feel better about moving here. I guess I thought if I acted like you, they'd be my friends too.”

“Right now if you acted like me, you wouldn't have any friends,” Bailey admitted. “Well, I still have Gus, I guess. But I won't when he finds out what I did to you.” She fluffed the grass with her fingers. “I started getting really jealous of you, if you want to know the truth.”

“Jealous. Of me? I don't think so,” Hannah said.

“It's true. I've known Gus almost since birth. Our birthdays are two days apart. And all of a sudden he likes you more than me. He drives me crazy half the time. But when he helped you with your costume after he said he wouldn't help me, I got jealous. I was soooo jealous. Then Olivia asked you to go celebrate at Emmy's, and that's something we've always done, just the two of us. So I was even more jealous.”

She glanced over her shoulder at her grandparents' house. “Also I'm jealous of you being able to be with Grandma and Granddad so much,” Bailey said. She might as well get out the whole ugly truth.

“You've spent your whole life with them, though!” Hannah cried.

“I know. I'm pure evil,” Bailey answered.

“Maybe not absolutely pure,” Hannah said. “You did make that list about how to make me feel insanely welcome.”

“And had an epic fail.” She couldn't think of anything
else to say. “I'm sorry about it all.” She stood up. “I could start a list on how to make it up to you, if you want.”

“No more lists about me, okay?” Hannah asked. “Let's see what happens when you don't feel like you have to be nice to me.”

“And when you tell me what you actually like and don't like, and what you actually want to do and not do,” Bailey answered. She stood up. “I guess I should go. I have about a million more people to say I'm sorry to. I started with you because I owed you the biggest apology.”

“Who else?” Hannah stood up too.

“Olivia, definitely. And Vivi and Tess. It wasn't fair to them to tell you they didn't want to be around you when I knew it wasn't true anymore.”

“But you said about a million.” Hannah brushed a few pieces of grass off the red-and-white-striped skirt she'd worn as part of her Captain America costume.

“Did you forget about the entire sixth grade?” Bailey asked. “We could have won today if I wasn't such a jerk.”

Hannah smiled. “Yeah, I had you beat before you started fighting with me.”

“That's not what I—” Bailey stopped and smiled back. “One of us would have beaten those older kids.”

“If only you weren't such a jerk.” Hannah's tone was teasing. “Remember the list you made about being MVP?” she asked.

“Hmm-hmm. Why?” Bailey replied.

“You had something on there about having practice sessions for the contests,” Hannah said.

“But it turned out we don't find out what the challenges are in advance, so we couldn't practice,” Bailey reminded her.

“I have an idea. How many kids from our class do you think you could get over here right away?” Hannah asked.

“Not as many as you could,” Bailey admitted. “I'm not very popular right now.”

“Okay, I'll text everyone. Here's the plan.” Hannah quickly explained her idea to Bailey.

“That's awesome. That should definitely get us some bonus points!” Bailey told her. “I'll make a list of everything we're going to need. Oh, text Gus too. Ask him to bring his monster makeup.”

Olivia was the first person to show up. Her face tightened when she saw Bailey. “You didn't tell me she was going to be here, Hannah.”

“Can we do the short-version apology, Oh?” You
couldn't be friends with someone for more than four years without having a few fights. Once after a blowup, she and Olivia had come up with a speed apology.

“That's a best-friend thing,” Olivia answered.

“I know,” Bailey answered. She turned to Hannah. “You should learn it too.”

“Best doesn't work that way,” Hannah answered. “There can only be one best.”

“I'm always telling Bailey everything doesn't fit in a list. With friends, you don't have to have a number one and a number two,” Olivia said.

“And I did just promise not to make any more lists about you,” Bailey told Hannah.

“Okay, so how does it work?” Hannah asked.

“Whoever is apologizing says five words that describe what they're sorry for. Then the other person says ‘Accept.'”

Hannah looked from Bailey to Olivia. “What if they don't?”

“It's never happened . . . so far,” Bailey said. She turned to Olivia. “Here goes. Mean. Selfish. Jealous. Jealous. Jealous.”

“You said jealous three times,” Olivia pointed out.