A Boy and A Girl

Chapter 8 ゜ ✭ ・.

Point of View: Bailey

A loud alarm was blaring in Bailey's ears as he woke up the next morning. "Ugh, shut up!" He groaned. "Crap, I forgot to cut my alarm off, I don't even have school today!" He whined and he sat up, hair matted and messy, to cut off the loud, annoying siren noise that his father had installed as his alarm.

"That siren is obnoxiously loud..." he muttered to himself. Once he cut the alarm off, he noticed that he had several messages from the night before. He clicked on the notification, which showed two messages from Allen and one from Genevieve.

'Bailey, text me back. Blondie said something weird last night and I have some questions.' Was Allen's first text. He didn't have to read the second to know that it was most likely an angry text because Bailey didn't immediately respond, so he ignored that one and moved on to Genevieve's text.

'Wanna come eat lunch with me sometime around 11:30? I have some place suggestions if you want!' Bailey grinned at Genevieve's usage of perfect grammar, even within the confines of an informal text message. He checked the time, which was 9:37. Plenty of time to get ready. Besides, it had been a long time since Genevieve asked him to go anywhere with her. The opportunity was too good to pass up.

He thought about how to respond for a minute, and finally settled on, 'Sure, sounds great! 💙😊 where u wanna go?'

After about fifteen to twenty minutes, in which he first waited while lying on his bed, then got bored and prepared himself a bowl of cereal, a notification sound went off. He picked up his phone and saw a response from Ginny. 'Solstice's sound good? Idk if you've ever been there but their coffee & pastries are awesome!'

'I haven't but it sounds nice, see u there! ☕️' Bailey happily finished his cereal and jumped up and down with excitement. Getting to see Genevieve again sounded awesome, especially if the meeting included coffee and sweets. On second thought, Bailey realized it wasn't likely a good idea to drink coffee, and also figured that he should take his ADHD medication. He sifted through the cabinets, which were filled with his family's various medications and vitamins that they took each day, plus some that they only took when sick. Finally, he located his medicine and took out one of the small pills, the size of his pinky fingernail.

The blond teen poured himself some orange juice and took the medicine with that, then looked around. His mom was still asleep, and he assumed that his dad was too, since he was supposed to be off today. Amelia was likely asleep as well since she'd gotten into the habit of sleeping until early afternoon, to his and his parents' relief.

Out of boredom, Bailey began sifting through old photos on his phone. He laughed as he came across a photo of himself, Ginny, and Allen together, painting flowers. Ginny's flower was a sunflower, which was alright for a painting made by someone her age. Allen's flower looked more like a pincushion, but no one was going to tell him that. Bailey's flower was a pink rose. It was incredible, but at the time he figured that the average fifth grader could draw that well. "Fifth grade." He smiled. "A week before Daisy moved here... a year before Ginny and I started drifting apart." He leaned back. "Wow, time flies. Can't believe we're actually in high school." He grinned. "Not just in high school but in our third year. That's..." he couldn't think of a word to describe it. "Strange? Crazy? Unbelievable? All of those mixed? Yeah, that last thing." He smiled and continued scrolling. He found many photos from when he was younger that made him smile.

However, when he scrolled back down a bit toward the current time... well, he wished he hadn't. Bailey's hands began shaking, as his eyes had locked onto a photo from seventh grade. Long after he didn't hang out with Ginny anymore... it was three young children, posing for the camera. One was himself, holding a baseball with a bat propped up against his leg, a goofy grin on his face. The next Allen, standing up in between the two boys who were sitting. He looked so happy in that picture, happier than Bailey had seen him look in a long time. Then there was the last kid...