The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Liv and Maddie)

1

There's no place like homecoming

A year after liv left, when maddie was 10 years old, she went on a family vacation to sandals, Jamaica. It was the first time liv wasn't there with them.

"I need help! Someone get this jellyfish off me!", she screamed, and quickly discovered that she hated the ocean.

Up until that moment, maddie had a relatively good life. Life wasn't amazing, but it's not like she fantasized about killing herself. It was good enough, she was popular enough, smart enough.

The only thing that was actually amazing was Daniel. Daniel was like a dream, gorgeous and really nice. The kind of boy that would text her every night before bed and say "sweet dreams". And the kind of boy that would meet her outside of school every morning just to make sure he could hold her hand as they walked down the hall. She could never figure out why Daniel chose her, what Daniel actually liked or loved about her. She just knew it felt really good.

"Can I have another one?", maddie asked for another drink. "sure", Karen, her mom, answered.

During her eight-day stay on that island, she drank 72 virgin pina coladas. It was heaven. And then she got home.

When she left for Jamaica, maddie was 107 pounds. When she returned, her body had gained extra weight. And it was noticeable. she did her best to minimize her fallout. She was sad and very angry at herself, she hadn't kept in shape, which is really important if you're going to become a star basketball player. At school, everyone looked at her as if they were seeing a monster.

"you're wearing two sweatshirts?", one of her classmates asked, "no", she said, with a clear embarrassment on her face.

Daniel didn't make a big deal out of it. That's why she liked him. He didn't care about what people thought. He liked her for whatever reasons he liked her, and 20 stupid pounds would never change that. Until fourth period.

Maddie received a message written on a paper, "I can't be with you anymore. I'm sorry. By the way, your sister looks way prettier". It wasn't even in Daniel's handwriting. It was Kendra Sutherland's.

Whatever. she didn't actually love Daniel. She was 11. And when you're 11, you fall in love with everyone and everything. It's not real love. Real love is when you can't exist without someone, real love was what she had with liv. But, ever since that letter, she viewed her life from a different perspective. Liv was the prettier one, and as much as she didn't want that letter to affect her... It did. Whenever she'd see her sister on tv, she compared to her. And it made her angry. That's why she never watched "sing it loud", because it was better for her to keep viewing her as her sister, whom she loved very deeply, and not as a spoiled annoying actress, who at her age already had the success she was pursuing with basketball.

With Liv's absence, maddie learned how to be by herself, and most importantly work on her self-esteem. For a whole year, she was very focused on her non-stop everyday workout. Given that she couldn't stand being called the least graceful twin. That, in her head, was totally unreasonable that people called her that. What did they even mean? They had the same face. The only difference is that she has glasses and liv doesn't, and also that she dresses like she's meeting Queen Elizabeth and maddie, like what you normally wear when you want to chill out at home.

Anyways, she finally recovered from that horrible trip and she was in shape again. Of course, after that, Daniel tried to apologize to her for what he had said, but fuck him, she thought. She didn't even care anymore if he liked her or not.

So naturally, he had to repeat 5th grade, because, forgot to mention, maddie was the one who did all his homework.

She was able to recover physically and emotionally from the easy-passed heartbreak. But never fully recovered from that letter. Unfortunately, she had let it sink in.