Finding Myself- Chapter 2, Part 2
A/N More of chapter 2!
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I stood there, eyes wide with disbelief and thoughts racing, before I was attacked into a bone-crushing hug. I could barely breathe with the girl dressed in pink winter clothes squeezed me. She let me go after a few seconds and stepped back to smile at me. "Hi Maddie!" she said happily. I looked at her, confused while still holding on the doorknob for dear life. "Lily… Um, hi." I tried to say casually. My words jumbled together and I sounded nervous. I cursed myself in my head for failing to cover up my awkwardness. She just kept smiling back at me in her sickly sweet way. "Can I come in?" she asked after what felt like forever. I weakly smiled and gestured for her to enter my house. I watched her for a moment before closing the door. While she looked around my living room, I took the time to take in that she was actually there.
Lily was fashionably dressed in a long sleeved white shirt with a magenta winter vest on top. She was wearing a white tulle skirt and light pink tights to match her hair band that wrapped wound her perfectly dark brown curled hair. Her outfit was perfectly matched with her magenta Uggs. I looked down at the penguin pajama pants and matching tank top I was sporting and I instantly felt childish and self-conscious.
Lily had that effect on me; no one was more intimidating to me than she was. Even when we were growing up, she was always one-step further than I was. When I was eight and she was nine, I was playing with my much-used Barbie dolls in my room while she started wearing lip-gloss and "dating" boys. I remember when she turned thirteen, she acted like we were years apart. Lily always though she was better than I was at everything. Like no matter what I had she always had more. I remember one birthday I got the new Barbie horse and every girl in my class wanted to come over for a play date to play with the new toy. A month later, when Lily's birthday rolled around she got the new Barbie Dream House. Everyone forgot about my pathetic horse and surrounded her. I got a new cell phone? She gets an iPhone. I get a used Play Station 2 one Christmas? She got a Wii. I get a new dress from the mall for the school dance? She comes in a new designer dress that was custom made for her. The list just goes on. Somehow, every time I get something special she just goes out of her way to be better. It just always seems like I come second to her. But not this time. I erased the self-conscious thoughts from my head and stood straighter and acted like my penguin PJ's were a new dress for the Oscars. I could not let her beat me.
She looked at me standing in the hallway and smiled again brightly. "Maddie It seems like I haven't been here in forever! How's your mom? Wait where is she?"
I looked at her, not smiling but not frowning, and walked back down the hall to the kitchen to resume pulling out the flour. She fallowed me, waiting for me to answer her questions. It wasn't until I preheated the oven for the cookies that I spun around to see her leaning up against the counter, waiting. "My mom's fine but she still misses Lea. And she went to get her nails done at Sally's in the mall so she'll be back in about an hour." I said plainly. I turned back around, cracked eggs, and dumped them into the glass bowl. Lily switched her position and took a seat at the back granite island that was in the center of the kitchen. She silently watched me as I measured the sugar and flour for the mix. "Lily, why are you here?" I asked with a twinge of annoyance lacing my voice. I looked back at her to see that she was looking nervously at her hands.
"Honestly Mads? I don't know. I just feel really bad about how I treated you at school and-"
"Then why do you do that to me?" I snapped angrily, cutting her off. I whisked the ingredients fiercely and refused to look at her honey bronze eyes. There was a moment of silence before she continued. "I don't know. I'm sorry." I barely caught what she said but I turned around to see that her eyes were full of unshed tears. "I'm so sorry for hurting you Maddie." I looked at her, confused at first. But I believed her so I walked around the island to were she was sitting and wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her into a hug. While I held her she just kept frantically apologizing and rambling.
I pulled away and smiled at her. "It's okay. Thanks for apologizing." my voice this time was full of confronting and happiness. We locked eyes, chocolate brown to warm honey-hazel, and smiled. "Can you forgive me Maddie?" she asked while holding out a pinkie. I laughed quietly at the reminder of our old childhood handshake that first started when the third season of Glee aired. I nodded and we locked pinkies and pulled away into jazz hands. "You realize we just did the gay hi-five right?" she said with her eyes sparkling of mischievousness.
I laughed and thought of that night we spent with Lea, Darren, Chris, and Diana watching "The Purple Piano Project". Lily and I had giggled through the episode because of the way the actors reacted to the episode. Since that night we always did the gay hi-five along with walking around like Brittany and Santana.
We sat together for a moment before I realized the cookies weren't done. Lily seemed to notice also because she looked behind me and asked "Can I help?" I nodded and we both went back to mixing the rest of the ingredients. Ten minutes later we were sitting on the couch together waiting for the cookies to bake while I was laughing my head off.
"Maddie! Seriously! It's not that funny!" she said sternly. I giggled even more through my reply. "Lily, only you would wear your designer tulle while skirt to make cookies. I offered for you to wear my extra PJ's!" I laughed harder while she tried her best to scrub out her skirt. "Maddie, me getting half the mix dumped on my skirt is no laughing matter!" After the incident, I convinced her to switch her clothes for my PJ's to attempt to clean her skirt. I continued laughing while she rubbed the sponge on her skirt harder than before. "Well it's your fault, I'm not the one who was holding the bowl." She finally gave up and walked over to the laundry room to put her skirt in the washer. She returned to her seat on the couch and huffed angrily. I started laughing again when I remembered one of her birthday parties.
"Hey Lily, remember that once birthday part when you turned nine? And you got a new white shirt from the mall that you were dying for? When we were making pizzas you decided to wear it even though your mom told you that it would get dirty." It took her a second to remember and then she started laughing as hard as I was and soon our faces were red and there was tears forming in our eyes. We each stopped and caught our breath and smiled at that memory. "I loved that shirt but I only owned it for an hour because the pizza sauce ruined it." she stopped talking to burst into giggles again. Suddenly her face changed into something like she was thinking and was looked at me quizzically. "That was the best present I had. Who got be that shirt?" I looked down and pointed at myself. "Me." I said quietly. She nodded, remembering. "We've had good times huh?" She said smiling. "Yeah I guess we have Lil-" I stopped talking and remembered something.
"Ohmygosh the trunk!" I got up from my seat and ran upstairs to my room. Lily ran close behind me asking, "Wait what? What trunk?" I ignored her and burst into my room. I scrambled to my bed and scooted under it. I pushed through the trash, stray clothes, and other junk and grinned when I saw the old wooden trunk that was caked with dust that was pushed against the wall. I struggled to pull it out and finally got it from under my bed. I blew the dust off the top and coughed at what came off. Lily and I kneeled on my hard wood floor and she looked at the trunk confused. I just beamed and looked at her. "This," I gestured to the box," is everything we did together from our childhood." She still seemed confused so I lifted the heavy top to uncover the trunk full of memories. She gasped at what she saw inside.
"Maddie! Our costumes from that one Halloween!" she exclaimed while holding up the Glee Cheerios costumes Lou had made for us. "And Ohmygosh! You have every Valentine I gave you? You have all the presents I gave you from your birthdays? Why'd you keep all this stuff?" She asked while gasping at the treasures from my childhood that the trunk revealed. "Because you're important to me." I answered immediately. She stopped searching through the trunk to pull me into a hug. I saw that her eyes were full of happy tears.
The moment was ruined by the loud ding of the oven telling us that the cookies were finished. We laughed and walked back to the kitchen, holding pinkies like we used to as kids. She ended up staying at my house until about ten at night. While I was cleaning up the mess in the kitchen I hummed happily because I got my sister back.
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A/N TA-DA! : ) I'm very proud of how this chapter turned out. And you'd think they're BFF's for life again right? Well… you'll see what I've planned *rubs hands together mischievously*
And the Darren reference from the earlier chapter was Lily's middle name, Sami. (Cause he wrote a song called Sami)
I'll write as soon as I can! But in the meantime… PLEASE REVIEW
