reality.

At the head of the table is the father. He looks to be about in his early forties, one of those handsome men that still have girls swooning over them even when they’ve gone gray. To the right of the father is a girl that might’ve been around twenty. She is pretty, with dark hair and eyes, and a stylish dress showing off a body any girl would kill for. Across from this girl sits another, considerably younger, but just as pretty. She has curly, caramel colored hair, naturally bronze skin, and a face like a doll. A boy sits next to her, in his later teens, whom, not unsurprisingly, also has good looks. He has shaggy dark hair, a long straight nose, and hollow cheeks. However, no matter how flawless the rest of them appear to be, the girl sitting across from the boy casts them all into a sort of shadow. She possesses absolute beauty, the kind that is told about in fairy tales and also the kind that is flaunted on runways. The next two seats are occupied by young boys who are exact mirror images of each other, and in the third seat sits an even younger boy, who still has chubby baby cheeks and big round eyes. The mother sits at the opposite end of the table facing the father. She is a thin reed of a woman with flawless makeup and a string of pearls hanging around her neck.
They sit there, quietly and politely eating their dinner, more like strangers would than a family. It should’ve been quite obvious to any person observing them that they weren’t accustomed to having much fun with each other, and yet, any person that was observing them very much, for some inexplicable reason, desired to be a part of them. They give off an aura of beauty; they obviously have money, and don’t seem to have experienced anything in their lives to cause them distress.
However, about midway through the main course, something seems to change. It is like a pleasant movie being projected onto a huge theatre screen. Everything runs smoothly, and then suddenly black spots start ripping onto the screen, and the picture becomes cut in half, and you know that pretty soon the screen is just going to go completely black.
The father leans forward in his chair as in anticipation that he knew he would soon be desperate to dash away from the table. Then he loosens the silk tie around his neck and sits back in his chair, hands clenched on the armrests. He clears his throat, which is not something he does habitually. Every face at the table, except for the face of the beautiful girl, who has already noticed his odd behavior and is gazing at him curiously, turns to look at him.
“Well,” he starts off slowly, in a deep, cautious voice. “There’s a reason that your mother and I brought you all here tonight.” He pauses. Everyone stares blankly at him, a few smiles faltering. “We have some news.”
And then, as if she can’t keep it from them any longer, and obviously feeling exactly the opposite about the news than her husband, the woman at the end of the table blurts out, “We’re moving!” She then smiles with such enthusiasm and excitement that she rather comes to resemble a chipmunk barring its teeth at an offender, but in the nicest possible way.
Now is the part of the movie where the screen does, in fact, with a final flash, go black. What were just a few minutes ago passive, peaceful people who were for the most part content, are now violently angry people. Likewise, the tension surrounding that dinner table finally burst. The children’s heads all whip around to face their mother, with jaws dropped open, protests already forming in the back of their throats.
The curly haired girl’s voice rings loud over the others’. “No! Are you crazy? There is absolutely no way! I’m not leaving.” Her eyes were blazing, and she looked as if someone had just slapped her in the face.
“Actually, it sounds like you are, honey,” the father declared, raising his eyebrows at them all. “Your aunt Margaret is moving to Britain for her research. We’re moving into the old house so that it won’t have to be sold.”
“You mean the mansion on Sailor Island that you grew up in?” The beautiful girl asks him this calmly. She seems to be the only one at the table besides the mother and the little boy that isn’t going to threaten to jump off a cliff if they take her away to live on some distant island.
“Yes, that’s it,” the father replies.
“Well why does someone have to be living in it? Can’t it just sit empty?” inquires the gaunt looking boy, spitting out the words.
“It’s a legal thing, Charlie. If no one’s living there, we lose it. And we’re not losing that house. My great grandfather built that house with his very first fortune and-”
“SO WHAT?” erupted the curly haired girl. “It’s an old house! What’s more important to you? An old house or your children’s happiness?” Tears were welling up in her eyes now, threatening to brim over, and run down her rosy pink cheeks for the whole world to see.
“We’re moving, and that’s that.”
At her father’s final decree, the curly haired girl dramatically bursts into tears, pushes herself out of her seat and, throwing her napkin on the table, storms out of the restaurant. Heads turn as she passes, and then eyes curiously wander over to the scene she just left. The oldest of the girls makes to follow her, but stays when her father lays a restraining hand on her arm.
“That girl is going to have to learn to not be so dramatic. Let her make a fool of herself if she wants to.”
So the family, minus one, resumed its dinner, keeping their thoughts to themselves so that things would run smoothly.

After dinner I was sent to find Lydia. It surprised me when I walked out of the restaurant that it wasn’t storming outside, that the air was still thick and humid, but peaceful. It didn’t seem right that the rest of the world still seemed alright even when things weren’t going so well for some people. I found Lydia sitting on a bench a block away from the restaurant. It was apparent that her mind had travelled off to other places by now. She was huddled next to what looked like an art student, flipping the pages of a big black book, giggling her head off. I walked nervously up to her and stood right in front of her until she noticed my feet and tilted her head up to look at me.
“Oh, hey Maddie. This is Jared. He was just showing me some of his work. He’s like a comic artist. He is just absolutely hilarious.”
All I could do was stare at her. Her bronze skin was glowing in the yellow light from the streetlight, her smile was wide and genuine, and she was looking at me like she had no idea why I was such an idiot and didn’t know how to talk.
“Umm…” I managed to say, turning my head from my sister to the stranger sitting next to her.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, holding his big brown hand out to me, with a bemused grin on his face. I shook it, and he turned back to Lydia. “Well I guess I’ll see you around. I’ve gotta split.”
Once he was gone, I sat down in his place. “Lydia, who the hell was that?”
She still stared at me. “…Jared.”
“Look. You can’t just talk to random people you meet on street corners.”
“Why not? Just because you don’t know them doesn’t mean they’re not cool.”
“Yea, Lydia, but they could be dangerous.” I felt like a total loser, telling my 15 year old sister what my mom had forgotten to teach her, but I was annoyed that she’d made me feel so stupid. The fact was that I was actually jealous of her, the way she could talk to anybody, even people she’d never seen in her life. It didn’t seem right that my little sister could be so sociable when I was so tongue-tied around strangers. But that’s the way it was, and the way it had been for all of my 16 years. We were just different people.
Lydia laughed at this last remark. “Get over yourself, Jenny. It’ll make life a lot easier for you. Believe me.” I didn’t say anything to her. “Besides,” she said, her smile faltering. “It’s not like I’ll ever see that guy again. And I’m sure not gonna run into any strangers on the island. Gawd. Life is horrible sometimes.”
“It won’t be that bad. Everyone dreams of living by the ocean, you know.” I didn’t know if I was actually trying to console her or if I just wanted to stop her whining.
She rolled her eyes and got up. “Maddie, you don’t know what Im going through. You’re not leaving behind any friends.”
I decided it was definitely the latter.