Not Exactly What it Seems

Things were definitely interesting. What I wasn’t sure about was how she actually felt. She was so different than when we first met, but I didn’t know what she really felt or what she really wanted. Could I risk it or was it better to keep my distance for the time being? Though I wouldn’t be able to handle it for too much longer.

Thanksgiving dinner was chaotic and always had been. With the number of people we had at the party, how could it not be? It came to the point when I was six years old, that we actually had to have assigned tables. There was the little kids table for those under the age of eight; the slightly older yet still between the ages of eight and eleven; the “awkward phase of life” table for those twelve to fifteen; the teenagers table for all of us sixteen to nineteen; the “too cool to be kids or adults” table for those twenty through about twenty six; and finally the adult table. Yeah, we were just that cool. The tables were actually labeled like that and it was a pretty big deal when you were old enough for the next table up.

Hayden was kind of overwhelmed with the whole situation and the traditions we kept. Every year, the family reenacts a scene from a movie that my mother was in that had absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving. Then we all sat around the living room drinking (you only had to be sixteen to get some wine or beer in my family, though it was only a little). After the “too cool to be kids or adults” group was sufficiently drunk, we would gather around the adult table and would all say what we were thankful for and trust me, with drunk relatives, you heard some weird things. Then we all got food, in order from oldest to youngest so the kids had to wait a while. We could usually get in a game of Twister before it was our turn. Again, yeah we were just that cool. Being with family was the most important part, though, and no one in the family would ever forget that. It was so special to be able to have everyone we loved right there with us.

Throughout the entire dinner, my overprotective cousins were grilling Hayden and throwing questions at him like there was no tomorrow. Most of them had me laughing hysterically, but some got me really mad or upset which was nothing that surprised me. I sincerely wanted Frankie to find a boy she liked just so she would be able to know what it was I felt. She was gorgeous, but in a subtle way so not many people took the time to look at her. She was shy around most people, but she had a great personality. But she was like me in my normal style so many people misjudged her by her appearance.

“Oh!” she exclaimed randomly during dinner. Turning her attention to Hayden, she continued her outburst. “Ny and I are going to the mall at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning. You should come with us so that she can complain to you about being out so early instead of me. You wouldn’t believe how much she can whine about that.”

I pouted, but said nothing to defend myself because the truth was that I did whine about it all the time. Though I enjoyed going with her, I was never good at shopping at six in the morning. Hayden looked like he would rather gouge his eyes out with a rusty spoon than go to the mall with us that early, but he surprised both Frankie and me by agreeing to come. Why he would ever subject himself to that kind of torture was beyond me.