Not That Perfect

“Rae, Liv, there’s something that I need to tell you.” My mom said as she walked into our kitchen, fingering at her hair nervously. She often fiddled with her hair, or anything, for that matter, when she's done something wrong. Like, one time, my mom bleached all of Liv's and my clothes. When she tried to tell us, our mom refused to look at us in the eyes, instead staring down at her knees as she told us the bad news.

So the two of us figured out that she had done something wrong almost instantly. We turned in our seats to look over at our mother, waiting to hear her confess her latest mistake. I listened as Liv dropped her fork down on our meal: cereal, scrambled eggs, and waffles. Our mother had made us breakfast for lunch, something that Liv adored. For some reason, doing things unusually always gave her a thrill; like wearing your pajamas all day or eating breakfast for lunch.

Which was exactly what we were doing.

I had felt suspicious when my mom first said that she was making 'lunfast,' as Liv likes to call it. Her behavior now just confirmed my thoughts. "Yes?" I asked, coaxing her confession on, "Mom?"

She didn’t continue speaking for a while, instead she was guiltily staring down at her slippers, like a little boy who knew that he was going to get yelled at after he had done something wrong. “Mom? What’s wrong?” Liv asked, her tone worried. Her response was what I had expected. My little, thirteen-year-old sister was often compassionate, caring. Her personality was a lot different then my own. Liv was usually loving, trusting, outgoing. She often kept her rude remarks to herself, knowing that she might hurt someone if she said them out loud. My sister only spoke kind words.

Unlike me.

“Mom, what did you do?” I said accusingly, dropping my spoon into my cereal bowl. Liv looked over at me, a warning look shown upon her face as I continued to speak, "Y-you're not pregnant, are you?"

"Rae!" Liv shouted, shaking her head, “Shut up!” A look of annoyance was plastered upon Liv's face, scolding me with out actually saying anything. Liv slowly looked over at our mom, the look on her face changing into affection, "Mom? You're not pregnant, right?"

Our mom shook her head no, her eyes were still glued to her feet, "No, no. No need to worry about that." She said calmly, shaking her head, "Actually, we're moving." Slowly, our mom raised her head, looking over at the two of us worriedly. Liv's and my eyes had grown wide at her words. It was obvious that neither of us wanted to leave our comfortable home. We had grown up in the same house for the both of our lives. It carried our best, and worst, memories, and we weren't ready to leave them.

"Moving?" Liv and I said in unison. I think we were too shocked to say anything else.

"Yeah, moving." My mom said slowly, reverting her eyes once again, "To Little Falls," She had started to pick at her fingernails as she spoke, another one of her nervous habits, "In New York."

I jumped up from my seat, running over to my mom when her final words came out of her mouth, "Are you kidding me?" I screamed, throwing my hands up into the air, "Are you fucking kidding me? Ha ha, mom, you're hilarious" Our mom shook her head slowly, looking up into my eyes, her own filled with guilt, "You can't do this, you can't take us away from our school. Our friends. Our memories?" I looked around our kitchen, trying to remind her of what had happened in the room before.

"I'm sorry Rae," She whispered, "I'm sorry, I can't stand this house anymore. Not anymore. Not since..." She didn't continue her sentence, but we both knew what she was talking about. Our dad's death hit all of us hard and unexpectedly.

"I've heard you Liv," My mom turned around to look at my little sister, tears welling up in her eyes, "I've heard you at night, when you cry yourself to sleep. And I've heard your nightmares Rae." She turned her attention to me, reaching her hand up in attempt to stroke my face, but I took a step back, before she could touch me. My mom sighed, continuing on with her explanation, "I was going through your dad's old stuff the other day when I found a deed to a house that I didn't even know he had owned. I looked into it and the house is pretty cute. I'm sure that you, and Liv, would like it."

She waited for us to speak, for some sort of response to her terrible news. I knew that she was right. I knew that we were going to have to move sooner or later, and so did Liv. It was the inevitable.

Eventually, our mom took our silence as an understanding and continued speaking, "We won't move until you guys get out of school though, so you have a couple of months to pack and say goodbye."

It was then that my sister did something so, extremely uncharacteristic of herself. As our mother finished speaking, my sister opened and closed her mouth, looking a lot like a goldfish. It was frightening how still she stood, staring over at our mom until she screamed, "Shit!" Liv looked down at her shaking hands, tears rolling down her pale cheeks.

It was then that I realized that I was crying too.