Carry on Like You're Supposed to Be

I sat down at the small four-person table that was placed on the other side of the kitchen's half-wall, and placed my salad down in front of me. I poked at it, waiting for Kyle and Caleb to come sit with me for dinner. We had made a lot of trips up and down to get the bags, since Caleb refused to help because 'Marissa and Ryan just got in a car crash!', and he wanted to see the end of the show.

The two of them came and sat on both sides of me, their plates loaded with food. Kyle looked at my plate and then looked up at me, raising his eyebrows.

"So you dragged me off to the grocery store where fan girls mobbed me -" He started, before I cut him off.

"There were three, Kyle, and you're just too nice for your own good."

"Close enough. My point is, you bought all this food, and you aren't even going to eat any of it!" He waved his fork around in the air, making bits of the pasta salad he was eating fly off and fall on Caleb's face. He sighed, clearly agitated, and wiped them away with his hand.

"You know, maybe I'm just not hungry. I'm not a six foot something guy with a fast metabolism who drums all the time, I don't need to eat like I'll never get the chance to ever again. So just leave me alone, okay?" I snapped at him, picking up my plate and stomping off to Caleb's room to eat. After shutting and locking the door, I set down my plate and examined myself in the wide floor-length mirror. I poked at my stomach, and my thighs, and the upper parts of my arms, and bit my lower lip along with furrowing my eyebrows.

I looked at the plate, then at my reflection in the mirror, and then at the plate again, thinking. I took the plate into the bathroom and flushed its contents down the toilet, so that Caleb and Kyle would think I had eaten. God knows what they would do if they thought I didn't eat a stupid salad.

"Alexa, get out here." I heard Kyle sigh from the hallway. I left the plate by the sink and stepped out into the hallway.

He placed his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. "I didn't mean anything by my comment. I'm sorry." I looked up at him through my eyelashes, shrugged my shoulders, and nodded. He smiled, and we walked back into the kitchen-living room, where Caleb was watching the television.

He patted the spot next to him, "Alexa, it's an O.C. marathon! Marissa's dead! Console me!" He fake-sobbed into my shoulder when I sat down and I patted his back a few times awkwardly.