Maddy and Me

Chap 16: Movie Night (Part 1)

Sonia parked the car beside Joel's silver pickup truck. Maddy waited a step away from the car with her bag in her hands and watched Sonia take the things out of the trunk, bathing in the setting rays. Her shoulder length hair tied in a low pony, as usual, turned brown; her soft brown underbelly showed from under her gray and blue striped shirt as she held the decklid up. Maddy felt like she was in a 90s film directed by a pervert and looked away before looking back at the beauty shining like a golden statue for a whole of three minutes. Sonia balanced the ice cream on her hips with three sleeping bags hung over a shoulder, closed the trunk and looked at Maddy. "What?"

"Nothing. Do you need help with the ice cream?"

"It's alright." They walked to the cabin about five feet away.

"So what do your brothers do?"

"The oldest, Sam, is a mechanic here and Rahul is at MIT."

"Oh! What does he study?"

"Geology, specializing in volcanology."

"Cool," she remarked before she knocked on the door.

"No need to knock. It should be open," immediately replied Sonia. So Maddy pushed on the handle and it creaked open to reveal Melissa and Jake on their feet.

A chorus of 'Hi's and 'Hey's rang through the bare cabin and after Sonia put the sleeping bags down and the two pints of ice cream in the cooler, a short conversation accompanied by hugs of welcome took place. "Why did you take long?" "Did you get everything?"  

Maddy stood few steps away from the group feeling awkward and kept her bag leaning on the table where the food and drinks were. Once the hugs were over, Sonia went over to Maddy and held her by the shoulder. "Guys, this is the Queen of our East Highland," she introduced and Maddy smiled. Then she pointed to her friends one by one while saying, "Maddy, this is Jake, his father owns the cabin till he becomes the President. Melissa, Joel's photographer-blogger girlfriend. Tony, our local gay ginger who's planning to win a Tony along with a Grammy and multiple Oscars." The children giggled as Tony acted as if he'd just won an award.

Sonia closed the intros by deadpanning, "Then you know Joel and Evie, the gossiping twins who'll either takeover TMZ, start their own Deuxmoi or a detective agency."

In unison the twins replied in a serious tone, "It depends on the funds that we round up."

Another round of light laughter decked the wooden walls. That was when Maddy felt as if she was already one of them and relaxed into the room. There was no permanent furniture in the one-storied cabin, only the things they brought; a huge mattress to fit four in the middle, a blue cooler in the corner in front of the entrance, three folded chairs near the huge cooler, two bean bags and a huge, plain white sheet amateurly nailed onto the wall opposite the mattress.

Maddy followed Sonia and sat next to her on the mattress like the others except Melissa and Joel who settled into one bean bag and Jake on the other.

"And what's your title Ms. Rosenberg?" asked Evie, teasingly.

Sonia proudly replied, "Sonia Teddy Rosenberg, the philosopher."

Everyone chuckled except Jake, "Teddy?"

"Yeah," explained Sonia, "Short for Theodore?"

"Oh."

Maddy asked, "So how did you guys know what you wanna be?"

Melissa replied, "We... chose whatever jobs align with our interests and likes?" Everybody except Maddy and Sonia nodded. "It' not concrete as such but it's what we want to try out."

Tony added, "Yeah and it's only because we held an intervention where we told our parents to chuck out their expectations for our futures." Tony looked away dreamily and said, "It was one hell of an event that deserves its own heist-film montage."

Everyone chuckled and Maddy asked, "What's he talking about?"

Sonia explained with a tired smile, "Freshman year we all studied real hard and got 'A's in everything to please our parents. Then over the following spring break we did so much research and arranged an intervention for our parents a week before school opened. 

"We showed them files of demographics about how the world is bound to end to end in less than 50 years, how different generations that almost witnessed the end of the world have been affected mentally, how many people regretted taking boring careers using our parents themselves as examples respectfully and how an economy is prosperous from having different professions. My parents were already on board so they added into convincing their parents and, voila!, here we are with our parents not giving too much of a shit about what we choose to do." She abruptly got up, "Anyone wants a beer?"

The boys raised their hands and Sonia went over to the cooler while Maddy asked Jake, "Your parents weren't okay with you wanting to be a President?"

"They're paranoid folks who wouldn't let me go for even fieldtrips, let alone presidency. They still don't know yet but they don't ask me a lot about what I will do once I graduate 'cause they trust me. Well, more like they trust Sonny to take care of me."

Sonia, standing at the cooler, groaned, "I need to do so much good will for them to forgive and trust me and there's not enough time..."

"Buddy, I really do pray that you don't end up becoming Mom's garden's fertilizer."

"Shit," said Maddy looking at Sonia like everyone else, bringing Jake's eyes back on her.