The Scars Within

French Food? Délicieux. Learning French? Compliqué

Ricca and I take our seats at the dinner table right next to each other. Adeline sits across from Ricca, and Quentin across from me.

"The food looks delicious, Mrs. Willow."

"Thank you Carmin, I hope you like it. Please though, call me Adeline . Mrs. Willow makes me feel old." She replied with a smile. After agreeing, we all dig in. 'Oh. My. GOD. French food is awesome. Why have I never tried this before?'

"Mmm, this is delicious Adeline! I can't believe I've been missing out on this. Would you mind if I got the recipe for it? I wanna try and make it myself sometime."

Laughing, Adeline says, "Of course sweetie! I have plenty of recipes for food like this. Some of them are in French though."

"I know!" Ricca bursts out. "I could teach Carmin French! That would be fun, right?" Looking at me, Ricca gives me a dazzling smile.

"Sounds like fun to me. I've always wanted to learn French."

"YUS!" Ricca yells, glomping me in my seat. Laughing, I wrap my arms around her before the chair tips over. 'She certainly is hyper. How does someone have this much energy?'

"Calm down Ricca. We don't need anyone getting hurt here." Quentin states. Pouting, Ricca moves back to her seat. The rest of dinner continues with small talk, a few jokes, and compliments to the chef. By the time we finish dessert, all of us are full and ready to relax for awhile. Quentin speaks as he stands from his chair. "That was delicious Chérie." Then, he leans over and kisses Adeline on the cheek.

"Ewwwww! PDA!" Ricca yells, covering her eyes. Laughing, Adeline kisses Quentin on the lips, looking directly at Ricca. "MOM! NO. That's not alright!"

Looking at Ricca, Quentin replies with a smirk, "We've done worse. Want me to show you?"

Quickly standing from her chair, Ricca grabs my arm and starts pulling me up the stairs, yelling "NO. NO. NO. DID NOT NEED THAT MENTAL IMAGE, DAD!" the whole way upstairs. Through the whole ordeal, I'm almost crying from laughter. 'When was the last time I laughed this much? I don't even remember any more. It's certainly been a while.' After we get to Ricca's room, she releases my hand and closes the door. "I'm so sorry you had to see that." She says, a sheepish smile on her face. Laughing once again, I tell her it's fine. "So, what do you want to do now? It's only about 6:00 so we have plenty of time to do whatever."

Thinking for a few minutes, I say, "Why don't we build that fort you were talking about? We could collect a whole bunch of blankets and pillows and go down to the living room. How's that sound?"

"Sounds like a plan to me!" With that said, we gather up all the blankets and pillows we can hold from upstairs, along with a whole pile we threw down the stairs, and head to the living room. We quickly take the throw pillows and blankets off the couches, and sort them into piles on the floor. "Alright, we have about 30 large blankets, and, like, 100 pillows. This should be just enough. Don't you think? If not, we could always raid my parent's room."

Shaking my head, I reply, "I think this is more than enough. This fort is going to be giant already."

"Pfft. Please. This will be one of the smallest forts I've ever built." I look at her with wide eyes.

"You've built forts with more stuff than this? You must love building things."

"Of course I do. When I'm older I want to work in construction. It fits, right? I've always loved building things." Shaking her head, Ricca speaks again. "Enough about that though. While we're building the fort, do you want me to teach you some French words?"

"Yea, sure. I only know Oui, Non, Bonjour, and Au Revoir so you have a lot of teaching to do." Laughing, we start building the fort. The whole time, Ricca is telling me different words as I repeat them back to her. By the time our fort is built (it spans across the whole living room), I know quite a few words and a couple of phrases like 'My name is Carmin', 'I am American', 'I am a girl', and 'I love you.' The last one Ricca (quite adamantly) insisted I learn.

"Okay, so what's library again?" Ricca asks me.

"Bibliothèque."

"School?"

"L'école."

"Good job Carmin! You're catching on fast. Anything you have questions on?"

"The thing I'm having the most difficulty with is getting my mouth to form the words properly. My tongue doesn't move right." I reply laughing.

"Yea. That's probably the most difficult part for others to get a hold of." Stepping back, we admire the fort. "We did good. The 'fun' part will be taking this back down in the morning." Agreeing, I walk over to the 'door' and crawl inside, Ricca right behind me. Once we get to the middle, we start spreading the pillows around. We had the perfect amount to have a carpet of pillows. Laying down, we stare at the ceiling in silence.

Suddenly, we hear, "Mon Dieu. What happened in here?" Peeking our heads out the door, we see Quentin standing in the doorway, Adeline right next to him.

"We built a fort." Ricca replies smiling.

Rolling his eyes, Quentin says, "I can see that Ricca. Why is it so big?"

"Because it is." And cue the deadpanned look from Quentin. Laughing, Adeline places her hand on Quentin's arm.

"It's fine dear. In fact... Move over girls, Mommy's coming in!"

"YEA!" Ricca and I yell. Moving back inside, Adeline soon joins us. We hear Quentin sigh, then moments later he crawls in through the door. "YAY!" We yell again, except this time Adeline joins us. We all settle into the pillows near the middle of the fort, where, surprisingly, Ricca and I were able to make a hole so we could still watch TV. Grabbing the remote, Ricca turns on some cartoons, and we all get comfortable.