The Fighter

Chapter 18: Maybe It's Time You Think About You

There comes a time in every child's life when the metaphorical breeze picks up and their parents catch wind of a private issue, one that would be better left private.

For me, Sophie Taylor, that day was today, and that issue was Xavier Mason's attempted suicide.

I had just gotten to my house, after staying with Xavier all day and receiving the heartbreaking news that he had almost died, and I felt something was off. Well... to put it more correctly, I felt something else was off. But, I was still trying to figure Xavier out, and I was trying to get a grip on the whole situation.

What had happened was a slap in the face , or a kick in the back, a knock to the lungs, a punch to the head... and I didn't even know how to think about it. I mean, how do you react when one of the worst things you've ever heard hits your eardrum and gets decoded by your brain? My brain couldn't even form an emotion, I was just existing.

But, I was almost relieved to be home. I needed some time to just not think about him and what he did. He changed the way I saw him that day. He was someone else, someone else who needed help.

I went home for some grounding, to remember who I was before all of it. Yet, from the moment my foot crossed the threshold, I could hear yelling coming from the kitchen... It wasn't, necessarily, a glaring sign of an emergency. Just last week I had walked into the same sort of sound, but the source was my father and brother playing chess.

So, I didn't hide in the bathtub or run away with one of those polka-dotted handkerchiefs tied to a bamboo stick, because I had assumed my family was clueless, and that I was in for no immediate turbulence.

"Hey, everyone." I said nonchalantly as I entered the kitchen and before actually looking up at their faces.

My mother, father and brother were sitting at the table with their hands folded looking up at me. The noise had stopped. Each of them had their eyes on me.

"We've been waiting for you." My dad said, grimly.

I looked around and there was no food on the stove, (a grave sign when it's 7pm and your mother's Italian) and their faces were like stone... or better yet, like the happy and sad theater masks, except they were all the sad, scary one.

"What is this, 'The Godfather?'" I said. My humor defense mechanism making it's debut. There was not one indication that any of them had heard me. "'Godfather Part Two'?" There was still no sound. "Am I Vito's father?"

"Sophie, sit down." My mother said.

"Ay, she's going to make me an offer I can't refuse." I said while making a mafia type gesture. Her brown eyes were holding a fire that was roasting me from where I was standing, so my last ounce of humor fizzled up and I did what she said.

All three of the Corleones sat across from me. My father's jaw was taut, my mother was tapping her clog on the tile (we'll have the clog discussion another time), and my brother was just shaking his head and running his hands through his hair like he had just heard some terrible news.

"Okay, what the hell is going on?" I said.

"Do you have anything to tell us?" My dad began, his blue eyes unfaltering as they grabbed my hesitant ones.

My stomach immediately sank. They knew.

"You know? You all know?" I said, looking around the room at all of them. I was staring at every other thing in my life that shouldn't have changed with the news, realizing that they had. I was sick for Xavier. In the five seconds it took for my brother to answer me, I felt for him. He was no longer an angel to my mother. He was no longer a normal teenage boy to my father. He was no longer a friend to my brother.