The Cinderella Agreement (Completed) [Featured Story]

08: The Dog Food

NORMAL was not the correct adjective to describe the Laden household.

Perhaps if you flipped your dictionary a little backwards, you'd find exactly what you're looking for in the A-section —the exact opposite of normal: abnormal.

At a first glance, they'd register as the quintessential all American suburban family —mother, father, three adolescents (with one a little too old to still be regarded as an adolescent, and another far too young).

During a double take, the other details would fall into place; the little quirks and quiddities that one might otherwise miss.

Most of the time, they managed to keep their oddities in check, ironing out the kinks in their personalities when underneath the public eye, but other times, especially under the roof of their home, they let their quirks rome free from their strained constraint like a ruptured dam.

"You look so out of it, Mit," her mother, Anne, spoke as she set down a bowl of macaroni and cheese on the dining table, because that was one of the few meals she could mange to cook without burning the kitchen down.

"That was a nice way of saying that you look like the piece of gum I scraped off my shoe today, or some creature pulled out of a shower's drain," Mit's older brother Reece, in all his table mannered glory, talked behind a torrent of biscuit crumbs. His brown eyes glistened playfully in entertainment as he continued his jeer, "Mom just doesn't want to hurt your feelings."

"I'm confused; isn't Mit always ugly?" piped Sam, taking up his devil-spawn frontier. His head swiveled to Reece's direction to seek for approval, orbs brightly shining. Mit nearly snorted at the sight; out of all people that Sam could possibly choose from, he still settled on picking her older brother as his role model. Reece of all people. That was surely a telltale sign of the world finally coming to an end, she was sure.

"You guys think you're so funny, I'm laughing so much I might die," Mit retorted dryly, spearing an elbow her plate and imagining the head of Sam there instead.

She knew that Paris was giving her a considerably hard time, judging by her deep eye bags and sloppy frontage, since at this point she'd clearly lost all the fûcks she had to give on how she looked when she was at home. Although her brothers didn't have to rub salt into her wounded pride, dammit.

"Damn look at those eye bags," Reece commented, spreading his palms on the table as he leaned to animatedly observe her face.

"Are you jealous because they're designer?" she bit back.

"Don't pick on your sister now," their father intervened, thumbing through an anime comic under the table. As he refocused on the book, his mouth curved scandalously in a drawn 'O'. "Oh, Sakura, you whor—"