The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 8.

"Misty, you need to eat," Janice said, scooting the paper plate over to my side of the table. It made a gentle scraping sound against the wood, and I received it with open, albeit unwilling palms. I held the tissue at the base of my nose, trying to stem the flow of blood from my nose. Janice eyed it.

"I'm not hungry," I replied. I scrutinized the paper plate with distaste. Janice had done her best in scraping up the best food she could from the contents of my almost empty cupboard. Al dente white rice took up half the contents of the plate, right beside the quarter portions of Ramen noodles and Navy beans. Call it the effects of grief, or the effects of cooking over a grill, lacking the electricity to do it over the stove, but the noodles and rice crackled slightly under everyone's mouths, having chunks still practically raw. I pushed my plate away from me, repulsed by the very thought of eating. It wasn't the shoddy grill-boiled food that got to me. I wasn't particularly picky about food. My sudden urge to "fast" rested merely in the fact that I couldn't for the life of me find one shred of appetite to send my stomach rumbling.

"It's rude to refuse food, Misty," Leo pointed out, trying to nitpick an urge to eat in me. Much alike to Sage, Leo knew how to manipulate me at points. Unlike Sage, he didn't do it for his benefit, he did it for mine. I sighed and shoveled a small spoonful of rice into my mouth. It crunched as I chewed, and laboriously, I swallowed a mouthful's worth of food. Nothing changed. I wasn't hungry. Silently, I laid down my spoon. Leo huffed silently and returned to picking at his own food. A tiny rice grain sat, infinitesimal and small, precariously tilted at the corner of Leo's mouth. I resisted the urge to laugh. The feeling felt strange, resisting the urge to laugh in a body that was grieving. I couldn't decide if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling as I nudged Leo and pointed out the piece of Rice. It disappeared into his mouth with a dab at the corner of his mouth using the tip of his tongue.

"It's normal to grieve, Misty, but certainly not in this way. You need your nutrients, and the energy." I looked up to see concern reflected within the agate rings of Janice's eyes. "We don't need another corpse to lay beside your parents." The statement alone unnerved me. The four of us were out on the porch, eating at a folding table on a couple of folding chairs that Paul had pulled from the basement. For a second, the two bodies in the kitchen had left my mind. Of course, their deaths hadn't, just the details of them laying in the kitchen had been painted over by the simple word: deceased.

"Janice, I won't refuse food to the point of starvation. I just need some time. For today, I'm not hungry. I need time to process everything." The concern in Janice's eyes didn't cease, but she leaned back in her chair and seemed to relax by a fraction of a millimeter.

"How's your nose?" Janice asked.

"It's fine. I think it's finished bleeding."

"We should've taken care of that right away. How's your breathing?"

"A little difficult, but I won't die. I have a mouth," I replied.

"I think what we need to talk about above anything else, is why nothing is working: radio, T.V, lights, the stove. We haven't had word from anyone. The police aren't responding to emergency calls, and we have two dead bodies in the kitchen. We need to think up our next move," Paul took a bite from his Ramen noodles, kneading them within his mouth before speaking again. We were all still in our pajamas, despite the fact that it was no longer morning, and was growing dark. It was coming time for us to be in pajamas again. "At first light tomorrow I'm going to leave for town to see if there's anyone who knows what's going on at all. Janice, I say that Misty gets what she needs from this place and then I'll drop you off back at our place, where its a little safer." I snapped my head up, but didn't object. The thought of staying hurt and comforted me at the same time. However, when it came to a decision, there was no way I was staying at that house forever. The next morning seemed like a fine enough idea for me to leave. Janice leaned toward me again, covering her whisper with her cupped hand.