Once, when I was seven, I tripped on the school playground and fell face first into a bed of mulch. The mulch and dirt got into my eyes, eventually making me go temporarily blind. The hard ground hurt, but the worst part of it all was the second I got the wind knocked out of me. I could not breathe, not a single breath. Honestly, I thought I was dying. I had never felt that way again.
Until now, that is.
The second the words escaped her lips it felt as if I had gotten stabbed. With a chainsaw. Continuously.
"Maddie? Are you-are you alright? You look a little, um, dead-ish," I hear her speak the words but they feel so far away. She speaks again, louder this time. Shaking my shoulders, she begins, "Maddie! Madison!" The way my name rolls off her tongue is what eventually snaps me back to reality.
"Your boyfriend? You have a boyfriend?" I ask.
"Well, yeah," She responds.
A thick, awkward draft hangs in the air, threatening to suffocate us all.
Thankfully, Mackenzie changes the subject.
"Where are we going again?" My sister asks pointedly.
At that moment, I have never loved her more. If she had just stayed quiet, which, thankfully, was not in her nature, I might have had a heart attack.
Chloe answers this time. "I was thinking 'Crossroads.' Is that okay? I'll pay."
Crossroads is an Italian restaurant just across from the mall. I've never been but I hear it's amazing. And frankly, I'm not one to pass up free food. Or any food, for that matter.
"Sounds good." I say quickly.
After I pull into the parking space, the tension seems to die down quite a bit. Chloe marks us down on the waiting list under the name "Lukasiak." Our scrawny, red-haired hostess, whose name tag reads "Sadie Sink," scribbles the name into a book and hands Chloe a table marker.
She pops her gum and instructs us, "When that thing buzzes and the light flashes, come back up here and I'll get you a seat. Got it?"
The last part had a bit of attitude, and Chloe must pick up on this because she sarcastically replies, "Yes ma'am!" With a fake salute.
We try, and fail, to supress our giggles. The teen, Sadie, glares at us for a few seconds before losing interest in the elementary banter that we've got going on.
Chloe and I make our way to Mackenzie, who is sitting on a brown waiting couch near the window with her head against the window and her eyes closed, and sit next to each other. As I think more about it, Kenzie is acting really weird. She's emotional and tired? Usually she would have the energy level of Usain Bolt due to her many personal experiences with late-night, early-morning bars. Me, not so much. A few minutes pass, then a few more, until finally the buzzer vibrates, snapping me out of my thoughts and indicating that we have an open seat. Our group of three follows a good-looking young man to a long booth in the back of the dimly-lit restaurant. After placing a handful of menus down in front of us he takes a few steps back and smiles.
"Hi, I'm Troye, and your waiter will be with you shortly. But in the meantime, can I start you off with some drinks?" He looks expectantly towards Chloe, who nods at me.
"You go ahead," she says.
Unprepared, I ask, "Oh, um, may I please have a water with lemon?"
Troye runs a hand through his semi-curly, thick, brown hair prior to copying my order onto a sheet of paper.
"I'll have the same." Chloe chirps.
Lastly, Kenzie requests, "Can I please have a regular water? Oh, and can we also get a basket of bread? Or do you guys, like, not do that here?" Her face grows slightly red at all the excessive babbling.
