Laugh Until You Cry

9 Thanksgiving-1

Every morning, for just about two seconds just as I wake up, I forget about reality. I look over and expect to see Andrew laying there next to me but when my arm reaches over into empty space, I panic and look to see that he’s not there. And then I remember. Like a tidal wave, it all comes crashing down on me again and I remember.

“Stella,” Anthony says, just as I’m getting over the initial panic of waking up. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I breathe, plopping back down onto my back and looking up at the ceiling. It’s like losing him all over again every single morning and it’s excruciating. I wonder if this will ever go away but I doubt it. “How much time to we have until breakfast?”

“Half an hour,” He tells me.

I sit up and remind myself that I’m about to spend about twelve hours with my crazy family. I cannot afford to be sad over Andrew right now. Unfortunately, there’s no switch inside of my brain that can turn off my emotions or my sadness. “Awesome,” I breathe sarcastically.

“It’s just one day,” Anthony tells me with a forced yet encouraging smile as he walks away and starts to fish through his duffel bag to fish out his outfit for today.

“Yeah, just one day,” I mumble tiredly as I stand up and get my own outfit out- a dark red chiffon dress with long sheer sleeves, black underwear and black pantyhose since the dress is kind of short, I figure the hose will cover my legs up more. I hop into the shower for only about ten minutes and then I get out, dry my hair and everything and then get dressed before washing my face and then applying silver-blackish eye makeup and some lip gloss. My hair dries in its natural waves and I decide not to mess with it except with a little bit of product. It’s my crazy family, not the president of the United States, I don’t really have anybody to impress.

“At least we get food,” Anthony adds as I walk out of the bathroom and start to poke my gold hoop earrings through my ears. “I mean, they hired a huge array of chefs and everything so the food has to be amazing, right?”

“Yeah, well while you’re pigging out on a million dollar pancake, I’m going to get an earful of them complaining about me watching what I eat. Seriously, I don’t think that any of them- especially Mom- understands the concept of keeping myself healthy.”

“Okay, that’s true,” He concedes, buttoning up his blue button up dress shirt. Fortunately, we didn’t accidently match our outfits because the last time we had a family gathering- I believe it was the Christmas before we moved to Vaughn- I wore a red and silver dress and Anthony wore a red dress shirt so it looked like we matched but we didn’t do it on purpose- it was Christmas, everyone was wearing red. However, the twins disagreed and they continuously yapped about how twins unintentionally match their clothes all of the time because of some neurological resemblance.

We have five minutes to get downstairs for breakfast as I’m slipping my tan pumps onto my feet. “Let’s do this thing. I pray that nothing goes disastrous,” And by disastrous, I mean that I hope that they don’t bring up Andrew. I know that my parents know about him because I told them about him but I don’t know if they told the rest of the family or not. I don’t even know if they would remember something like that, but I really hope that they didn’t. Or at least they just decide not to ask about him.

“Remember- we stick together,” I remind my brother just as he finishes tucking his shirt into his black dress pants and we stand by the door, readying ourselves for the last time before we begin the day. “And the SOS is pecan.”

“Right,” He nods. “Pecan.”

“Wait, we should change it. What if they have pecan pie? I love pecan pie but you might think it’s the signal,” I explain. “Let’s change it to mermaid.”