The Grace in the Fall

Getting Adopted

After church on Sunday my mom was cooking food. She had decided that she was going to throw herself a going away party. Mrs. Eastwood offered to throw her party for her when she found out about it, but my mom denied her. My mom insisted that she throw the party because her house was finally working and nice again. And we had gotten Boonie Furniture for the resale.

It felt kind of weird. My mom had spent all of this past week working on a house she had no intent on living in. Sure our landlord paid for some of it, but my mom had done most of it. However, it was pretty nice to live in our upgraded house because the sinks weren't leaking, the air conditioning was working, we had even gotten a new oven for the sale.

Soon the doorbell started ringing and our house was filling up with people. There wasn't much space on our tiny little Boonie Couch so my mom got out towels for some people to sit on. It was a quaint little party but it was all the people I had wanted to be there. The Mcklarens came, as well as the Eastwoods. Tanner and Trevor came. Even Evie and her mom stopped by. The only one who couldn't come was Dylan because Dylan had a soccer game.

By the time my mom had called us for dinner we were all sitting in a circle on the floor on the cheap towels she had bought. The adults, at that time, were either conversing on the couch or gathering by the counters.

My mom had made grilled chicken on a tiny portable grill that she had purchased when we packed up all our stuff. I had been smelling the cooking chicken for about a half hour now and it was killing me to be sitting here on the floor while the aroma of the chicken was surrounding our now empty living room.

As I was sitting here with all my friends I couldn't help but remember what it was like before this year. Before our Junior year my get-togethers weren't nearly as complicated. In fact this reminded me of a similar get together I had in my freshman year.

It was late August and all my friends were sitting on the floor in the Living Room. I can't exactly remember why we were sitting on the floor, but this was about two years ago.

I looked around at all their faces. Everyone seemed so young in my memories. Noah's face was still round with baby fat. Dylan's hair was cropped short, it seemed like it had been ages since I had seen it that short. Next to Dylan was his girlfriend, well now ex girlfriend but at the time she was his girlfriend. Her name was Beatrice. Next to Beatrice was Trevor. Trevor was just a scrawny kid. Tanner's face was sprinkled with acne and Rylie, who was sitting next to me, still had her hair in her signature side braid that she wore all of her Sophomore year. I looked down at Rylie's hand and it was intertwined with mine. It seemed weird, all of this appears like it was ages ago but in the bitter reality it really wasn't. Noah made a witty side comment that I wasn't paying attention to and Trevor smiled. He had braces, I had almost forgotten about that.

"I think I'm going to try out for Varsity Football," I randomly addressed the group.

"Tryouts are next week, are you sure you are ready?" Trevor asked me and it was definitely different hearing him talk in that weird pubescent voice that all boys in 9th grade had.

"I think it's great," Beatrice smiled over at me.

Oh, Beatrice. It seemed like she could do no wrong. She was the sweetest thing when Dylan had introduced us to her when we were in 8th grade. Since we were in 8th grade some of us took it in different ways. Noah was just happy he had been introduced to a girl and took this opportunity to try and get with some of Beatrice's friends. It didn't work as well because, well, Noah was about 5'4 at the time, with a face with more red spots than a pepperoni pizza and teeth that only two years of braces and dental surgery could fix.