By the time Thanksgiving came in, routine had finally become routine. Almost two weeks had transpired, Seth was still in his coma, Summer had yet to be heard from, and Kirsten cried more everyday, though she was trying to quit. It would be her first Thanksgiving without her son. She tried to just pass right through it, and hopefully head to Chrismukkah, where she could bury herself in work, but Sandy wouldn't let her. She had to be strong. But who was she kidding? Tears would roll down her eyes every time she was alone. Seth had destroyed her before, he was doing it again.
She sat in the kitchen, sipping coffee, it was Thanksgiving morning. Kirsten just thought they could go out, nothing special. But she doubted everyone would agree. It was Day 23 of Seth in a coma, they were nearing a month soon. Ryan had just woken up, and came into the kitchen.
"Morning Kirsten." Ryan greeted her and poured a cup of coffee.
"Morning. And happy Thanksgiving." Kirsten said back, the two hadn't talked in a bit.
"Well, happy Thanksgiving to you too." Ryan felt a tiny smile form on his face. She smiled also, glad that at least Ryan was still in the house.
"How's school been? You haven't really said anything about it." In fact, Ryan hadn't really said a thing. He just decided to be quiet.
"It's been okay. Some teachers are just letting us have a free period, and others are piling it on thick." Ryan seemed okay talking about it, Kirsten didn't know how he acted with something like this. She was never with him when something horrible happened.
"Well, that's good." Kirsten thought about Seth, why was he still in the coma? When would he wake up? These questions haunted Kirsten every minute.
"What's up?" Ryan noticed Kirsten was distancing herself.
"Hmm?" She was surprised. Why would Ryan care?
"You just seem a little out there. What's up?" Ryan explained, waiting for an answer.
"I'm just thinking about how much I wanted Seth to be awake for Thanksgiving. So I could say, 'Thank you God for bringing my son back.' But I can't, he's still asleep." Kirsten would not cry. She hadn't cried for eighteen hours, it was an all time high. It was the record, she wasn't breaking it.
"Well, he's not dead." Ryan didn't know what else to say.
"Yeah, I guess, but still..." Kirsten didn't continue.
"I got ya. So, are you still going on with Thanksgiving?" Ryan didn't know what to expect. He was fine not having the holiday, he only had it about four times in all his life. His mother always said it was a waste of money and time, buying a giant turkey. But when they did have Thanksgiving, they would go to Boston Market, and get their dinner. Not all that fancy, but it still stuck out in Ryan's mind as some of the happiest moments with his family. His dad was still there.
"Yeah. Sandy's making me. But we're just probably going out to eat. I'll probably invite my dad and Hailey." Kirsten told him.
"So the Coopers are coming?" They laughed.
"Yeah. And I thought I would invite Summer, so that'll be eleven." Kirsten counted.
"Nine." Ryan corrected her.
"What?" Kirsten didn't understand.
"I doubt Summer will come, she hasn't been back to school yet. And Seth...." Ryan told her.
"Oh." Kirsten forgot about Seth being in a coma for a split second. In that split second, Seth was okay. The world was okay. "Well, I'll just go call them and see if they want to come." She grabbed the phone and began to dial. First her dad, who accepted, and then her sister at Jimmy's.
"Hello?" Hailey picked up after two rings.
"Hey Hailey, it's Kirsten."
"Oh hey. What's up?" Hailey hoped it was nothing bad about Seth.
"I wanted to see if you, Jimmy, Marissa, and Kaitlin would come to dinner for Thanksgiving with us." Kirsten proposed the idea.
"Is Dad coming?" Hailey still wasn't on good terms with her new step-mom.
"Yes, of course." Kirsten knew who Hailey had really been referring to.
"Fine. We'll come. As long as..." Hailey started to say.
"You don't have to sit anywhere near Julie." Kirsten finished Hailey's sentence.
"Right. How did you know?" Hailey was surprised.
"I've paid attention." Kirsten said.
"Oh. Well, I gotta go. I'll see you later, okay?"
"Love you." Kirsten had to say it.
"Love you too sis." Hailey hung up.
Marissa was listening to the whole conversation. For Thanksgiving, she would be going to the Cohens'. Which meant Ryan, and no Seth. How fun.
"Hi." Kaitlin stood at Marissa's doorway.
"Not watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?" Ever since the girls could turn on the television, they watched that parade. Marissa was gonna watch it a little later.
"It's on a commercial break." Kaitlin answered plainly.
"Oh, so you can only talk to your sister when there's a commercial." Marissa pointed out.
"Yeah." Kaitlin agreed. "You usually watch it with me."
"I was gonna come down in a bit." That was true, Marissa had wanted some alone time for a tiny bit more.
"It'll be over by then." Kaitlin wanted to hang out with her sister.
"That's a lie, and you know it. It's on for like, the whole day." Marissa looked at Kaitlin. She hadn't talked to her in a while. Marissa was always worrying about someone.
"Whatever." Kaitlin was disappointed, she loved her sister, and she just wanted to be with her.
"Go back down. I'll be there in a bit." Marissa was only half paying attention, and she turned away.
"You know, I hear you at night." Kaitlin knew Marissa had made mistakes in the past, more than both liked to know about. Kaitlin knew more about Marissa than Marissa thought she did. Kaitlin had seen her cry and drink a while lot. She wished she could help her, she now would at least try.
"What?" Marissa looked back at Kaitlin. Was this true?"
"I hear you crying. Almost every night. Hailey does it too." Kaitlin told Marissa.
"It's okay to cry. Don't worry, I'm fine." Marissa attempted to cheer up her sister.
"But you don't get it."
"Get what?" Marissa didn't understand.
"It makes me sad when you cry." Kaitlin finally said it to Marissa.
"Why does it make you sad?" Marissa asked softly, she was touched.
"Because I want to help you. But I can't." Kaitlin looked up at her big sis.
"It's kinda hard to explain. Why I cry. You remember our old neighbors, the Cohens?" Marissa had walked over, and Kaitlin nodded to her question.
"Well, their son, Seth got hurt." Marissa put it ass nicely as she could.
"I remember him. He used to babysit me. He was cool. But he always talked about Summer." Kaitlin commented.
"He did?" Marissa thought it was cute that Seth used to always talk about Summer.
"Yeah. He used to ask me questions about her. He really loved her."
"He still does. And she does too." Marissa smiled.
"She must be taking him being hurt really hard." Kaitlin guessed.
"She's dealing." Marissa didn't want to think about Summer, that was too depressing. She wanted to stay in the good moment.
"You shouldn't cry that much." Kaitlin started that conversation up again.
"That was random." Marissa joked.
"I know, but you still shouldn't." Kaitlin couldn't see how her sister was so sad.
"Crying is a release of emotion." Marissa tried to make it seen as though crying was really good.
"But if you cry that much, what emotion is there left to release?" Kaitlin was smart, Marissa had to admit. She had a point. Sure, Marissa was sad, but she shouldn't be crying that much.
"There's a lot of emotions." Marissa covered quickly.
"Oh." That wasn't the answer Kaitlin wanted.
"Don't worry about me, Kaitlin. I'm fine." Marissa reassured her.
"Are you Marissa? You cry yourself to sleep, you're sad. And that makes me sad. You make people sad when you cry, don't you notice that? It hurts us because you're hurt. We wanna help you, but we can't." Marissa was overcome with emotion. She wouldn't cry, that was what this talk was all about. Kaitlin really cared, she hadn't expected anyone to.
"I love you Kaitlin." Marissa hugged her sister, feeling closer than ever.
"I love you too." Kaitlin hugged back and grinned. She wanted to help Marissa, maybe she finally was.
"Come on, do you wanna watch the parade? I'm pretty sure it's back on." Marissa felt good when she was with Kaitlin, nothing bothered her. Maybe Kaitlin's innocence rubbed of on Marissa. Kaitlin hadn't seen the horrors Marissa had, Kaitlin was too young to understand everything around her, even if she was eleven.
That went down to the living room, the parade was on. Hailey and Jimmy were nowhere in sight, the girls say down on the couch. They didn't say anything for a while, they didn't need to. The two felt good just with each other's company. But after a while, Kaitlin spoke.
"So, who are you having Thanksgiving with? Mom or Dad?"
"Well, with Mom, we go with her and Caleb to the Cohens, or we go with Dad and Hailey, and go to the Cohens." Marissa answered.
"We're going to the Cohens?" Kaitlin joked.
"Yeah." Marissa laughed. She felt okay around Kaitlin, she didn't need to cry.
"Hey look, it's Hilary Duff!" Kaitlin exclaimed and pointed to the television. There Hilary was, singing her song, "Fly."
"You like her?" Hilary was definitely not Marissa's choice. She liked deep, loud, rock. She liked to drown out everything around her and only her and the music mattered.
"Yeah. Don't you?" Kaitlin had both her CDs, and knew every word to all the songs. Hilary was quite popular to the preteens of Newport Beach.
"Not my favorite, Kaitlin." She said it nicely, not wanting to hurt Kaitlin's feelings. Hilary rolled away off the screen, and soon...The Big Man himself appeared.
"It's Santa!" Marissa didn't know if Kaitlin still believed in Santa.
"You still believe in him?" Marissa asked.
"No." Kaitlin tried to seem cool.
"It's okay if you do." In fact, Marissa wished she still did beleve in Santa. She would put up at the top of her Christmas wish list, "Seth to wake up, and Summer to be okay." Believing in Santa was a time of pure childhood, no drama.
"I don't. Mom and Dad are the ones who do." Obviously, Julie and Jimmy hadn't gotten the memo that Kaitlin didn't believe.
"Okay. Fine with me." The two girls watched as Santa waved to the crowd in the cold New York. Somewhere Marissa had never been. She never experienced the cold, she never saw real snow. All she ever saw was sunny, hot days filled with drama and uproar. They were nowhere near the calm of the snow.
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Seven of the desired nine sat in the restaurant lobby, waiting for the infamous couple, Julie and Caleb. Everyone was relatively dressed up nicely, the guys stood while the girls sat on a long bench.
"Finally." Kirsten said upon seeing her father and Julie walking up to them. "Where were you guys? You're ten minutes late."
"Kirsten, it's Thanksgiving. There is something called traffic." Julie sneered. Kirsten ignored what Julie said, she wasn't in the mood. She just wanted to get through the dinner.
A hostess directed the group to a large table where Sandy sat at the end of one side and Jimmy was at the other end. Kirsten sat next to Sandy, then Ryan and Marissa. Hailey sat across from Jimmy, then Kaitlin, Julie, and finally Caleb. No one spoke, they sat there looking at their menus. A waiter finally came, relieving them of their awkwardness. They ordered, and soon the awkwardness settled back in.
Marissa stared blankly at the table. What else could she look at? She didn't want to stare at the people that surrounded her, she felt uncomfortable.
"So....Dad. How's work going?" Kirsten tried to initiate conversation.
"Quite fine, Kiki. Thank you for asking." Caleb replied, not looking up, as he read the wine list. Kirsten hadn't been into work for a while, Seth had been taking up all her mind. She knew her dad needed her, to help keep his business afloat. Lately, everyone was pitted against everyone else.
"Um Kirsten...." Hailey began to ask about Seth, but stopped. Kirsten had a sense of what Hailey wanted to say. She shook her head, providing the answer. They wanted to stay relatively happy, with no outbursts of tears. And that would mean not actually mentioning Seth.
Hailey didn't even want to be this close to Julie. Julie had been using Hailey's dad, and had used her boyfriend. Hailey hated Julie Nichol, Cooper, whatever the hell she felt like being this week. Hailey had visited Seth numerous times, Julie had visited maybe twice. Caleb was Seth's grandfather, shouldn't he be visiting a lot? But no, Julie and Caleb lived in their own little world where none of the Cohens, Coopers, or Nichols existed.
Hailey looked over to Ryan, who sat there thinking about something else. Marissa had taken to staring out a window, the two looked like an unlikely couple. But they were. Weren't they? Hailey had lost track.
Sandy could feel his wife trembling. Silence was when she didn't work well. Quiet was torture, she usually cried then. Maybe the dinner hadn't been such a great idea. He held her hand, trying to get her to calm down.
Kirsten couldn't do it. She was gonna cry. The knot formed in her throat, the water came to her eyes.
"Excuse me," Kirsten whispered and left the table. Sandy began to get up, but Hailey stopped him.
"I'll go talk to her," Hailey go tup and started to follow Kirsten when Julie also got up.
"I'll come and help." Hailey turned around to Julie. She was pissed.
"You've done enough." She didn't say anything else, she didn't want to start a fight. Julie could do that.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Julie either was playing dumb, or really wanted to get into a fight.
"You know exactly what I mean." Hailey was ready.
"Well, obviously I don't, because if I did, I wouldn't be asking." Julie never liked Hailey, never once.
"Your step-grandson is in the hospital. In a coma. And you don't even have the common courtesy to even see him." Hailey hated mentioning it, but she was mad at Julie.
"Hailey, my point exactly. The boy is in a coma, he can't see or hear us, so why bother? I have been incredibly busy, I can't waste time staring at someone who won't wake up." Julie proved her point. Everyone was appalled at what she said, even Caleb.
"Julie, there's a little something called love. Maybe you've heard of it, since you obviously can't comprehend it. People care about him, you don't. All you care about is who is gonna pay your bills next month." No one spoke, and Ryan tried to sneak away, but Sandy caught him.
"Hey, where ya going?" Sandy asked, wondering.
"Get some air." Ryan told him.
"Don't wanna be here when the fur flies?" Sandy joked, meaning Julie and Hailey.
"Yeah, sorta." Ryan smiled and left. Marissa watched as he left, she wondered why.
"You only married my dad for his money!" Hailey exclaimed.
"That's a lie. He doesn't have any money and I still love him." Julie composed herself.
"You married him knowing he had money." Hailey remarked coldly.
Marissa was done. She needed some air. Partially, she did want to talk to Ryan, but she didn't want to see Hailey and Julie fighting. She left the table, telling her dad she'd be back and went to the outside of the restaurant.
"Hey." She greeted him, he was leaning on a pillar, hands in pockets.
"Hey." Ryan looked over, surprised to see her there.
"Thought you'd be smoking or something like that." Marissa thought back to the first time they met. He had been smoking, she borrowed one, they felt the connection.
"Nah, I quit that a long time ago. I just wanted some air. How about you?" It was a rule that you couldn't smoke in the Cohens' house, and Ryan wanted to stay there.
"I'm sick of my mom and Hailey fighting." The argument had been going on for so long, it was getting boring.
"They're still at it?" Ryan asked, amused.
"Of course they are. When aren't they?" The two sounded as though they were friends, not the complicated mess that they really were. They kept their conversation fairly not depressing, the world was getting to be too much around them. Each other was their release from the sadness, they needed each other. They fit the puzzle perfectly. But too much was separating them. "I can't believe it's been almost a month." Marissa commented, noticing the silence.
"Yeah, doesn't seem like it." Ryan looked over as Marissa came closer.
"Right. I wanna say that it's been going by really fast, and it's all of a sudden a month, but that's not true. Everyday has been like..." Marissa sat on the ledge Ryan was already sitting on.
"Forever?" Ryan finished the sentence for her.
"Yeah....forever." She smiled at him and a tiny smile came on his face, better than none. "Do you ever think it's your fault?"
"What?" Ryan didn't understand her question.
"I mean, like, do you ever think what happened is your fault?" Marissa looked at him, he looked away. She felt like that a lot.
"All the time."
"Kaitlin told me today that she hates when I cry because I make her sad. And I never thought of it that way. When you're crying, you're into yourself, you don't think about the people around you." She thought about that earlier.
"Oh." Ryan didn't know how to react to what Marissa was saying.
"Is that why you do it?" Marissa had been wondering about this question for so long. Why Ryan never vocalized his feelings.
"Do what?" Ryan asked.
"Hide your feelings," Marissa answered.
"I don't know why I do it. I just, never feel like talking." Ryan tried to answer the best he could, but not sounding stupid. It kinda worked.
"There has to be a reason. What is it?" Marissa pushed on.
"I don't really want to talk about it." Ryan didn't want to think about his past, it was too hard.
"Okay. Fine with me." She was saying that a lot. Marissa was a little disappointed, but she didn't show it. "Do you wanna go back in? Maybe my mom and Hailey stopped fighting." Their conversation was going nowhere, why continue it?
"All right." The two got up and began to walk in. Marissa brushed Ryan's arm, he felt a tinge of pain, his arm still hurt from that day.
Walking back into the dining room, they found Hailey and Julie were still fighting. Sandy had taken Kaitlin to try and get Kirsten, Kaitlin was the message giver between them.
"So how much did Jimmy originally pay you? You seem like you were one of the cheaper ones." Julie remarked.
"I am not a prostitute." Hailey was getting really pissed.
"Oh right. You're a stripper. How much better." Julie wanted a fight, and she was getting one. Just as Sandy and Kaitlin returned with Kirsten, Hailey slapped Julie. Julie slapped back, both were now hitting each other. The rest of the dining room watched in amusement as the rest of the Cooper-Cohen-Nichol-Atwood group stared in horror. Everyone felt embarrassed, especially when after Hailey pushed Julie, Julie shoved Hailey into the wall.
Waiters and such came in flocks, some just to watch, some actually trying to stop the girls. Eventually they were stopped, both were disheveled. Hailey's head throbbed as Julie nursed a bleeding lip. The restaurant kicked them all out, they walked away with no food, no nothing. What a great holiday dinner. Happy Thanksgiving, folks.
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Okay, I hope you all liked this chapter, I think this is the least depressing one yet. All of you want Seth to wake up, and he will soon, I guarantee that. I can't wait to write the end of the next chapter, and the next two chapters. Please read and review, as I've said before, I love the reviews, I live for them. I hope you like this chapter and I'm writing as fast as I can!!
Ali