It was the weekend, and Joe had put together a nice breakfast of eggs and French toast. However, Katrina had not come downstairs to eat yet, and he didn't want to start without her, so he went upstairs to her bedroom to fetch her.
When he peeked through the crack left open by her ajar door, he saw her still laying in bed, scrolling through her phone with a crestfallen look on her face. He suspected she was upset about what had happened the past few days. He slipped into the room to talk to her. "Chérie?"
Katrina looked up at her father, and sat up. "Why do people change, Daddy?"
Joe sighed and sat down on her bed. "Je ne sais pas, ma belle. Peut-être que quelques enfants sont nés terribles." (I don't know, sweetie. Maybe some kids are just born rotten.)
Katrina shifted over and put her head on her father's shoulder. "It wasn't always like this."
Joe put an arm around his daughter. "J'ai une histoire de quand j'étais ton âge, et j'avais un problème d'amitié…" (I have a story from when I was your age, and I had a friendship problem…)
"C'est tout commencé avec un garcon." (It all started with a boy.)
Many years ago - in fact, it was 1997, Joe was in the seventh grade, and a new boy named William had recently started attending his school on Monday. Joe found himself fascinated by William; his hair was never messy, he knew everything about science that a kid could know, and he knew how to fish.
Joe really wanted to be friends with William, and he figured that to do that, he'd need to do something to really impress him. Well, William came here from London, so Joe decided he would teach himself English. All through Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, he obsessively read through English books to teach himself pronunciation and sentence structure. By Friday, he had a decent grasp on how to speak the language.
Joe waited for William to come out of the building after school, and when he did, he went over to him. "Good afternoon, William," he said shyly. "I think you are really cool and want to know if we can be friends."
"Oh, it's the aft-air-noon, is it?" William snarked, mocking Joe's accent. "If you're going to speak to me, I expect you to do it properly." He stuck his nose in the air and walked away without another word.
Joe watched William walk away, crushed. "Cretin," sneered another boy, shoving him on his way out.
And so that night, Joe went home and cried into his pillow. When Amélie came to fetch him for dinner, she put her hand on his back, as she always did. However, she was far from prepared for what Joe would tell her happened that day. Normally, Joe got upset over relatively small things, but this? "Oh, mon Joseph." She held him closely. "Ton voix et ton accent sont beaux, juste comme ils sont. Et tu apprends quelque chose de très compliquée." (Your voice and your accent are beautiful, just as they are. And you learned something very complicated.)
Joe didn't really listen to the rest of what his mother said. He just laid his head on her shoulder and let the rest of his tears fall.
"Je crois que le message ici, c'est que quelque fois, il va être les personnes qui ne t'aime pas, mais c'est ne te rend pas une mauvaise personne. Tu as aussi beaucoup d'amis qui t'aiment, et même si tu n'avais rien d'amis, tu y vas même moi, et Viktor, et tes grand mères, et toute ta famille." (I believe my message here is that sometimes, there will be people who don't like you, but that doesn't make you a bad person. You also have lots of friends who like you, and even if you didn't have any friends, you'd still have me, and Viktor, and your grandmothers, and all of your family.)
Almost as soon as Joe had spoken his name, Von Kaiser came upstairs. "Was, bist du hier oben eingeschlafen? Dein Frühstück wird kalt." (What, did you fall asleep up here? Your breakfast is getting cold.)
"It's fine, Vati," said Katrina, getting up. "We'll just nuke it in the microwave." She trailed downstairs after her stepfather, and Joe, happy that he had cheered his daughter up, followed.
