Perfectly Imperfect 1

74- The Dinner

KAYLA:

The silence was deafening. 

All my life, I had never quite understood what that phrase meant. I mean, really. How can silence- silence, I tell you!- be deafening? Silence is quiet and noise is deafening; how hard can it be to understand that?

Tonight, though, the full meaning of the phrase dawned upon me, for here I was, right smack in the middle of a room where the silence was deafening.

The deafening silence was only occasionally broken by the delicate clinks of silverware on china. Apart from that, though, there was only a heavy, pregnant, deafening silence. No one talked, no one caught each other's gaze, no one moved- in fact, no one did so much as to breathe loudly. 

Like I said, the silence was deafening.

After the main course was served and taken away, the salad dish was brought in. I looked distastefully down at mind: cherry tomatoes on top of some green and purple vegetable, dressed with olive oil. Yuck! Surreptitiously glancing around while still keeping my head down, I saw Sean and Ivan bravely digging into their salads, although the grimace of their mouth told me that it was not entirely to their liking. Pursing my lips, I bowed my head and bravely forked up a cherry tomato, trying not to spit out the sour goo that invaded my mouth the moment my teeth sunk into it. Double Ew!

What neither of us counted upon, though, was Emma- very unsilent-like, too,- almost puking out the contents of her mouth right back onto her salad plate.

"That's gross!" she exclaimed loudly, at the exact same moment as Cal's sister, Bethany, saw Emma's semi-chewed salad.

Bethany turned green, but her mother- who was too busy trying to look prissy at Emma- did not notice. 

Everything would have ended quite well if Emma hadn't then started to prod her unchewed cud with her spoon, complaining about how icky it tasted. Fate had, unfortunately, pushed Emma to do exactly that, and the world exploded.

Or at least, Bethany did. Over her mother.

The rest, as they say it, was history. The deafening silence was gone, only to be replaced by deafening... yells.

A few moments passed before Cal's step mom realized what she was drenched in. In that few moments, Bethany had already burst into hysterical tears, brandishing her arms around violently at Emma, shouting phrases around. Although I didn't catch what she was saying- for at this time, her mum had finally registered the puke that was hanging from her hair and had started yelling and puking too- Emma got the gist of it. Soon, Emma too was standing on her chair, yelling back at Bethany. Mum and Dad, pale and horrified at their perfect little daughter's behaviour, scrambled up, shouting at Emma to be quiet. 

So, in fact, the only people in the midst of this deafening noise who were too stunned to move were: my boyfriend and his father, the twins, and mua.

What we didn't count was William Cafferty observing all that was happening around him with a crinkle in his eye, before... chuckling.