Strangeland

Chapter 15 - All You Really Do is Complain

I decided to hide in the kitchen and make myself look busy. I didn't want to awkwardly stand next to the kitchen table and twiddle my thumbs while waiting for whoever the person is in front of me to start a conversation. Billie, Adie, Joey, and Jakob were in the entrance of the house. I heard the front door open and loud chatter.

"Eli!" I heard Billie yell, "They're here! Come and say hi!"

"Damnit..." I muttered to myself. Not going to get out of this easily.

I started to walk slowly out to the front door where everyone else was. I put my hands behind my back and gripped my fingers, trying to calm myself down. I bit the inside of my cheek. This always happened when I was nervous.

When I finally got there, I stared at the people who were there. Mike was standing next to his wife, while his children were next to him, same with Tré. Suddenly, one of Mike's children ran up to me, gripping my jeans. She smiled, and I smiled back. I bent down to her level.

"What's your name?" I asked the girl sweetly.

"Ryan!" She yelled. Ryan threw her hands up in the air and giggled. She ran back to Mike, hugging his leg.

I stood back up and Billie led me over to the group. "Eli, this is Tré's new wife Sara, and Tré's children: Ramona and Frankie," They all said hi to me, to which I replied a hi back. "This is Mike's wife Brittany and their children: Estelle, Brixton, and Ryan." They all greeted me as well.

We all walked to the dining table, where Billie sat at the head of the table, and Adie sat next to him. Following this, I sat in my normal spot next to Jakob, and Joey sat next to him. We got some more chairs out and extended the table so that everyone would fit. Frankie sat next to Joey, and Ramona sat next to him, with Estelle, Brixton and Ryan following down. I sat with us "children" on one side, with the couples sitting on the other side. I helped Adie bring everything out, including the food and drinks. All of the adults had wine or champagne, and the rest of us had soft drink or soda as the Americans called it.

It started off with everyone having different conversations with their neighbours or across the dining room table while eating lunch. I talked to the others down my row. I learnt that Estelle is 17, Ramona is 19, and that Frankie is 13. Ryan is 3 and Brixton is 5. Suddenly the conversation started to be about me, starting off with a question from Mike.

"So how did you discover our band?" Mike asked me.

It went quiet. Everyone who was eating or drinking finished quickly to see what I had to say. They were all staring at me which totally boosted my self-confidence.

"Um, well," I stuttered, trying (and failing) to remember anything. I stared at the tablecloth, creating a small beat with my fingers on the table. "My friend, she, uh, she showed me this video on YouTube at lunch at school one day. It-it was a live video and it was just after you guys released American Idiot. It, um... was the Are We The Waiting video,"

I closed my eyes remembering the memory, "and gosh it was so inspirational. I loved the beat of the drums and the guitar... So I started to listen to the full album and I fell in love. Then I started to listen to 21st Century Breakdown, then the trilogy and 39 Smooth."

I finally finished earning a small wow from Billie. I smiled and he had a big smile on his face. Then they all started to ask questions: What was London like? Is the schooling system different there? Why do you spell things differently? What's with the Metric System? I was able to answer all of those types of questions. I was lucky, though, because they didn't ask the personal questions.

They then started to tell me stories about when I was little, and how crazy and full of life I was. Like the time when I tried playing Tré's drum set, only to let go of the drumsticks and fling them across the room, almost hitting Billie in the head with them. Then apparently there was the time that I did ballet and pushed a girl that I didn't like off the stage in a dance recital... And into the audience.