Laugh Until You Cry

8 Tennessee

“I hate snow,” I mumble in irritation as I’m walking through about an inch of snow with my tan boots that aren’t really boots because they only cover up to my ankle. “How did I let you talk me into this?”

Anthony chuckles from beside me, his teeth chattering almost as badly as mine are, “I didn’t talk you into it, Stell, I just asked you if you wanted to come and you said yes. I didn’t even know that it snowed in Tennessee.”

“I wouldn’t have said yes if I knew that there was going to be snow,” I mumble in freezing irritation. I mean, it’s November so I knew that it was going to be cold so it’s not like I’m not dressed for the freezing weather. Since I wasn’t allowed to go to school yesterday, I slept late and then went shopping but I was only gone for about an hour, so nobody really noticed that I was gone. It has been years since I’ve dealt with cold weather though, so I had to get a winter coat and a cute sweater before arriving here in freezing Tennessee for this stupid Thanksgiving vacation.

Not only was it snowing, but we had to walk from the driveway of our grandparents’ house to the front door and it’s actually a surprisingly long walk. They’re very rich, my maternal grandparents are, and they live on this huge piece of land with a huge house and they have a huge staff from butlers to valet to cooks and pool boys (even right now because they have an indoor pool) and they have enough bedrooms to accommodate the whole family, which is why we are all gathering here for the Thanksgiving holiday.

My grandparents had five kids including my mother: Uncle Denny, Aunt Jackie, Aunt Georgie, and Aunt Theresa. Denny and his wife had two kids of their own- Michael, who is 32, and Sarah, who is 29. Michael and his wife have two little kids (Timmy-5 and Ericka-2) and Sarah is pregnant with her first child. Jackie married and she now has four grown up kids. Emily is 25 and engaged, Harry is 23 and has a newborn baby with his girlfriend named Jayda, Riley and Jamie are 19 year old twins. Georgie and her husband only had one kid- TJ, who is 27. Theresa never married but she adopted two kids from China a while ago- Brian, who is now 13, and Miracle (we all just call her Mary), who is now 10.

Basically, there’s a little over thirty people that will be staying in this one house, that’s how big it is. I honestly haven’t seen any of these people since I left for Vaughn and I don’t think Anthony has either, so we spent our whole flight from LA to Tennessee looking through Facebook and printed photo albums as we remembered everybody and their names and faces and got caught up with who had kids, who’s about to have kids, and who got married or is about to do so.

“Okay, so from what I remember, we are the sanest people from this family,” I start as we get closer to the front door. “So if we split up and then get bombarded by a family member or members and their craziness, we need a code word so that the other person will come in and save the other.”

“Oh, God, the twins,” Anthony recalls how the twins, who are only a year older than us, feel like just because they are twins and Anthony and I are twins that all four of us share some weird connection. They’re also really into science and the brain, so they always ask us to do experiments and it’s really creepy and weird. “Yeah, we’ll definitely need a safe word.”

“Okay, so how about… Pecan,” I suggest. “If you hear me say that, you need to hightail your ass over to me and I’ll do the same for you. This family is crazy. We need to stick together in there.”

He nods in agreement as we walk up to the front door. Because we are only going to be here for a few days, I just washed out my gym bag and stuffed all of my clothes in that so that I didn’t have to bring a real suitcase, which is what Anthony did too, so I clutch my stuffed gym bag over my shoulder as Anthony knocks on the door.

Almost immediately, the door swings open and a man dressed in a fancy tuxedo is standing there. I don’t recognize him as part of the family, so I’m assuming that he’s one of the butlers.