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The table was set for four, and there were four hungry people ready to eat.  Delicious meatloaf was on the menu, and for the first time in a week all four family members had made the effort to sit down at the dining table and have a dinner together.

Kyra scooped some mashed potatoes onto her plate and then eyed her brother, Jason.

“Were you at school today?” she said, “I didn’t see you.”

Jason looked at his sister, frowning, then looked to his parents, Anne and Orson, and saw two questioning faces.

“I only had one class in the morning, and with finals coming up I got let off early to spend the rest of the day studying.”

Jason looked at his parents again and saw that their expressions hadn’t changed.

“Okay, maybe I cut my last class, but it was just P.E. and the coach has told me before that it’s okay with finals and graduation coming up.”

“Very well,” Orson said and took the mashed potatoes from Kyra.

“So Kyra, how was school today?” Anne said.

“Usual.  Full of cliques and popular kids and kids wanting to be popular and kids wanting to be anything but popular.  And me, getting by.  Oh, I’m going to the beach tomorrow; want to lay back and enjoy the sun for a bit.”

“Well, you know about the swimming warning, right?” Orson said.

Kyra looked to her dad: “Huh?”

“Huntington Beach has been issued a swimming warning because they’ve found high levels of bacteria in the water;  something to do with contaminants leaking into the ocean from somewhere.  So they don’t advise swimming.”

“But, what does that mean if someone does go swimming?”

Orson smiled.     “Nothing major, but you could get sick from it, with a virus or something; nothing really serious.”

“Yeah,” Kyra said, “I think I’ll pass.  I’ll just sweat under the sun for a while and come back and have a shower, and that’s as close as I’ll get to the sea for a while.”

She forked some meatloaf into her mouth and savored the rich gravy taste.

“Is it just the beach, or up and down the coast too?” Jason asked.  “I was planning on doing some surfing this weekend” – he saw a frown from his mother and quickly followed this with – “in between studying for finals, of course,” and smiled.

“They didn’t really say,” Orson replied.  “I think it’s pretty much localized around this area, so if you go up past Seal Beach or down past Newport, you should be fine.”

There was a moment of silence, as a happy family enjoyed a delicious meal together.

Kyra sat up straight, chewing and feeling the food go down into her stomach, looking at her family and feeling really happy for a change.  Everything at school had been getting her down, with so much homework, and the popular girls making fun of her every time she passed them in the hallways.  High school wasn’t easy.  She’d know that since she started, two years ago, and it seemed to get harder each year.  But summer break was coming up and she was looking forward to it.

She looked at her father, then her mother, then her brother, feeling content and happy to be here.  She felt like she hadn’t seen her family in a while.  Sure, they saw each other every day, but only for small amounts of time.  She was going to make the effort to change that.

“We need to do this way more often.  This is great,” she said.

The three stopped eating looked, at her, then looked at each other and burst into smile.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jason said.  “I do feel like I haven’t seen you guys that much lately, what with school and everything.  We just need to spend more time together and not get so caught up in our own lives.”

Anne wore the frown again.

“Okay,” Jason said, looking at her, “yes, that means me too.  I will make the effort to, to spend less time doing fun stuff and hanging out with you boring people more often.”

The frown didn’t go away.

“It was a joke!” he said, and then it disappeared.

“We should all do something together this summer?” Kyra said.  “I know we can’t do a full-blown vacation, with us all working and everything, be we should all take a long weekend and do something, go somewhere.”

“How about Catalina?” Orson said.

Kyra remembered that last couple of times they’d been.  It was there that her dad had proposed to her mother, and it was there that they had spent their honeymoon, and it had become one of their favorite spots to just get away from everything.  Then the children had been introduced, and loved the island just as much.  Catalina had a way of doing that, with its scenic beauty, peace and quiet, as well as being completely different to hot and crazy LA.

She thought about the amazing round casino building with the old-fashioned movie theater inside.  Sure, the sound system wasn’t fantastic, but they even had an old organ with some old guy playing songs before the movie, and it just killed her when he inevitably played Phantom of the Opera.  She thought about the time they’d rented bikes and ridden around Avalon and how much fun it had been.  And then there was the tour bus they’d taken into the hills of the island, giving the geographical as well as island history, and how they’d stopped at the highest point on the island, which was actually a small airport, Mile-High Airport or the Airport in the Sky, something like that.  And at the cafeteria she’d had the best cookies of her life.  They were big and filled with different ingredients: chocolate, cinnamon, nuts: a whirling of flavors in your mouth.  Kyra could taste that cookie now.

She looked at everyone else and saw that they were all thinking the same thing.

“So I guess,” Kyra said, “the real question is when are we going?”

Everyone burst into merry laughter.

“We just need to agree on a weekend, say July sometime, and schedule our work around it,” Anne said.  “I have to give notice at the hospital, but it shouldn’t be too hard, so long as I let them know well in advance.”

Jason raised his glass of water, and everyone else did the same.

“To Catalina in July,” he said.

“To Catalina in July!” everyone replied.

Dinner was soon finished, as all good meals that take long to prepare are.  Once all the dishes were in the dishwasher and everything was cleared away, Jason said he was going to see a friend across the street, while Orson and Anne went to watch some TV.

“I’m just going to my room, spend some time online and then go to bed.  I’m pretty tired,” Kyra said.”

“Okay hun,” Anne said.

Kyra hugged her dad and kissed her mother goodnight and headed down the hall to the end where there were two doors: the left was her bedroom, ahead the bathroom.  She went there first, taking off what little makeup she wore and getting ready for bed so she wouldn’t have to bother with it after she finished chatting online.  She knew she’d be tired by then and would only want to crash on her warm soft bed and not even think about brushing her teeth.
    
She walked into her room, closing the door behind her and was greeted by two large bookshelves, each bulging with books.  She sighed in pleasure; this was her tonic after a tiring day: walking into her bedroom and being surrounded by the worlds she loved to lose herself in.  She thought about the special world she’d been dreaming about recently and smiled.

She chatted with some friends for about an hour: friends she’d never met, who lived on the other side of the country and the other side of the world.  But they’d all come to the same conclusion: high school sucked, no matter where you lived.