They gather in the living room.

Her father is glued to the telle, watching Dark Angel DVDs with the upmost interest.

Her mother is looking at a magazine, flipping iddly through the pages, prying apart the pages that were sticky for some unknown reason.

Her brother is on the computer, looking up information about grenades, guns, and has his music blaring through his earphones, heavy metal.

How can he even understand the words?

She lays on the couch, a book opened on her stomach. She had been lost in a world where the handsome gypsy turns into a tree by evil in turn for good, leaving the girl in the book distraught and lost. Her eyes went back and forth between her family.

This was family time.

Where no one talked to each other, the only sounds from the telle or the music that her brother played. The annoying music from some band who complained and hated everything but that she wanted to like.

She took this time, every day after dinner, to evaluate her family.

The wrinkles were setting in deeper around her father's eyes, and her mother's hair was showing the gray again. Her brother was almost a man, looking into the aspects of life and what would be best for him.

And she was sitting here reading about a girl's father who was addicted to opium.

Disconnected. Each and everyone one of them were disconnected from each other. It could be worse, she knows. They could hate each other with a tremendous passion. Her family could be abusive and horrible beings, locking her in the basement or in her room, burning her with ciggs or taking away everything she ever knew, her hands clinging to anything she could get a grip on.

But they weren't like that.

Her family was loving and understanding, but what they didn't understand was that she couldn't stand the silence, she couldn't stand laying around watching them grow old. It was a beautiful day outside. The cats lounged on the porch banisters, sun bathing. The birds chirped out their callings.
She stood up, letting the book drop to the floor.

She got to the door before her mother asked "Where do you think you are going? It's family time."

She turned around, one hand still on the doorknob.

"Think about it. What do we do during family time? We sit around and not talk to each other."

She opened the door and walked out.