LOTF: Before and After

Phase 3: Chapter 4

Ralph was gravely unprepared for how overstimulating the nearby mall food court would be. He'd been to malls, and eaten in food courts, what must've been hundreds of times before. But now, it was strikingly anxiety inducing to have all these different choices. Burgers, chicken strips, sushi, pasta, breadsticks, salad, hot dogs, french fries, and the list went on from there. He was used to eating whatever he could find on the island. There was no choice to be made.

"Can I just have fruit?" Ralph asked his mother as he felt his stress levels rising, and his body temperature with it.

"Fruit? From where?" Laurie asked as she looked around the food court.

"I don't know, where can you buy fruit?" Ralph asked genuinely. His mother tried not to show the surprise she felt that he couldn't remember.

"The grocery store across the street?"

"Right. Can we go?" he pleaded.

"Of course we can, just let me grab something for Daddy and Jack, okay?"

Ralph nodded as he hooked his arm around his mom's. He closed his eyes as he let his mom guide him through the noisy crowd. See, it wasn't the noise that made Ralph feel like he was suffocating. It was the visuals; all the light up signs above the fast food restaurants, the ridiculous amount of various colors from pastels to neons, as well as the smell of all the different food choices combined together in a room that didn't seem to be big enough to hold it all.

Once they got back to the hospital, Laurie handed the bag of food over to Jeffery. Ralph's father pulled out the hamburger and chicken strips his wife had ordered for him and gave Jack the medium french fry container. Laurie sat next to her husband and picked at the chicken strip basket in his lap. Ralph sat down on the other side, leaving one seat between himself and Jack.

Jack poked and prodded at the french fries in the paper container. The smell was overbearing, and he closed the box up without taking a single one. He glanced over at the plastic container of assorted fruit pieces that Ralph was eating from. Feeling Jack's eyes on him, Ralph glanced up at him with a mouthful of cantaloupe.

Ralph said nothing to his former friend, but he held the fruit container out to Jack. The older boy, he too without speaking, reached into the container and grabbed a couple pieces of pineapple. The Langley parents watched the boys in silence. Instead of setting the plastic container back down in his lap, Ralph set it in the chair between the two of them. Laurie smiled as her eyes watered with pride. Jeffery's endless generosity may drive her crazy sometimes, but Ralph embodied nothing but the best parts of her husband. She couldn't have loved either of them more.

When the Langley parents met each others' eyes, they knew they were both thinking the same thing; how weird it was that the boys refused to eat fast food, that they both preferred fruit instead. Their diet on the island had been different, of course. Desperate, it would've been. Still, the adults were struck by the strangeness in their desire to stick with it rather than run from it. Jeffery was expecting his son to be thrilled and ecstatic to get back to eating all the junk food he'd never been allowed to eat at military school, and never been able to eat on the island. The Langley's realized that this might be the first weird thing Ralph's done since his rescue, but it most likely wouldn't be the last.

"Paige Merridew" Jack heard a familiar voice say in the muffled distance. He shot his head up and saw a head of mid-length blond hair standing at the reception desk, her back to them as she spoke to the lady.

Paige turned around when the receptionist told her where to find her brother. Her eyes met Jack's from across the room as she thanked the receptionist before walking over to them.