Good Luck Charlie (Or is it Teddy?)

A Very Strange Dinner

One week later...

Isabelle:POV

I approach Gabe's houses front door, and nervously rub my arm. I ring the doorbell, and I tug on my green short dress. I really hope they like me. It seems like I have a history for making bad first impressions, I can only hope that I can change that starting today.

Gabe answers the front door, and I smile widely.

"Hey." he greets me.

"Hey." I respond awkwardly and we stand in silence for several seconds.

"Come in." Gabe says, and I walk into his house. Out of the corner of my eye I see a short blonde-haired women walk onto the family room, and she flattens out her shirt.

"You must be Isabelle, I'm Gabe's mom." Mrs. Duncan introduces herself, and I shake her hand.

"It's very nice to meet you Mrs. Duncan." I inform her. She nods at my response, and then leads me to what I assume is where we'll be eating. Sitting around the dark marble table is a little girl with bright blonde hair, a young man with slightly darker hair, and a middle-aged man wearing a blue uniform.

"Isabelle, meet Charlie, Pj, Toby, and my husband, Bob." Mrs. Duncan introduces me to her family. 

"Lovely to meet you all." I grin, my almost non-existent British accent bleeding through. The dining room smelled of roast beef and freshly smashed mashed potatoes, one smell I had unfortunately grown tired of. I wouldn't dare tell Mrs. Duncan that, though.

Gabe pulls out a chair for me from the sleek table, and I smile whilst taking a seat. I hear someone gasp, and turn around to see Mrs. Duncan with a look of pure shock on her face. She quickly recovers, and clears her throat.

"I'll be right back." she murmurs, and rushes upstairs, but not before she grabs one of their home phones. Gabe takes a seat next to me, and awkwardly plays with his fork, obviously embarrassed.

"I guess we can start eating now. Oh, and no matter what my mom tells you, she didn't make this food, she ordered it." Gabe's older brother me, and I nod in acknowledgment.  Everyone starts to slab the food harshly onto their plates, Mr. Duncan helping his two younger children fill their plates with food.

Something, for some reason, made me feel unsettled, as if there was something I was to be embarrassed about. I look down to my chest to see if I had accidentally spilt something on my dress, but found nothing there. I sit up as straight as an arrow up in my seat, not wanting to embarrass myself.

I grab the plate of roast beef, and cover a quarter of my plate with it, and half of it with mashed potatoes. I poke my fork into the strange smelling meat, and take a bite. It tasted like rubber and had the texture of sweaty gym socks. Not wanting to appear rude, I manage to eat the rest of the disgusting mystery meat, just in time for Mrs. Duncan to enter the dining room once again, and sets the home phone down onto the counter.

"Sorry I took so long, I just had to call a friend for something." she says vaguely, and takes her seat at the table. I switch my eyes over from Mrs. Duncan, and back to my empty plate. The only thing left on my plate was my fork.

"Here, have some more, sweetie." Mrs. Duncan says while gingerly placing more roast beef onto my plate. I groan internally, but force a smile onto my lips for the sake of making a good first impression. I look over to my left to see Gabe using his spoon as a shovel as he flips his piles of mashed potatoes over, playing with them. He looks up from his unfinished plate, and grins at me. I return his smile, and look down.