that morning and consumed in the hallways on the way to a meeting scheduled for some blasted reason during their one free period of the day, that a goddamn hallway PB&J would be a last meal of sorts...well, they would have done something else. They would have woken up earlier or stayed up later to cook something real, something substantial, something lasting and delicious. Something like what Malik had.
He unwrapped a second tin foil packet, this one smaller, containing a sliced pickle and a dollop of schug, a Yemeni chili paste. His mom knew him so well, how he hated the pickles making the pita bread soggy, how his taste for spice came and went, so he liked having the option of how much to add. He took the first exquisite bite, a little bit of tahini dribbling out onto his chin. He used his finger to scoop it back into his mouth, not wanting to waste a single drop. A soft moan escaped his lips, similar in sound but wholly different in feeling to the teacher’s whimper. Every stomach in the room grumbled in response.
* * *
Omar Ng’s stomach grumbled, too. His metabolism worked like a clock, or rather, like a metronome. If he had just played a sport, hunger came. If he had just woken up, hunger came. If he had simply spent an hour or two not eating, that pendulum swung back and Omar had to eat. He wasn’t in the foyer. He’d quickly figured out there was no food in the foyer, and had been scouring the building. The roof garden had provided some popcorn dregs, but he hadn’t been able to figure out how to work the fancy popcorn machines (lent to CIS for the evening by a parent) to make more.
In the basement, Lolo Dufry had offered him an apple, but to Omar’s six-foot-three seventeen-year-old frame, an apple was the equivalent of a single French fry. He’d taken it in greedily and gratefully, but as soon as it was gone, it was as if he hadn’t eaten anything. The one place he hadn’t explored yet was the gym. His sister, Joy, hadn’t responded to his texts, and he worried that if he came storming in before she was ready to talk, she would clam up. But after seeing Lolo, Eli, Marisa and Malik pull out various foods, he knew Joy, too, would have planned accordingly. He hung just outside the gym door and texted her again.
I’m coming to the gym. Don’t have to talk yet if you don’t want, but I’m so hungry I just ate a freshman.
He waited for a moment, smacking his phone against his hand.
But I’m a freshman, she wrote, and he knew it was okay for him to come in.
It took him a few seconds to find her sitting on a stool behind some sort of improvised room divider. Funny how he’d already forgotten where the exit to the gym usually was. She pulled out a container filled with rice and curry. “I forgot about having to heat it up,” she said.
He popped the lid and grabbed the metal fork she handed to him, then squatted down beside her. He studied the fork as if it was some unknown device. Joy wondered what was on his mind at that moment, why he wasn’t scarfing the food down already. Was he angry at her? Would he demand she open the padlocks? She glanced over at the bucket. If Omar asked her to she would want to, she would do it in the moment. If it were entirely up to her. She pushed away the mental image of a half-digested key.
Finally, Omar spoke. “You haven’t been using plastic utensils,” he said. They spoke in Spanish to each other, having spent five years in Madrid before starting at CIS. “I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed.” He turned his attention to the food, took the first heaping bite. It was their dad’s curry, always a little bland the first day, but amazing the next, the mysterious alchemy of a night in the refrigerator. Any time Omar heard his dad say the phrase “letting the flavors marry,” he pictured actual weddings, cloves walking down the aisle next to ginger, bird’s eye chili clad in a Catholic priest’s uniform waiting to recite a psalm. In thirty seconds, half the food was gone.
Omar resisted the urge to finish the food and put the container down. “Joy, why didn’t you tell me?”
She bit her lip, wishing for a