I wrote up my whole review, including the balmy night, the twinkly fairy lights, and the kids clustered around rough-planked picnic tables, and I gave Dirt Treats five stars. Then I did a word count on the piece, and it was only three hundred and fifty words. Ms. Gallo had wanted five hundred.

Oh no!

I slumped back in my seat. How on earth was I going to come up with a hundred and fifty more words about vegetables? I flipped through my notebook and tried to think of areas I could expand on. As I flipped, I thought absentmindedly about Sierra and how she had made that night so fun, and how if Tamiko had been there with us, it would have been even more fun, but in a different way.

Inspired, I lifted my pen, turned to a blank page, and began to jot down some notes on how different my two besties were.

One is the sun—burning fiercely,

Pulling all to her side.

One is the moon—always moving,

Riding a new tide.

One is fiery, gold, electric, and wild.

The other is cool, silver, [something], and styled.

I chewed on the top of my pen. I was stumped on the last line. What was Tamiko like? Opinionated, stylish, inventive. But still kind of private. Sierra was totally out there, giving everyone her all, holding nothing back. I wondered where Tamiko would fall on the sixteen personalities test. Sierra was for sure an extrovert—she needed to be interacting with people (preferably new people) to get energized. She craved new experiences and was always signing up for activities, biting off more than she could chew, just because something “sounded fun.” Tamiko, despite her public blog and her sassy confidence, was an introvert like me, I thought. She liked working on her creative projects alone. She marched to the beat of her own drum, following exactly no one else. And she was pretty picky about friends, even though she was confident enough to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

What if I’d had to put myself in this poem? What was I, right in the middle of the sun and the moon? Solid, reliable, never waxing or waning, setting or rising, just down to… earth! I was the earth!

But what rhymed with “earth,” besides “dearth”? (I’d had to look that up.) Hmm. “Birth” and “mirth.” A little forced. I sighed and set aside the notebook and pen, then stretched and stood up from my desk. What was I going to do about this food-writing piece? I stared down at my computer in annoyance, willing a hundred and fifty more words to appear on the document all by themselves, but no luck.