Mandy woke with a start and threw off the comforter. The microwave clock was visible from the queen-size bed. It was almost noon. She’d slept for more than fourteen hours. Stuart had gone to work. Ted was at school. Sun streamed in through the kitchen windows.

She sat up and swung her feet to the floor. Something was different this morning. She could feel the blood circulating in her veins. She felt… alive.

Was it the weed? Maybe it was working. Not that she was certifiably ill, but something was different. Maybe it was the sleep. Maybe that’s all it ever was. She’d gotten so sleep-deprived when she first had Teddy, she just needed to catch up.

People died from exhaustion. It was a good thing she hadn’t died.

She stood up quickly, eager to get on with what would surely be a new kind of day. Whoa, maybe too quickly. Lying in bed watching movies all the time had made her weak. She looked down at her wobbly ankles and doughy knees and looked quickly away. How had she allowed herself to get this fat? Plus, she was starving.

The fridge was full of Stu’s gross green juices and Ted’s baby carrots. Mandy wanted something substantial, like a roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy or shepherd’s pie. She didn’t know of any place that delivered that sort of food, and she wasn’t about to eat at a restaurant all alone. Maybe there was someone she could call, someone with a weird work schedule who might be free. She scrolled through the contacts on her phone. Nothing but doctors she never saw, hair salons she never went to, and a few girls from high school she’d completely lost touch with. Her entire existence had always centered around Stu and his band, and then Stu and Ted. She didn’t have any friends. She didn’t have much of a life.

Showering was so tedious when she was this hungry, but she made it through by eating half of one of Stu’s weed cookies first. By the time she’d dressed, blow-dried her hair, curled her eyelashes, and tied her sneakers, she was buzzing with hungry energy. She took a picture of herself in the mirror and texted it to Stu, showing off how up and at ’em she was today.

Going out, she wrote.

She waited a few minutes but he didn’t write back.

There was a luncheonette in Carroll Gardens where all the old neighborhood Italians went. She could get takeout chicken Francese on a bed of linguine with fresh garlic bread, bring it home, and eat it on the sunny stoop.