But I’ll make my new lists over hot tea and not wine. Because we don’t really keep wine in the house, while a hurricane would probably hit San Alejandra before we’d ever run out of tea (fact: California doesn’t get hurricanes; the Pacific Ocean’s too cold, so storms just end up petering away).

And it’s just as well we also don’t have straws, because who drinks hot tea with straws, anyway?

Some things have to be universal.

I lie on my bed and open up the Notes app on my cell.

From above, old stars gone dark continue to stare down, and I wonder what they see.

It’s the next afternoon, ten after three, and my shift at The Luckiest Wok is over.

After changing back into my jeans and T-shirt, I stuff my work uniform into my backpack and leave the tiny staff room through the side door. I head down the hall and into the food court.

I spot familiar red curls just up ahead.

“See you tomorrow, Vera!” I call out over the heads of shoppers.

Vera turns and waves, stopping so that I catch up to her. “Oh, I’m not leaving quite yet, sweetie,” she says. “You know I always need some sugar at this time of day.”

“Going for ice cream?” Vera lives for the gelato place across the food court as much as she does for Flicked.

“Of course. Need a hit yourself? My treat this time.”

“No, I’m good today, thanks. Actually, I have to go meet someone.”

She must sense the nervousness—tingling, excited, a bird going round and round inside its cage—that’s taken over my stomach. She’s nearly cackling as she pats my arm. I’m positive every teenage couple from every John Hughes movie she’s ever watched is flashing across her brain. “Oh, you’re meeting a boy.”

I nod. A grin breaks free—at her glee, at my choice, at having no clue if it’s the right one but knowing I have to find out anyway. Maybe it’s a kind of mutual challenge, even.

Vera winks. “So who is he, hon?”

“The boy is James.”

Sandwiched in Between

Sandwiched in Between

Eric Smith

It doesn’t feel like the Thanksgiving season until I have a Gobbler hoagie from Wawa clutched in my hands. Forget the autumn leaves, the brisk weather, or the occasional odd decorations. It’s that hoagie. Wrapped in crinkly white paper that quickly becomes translucent the longer the hot sandwich sits inside, it is a glorious mash-up of the staples found at my family’s Thanksgiving dinner table. Turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce . . . all crammed within a roll that is totally unprepared for its glorious contents. It’s like the bread goes into shock, just totally falling apart. The Gobbler looks nothing like the advertisements plastered around Philadelphia, on buses, the SEPTA trains, on billboards . . .