“I grew up eating these, in Pennsylvania,” said Lu, when what she really wanted to say was, What the hell? I was saving the raspberry for myself.

Jessica was tapping away at her iPhone, but she glanced up long enough to smile politely. Chewing.

“That’s where these came from, you know,” said Lu. “A bigger version of them. Long ago, they were called ‘gobs.’ Coal miners brought them in their lunch buckets.” She was visited by an overwhelming sensation of nostalgia, though she had never worked in a mine (probably a good thing). She might think about a gob-inspired post.

“Funny!” said Jessica absentmindedly. She was scrolling through Instagram, tapping the photos with what Lu thought was indiscriminate haste. “I’m going to have to run, like, three extra miles to make up for this indulgence,” she said, when she looked up. “Hey, we should totally run together! Do you like to run?”

“Er,” said Lu. “Not really.”

Jessica nodded. A little crater popped up between her eyebrows. It disappeared when she smiled. “I see. More of a gym girl?”

“That’s it,” said Lu. “That’s exactly it. Gym girl.”

“Then you must have taken Tommy’s class. I just came from there.”

Lu gave a half nod. “I think so . . .”

“Oh, you’d know it if you had, girlfriend. You’d know it if you had.” Jessica tapped the side of her hip. “You’d feel it right here.”

“Yes!” said Lu, tapping her own hip in the same spot. “Exactly. Tommy.”

“Anyway,” said Jessica. “I’ve got to zip on out of here. We should totally do this again.”

“Totally,” confirmed Lu.

Jessica waved at Chase and Sebastian on her way out. “Bye, boys.” The boys didn’t look up from their electronics. Lu knew she should also be working on their manners.

Lu looked around the shop. A young teen with a purple streak in her hair was giving a vigorous, robust wipe to the counters. Lu told the boys she’d be right back and went in search of cinnamon. She didn’t really need the cinnamon but she wanted to ask a question.

“What’s reinventing the whoopie pie mean?” she asked the streaky-haired girl. She had seen the phrase on the sign, and was intrigued.

The girl turned her attention to filling the napkin holders. Her shirt read That’s Too Much Bacon, Said No One Ever. “It just means whoopie pies used to be made with all sorts of crappy things, like Crisco and stuff. My mom makes them with all-natural ingredients, and they’re smaller. So you can have, like, ten of them.” She smiled. Her smile was charming, with a mouthful of metal that announced, My body is growing in crazy ways over which I have no control. Lu had wanted braces when she was a kid, but her mother couldn’t afford them. Jeremy said he liked the space between her two front teeth. Lu hated it. Chase and Sebastian, of course, would be given sets of braces along with their middle school locker combinations, the way children of means were.