Page 4 of Wicked Hungry

“Yes,” my mother asks, still squinting at Karen. “It’s worth looking at, let me tell you.”

“Can we go now,” I ask. “Please?”

My mom quits it, finally. “Just be careful,” she says. “Both of you.” She’s calmer now, and I want her to smile. But she doesn’t. She just looks at me, until I look away.

We walk outside and quietly to the corner.

“Wow,” Karen says. “That was kind of awkwardly intense.”

“Yeah,” I say. “She gets in her moods. Everything is magic, or the phases of the moon, or something. Sometimes I need to get out of there.”

We walk along slowly, down the street. Unfortunately, my mother was right: the cold air takes a special interest in my knee, and the full moon above me? Let’s just say I wish there was a little more cloud cover.

“You hungry?” Karen asks me, finally.

I nod. “Starving.” But I stick my hand in my pocket. “Shit,” I say. “I don’t have a dime. I’ll just go back in, and ask—”

“Are you serious?” she says. “Your mom will never let you out again.”

“But I’m hungry,” I say.

“Where do you want to go? Burger King? I have a coupon for buy one Whopper, get one free.”

“You know I don’t eat meat,” I say.

“God, I’m so sick of extremism,” she says. “And no, I didn’t know. I figured Zach was the last of the Lansfeld vegans.”

“Is that why you came by? Zach?”

“He won’t let it rest,” she says. “About how ‘polluted’ my body is. He even blames the pain in my shoulder on my meat eating. For him, it all adds up, and everybody’s got to be like him.”

“Well Zach is Zach. But I still don’t want to eat meat.”

“Fine, whatever,” she says. “I’ll buy you a veggie burger. With a side order of wussy vegan fries. Just don’t give me any shit about my Whopper, okay?”

“I just don’t understand how you can eat that stuff.”

She glowers at me, her eyes big, green and deadly.

“You’re really pretty when you’re angry,” I say. “And by the way? I was kidding.”

“Sorry,” she says finally. “But that wasn’t funny, you know? I mean, Zach is like a broken record.”

We walk with a purpose now, heading towards Burger King. It’s maybe a five-minute walk for a normal person, but it may well take me fifteen.

I imagine I can smell the meat charring on the grill.

The streetlights are coming on now.

“So what’s this about the full moon?” Karen asks.

“Weird stuff happens to me on the nights with the full moon. My mother doesn’t believe in coincidences. She believes in magic. In the power of the moon.”

“But you don’t believe in all that, do you? In witchcraft?”

I shrug. “Sometimes I don’t know what I believe.”

“Me, neither, I guess.”