Teresa Loughery

“Foooooood…”

             I swear, a slug could crawl faster than the time it took for the big hand to tick to the next minute on the clock. It was driving me up the wall. My teacher wasn’t helping my slow decline into insanity, doing an outstanding impression of Charlie Brown’s educator and wah-wah-wah-ing away in the front of the room. I didn’t have time to listen to her; I had places to be, people to see! And they were going to be waiting for me outside when school was over, ready to save me from the horror that was my B.O. infused sauna of a bus and to start a great afternoon. I’d been looking forward to seeing them for weeks. So, yeah, class needed to be done, say, five minutes ago.

I was just starting to get jittery when the shrill, mildly painful bell (that usually made me cringe but today was the best symphony ever conducted) rang out, waking the rest of the students from their temporary comas. I went flying out of my seat, into the hallway, and to my locker as fast as Usain Bolt in a sprint, then packed my bag and jogged out of the school. I saw the car I had been waiting for and got in the back as fast as I could. My mouth was open as soon as my bag was on the floor and I had bounced onto the soft cushion of the seat that was under me.

“Oh thank god! I’m so glad you guys are here! My teacher took a year to finish talking and the bell would not ring for anything, and it was so annoying but it’s okay now because you’re here and I’m so happy because I missed you so much and you need to tell me all about college.”

“Ummmm,” my sister Tara said with an exasperated little smile, drawing out the last letter while her best friend Lisa snickered next to her. “Okay then. We missed you too! And we can talk all about that later, but we have food to get and then a movie to get to, so…”

“Right, yeah, food, Maze Runner, let’s go,” I replied. Tara nodded her head and pulled out of the parking lot, and we drove while she and Lisa talked about their first year of college over the blaring of the radio. I hadn’t gotten to see them much over the year, and wanted to know everything. It had been different without having them around.

 Halfway through the drive, Lisa turned around and threw a black t-shirt, black shorts, some paper, tape, and scissors into the back seat. She told me to put the clothes on and start cutting the paper into spots and ears. I did as she said, though it was hard with the bumpy ride, and had just finished when we pulled into the Home Depot parking lot across from the Chick-Fil-A that was on the way to the mall. We all got out of the car and Tara told Lisa and me to tape the white spots onto our clothes, so we kind of looked like backwards cows. After doing that, and snapping a quick picture, we turned towards the heavenly scent of chicken and fries coming from the restaurant sat on the other side of the ocean of stilled cars.

“We’re gonna have to run through that mess to get across the street, aren’t we?” I asked.

“Yep,” Lisa answered with a happy grin, “now run!”

And so we ran, dressed like confused cows with our black clothes and white spots and cool wind blowing in our hair, across the street to get free food for Cow Appreciation Day. We looked ridiculous and I knew it, but it didn’t matter because it was the most fun I’d had since they left for college. The best thing happened while we were running, breaking me out of my thoughts of the picture the three of us must have made and almost breaking Lisa all together.

“What do we want?!?” she yelled over her shoulder to us, having been the first to leap.

“Fooooooooood,” Tara and I chorused out simultaneously. We had gotten across the street, straight in front of the restaurant, when we said it, and we stopped in our tracks. Lisa turned to us slowly, eyes big and smile as wide as the Cheshire cat’s.

“Did you guys do that on purpose?” she asked, voice quivering with barely contained giggles. “Was that planned?”

Tara and I both shook our heads no, because it really was just a perfectly timed coincidence, and Lisa started cackling so hard it brought tears to her eyes. She went crashing to the ground, shaking with amusement, and only got up with our help. We all laughed our way into the restaurant, where weirdly enough there was no line, ordered our food, and then went back to eat in the car. Tara, Lisa, and I sat in silence in the car for about twenty minutes, focused on our food, enjoying the salt of our fries and the cold ice of our drinks on our tongues. We finished up eating and then drove to the movie, which we watched (or maybe talked through) in our cow outfits, not caring about the quiet laughing we could hear people trying to hide when they saw us. We were too busy (I was, especially) savoring the day we were having with each other.

It was a great day, like a flashback to before they left for school, when I could spend as much time with them as I wanted. I dreaded its end. That would mean them going back to being hours away, taking my entertainment with them, which was annoying because that was never an issue before. The day had to end eventually, though, and as they were leaving I realized that at least when they came back, the day would be extra fun all over again. That made it worth it.