There is a raspberry pie in the oven and it’s making the home smell like melted butter. There’s also a crispy-skinned chicken roasting in a creamy murmur of carrots. I’m the one stooped over my dinner plate and I’m sucking on the ice cubes and they make my insides freeze. The smell is warm, and in its warmness, nauseating. I want to eat but I can’t. The guests aren’t here yet and plus, my mom is mad at me for what I did last night. I know that she wants the smells to slip deep enough into my lungs and then she’ll stand before me and say, “There’s frozen food that will go bad if someone doesn’t eat it.” And then I’ll think of how frozen food can never “go bad,” because wouldn’t that ruin the entire purpose of it, anyway? But I know that she’s waiting for me to say that so that she could walk straight to the freezer, jerk open its bluish door and pull out the cold, pink cubes of food. So instead I continue sucking on the ice cubes and the chicken smell grows warmer against my nostrils and I’m about to explode with hunger and a vacancy that pulls me apart with a sharp, practiced delicacy.

Foolishly, I long for the days of my childhood when Hannah Montana’s mind-emptying lyrics did not pervade through the home like a sick stench, bruising the once delicate summer atmosphere, making the pasta sauce seem like pulpy, red vomit, and the lemon curd a urine goop collecting like dead dreams on the counter. I cannot convince them to poke their heads outside and take view of the warm afternoon, to observe and appreciate its slow transformation, the delicate, light-footed breezes falling away to allow for night to settle, the sun falling back like a souffle. Instead, the Internet has hooked them and so comforted they are, by its sweet-smelling breath and large, blinking eyes that they neglect their childhoods, not even turning around to wave two sloppy farewells. Foolishly, I long to change things, the longing itches my toes and the back of my neck, tugging me into a state of endless discomfort, during which I contemplate life and its meaning, such black-hole question for a young girl such as myself, but it always happens when I’m confronted with the epitome of loneliness, of emptiness--a hole-ridden Hannah Montana tune, short-lasting, awake for only the summer before it is pulled into a deep sleep. And the girls grow up. They are affected by the summer tunes without even knowing it, perhaps they wink at their startling images in the mirror, stringing together a story of love at first-glance, when a boy will be marveled by their endless, shimmering legs and their fleshy pink lips. Foolishly, I look back on days, pebbles pitched into a nearby stream, the earth’s gurgling, bubbling smells below my feet, and the luxurious bird-songs that erupted our worlds, how young and carefree--but never careless--were we.

Sweet things give me cavities. This includes, but is not at all limited to, summertime popsicles--or brightly colored sugar-water frozen into a crunchy, rectangular mass with a thin wooden stick visible beneath the neon translucence, like an ant trapped in amber. Cookies, too, for I love them. My favorite are the cubes of caramel I soften between my thumb and forefinger before popping them into my mouth and savoring the sweetness roll over my tongue. Unfortunately, these brief moments of bliss end with a visit to the dentist's office ,during which my mother's eyebrows do that intimidating dance to the middle of her forehead and form a single, black dash of disappointment. These cavities are always filled, though, and soon after the aching, nighttime reminders of their existence dissolves, I forget about them completely. His sweetness, however, forced open the costliest of cavities, and this one never disappeared.