Scratch
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By Zoe Leonard
ue-li Huang was going to make an apple pie from scratch. She came to this decision after being humiliated for showing up to a Friendsgiving celebration with a store-bought apple pie. Her brother had called her the night before asking her to check for a mistake in his company’s books— they were missing over $800. It took her late into the night to find the mistake, and when she woke up at 11 the next day, she remembered the annual Friendsgiving with her old sorority girlfriends at Carla’s house and cursed herself for not remembering sooner. The dinner started at 5, and she had to pick her mother up from the bus station at 12, so she had to leave immediately and stop at Costco sometime before dinner. “Oh, Shelly!” said Carla as she opened the door. “Come in, what did you bring? Apple pie? How wonderful! I can take that from you.” Xue-li smiled weakly but did not offer the pie. She had put it in a ceramic dish to make it easier on the eyes and to put into the oven, but she hadn’t removed the plastic cover. “It’s from Costco,” she said. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to make anything.”
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