“Sure!” Jess replies. “We know a place down the street. We make jokes about the name all the time. It’s called, Hairy Fruit Factory. We don’t know why it’s called that, but there are a lot of hairy fruits in there.”
“I found hair on the floor of the bathroom once,” Rudy chimes in, in which the kids give her a look for. “It wasn’t nice.
“Anyway, yeah. Thanks for payin’! You don’t gotta, though. We’ve got our own money. We can go to this nice deli downtown. There’s a really good sub-shop there and it’s got some hella good stuff. You can eat just about any sandwich combination you can think of!”
“Like a ham and cheese sandwich!” Jess exclaims.
“My fist smothered by mozzarella and then deep fried!” Brody exclaims as well.
Is Kyana enjoying the company of these kids? No? Yes? Both answers are valid for their own reasons. Whenever their odd, humorous shenanigans will stop, he’s probably going to be stuck with them for some time. They seem to know the town a lot, after all.
“Well, we should be going,” Akilah sighs. “I’m getting hungry. We’ll lead the way, Kyana. And I think you should tell your dad, too.”
For some reason, Kyana doesn’t say much about going to the sub-shop, just that it is no problem. As they finish stacking the last box in the ‘box room’ (about an hour later), Kyana nods in agreement.
“Okay, I’ll be right back…”
He runs upstairs, thinking he remembers hearing the heavy clop of his father’s shoes go up not too long ago. There’s a reluctance in his step as he thinks about how much he doesn’t want to eat more take out food. Not even from a well-spoken-for sub-shop. He figures he ought to let these goofy kids get what they want for lunch, since it is his treat, but he was hoping to make lunch for them himself. He’s a little disappointed.
He spies his dad sitting in a swivel chair at a desk they had managed to haul up the stairs and into a bedroom. He is pouring through some papers with an open box at his feet. Kyana knocks on the door frame, but his dad doesn’t turn around.
“Yeah. I wanted to go through a few things… Did you need something?”
A few things. Yeah right.
“Oh. Yeah, I’m treating the neighborhood kids to lunch. There’s some sandwich shop they want to go to. You wanna come?”
“I see… No, you go ahead… I still have a lot to look over.”
“It’s lunch time, Dad. You should eat something.”
Mr. Mosi finally turns around. He looks a little tired. Kyana frowns. He can’t believe his dad has started working again already.
“You can bring something back for me.”
“Okay, what do you want?”
“Pretty much anything what do you want?”
The dad gives an annoyed sigh. He straightens the papers in his hands, turns back around and says,
“A meatball sandwich, then.”
With that, Kyana grabs his wallet from his own room and tromps back down the stairs. On the way down, he nearly trips on his own feet.
He grinds out between his teeth to the 6th step of the staircase. He returns to the ‘box room’.
“Okay, um… my dad’s busy, so… Let’s go, I guess.”
