10:56 a.m.

It was late, they were drunk and hungry, and she had the sudden idea to make cheese tortillas for everyone.

“I can walk over to my place in two minutes you guys, seriously.”

No, they said. It’s too late.

There were brief and overlapping discussions about which pizza places might be open at 4 a.m. In the end, it was decided no food purveyors were available, save the steel-plated gyro stand across from the main string of bars downtown.

She darted out the door to the protests of her friends. They realized the beer in her veins made negotiation impossible.

The walk ended up taking more than two minutes, as the police had set up a DUI checkpoint in between the two apartment complexes. She, freshly 21 and still enjoying the novelty of it, breezed through the barricades, shoulders back and head pointed forward. The officers seemed not to notice her precise footsteps.

She retrieved the needed supplied from her refrigerator, using only the dim light inside as guide. Her roommates would not have appreciated the late intrusion.

Once back amongst her friends, she stood at the stove, one hand on her hip, flipping the tortillas with her bare hand as she had watched her grandmother do hundreds of times.

In the morning, the pads of her fingers were red and tender from where they had touched the hot, flat circles of flour.