“Wanna go out?”

For a second I floundered. As I stood in the kitchen, gazing absently into a refrigerator packed to its edges with leftovers wavering within a wide range of decrepitude, I looked at the boy who spoke those three words with a dubious expression.

That is not how the last teenager of the household usually answers when I ask him what he’d like to eat for dinner.

“You want to go out?”

I had heard him right, evidently, but my mind still wasn’t processing the information.

Usually, he shrugs in silence, or mutters under his breath that he’ll find something to eat when (or if) he gets hungry. The idea of leaving the house for food holds no cache. Then, maybe around midnight, he’ll make his way to the stove to grill a few sandwiches, leaving a pile of dishes in the sink, a precariously wrapped........

© The Saratogian