I bought all the ingredients I needed with the money I'd made from cashing in bottles and baby-sitting and spent all morning baking a spice cake and making fancy little sandwiches whose recipe I found in a Betty Crocker cookbook I checked out of the library. I picked a bunch of lilacs and set the table with place mats I'd made out of construction paper in the shape of daisies. I was so excited sitting at the table waiting for you, but then three o'clock rolled around, and then three-thirty, and then four o'clock, and by the time it was five, I was resigned that you weren't going to show up, and I ate my cucumber and tomato sandwiches and sliced myself a piece of cake. By the time you stumbled in after midnight, crying,
'Oh, baby, I forgot all about our little date.' I had hardened my heart to a little stone.