When class ended, Linda realized she was famished. She started to head directly for the dining hall but continued back to the dorm room instead. Lauren might still be deep in sleep, and she wasn't in the mood to eat by herself that night. Linda did find Lauren in the room, but she was upright and active, wearing different clothes than before and twirling locks of her long, thick hair with a curling iron. She also wore her nicer, strappy sandals and had put on vampy swathes of thick liner on her eyes. "Are you trying to impress that tall proctor guy at the cafeteria?"
"No, I'm going to the Firm for quarter beer night. Wanna come?"
Linda sighed. "You know I can't." She wouldn't turn nineteen until September.
"Just borrow Janelle's ID," she said, pointing past the doorway and down the hall, to Janelle's room at the end.
"I don't look anything like her," Linda said. "They'd just laugh at me."
Lauren shrugged. "You're missing out."
"On a bunch of people getting drunk? I don't think so." She watched Lauren carefully arrange her tresses into curls that Farrah Fawcett would envy. "You're going to go to dinner first, right? It isn't good to drink on an empty stomach."
"Okay…mom!" Lauren finished in front of the mirror and reached for her jacket.
They arrived at Rutherford Hall, the dining cafeteria, at five-thirty. It was the most crowded period. They reached for trays, which were still warm and damp from being cycled through the steamy dishwasher, and checked over that night's offerings. Vats of mashed potatoes the consistency of wallpaper paste and pots of brown, watery gravy awaited them. "S.O.S," Lauren said, meaning "same old shit."
Linda stretched on tiptoe to see over some of the other students and learn what they were serving at the front of the line. "Is it gray grizzle or roofing tiles?" She referred to the Salisbury steak, and the sliced, processed turkey.
"Why do you care? You're just gonna get salad and cottage cheese and drown it in red dressing anyway."
"But I'm hungry. This time I might actually go for the main course. The spaghetti is pretty good, if you put lots of parmesan cheese on it."
Lauren laughed. "And you don't mind the noodles being like mop strings."
They were serving the gray grizzle that night. Linda reached for the stewed tomatoes and croutons instead, filling up another plate with salad greens and cottage cheese.