Page 105 of Cruel Demands

I scoff at her. “I will not like it.”

“Then prove it.”

“This is a childish tactic.”

“Is it working?”

“No.”

She waits. I take the…Frito. Her smile becomes unbearable, her eyebrows lifting so high I think they might fly off her head. It leaves an orange residue on my fingers. I curl my lip in disgust, and Taylor giggles. “Do you need me to feed it to you?”

I shake my head and put one between my lips. I bite into it. The first thing I notice is it is too dry. The corn sticks immediately to the roof of my mouth. Salt arrives first, followed by a sweetness so artificial it tastes engineered in a laboratory. The honey flavor is not real, nor the barbecue, nor the salt. None of it is quite what I recognize as the flavors that I know.

Taylor watches me with intense interest. “Well?”

I chew. “It is terrible.”

Her eyes narrow. “You’re lying. You took another bite.”

I narrow my eyes back at her. “That was necessary to confirm the first impression.”

“Of course.”

I finish it and reach for the packet. She pulls it away. “What are you doing?”

“Confirming the second impression.”

“You said they were terrible.”

“They are.”

“Then you don’t need another.”

“I need a larger sample.”

She hugs the packet to her chest. “These are imported. They’re expensive here.”

“I will buy you more.”

Her glare returns, but it’s weaker now. I hold out my hand. After a moment, she gives me another. I eat it while she watches. “This means you like them,” she says.

“It means nothing like that. You said these remind you of home? Your mother let you eat these as a child? And your country allowed that?”

She smiles serenely as she watches me eat them. “Mhm, and I used to eat them all the time during late-night study sessions back home.” She tips her head back against the wall. “Late nights cramming for exams and eating trash. Once I saw we have them in the vending machine at work, I started having a bag almost every day for lunch at work.”

I widen my eyes. “Taylor, these cannot be your lunch. Every day? For how long?”

She sits up suddenly. “You ate fish eggs and sour cream on pancakes tonight! You don’t get to judge me.”

“Blinis? You are comparing caviar on crepes to this…poison?”

She laughs sharply, and her eyebrows shoot up behind her dirty-blond bangs. “Poison you finished! You love them, don’t you?” I look down at the bag in my lap and realize with horror that she is right. I have finished the entire thing. “Look at you mindlessly eating. We might have to get you a gun next.”

I almost answer, but the joke catches somewhere before it reaches my mouth. A bag almost every day. I know how little money she has. I know she sent two hundred dollars home anyway. I know how little remained afterward, and suddenly the imported packet in her hand is considerably less amusing. I cannot say any of that without reminding her exactly how I know.

“These are in the vending machines at work?” I ask, looking up at the vending machine beside us. She nods with a triumphant look. “Then I must have the machine removed.”

Her mouth falls open. She stares at me for two seconds, then begins to laugh. “You wouldn’t.”