I wrote this piece for my college creative writing course. I took inspiration from an old book character of mine named Bryan Sign and tweaked him for this particular story. I wanted to write a story that reflected my impossible trials of cooking in the kitchen. A fun fact that might be of interest: a good portion of the cooking failures in this story were inspired by my real-life events.

UPDATE 4/13/18: This piece was selected and printed in Pensacola Christian College’s literary publication, Fountains, which can be read about here. Yvonne Zorn did the artwork for the book, which I’ve added below.

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The drone of the hairdryer whined through the open bedroom door. Bryan groaned once and tossed in his bed, his shoulder crushing a crummy bag of chips as his elbow knocked an empty Mt. Dew bottle to the floor. The hairdryer continued from outside his room, heralding seven o’ clock, Tuesday morning, as his mother busily tried to tame her stubborn hair before jumping into a suit, grabbing her briefcase, and—usually sighing—rushing out the door.

Without leaving his bed, Bryan reached out with his toes until he could feel his open door, kicked out irritably, and listened as it swung shut. The metal “DO NOT ENTER” sign from the comic store slapped once against the outside of his door, a signal to his mother that her diligence was interrupting his laze.

Bryan managed to siphon out the blowdryer’s groan and return to his sleep just long enough for his mother to finish her hair, dress, and break the sign’s simple commandment by poking her head into the room.

“Henry? I’m headed to work,” she said in a weary voice, her words hanging in the air like a disregarded handshake. Bryan bristled at his first name. Henry was his dad. He wished she’d just call him what everyone else did. Bryan Sign could never be Henry. Especially now.

He could almost feel her expectant eyes boring into the back of his head, waiting for a response he didn’t intend to give her. Instead, Bryan merely folded the comforter over his face, dismissing his mother from his room. He listened for her sigh of resignation, the quiet click of the door, the rattle of the metal sign, and then the labored steps creaking down the old Bradey Bunch staircase that led to the ground floor and garage.

When he was sure she was gone, he lowered the covers so he’d be able to breath fresher oxygen that didn’t smell of artificial cheese dust. Now grudgingly awake from the hairdryer, his eyes wandered over to his cluttered desk and rested on a calendar tacked to a cork board. May sixth. He guessed that he would have been prepping for final exams right about now if he’d stayed in college—instead of sleeping each day away like a hobo.

For the next few minutes, Bryan tried to recapture the college drop-out sleep that had been so cruelly denied to him. He wrenched restlessly in his bed until the comforter was twisted around his lanky body like poorly-wrapped mummy gauze. With an angry thrash, Bryan rolled off the mattress, crashing to the floor and sprawling in a pool of blankets and sheets.

Bryan snarled to himself, blowing a wisp of shaggy red hair from his eyes. “Stupid hairdryer,” he said as he clambered to his feet. He neglected the sheets that lay on the floor, as if to spite them for their betrayal.

The sun’s morning angle directed the light into the house, setting the curtains, counters, and wooden floor ablaze with a fresh white-yellow as Bryan loped down the stairs, absentmindedly counting each creaky protest from the old carpeted steps. The emptiness of the house, the natural light, and the comfortable breeze slipping through an ajar space in the deck’s sliding door reminded him of the last time he’d been awake this early, during last semester.

Padding his way to the kitchen, Bryan shamelessly lifted the dirty sports jersey off his stomach and scratched the skin over his ribs as he stifled a lingering yawn. Probably should throw this into Mom’s laundry, he thought, dropping the hem of the jersey. Don’t remember the last time it was washed.

A hearty breakfast of Pop-Tarts and donuts preluded two hours of competitive gaming in the basement, giant noise-canceling headphones clapped over his ears, a can of Pringles at his elbow. Periodically his phone would buzz on his knee, each text message from his mother venting about her trying day at the office, the secretary’s negligence, the staff dinner she somehow had to host at the house but didn’t know what to cook…. At one point, Bryan picked up his phone and stabbed in a curt reply—mom, im busy and i dont rly care—but his thumb hovered over the “send” button when his eyes caught sight of the wedding pictures on the basement’s window ledge. His mother had moved them downstairs after the funeral.

“She doesn’t need that,” he muttered, dropping his phone between his legs.

“What’cha say, bro?” a voice crackled from the other side of the gaming headset.

Bryan picked up the controls again and returned to the game. “Nothing. Forget it.”

He managed to forget entirely about his mother’s texts for the rest of the morning, totally engrossed in his own world of couch-potatoing. It wasn’t until long after the colorless afternoon sun replaced the golden hue of morning did Bryan remember his mom’s fear about the staff dinner she had to host at the house. Turning to slouch over the back of the couch for a better view, Bryan glanced at the time to see the clock hands threatening to complete the latest hour.

She wasn’t meaning today, was she? he thought, frowning at the clock face. She would have been back by now, if it was.

But despite his texts to clarify—mom u coming home 4 the dinner thing rite?—his mother remained silent on the other side of the phone, her absence implying heavy meetings and crazy schedules. After the clock hands completed yet another hour, Bryan had convinced himself that his mother had completely forgotten about the dinner. He tried texting her again. Calling her. Twirling his phone between his thumb and index finger, Bryan knew there was no other option.

“I’ve got to make the dinner,” he said aloud, the realization hitting him like a cold water balloon to the face. Somehow he knew his mom’s boss wouldn’t be pleased if they showed up at the house for a meal of Cheerios. Bam. Termination papers on the desk by Monday.

He leapt from the couch and dashed upstairs to the kitchen, wrenching off the gaming headset halfway up the stairs. He skidded to a stop in front of the pantry, desperately trying to conceive a presentable meal for a bunch of office staff that didn’t involve toasted Pop Tarts.

Ground beef always seemed to be the first ingredient his mom used when she was starting supper. Bryan dug through the fridge, but found the meat frozen to bricks in the freezer.

Okay, okay, he thought, his hands numbing as he held two packages. How do I get them to defrost? Doesn’t she just put them on the stove, or something?

He dropped the bricks on the counter, yanked open a cupboard, and found a pot that looked like it could hold the meat. With a sweep of the arm, he shoved aside the half-empty Oreos, Cheeze-Its, and potato chips from the stove top to make room for the pot. He peeled the sandwich bag from off the frozen brick of ground beef and dropped it in with a sharp bang, a couple shavings of ice breaking loose and flinging against the pot’s walls.

After an anxious ten minutes of poking and prodding the meat with a metal fork over a heating element, Bryan decided the beef was defrosting much too slowly and transferred it to the microwave. He stood outside the microwave door, punching in thirty seconds, then a minute, then two. Each time he checked to see if the meat was any softer than it had been.

“You know what?” he told the microwave. “Forget this.” He followed up his apathy by punching in the largest number he could think of and resolved to check back later.

Apparently food spontaneously combusted if microwaved too long. Bryan skidded back into the kitchen at the sound of an atomic bomb erupting from the kitchen. He yanked open the microwave to stop the incessant popping and thumping from within, and the hum died immediately. Raw meat and blood spattered everywhere inside, a harsh hissing sound emanating from the now very defrosted lump in the center of the microwave.

He growled as he tried to pick up the meat. It was too hot to touch now that it had been thoroughly nuked, though it was still obviously undercooked. Instead he took the rotating microwave plate out—meat included—and held it over the the stove, letting the meat slide and plop messily into the awaiting pot. “This is not how Mom does it,” he grumbled.

Now that the meat was in the pot over the hot stove, he resolved to watch it every moment of the cooking process. If it so much as popped in its own grease, Bryan was ready to drown it with a fire extinguisher with the same vehemence that he did with whipped cream on cake.

But looking at it, Bryan wondered if just one pound of ground beef would be enough for the whole staff dinner. He didn’t know how many people his mom would be hosting, but he assumed it would be a decent number.

“I’ll just put in another one,” he said, unwrapping the second pound. He glanced at the microwave once, but decided putting the frozen block in with the hot one might defrost more quickly than the last one had.

He dropped the frozen brick into the pot, not realizing what happens when frozen food comes in contact with scalding grease. A geyser—no, a fireworks display—blossomed forth from the pot, hot grease spewing everywhere. Bryan leapt back with a yell after just managing to shove the pot off the element. It sputtered and splashed everywhere like a hissing, wild animal.

When the fountain had stopped, Bryan grabbed the pot’s handle, and with a flare of attitude, swiped it off the stove and tried his best to dump the grease down the drain. He would have to drain it again when the second pound cooked, but at the moment, all he wanted was for the food to stop hating him. He slammed the pot back on the stove and glared at it.

For the next hour, Bryan tried in vain to make something halfway decent for his mother’s staff, but after the beef burned on the stovetop from being half-overcooked and half-undercooked, the drain blocked up from the grease he poured down it, the fire alarm went off, and a couple follow up attempts with no better luck, Bryan was considering how much of a punishment he’d get if he grabbed the pot and hurled it though the window.

There was only one thing left to do. Something he should have done from the beginning. He needed help from a girl.

“Cherith, help me!” he practically screamed into his phone after calling his neighborhood friend. He flipped off the stove and shoved the pot off the element, causing it to crash into the salt and pepper shakers set up on the back of the stove.

“What was that?” Cherith’s voice snapped through the phone at the sound of destruction.

“I don’t even know!” Bryan folded over the counter, deflating from all the morning’s chaos. With some coaxing from Cherith, he managed to explain his predicament to his friend in every embarrassing detail. “I have no idea how to cook,” he added as he finished.

He half expected Cherith to snap back with a “Yeah, clearly you can’t,” but instead she glossed over the obvious and attacked the problem head on.

“Go to the fridge.”

“Why?”

“Just go. Tell me if you have that microwavable mac ’n’ cheese your family loves.”

Bryan obeyed, feeling a little like a toddler obeying his mother. “We have two. And some of those pot roasts you can microwave. But—microwaving, that’s not cooking, Cherith.”

“It’s good enough,” she said quickly. “Now look for green beans in the freezer.”

Through Cherith’s coaching Bryan managed to successfully fry green beans on a skillet with butter and salt while he microwaved the pot roast and macaroni. Cherith gave him specific instructions for how long to microwave each one and in what order so they’d stay warm. By seven, a presentable meal awaited to be set on the table. In the few minutes before he expected his mother to get home, Bryan loaded the dishwasher full of all his failed attempts and tried to make the kitchen look as clean as possible. He had trouble finding the dish detergent, but within minutes the dishwasher was humming happily.

A twist of keys in the lock signaled his arriving mother. He turned, fidgeting with his jersey embarrassedly as he awkwardly waited for her to step into the kitchen and see his work.

Mrs. Sign labored through the doorway, a heavy look on her face as she dropped her briefcase and kicked off her shoes, not noticing her son right away. She looked up at him with a mixture of surprise and expectancy, probably wondering why he wasn’t downstairs gaming.

“Hi, Mom,” Bryan said quietly, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. “I…I made supper for the dinner.”

Mrs. Sign blinked once, not registering, then glanced at the food waiting on the stove. “You…you made supper? You made us supper?” She repeated the question twice, like she couldn’t believe what was coming out of her mouth.

Bryan stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets and shifted his weight. “Well, yeah, you know. For the staff dinner tonight? You were texting me about it this morning. I thought you forgot.”

Tears sprung into his mother’s eyes immediately, contrasting with a quivering smile on her lips. For a brief moment Bryan was terrified that he had done something terribly wrong before he was caught up in the fiercest embrace he’d ever received, the air seeping from his lungs.

“Oh, Henry,” his mother cried. “Thank you so much. You made me dinner. Oh, thank you.”

For once, Bryan disregarded his first name, allowing his mom to hug him, realizing how thankful she was that he took such a load of work off her shoulders. “Hey, it’s not like I could let you get fired for not having anything for the staff,” he said, forcing indifference as he pulled away. He approached the finished dishwasher and moved to unlatch the door.

“Oh, Henry,” started Mrs. Sign, surprise in her voice. “But the dinner isn’t until Friday.”

Bryan unlatched the dishwasher door and let it fall open with a bang. “What?”

Suddenly a cloud of bleachy suds erupted from the mouth of the dishwasher, flooding the entire kitchen floor. One sniff of the odor told Bryan he’d accidentally used laundry detergent instead of dish soap.