Student story: Midnight munchies

By Kathryn Schultz

A man with a round belly stepped off the elevator, long blonde braid hanging down his back, head covered by a black bandana. Tattoo sleeves covered his bulging muscles. His feet, wearing black Converse high-tops and mid-calf white socks, made a muffled thump on the carpet with each step. He balanced a flat white box in his left palm.

With a scowl on his bearded face, he stopped at room 312 of the Holiday Inn.

Knock.

Knock.

A shout emerged from the room. The pounding of feet. Scrambling. The door opened in a whoosh.

“Pizza!” one girl shouted.

Wild-eyed girls ripped the pizza box from the bandana man’s hand. Money was thrust into the other. The door slammed on his face. No thanks for the pizza man.

He stepped back on the elevator and pushed for another floor.

“I’m just running up and down floors,” he said, sighing.

Anyone would sigh if they were working at 12:13 a.m.

“I’m not delivering much tonight. But all the ones I’ve delivered are to this hotel,” he shrugged. “Must be something going on here.”

He walked off the elevator, too busy to give a name.

Earlier that night, there was a dance at the Flint Hill Publication Workshop. Back inside room 312, the four girls, who attended the workshop and its dance, devoured their cheese triangles from Pizza Shuttle. And having danced for two hours, these girls had worked up an appetite.

Every teenager knows the curse of the midnight munchies. Stress from cramming combined with lack of sleep leaves them yearning for the fridge. And the unhealthier, the better.

Hailey Shelton from Wichita East High School thought of her pizza as more of a late-night meal.

“I didn’t really like dinner tonight,” she said, choosing greasy cheese over barbeque meatballs.

Cassie Fagen from Wichita East said she just likes eating at night.

“I think that food late at night just tastes better,” she said, taking another bite out of the drooping slice.

Though Liz Prosser and Brooke Urzendowski from Marian High School did not order the pizza, they each took one of the alluring slices.

“I was sort of hungry, and the pizza just looked really good,” Prosser said with a smile.

These girls were not uncommon. According to Domingo Ward, a worker at the hotel front desk, there are various delivery calls from all floors two or three times a night.

“They usually get food from pizza and sandwich places that are still open,” Ward said. “Pizza Shuttle is popular. And Jimmy John’s is called a lot.”

After their cravings were satisfied, the four girls no longer looked at their pizza as a circle of delight but as a half circle of button-popping torture. They patted their bellies and lay back onto their pillows.

“Would you like some of this?” Fagen asked, holding up one fourth of the pizza.

A full belly makes even the wildest animal generous.

Kathryn Schultz is a junior at Notre Dame de Sion High School and a student in the advanced writing class at the Flint Hills Publications Workshop.