Outside the Lines by Amy Hatvany

smile when I rapped on the open door. He sat at the desk he apparently shared with Rita. “Right on time. I wasn’t sure you’d show.”
    “Why wouldn’t I?” I asked. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved thermal shirt the same color green as his eyes.
    “I get people volunteering all the time.” He shrugged, looking a little sheepish. Maybe he realized his words rubbed me the wrong way again. “‘Oh yeah, I’d love to help,’ they say. ‘Just tell me what you need.’ Then the time comes and it doesn’t fit into their schedule or whatever. And I never see them again.” He smiled and said, “I’m glad that’s not you.”
    “Me too.” I shifted my weight from my right foot to the left and stuck my hands in the front pockets of my jeans. “What do you need me to do?”
    Jack stood up, came over, and rested his palm lightly on my lower back. “I’ll show you. Rita’s already in the kitchen.”
    “What are we serving?” I asked. We left the office and moved into the hallway.
    “Scalloped potatoes with diced ham.”
    “What about a veg?”
    Jack stopped and looked puzzled.
    “Oh, sorry. Restaurant speak. Vegetables.”
    “Ah. Well, if we can sneak those in somewhere we will, but for the most part, we’re not dealing with salad fans here. They need a hot, filling meal. Sometimes it’s the only one they’ll get for a few days.”
    “Okay.” I considered my ravenous appetite and how terribly I’d fare on one meal a day, if I was lucky enough to find it. I had no idea how my father managed to survive. Of course, I still didn’t know whether he had.
    I followed Jack the rest of the way down the hall and through a room about the size of a basketball court. The room was filled with wall-to-wall cots. We walked a narrow path and I tried not to wrinkle my nose at the musty, sweaty odor. I suddenly found myself fighting back the bitter, painful memory of my father sleeping in our old garage. Oh Dad, I thought. Where are you?
    “How many people do you get spending the night?” I asked Jack.
    He looked at me over his shoulder. “It depends, but usually we can accommodate around fifty.”
    “Do you feed dinner to more than that?”
    He turned back to look where he was going. “We feed as many as we can until we run out of food.”
    “How often does that happen?”
    “Both nights we serve dinner. Right now we can only afford to do it on Mondays and Tuesdays. But the rest of the time we usually have things on hand like bread and cheese for sandwiches, and eventually I’d like to be providing a hot dinner seven days a week. We only get so many donations, you know?” He sighed, as though he was disappointed that he wasn’t doing more.
    I nodded, thinking about the absurd amount of waste that went on at my job. Even with the leftovers I sent home with Juan, there was always food thrown away. My budget consistently included a 10 to 15 percent write-off for excess supplies. How much of that could have been used to feed those who really needed it?
    We made our way through another doorway into the kitchen, an area about twenty feet square. There was an L-shaped counter running the length of two of the walls, a large stove and refrigerator on the third, and a wall full of cupboards on the fourth. It was about a tenth of the size of the kitchen I worked in at my job. Rita stood at the sink with four enormous sacks of russet potatoes lying next to her on the counter. The radio by the stove played a bass-heavy tune—the Black Eyed Peas, maybe? Rita smiled when she saw me. It lit up her entire pixie face.
    “Eden!” she said, continuing to peel the potato she held. “So happy you could make it!”
    “I’ll leave you in Rita’s capable hands,” Jack said. “I’ve got a ton of paperwork to do.”
    “Oh sure,” Rita said. “You just want to get out of potato-peeling duty. Again .”
    Jack laughed and put his hands on his hips with false indignation. “Come on, now. You’ll make me look bad to the new