No Ordinary Day by Deborah Ellis Page A

behind a plastic plant and kept my eyes open. There were guards here, too, and workers who would swoop down on the tables and take away the leftovers the second the customers got up to leave.
    A family sat nearby having lunch.
    “Finish your pizza,” the father said.
    “I don’t want it,” the little boy whined. “I want a hotdog.”
    “You said you wanted pizza.”
    “Hotdog.”
    “I don’t like the look of the hotdogs,” the mother said. “You like pizza. Eat your pizza.”
    “No.”
    “And drink your Coke. We don’t waste.”
    They kept arguing. When they weren’t telling their child to eat, the parents argued about other things.
    “We go to your brother’s house every week. Is it too much to ask that we skip one week?”
    “All I do for you. Why can’t you do this for me?”
    It hurt my head. I wanted to move, but I wanted their food more.
    I tried my special magic to make things happen.
    Leave the table, I told them silently. Leave the table and leave the food.
    It wasn’t working. On and on they sat.
    I tried to remember the last time I had eaten, not counting the unripe melon I threw up.
    It was the day before yesterday, I decided. I had begged some rupees from the tourists on Sudder Street.
    “You should be in school,” they had said. Then they argued about whether or not they should give me money.
    “It only encourages them,” one tourist said. “We should give it to a charity.”
    “We should go shopping,” another said. “When the economy is strong, everybody wins.”
    They talked and I stood in front of them with my hand open, wanting to snatch the five-rupee note out of the tourist’s hand so I wouldn’t have to listen to them anymore. But tourists don’t like it when you take money from them. I watched another child do that once. They held onto him and called the police on their cellphone. He always begged in front of the Indian museum, but I never saw him again after that.
    Leave the table, I tried again. Leave the food.
    “I want ice cream!”
    “Why can’t you make him behave? Every time we go out, he acts up. Finish your Coke.”
    “Maybe if you were home more instead of always off with those friends of yours.”
    “Let’s just go. You don’t want your pizza? Leave it.”
    “Ice cream!”
    “You’re not getting ice cream. I’m not buying you another thing.”
    The child screeched and wailed, but the family got up. Customers’ eyes followed the wailing as they left the eating area.
    I moved fast.
    With one hand I folded the pizza and stuck it in my pocket with the nail polish. With my other hand I stuffed my mouth with curried potatoes, dal, tomato chutney and the little bit of cucumber salad the mother had left. I grabbed the pieces of paratha and downed the rest of the cold Coke in one gulp. Then I ran before the guards could grab me.
    The Coke bubbles rose up in my stomach. Out came a huge burp. I thought it was funny. I didn’t care if the other diners did not.
    I ate the paratha as I walked through the mall. Food in my stomach made all the difference. I could look and enjoy and pass the time in clean, cool air.
    “Only four more shopping days to Christmas,” a young man called out. He stood outside a shoe store trying to encourage people to come in and buy.
    I kept wandering and trying to distract myself from eating the pizza in my pocket. I was still hungry, but I would be more hungry later.
    I stopped in front of a bookstore. There was a poster in the window of a human body cut in two. One half showed the bones. The other half showed the organs. It was like the picture Dr. Indra showed me in the hospital.
    I put my finger against the glass, over the picture of the human heart. I put my other hand over my own heart.
    I could feel it beating. I remembered what it sounded like through the stethoscope.
    Out of the heart came red lines that traveled all over the body, including to the spot on my arm where Dr. Indra had taken out my beautiful blood.
    So, blood