I never turned six years old

Last night, I decided to renege on all responsibilities and obligations (does my GPA truly matter?) and go down to the East Village to eat couscous in celebration of Lindsay's birthday. The couscous was delicious, small in quantity, and expensive. Everyone wore shiny bangles and eyeliner, and the small restaurant was dimly lit and red and crowded. I ate, I smiled, I chatted. But all I wanted was a piece of caramel.

I don't remember when I discovered caramel, but I have not grown since that one moment. I am still five years old (or seven, or ten, or whenever I first experienced that sweetness). Like everyone else, I pretend to be a grown up and pay my credit card bill and read the Gotham Gazette, but in reality, all I want to do is eat caramels on my front steps in the summer.

When Bianca and I left the dinner last night, we decided to head home to finish some homework. We both needed some candy (her candy of choice was Riesen.) On the way to the F train, we stopped at a Rite Aid, which had already put bars on the windows. The guy in the store told us it was closing in 5 minutes, in hopes that we would turn around and leave. Instead, we raced around the store, breaking a sweat, looking for the goods. We found lots of easter eggs and nail polish, but kept running past the candy aisle. "Why the hell do easter eggs get their own aisle?!" Bianca was screaming and I was flailing around the store. Everyone was staring at us. We thought we were beautiful. They thought we were criminally insane.

Once in the candy aisle, we scrambled through all the piles of candy, rummaging through the bins and the hanging bags, until finally we realized that what we were looking for was right before our eyes. And then we ran to the counter. The cashier had resorted to banging against the cash register instead of tapping her long fingernails. Bianca's credit card had to be swiped 5 times before it registered. Everyone was waiting for us to leave. Our mouths were watering, our foreheads were drenched in perspiration. And as soon as we ran out of the store, they turned off the lights.

We ripped open our bags of candy as soon as we stepped into the frigid night. And then all the purple people in the East Village and the wind and the cigarette butts converged into one single bite of bliss. We held hands as we crossed the street and walked underground, so we could catch our train home.