The Campus Food Pantry

Ester has discovered that a cup of tea with three sugars can pass for dinner, at least until about nine o'clock. It is only the fifth week of her first semester, and her grocery money ran out before the middle of the month.

She has told nobody. Her scholarship covers tuition and a room, but food depends on a part-time job that was cut to six hours a week. Asking her parents is out of the question, because they would send money they do not have.

Her roommate, Laila, notices anyway. The cupboard shelf on Ester's side holds only a tea box and half a bag of rice. Ester always has an excuse for skipping the dining hall: a deadline, a headache, a late lecture. Laila says nothing about it.

On Tuesday, she drops her backpack on the bed and sighs. "I need a favor," she says. "The campus pantry is short of volunteers tonight, and the delivery is huge. Could you give me an hour?"

Ester freezes at the word "pantry." She has been walking past its blue basement door for weeks, always staring at her phone. It is as if the door were a stranger she did not want to greet.

"I'm not sure I'm the right person," she says.

"You have two hands," Laila replies. "That's the whole job description."

Downstairs, the room smells of cardboard and oranges. Shelves are labeled in thick marker: "No kitchen needed," "Breakfast," "Fresh." A coordinator in a knitted hat hands Ester a box cutter and explains that anything dated within the week must be stacked at the front.

For an hour she lines up tins and boxes of pasta. Students come in quietly, hoods up or headphones in, and each one takes a bag without explaining anything. Nobody is asked for a card or a story. A boy in a lab coat leaves with a bag of lentils and thanks the room in general. Ester thinks that if she were standing on the other side of the table, she would want it to be exactly this ordinary.

At closing time, the coordinator counts the crates. "These soups expire on Friday," he says. "They will be thrown away unless somebody takes them. Volunteers get first pick. House rule."

Ester looks at Laila. Laila is studying a carton of oat milk with great interest.

It dawns on Ester that her roommate must have planned the whole evening. She ought to be annoyed. Although her face feels hot, she finds that she is not.

"You invented the shortage," she says quietly.

"The delivery really was huge," Laila answers. "The rest is a coincidence." Her mouth twitches. "Volunteer rules. I don't make them."

Ester picks up a tin of tomato soup, then a second one, and a bag of apples from the bottom shelf. Laila holds the door open with her foot.

"Same time next Tuesday?" Laila asks.

"Bring a bigger bag," Ester says.