(Just a short blurb about tomato paste pasta because I had a memory of it and wanted to write it before the memory disappeared TwT)

Pasta. That's all I could smell. Tomato paste pasta, the kind that makes you think of blood but then move on after your first impression. The kind that tastes like grass and onions and steak tacos if they were all a singular food dish. The kind that your grandma would bring to a potluck with wheat cookies on the side. That was what I could smell. And I could see it too, in that red light with slight lime and blue and yellow tints, the smell of cooked cheese and tomatoes lingering behind it, delicious smelling meats and vegetables and spices sprinkled in as well.

I wanted so bad to take a bite of the delicious food, but when I tried, putting my fork oh so close close, piping breaths slowly, it disappeared, as did the other smells, the background. I was left in a black space, one where I could only be allowed the smell of city air, oil, the scent of a used car, dead grass, slime and filth. It surrounded me, the smells. Awful, disgusting smells. I reached forwards for that forbidden plate of pasta, with oily sauce dripping down it, smelling amazing, yet drew back my hands to find only hands, nothing more. Just hands. And then the alarm bell rang. Tu tu tu!

So jolly, announcing lunch period, with no tomato paste pasta. Instead, there would be meatloaf. Always meatloaf. Meatloaf with rip-off garlic bread, meatloaf with disgusting definitely not slushees. Meatloaf with an apple, which half of the time had some sort of issue with it. Meatloaf with the flattest, driest, silliest pancakes ever. Never once had my school served pasta. The closest they'd ever come to it was ravioli with meat sauce that tastes like puke and roadkill. Awful.