Left for Dead

"Let's order pizza for dinner!" I suggested after coming home at the end of a tiring week at work.

"Pizza Hut?"

"I was thinking Dominos for a change."

A unanimous groan swept through the living room. "Dominos where got nice?"

"Eh, nice what. Come on lah, for a change."

When everyone finally agreed, I went over to the phone to start dialing but realized I only had the Pizza Hut number in mind, thanks to their catchy advertising jingle. I couldn't quite remember the Dominos hotline.

"Anyone knows the number for Dominos?" I called out to the room.

When everyone only shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads, my mum offered me a helpful suggestion: "Try checking in our phone book, I think I remember writing it in there when we last ordered a long time back."

So I fished the phone book out and flipped the pages to 'D' to see if Dominos was listed anywhere in there. There was no such number but what I did find scrawled in as the very last entry in my mother's own handwriting was a name I expected least to see. I did a double take and was mildly surprised to see that my eyes weren't playing tricks on me after all. But hey, it's such a godawful common name, it could be anyone. Maybe a distant relative or a family friend or something. But no. The notes written next to it in a bracket beside the name told me that it was indeed who I thought it was and a look at the number instantly confirmed any little doubt I had left.

"Found it?" my mother's voice snapped me out of the train of thought that was running through my head of a thousand possibilities as to why the contact was anywhere in my family phone book in the first place. I slammed the book shut and cried out a "NOPE!" a bit too quickly. I didn't want my mother to see what I was staring at and start getting ideas.

"I'm sure you're not looking properly. Let me try," my mum took the hardcover book out of my hands before I could protest or do anything to stop her. She flipped through the pages, landed on the name I was gaping it just a few seconds before, stalled for a heart-stopping moment then maintained a perfectly calm facial expression as she continued flipping the pages as if nothing had happened. "Must be under P for Pizza then," she spoke more to herself than to me.

I was tempted to prod her on about it and question her as to when and why she had written it in there but I knew that I was treading on dangerous ground and that this was going to backfire and put me in a tricky situation in the end so I kept quiet.

And no, the Dominos number was nowhere to be found in the book. I eventually looked it up on my iPad *ahem* and the whole family had a lovely pizza dinner.

The end.

But some things go unresolved.