WELCOME TO THE STATE OF VERMONT Jim watched the sign grow larger as his rusty maroon Ford Festiva puttered ever closer to the border. It had been twenty-two years since his family uprooted and resettled in Vermont. Jim had resigned himself to feeling the great weight of the years as he crossed that invisible line. He felt numb, maybe a little disappointed. Jim looked down at the seat next to him and fished through a stack of MapQuest printouts, each labeled with a town name, held together with a black metal binder clip. The car smelled like fast food--crumpled bags on the passenger side, grease-stained and stale, memories of bad choices. He reached down without thinking into one of the bags. He grabbed a Hershey bar and unwrapped it.

He put the candy under his nose and breathed deeply. The scent was biochemical to him, like pheromones. He devoured the chocolate. It tasted so good, he immediately had another. Jim Sutton had grown into a young man in the years since he had first crossed that border. He was tall, with brown hair and green eyes. Jim had been naturally thin his whole life, but age and metabolism seemed to be catching up to him. He had noticed his stomach was starting to grow juuust a bit rounder these days--a bill overdue with his terrible diet.

Jim had had occasional relationships over the years, but none that blossomed into anything serious. In fact, he had just broken up with his most recent girlfriend, which was just the push out the door he needed. Inspiration had struck while he was in the school cafeteria of all places. It was Friday, pizza day. Jim moved his tray down the line, bypassing the greens and choosing the pizza. And the tots, and the. there they were: Onion rings. They were hack rings, frozen rings, corporate rings --nothing like the ones his father taught him to make.

This. Was. It. He would finally write his book, about these , about onion rings .