The Burnt Pizza

This is a story that, if he were here today, Jordan would probably be exasperated that I'm telling everyone. I mean, it was supposed to be our secret to save us from Mom's wrath.
I don't recall exactly how old we were at the time. I'd estimate Jordan was 11 or 12, and I was 9 or 10. Bre, our sister, would have been two years younger than me. 
Mom had left us for a bit, with Jordan in charge. One thing she didn't consider is that we weren't very good cooks. When we got hungry, Jordan decided we would just pop a frozen pizza in the oven because it seemed easy. It's weird how wrong a simple frozen pizza can go.
I'm not sure why or how, or whether we didn't know how to set the timer on the oven...but we completely forgot the pizza. At some point, we only remembered it was there because the entire house started smelling like a burnt pizza. 
Panicked, Jordan pulled it out of the oven, only to find that the pizza had been reduced to an inedible black disc. I'm not exaggerating. It was completely black.
We assumed that Mom would be mad if she found out we wasted an entire pizza. So Jordan hatched a plan: we would bury the pizza in the back yard. Mom would never know what had happened. 
In retrospect, that seems really silly. But we did it. We buried an entire pizza in the back yard as if we were criminals hiding a body. 
For at least a day or two, it worked. Mom was none the wiser about the missing pizza. We gradually relaxed, thinking she would never find out. 
But of course, these things have a way of coming back to get you. At some point, I remember Mom was standing at our back door, staring out through the glass into our back yard. Our dogs had found something and were sniffing and nibbling at it, and she couldn't figure out what it was. 
I think even wild animals had found the pizza. At any rate, our secret was soon revealed.
I'll just never forget the time I had to hide a shady pizza with a Jordan. 

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​-Amanda J Tucker

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