“Volcanic Grilled Cheese” by Stephanie Thomas

The smell of sulfur doesn’t belong in a kitchen. It belongs somewhere distant, somewhere dangerous, somewhere the ground breathes instead of rests. But every now and then, when a grilled cheese browns just a little too far, something in the air pulls me back, not to a stove, but to heat rising from the earth itself. To a place where I once tried to fix something as simple as lunch while standing on top of something that could not be fixed at all.

I was nine years old the first time I tried to cook a grilled cheese sandwich on a volcano, and at the time, it made perfect sense.

At nine, the world felt negotiable. Problems were temporary. Solutions were always within reach if you were willing to think just a little differently than everyone else.

I didn’t like cold sandwiches. Cold bread and unmelted cheese felt unfinished, halfway to becoming what it was supposed to be.

Heat was heat. The same thing that melted cheese in a pan could melt it anywhere else. The difference between a stove and the ground beneath my feet didn’t exist yet.

Looking back now, it’s the kind of moment that seems too small to have lasted. Just a sandwich. Just a brief disagreement stretched across a single afternoon.

We were visiting Hawaii, my mom, my dad, and my older sister, Becky. My mom believed everything would work out, even when it probably wouldn’t. My dad said more with a raised eyebrow than words. Becky had already learned how these moments ended, her sigh coming early.

We were staying in a small wooden cabin on an air force base. The wood creaked with the heat, expanding and settling. At night, the air didn’t cool the way I expected it to. It lingered.

The base was not like anything I had ever seen before. The heat and humidity were almost unbearable, even at night. Clothing clung to my skin for hours. The plants and flowers were enormous and bright, so unusual in shape and color that they looked like they belonged in a painting.

One morning my parents announced we were going hiking. If you want to talk about a hike, this wasn’t just any hike. They were talking about crossing the crater of an active volcano: Mount Kīlauea.

Volcanoes were something you saw on nature documentaries, far away mountains explained by a narrator describing lava and tectonic plates. The idea of walking on one felt unreal.

But before we could leave, we had to pack our lunch. And that’s when things fell apart.

“I don’t like cold sandwiches,” I told my parents.

My parents listened with the calm patience of knowing they were right and I was not.

“Well,” my mom said, “it’s like a picnic.”

I didn’t care. Picnics still involved sandwiches.

“And you like cheese,” she added.

That part was true.

“So we’ll just make you a cheese sandwich.”

And that was that.

A few minutes later, my lunch appeared in a Ziplock bag: two slices of white bread and a square of American cheese. A very plain sandwich.

A few hours after that, we were at the edge of the crater.

The ground stretched out in black volcanic rock, cracked and uneven. Some sections were sharp, others smooth and glassy, as if the molten lava had flowed and then suddenly stopped.

Steam vents dotted the crater floor. Some were small holes; others had rock formations above them like little umbrellas. Thin white plumes rose and disappeared into the air.

They didn’t roar or demand attention the way I expected something like a volcano to behave. Instead, they breathed, slowly, steadily.

The faint sulfur smell lingered, a quiet reminder that something was happening beneath the surface.

The air was thick and humid, almost hot as it was inhaled. And along the edge of all that black rock, there were bursts of color, flowers bright against the dark.

At first, I thought it was incredible. We were walking on a volcano. But after hours, the novelty wore off. My neck dripped with sweat, my shirt stuck to my skin, and the rock pressed hard through my shoes.

Everything began to feel the same. Step after step, black rock stretching in every direction.

I started noticing smaller things instead, the texture under my feet, the sound the rock made when I stepped on it.

Eventually, we stopped for lunch.

I don’t remember how everyone suddenly had food, but they did, pulling it from their packs as we sat near a cluster of steam vents.

I wandered over to one of them. It was about the size of a foot across, with a small rocky ceiling. I held my hand in the steam. It was hot, like opening an oven.

Warm air. Very warm air. Warm enough to melt cheese.

I didn’t go to the vent with a plan. It started as a pause, something to look at while everyone else settled into their lunches.

But the idea took hold.

I pulled the sandwich from the bag and held it above the vent. After a few seconds, it was too hot to hold, so I found a stick and pushed the sandwich onto it like a marshmallow.

I held it over the steam. Slowly, the cheese softened at the edges, losing its shape. The bread warmed, becoming flexible.

This wasn’t luck. It was control.

I remember glancing over at my family, expecting them to notice. Not for praise, exactly, but for acknowledgment.

But no one was paying attention.

And that made the moment feel like it belonged entirely to me.

I decided it was done when it looked right and pulled it off the stick.

That’s when the smell hit me.

The sulfur we had barely noticed earlier was now trapped inside the sandwich. Rotten eggs, sharp and overwhelming.

My stomach flipped. I tried to hold my breath, but it didn’t help.

Something that had seemed improved seconds before was now completely inedible.

“This smells so bad,” I said. “I’m not going to eat this.”

“You’re not wasting food,” my parents said. “Just eat it.”

But there was no way.

I stared at it, unsure what had gone wrong. I had thought this was one of my better ideas.

I hesitated for a second. Not because I wanted to eat it, but because I knew what I was about to do.

Then I tossed it into the steam vent.

It disappeared instantly.

A few weeks later, we heard there had been an eruption. My parents joked that my sandwich had caused it, that it had been so bad the volcano spit it back out.

The story became one of our family’s favorites, retold at gatherings, growing more exaggerated each time.

For a long time, that’s all it was. A funny story about a bad sandwich.

But over time, it began to feel like something else.

At nine, I didn’t understand where I was standing. I didn’t understand scale, the difference between my small problem and the massive force beneath my feet.

The volcano looked calm. But underneath, it was alive.

And for a moment, I thought I could change something there. That I could improve it.

For a moment, I believed I had.

But not everything can be fixed.

Because somewhere beneath that crater, the ground is still shifting.

The heat is still rising.

And that sandwich, in some strange and impossible way, may still be a part of it.

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Stephanie Thomas is an undergraduate student at Southern New Hampshire University studying Creative Writing. While she primarily writes middle grade fantasy, her work often explores themes of place, memory, and the ways we try to make sense of the world around us.