Friday, February 14, 2014

“Uh-huh.”

Poor Andrea appeared to be doing her best to keep an interest in Charmaine’s lecture. After all, it’s critical to have redundancy in a business!

“And the flour helps to prevent sticking. Are you still with me, Andrea?”

Andrea’s brain was clearly clocked out at this point.

“Andrea.”

The only thing in her mind was the mountain of cash that she was going to make.

“Andrea, dear?”

It was going to be like a TV show. She would make so much money that they could swim in it or make a huge, neatly stacked pile hidden away in a storage unit.

“Hello? Earth to Andrea?”

Except, she would haven’t to hide it since every cent would be clean and legit… for the most part.

“ANDREA!”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Andrea, please! This is important! Breakfast might be the most important meal of the day, but dessert is where we’re going to be making our money!”

“I know, and I apologize.”

“It’s all good. Now, as I was saying… this is what they call ‘puff pastry’…”

Having all that money was going to rock. Andrea pictured herself in a nice car cruising down the streets of San Diego in the luscious air of summer.

“And then you lightly sprinkle some cinnamon.”

That crisp breeze in your hair. In their hometown here in Oregon, the Pacific air wasn’t as lovely as it was down on the Golden State.

“Andrea, this is also what you do to ensure that the cake is fully done…”

Why should she take a vacation in California? With this money she could simply move there…

“And if the toothpick comes out clean, you’re good to go!”

At this point, Andrea decided to rejoin the currently one-sided conversation. “So, is that before or after we put on the cinnamon and flour?”

It wasn’t hard to see where Kenton picked up his face-palming habit as Charmaine promptly did so at her best friend’s remark.

“Andrea! That was the earlier dish! Please pay attention. Can you do that… for me?”

Andrea looked Charmaine in the eye, smiled, and said “Okay. For you.”

“Maybe desserts aren’t your thing. That’s okay.” Charmaine said as she reached over and started rummaging through the pile of cookbooks stacked between them.

“Maybe… oh, here’s something. Entrees.”

“Entrees.”

“How about Macaroni and Cheese. It’s an all-American classic!”

“What? You might be onto something. They sell that stuff at the grocery store for about thirty cents per box!”

Charmaine had that look of sheer disgust. She found that crap-in-a-box completely repulsive.

“Y-You cannot be serious, Andrea!”

“I’m dead serious!”

“That stuff is filth! I want to make something to be proud of!”

“It’s just as healthy as that Pastry-Puff-Cinnamon-Toothpaste-Cake that you were talking about earlier!”

“I’m not talking about that, Andrea!”

“Then why don’t you clue me in. What are you talking about?”

“I want to do this for the art. Culinary is an artistic skill.”

Andrea sighed. The money was her goal. Charmaine wanted to make art.

“I tell you what.” Andrea said as the gears in her head started to spin at a rapid pace.

“You’re going to tell me what?”

“If we both try to tackle everything ourselves, we’re going to drown. It’s an ocean out there. I’m not a chef. It’s not my thing. You know that. You just worry about the cooking and I’ll deal with the red tape. How’s about that?”

Charmaine thought about this. All the fun and fame of running a restaurant without the hassle of business management. This was perfect. She could cook out of the books instead of cooking the books.

“Do we have a deal, Charmaine?”

Charmaine was about to raise her hand to shake Andrea’s. Something was different. Andrea was confident. This wasn’t the same girl that she confided in throughout elementary school. This wasn’t the same woman was there for the birth of her son and gave her a shoulder to cry on when her husband was taken away from her.

“Mom, I’m home!”

Kenton’s arrival to the small house distracted the two from completing their business deal.

“Oh, hello, Andrea!”

Andrea lowered her hand and looked at the young teenager that had entered the room.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“Hey, baby!” Charmaine said as she gave her son a quick hug.

“Hi, mom!”

“So, tell me. How did it go? Did you do it?”

“Yeah. It’s done.”

Andrea leaned back in the chair on which she was sitting. Without the proper context, this conversation could come off weird to a stranger. This somehow occurred to Charmaine and she turned back to Andrea as Kenton opened the refrigerator to get something to drink.

“Kenton’s got a crush on a girl and he made a valentine for her.”

Even though Andrea was far, far away from being a stranger to the family, Kenton was still shocked that his mother would give away such information so easily.

“Mom!”

“Oh, it’s just me. I won’t tell.” Andrea said with a giggle as she got up from the seat.

“So, what’s for dinner tonight?”

“Oh, that stuff that you like.”

“Mac and cheese?”

Andrea turned to Charmaine and raised an eyebrow.

“Uh… yeah.” Charmaine nervously said.

“Awesome! I’ll get it out of the pantry!”

“Wait! You don’t have to…” Charmaine quickly exclaimed as Kenton retrieved the “crap-in-a-box” that she referred to as “filth” just mere minutes before.

“Just leave it on the counter and I’ll have it ready in about twenty minutes.” Charmaine said as she slumped down into her chair in defeat.

“Yes! Thanks Mom! I’m going to take a shower in the meantime!”

As Kenton cheerfully walked into his bedroom, Andrea politely got up from her seat at the kitchen table.

“I think that I’ll head out. We’ll talk about this some more next week. I’m getting my rest on this weekend as the stupid photo studio is having a half-off baby photo special next week.”

“Alright, then. See you then!”

“I’ll call you later on.”

Andrea opened the door to the house and walked down the stairs. As she got into her beater car and cranked the ignition to the point that the engine would rumble to life, she started thinking about all that money.

If she could keep Charmaine preoccupied with the actual culinary stuff, all that money would be right in Andrea’s pocket without Charmaine knowing a single thing.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

“You just worry about the cooking and I’ll deal with the red tape.”

Charmaine laid awake in her bed thinking about that line that Andrea fed her just under a week before. What red tape? Outside of a brief disagreement about having a catering business and the menu. The building has sat empty for several years and between the inheritance from her husband and Andrea’s contribution, there wasn’t going to be any “red tape”.

Or was there? What exactly did Andrea have in mind? She said that she got the money from her uncle and Charmaine knew enough about the old man to know that he was loaded. She knew that Andrea had to be bailed out by her uncle on many occasions and none of which forced any “red tape”?

Wait a minute. This wasn’t a couple hundred dollars to keep the eviction notices at bay. This was ten grand. That’s a little more than a drop in the ocean for anybody. Maybe Andrea’s uncle was asking to be a business partner. Was Andrea trying to be a man-in-the-middle to keep Andrea’s uncle from meeting the “other half” of the business? Or “other third” to be exact.

As the sun started to creep over the top part of her windows, she could hear a muffled alarm going off across the wall. In between the tenth and eleventh beep, she heard a thump before the alarm went dead and the closing of the bathroom door reassured her that Kenton was awake on time for once.

She, working as a secretary at the elementary school, had to work on a similar schedule. Charmaine groaned as her alarm started to go off fifteen minutes later. With a yawn, she turned off the alarm and came to the realization that she only received a meager four hours of sleep.

“Good morning, baby.” She said as she yawned yet again as she walked in on Kenton munching on a bowl of leftover macaroni and cheese from yet another batch that was made the night before.

“Morning, mommph.” Kenton said as he shoveled the cheesy garbage into his mouth. Charmaine smiled and shook her head at the boy’s semi-lack of table manners. She went to start the coffee maker only to find that it was percolating away with a fresh brew.

“I already started it.” Kenton mentioned between shovelfuls.

“Aw, thanks, baby.” Charmaine complimented.

“Are you going to meet with Andrea again today?”

“Yeah.”

Charmaine sighed and looked out of the window of the over-garage dwelling that they lived in. Kenton was surprisingly supportive of this huge step that Charmaine was going to make in her life. That was a trait that he shared with his father. No matter how ridiculous the idea was, Kenton was a determinator.

Kenton broke her train of thought by plopping his bowl into the sink and running some hot water to prevent the leftover “cheese” from coagulating.

“I gotta go, Mom.”

“Wait, what? This early?”

“Yeah, I joined a new club.”

“Oh, you did?”

“Yeah, the Drama club.”

Charmaine turned her head sideways in curiosity. Kenton’s interest in the arts included Slasher films and video games. The idea that he would be interested in something like Shakespeare and Greek Tragedies was just puzzling.

“Are you still playing basketball?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re sure that it’s not going to interfere with your schoolwork?”

Kenton’s smart mouth wanted to say, “What schoolwork?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine.”

“You better. If I find out you’re slippin’…”

“Mom, I’ll be fine. Now, I gotta go. Love you!”

“Yeah, yeah. Love you too.”

Charmaine sighed as she dumped the fresh coffee into her thermal mug to prepare for the long trip to the school.

The morning dragged on and on. When you have no sleep, it is darn-near impossible to keep yourself awake for the minutes on-end when there’s nothing going on. Every seventy minutes or so, there would be a kid or two sent to the office to be reprimanded by the Principal, but nothing too major.

Charmaine’s lunch period started just as the recess period ended. Instead of going to enjoy a quiet lunch at the teacher’s lounge, she went to the parking lot and got out her cell phone.

At the photo studio, Andrea had to deal with what felt with the twentieth screaming baby of the day. Instead of taking a lunch break, Andrea took “breaks” between pictures. She tried to time her photo shoots so that she could get a “break” around the time that Charmaine would go to lunch.

“Hey, Charmaine.”

“Hey, baby.”

“You ready to talk some business?”

“Yeah, I would like to talk.”

“Okay. So, you’re okay with the arrangement?”

“I just have some questions.”

“Shoot.”

“You said ‘red tape’ last night. You do have the money, right?”

“Charmaine…”

“I know it sounds weird, but this whole thing sounds almost too good to be true!”

“I have the money. I could go to the ATM and get a receipt if you don’t believe me.”

“No, I believe you. But what’s this ‘red tape’?”

“Oh, you know. Tax audits. Permits. Health inspections. Employee affairs.”

“Right. I don’t want to pry, but how did you get your uncle to give you ten grand?”

“I told him that I was starting a business. Easy as that?”

“And he just gave you the money?”

“Yeah.”

“With no strings attached?”

“Well, I’m obviously going to have to pay him back someday.”

“Oh, I see. You mean he’s not on as a business partner or something?”

Andrea silently hissed. Charmaine was showing herself as being more business savvy than she could have imagined. She wasn’t wrong: Andrea lied about the money being for her college tuition because she knew that her Uncle would certainly try to cut himself into the business. She didn’t want him involved. It would be one more nose she would be smacking.

“No, Charmaine. It’s just you and me. Against the world. Remember?”

“Yeah. Against the world.”

“You sound tired. Get some sleep in your car. Can’t have you sleeping at the desk, can they?”

“You’re right. See you later?”

“Yeah. See you later.”

Andrea hung up the phone and looked at the screen. The truth was within Charmaine’s reach. Not good.

She met Charmaine on the very first day of third grade, in the same school where she would be a secretary decades later. And here Andrea was, in the present day, ready to become richer than her wildest dreams.

Andrea looked at the phone in her hand as she sent the text message lying to her best friend about renting a building. A chime on her phone alerted her to the fact that her online reservation for a plane to San Francisco was ready.

The whole scheme was a plan that felt ripped out of a movie: Andrea used the magical powers of the internet to set up one of those fancy bank accounts that could be managed online. As soon as Charmaine would give her the check, she would take that money and deposit it. As soon as she’d get off the plane, she would rent a car and drive it about eighty or so miles south to a suburb that would have a branch of the bank. One cash withdrawal later and she would be free with cold, hard, cash.

What was going to happen to Charmaine? Andrea knew her friend well enough to know that there was enough trust to put at least three days between Charmaine writing the check and realizing that the restaurant wasn’t going to happen. Knowing exactly how much Charmaine got from her inheritance and she knew that Charmaine and Kenton would continue to live comfortable (yet disappointed) lives.

“When we start this place, we’re going to be the ones making the rules.”

Andrea shook her head. When Charmaine first heard about this whole restaurant idea, she was just as skeptical as anyone would normally be. When Charmaine reminded Andrea of this line, she was parroting one of the many lines that Andrea was spoon-feeding to get her to go along with this idea.

May 2013

“Girl, are you out of your mind?!”

“No. I think we could do this!”

Andrea sat down in a chair in the elementary school office as Charmaine sat behind the secretary’s counter rapidly typing on the computer.

“You’re saying that I could just up and leave this place?”

“Yep. Be your own boss. We’re going to be the ones making the rules.”

“Are you feeling okay, girl? This is far out. Have you been sniffing those film-developing chemicals again?”

“Nope. I’ve been looking at what it takes. You know that building over on the corner of Jaguar and Panther? Dirt cheap rent. Maybe we can sweet talk the owner into a contract-for-deed deal.”

“Girl, as much as I love and support you in everything that you do, this is asking a lot of me.”

“Charmaine, look around you. Would you miss the nightmares, the stress, and the people?”

Before Andrea could continue, the intercom-call indicator lit up for the fifth-grade classroom. Charmaine gave the “be quiet” gesture to Andrea before pushing the button.

“Hello?” Charmaine cheerfully said.

“Yeah. He’s on his way.”

“Okay, I know the drill.”

Andrea could barely hear the background laughter from the kids in the classroom as the top of a kid’s head passed along the bottom of the tall office window. The door flung itself open and slammed against the wall.

“Sit down, Cameron.”

“Make me.”

“I’m sorry. What I meant to say was ‘sit down’ and ‘shut up’.”

The kid scoffed and took a seat in the chair next to the door.

“You know, Andrea. I might take you up on that offer.”

“We’ll talk later.” Andrea said with a smile as she stood up.

“Alright. See you later, girl.”

Andrea turned towards the door and took a step before feeling her leg catch up on something.

“Cameron!”

After catching herself on the wall, she looked down to see that the kid had his leg stuck out with the intent of tripping her.

“Oh, you’re so cute.” Andrea said with half-cheerfulness and half-sarcasm as she walked out of the office.

Present Day

Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. Charmaine was getting frustrated with her job and the crap that she had to take from the rowdy kids.

Andrea walked into her bedroom and looked around. Less than forty-eight hours left meant that Andrea had to start packing. This was the most difficult part of the task. There wasn’t an opportunity to find an apartment or house down in California and she couldn’t just send her stuff out to nowhere.

A good chunk of her most precious collectibles were already sitting in a storage unit about a hundred miles south. Like Charmaine, Andrea played sick several times to make a road trip to run a couple boxes to that storage unit.

Andrea took another deep breath and sat down on the bed. This was a difficult decision to make. Her job as a photographer in the armpit of the city wasn’t going to make enough money for her to get a fresh start. There was no way that her family (who strongly believed in “hometown pride”) would front her the money to move to another state.

This was the only conclusion. She had to keep a positive outlook on her upcoming new life. The only problem was that she was going to have to sacrifice the love and trust of her best friend and her family to do so.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

“Isn’t that beautiful?”

Andrea craned her head over to the laptop that was sitting on Charmaine’s lap. Instead of dishes, tablecloths, mixers, saltshakers, and other restaurant-like equipment, there was a picture of a large van generously covered with oxidization.

“Charmaine? I thought you said that you’re looking for stuff to brighten up the place. What the hell is that?”

“Okay, I know what you might be thinking. But imagine this: a beautiful bride, a handsome groom…”

“Get infected with tetanus from this thing?”

Charmaine tilted her head sideways with a look that said “Really?”

“So, you’re wanting to do… well, catering. There is absolutely no way that the health department would let us do any catering out of that monstrosity.”

“Girl, you know that van just needs a little love to make it right. A little coat of paint…”

“Charmaine. It costs a lot of money to get a car, let alone a van, repainted. We don’t have that much money in the budget as it stands. What makes you think that we’re going to be able to afford a van?”

“It’s only $1,500!”

“That’s the sticker price. What about the stuff that you don’t see? How do we know that it runs? For all we know it could take ten cranks to start on a hot day, or worse, leave us stranded!”

“Look at it like this, Andrea. Kenton’s been mowing lawns and saving up for a car when he gets his license three years from now. Believe me, I’ve seen vans as cheap as $500!”

“And what’s the first thing that you tell him when he brings you these junkers?”

“I tell him that he’s way too young to be worrying about driving and that his grades are more important!”

“Okay, what’s the second thing you tell him?”

“That you get exactly what you pay for. But girl, it’s a $1,500 van in a $500 world! What can you expect?”

“I expect wonderful things, Charmaine. I’m not saying that it’s never going to happen, but we need to focus on the short-term future. I want to be there on a beautiful bride’s big day, but I want to be there in a van that looks like it belongs among the limos and the horse-drawn wagons. You get what I’m saying?”

Charmaine looked down at the floor with disappointment in her eyes before looking back up at her best-friend-turned-business-partner and smiled.

“Now, we’re on a roll.” Andrea said as she started to knock on the counter of the commercial kitchen that they were standing in. “We’ve almost got the building. We’ve got a vague idea of the menu. We’re on the right track.”

“Yeah, you’re right. So, I was thinking about an owl motif for the dining room.”

“Well, that’s unique enough, I guess.”

“Great, because I think this would be good for the sign of the restaurant.”

With a couple of taps on the laptop’s touchpad, the internet browser on the screen was replaced with a vector graphics editor. Andrea’s mouth opened a bit at both the work that Charmaine put into the beautiful computer graphics and the audacity of the name she picked.

“Night Owl Café?”

“Yeah, I think it fits well with the motif?”

“…Okay…”

Charmaine could tell from her friend’s eyes that this was going to take a bit of a pitch to convince her that this name would work out.

“It’s got that… well, pop.”

“Pop?”

“Yeah! It’s got that twist of ambiguity and shadiness…”

“Shadiness?”

“It’s edgy, but in a good kind of way. It’s enough to get a person’s eyebrow up. Enough to make them say ‘I want to know what this is about. I’m going to eat there.'”

Andrea didn’t want to admit it, but Charmaine had a solid point.

“Okay, it’s something to ponder.”

“Yeah, exactly. Something to ponder.”

“Now, you see, this is progress. When you get your mind to something, you can do amazing things. But Charmaine, we must focus those powers down. We need a case of tunnel vision here. Wonderful things will come.”

“I know, girl. I know.”

“And, you know, several years down the line I think it would be awesome enough to expand into the catering business. But we need to think about the present instead of the future. Maybe down the road whenever Kenton gets married you might be the one catering the reception!”

“Honey, that’s going to be a LONG way down that road. Otherwise he’s going to be walking down the aisle with my foot in his behind!”

With a chuckle, Andrea got up from her seat and walked over to the door.

“I’m heading out. We’ll talk more about the specifics, as in the menu, next time. Like I said, let’s take this one step at a time.”

“Right. I’m sorry, I guess I’m getting too caught up in my excitement!”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just don’t get too ahead of yourself.”

Charmaine nodded as Andrea opened the front door. After hearing footsteps coming up, she stepped back as Kenton walked through the front door.

“Hey, look who decided to show up!” Andrea joked as Kenton set his school bag down on the kitchen table.

“One: how was your day, baby? And two: Get that off the dinner table.” Charmaine sternly said as her parenting “personality” started to take dominance over the silly daydreaming she was guilty of just a few minutes prior.

“Good…” Kenton said as he slid the bag off with a sigh.

“I’m out. See you tomorrow?” Andrea said as she opened the front door once again. Charmaine nodded and gave a small wave.

“See you later, girl!”

“Bye, Andrea!” Kenton added with a polite smile.

Two hours later, dinner was done and served followed by silence from Kenton’s room. Charmaine put the restaurant out of her mind as she kicked back in her favorite chair to watch some television.

She found herself dozing off when she heard Kenton’s bedroom door open and then close about two minutes later. It was a commercial break, so she walked to the fridge to get a drink. With a glance to her right, she noticed that the bathroom light was still on.

“Really? Does that boy think that we’re paying for the power company’s luxury yachts?” She mumbled to herself as she walked away from an open fridge door to turn off the light. Before she could turn off the light, she noticed her makeup case sitting on the vanity.

Curiosity piqued, she walked over to the makeup case and opened it up. Instead of being organized by color, she grouped her nail colorings by occasion: solid colors for super-formal events, fluorescent for fun with a touch of formal, and finally some that was glittery (and expensive) for looking good for a night on the town. Of course, the glittery (expensive) one was missing.

With fire in her eyes, Charmaine stormed out of the bathroom and threw open the door to her son’s room.

“Boy! What are you doing with my glittery makeup?!”

Kenton looked up in shock knowing full well that he was in trouble. His mother, Charmaine, could only look down at him in disappointment and anger over the fact that her precious (and don’t forget, expensive) makeup was being used by her young teenage son.

“Mom, I can explain!”

“Explain what? What is any mother supposed to think when she walks in and sees her baby boy well on the road to being a pretty woman?”

Kenton sighed. Charmaine, already proven to be easily excitable, once again jumped to a conclusion.

“Mom, seriously, it’s not what it looks like!”

“You! My makeup! Your hands! Your face!”

Curious about that last statement, Kenton craned his head around to look at a small mirror positioned on the dresser next to his bedroom desk. Sure enough, there was a small amount of the glittery makeup under one of his eyes. His hands were indeed covered in the “beautiful” substance, so it’s not a stretch to believe that he simply scratched his cheek without giving it a second thought. His last statement was indeed incorrect: It did look like what his mother thought it looked like.

“Kenton, I’m sorry. You are free to be whatever you want on God’s green Earth. It’s just… wow, I wasn’t expecting this from my baby boy…”

Placing his face into his palm was the worst thing that Kenton could have done in this situation. The makeup was still very wet on his hand, making the problem that much worse.

“Gah!” he exclaimed as he moved his hand away when he realized his faux pas.

“Mom, look!”

Kenton, defeated, held up his “project”: a piece of construction paper that was carefully cut in half. The glitter makeup was applied very liberally to the edges of the homemade card. Charmaine bent down and studied the in-progress piece of “art”.

“Okay. What is this?”

Kenton sighed again and only pointed to a basketball calendar posted up directly over his desk. Charmaine’s gaze followed his finger and she realized that she was point to the very next day: February 14.

“Boy… ARE YOU USING MY EXPENSIVE MAKEUP FOR A GAUDY VALENTINE?!”

“It’s gaudy because it’s not done yet!” Kenton replied in a strong, but still meek voice.

“What do you mean? What do you want? My hairspray to keep it together?”

Kenton, finally having enough of this, flatly replied “Why yes, that would be great.”

“Boy, don’t get sarcastic with me! I will smack you into the next solar eclipse!”

“Sorry, Mom” was all that could leave the young man’s mouth. The phrase “Sir, yes, sir!” was really what was leaving his mind.

“So, who is the lovely girl?”

Kenton blushed and quickly said “Oh, it’s just a girl from school…”

“Who? That doesn’t narrow it down! Do I know her?”

She did. And that was precisely why Kenton was keeping his trap clapped.

“Uh, yeah, maybe, I don’t know…”

Charmaine giggled at the fact that her son was getting flustered at this line of interrogation.

“It’s okay. It’s probably for the best that I don’t know. Just don’t stay up too late, okay baby?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Oh, and try not to use up the last of my makeup. That stuff is expensive.”

“I know, Mom.”

Friday, February 14, 2014

Valentine’s Day always caused a rift that split the students at Kenton’s school into two groups: the groups made up of the couples that gushed over one another and the other group made up of people who kept to themselves and wished for the day to be over quickly.

Kenton did a wonderful job playing a role in the latter group while wishing he were in that first group. As the last period of the day started, he was ready to execute his plan. After fifteen minutes passed by in the class, Kenton meekly asked the teacher if he could use the restroom. He chose this class period to do this as he would have to pass by the girl’s locker on his way to the restroom.

He quietly opened the door to the classroom and just as quietly closed it behind him. He reached his hand into his pocket and secretly started to pull out the envelope holding the anonymous confession as the locker appeared when he turned a corner.

Twenty feet. Ten feet. Was this really a promising idea? He had his eye on this girl since the start of the school year and yesterday had to be a sign from above. A sign that he should act now or forever regret it.

Five feet. Kenton felt his stomach leap into his throat.

Two and a half feet. Kenton’s shadow started to appear on the door of the locker.

Kenton’s whole body froze. This was the last call before the train was to leave the station. Inhaling deeply, Kenton turned off all his thought processes and slammed the envelope into the ventilation slot of the locker.

Common sense started to recover in Kenton’s mind as he sped to the restroom and took some deep breaths as the reality of the situation started to sink in. What was done was done. There’s no taking that back. And if everything worked according to plan, Kenton would have no reason in the world to take that back.

Thirty-five minutes later, a loud bell told the teachers to release their students into the wild. Kenton raced to his locker and put his stuff away before slowly making his way to the gym for a basketball team meeting. He had meticulously planned out this part: if he would move slowly enough, then he would almost certainly be able to see the girl open her locker and get the valentine.

Sure enough, he turned the corner and saw her working the combination lock. To waste a little time, he stopped and acted like he was reading the bulletin board before taking a drink from the fountain. He hoped that his expression and body language didn’t give away any hints as she had the envelope open and was reading what he had wrote:

“I’m not good at poetry, but I want to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day. At least you know that you’ve heard it from someone that likes you very much ~ Secret”

The girl quickly glanced up to see if the “culprit” would return to the scene of the crime to see her reaction. Luckily, Kenton picked up on this and averted his gaze away from her mere fractions of a second before their eyes could meet.

The girl, seeing no one that could pass as a guilty party, blushed with a genuine smile as she put the valentine back in the envelope and carefully placed it in her backpack. Kenton was barely able to see her walk out of the door. She was keeping the valentine and did not toss it into a nearby garbage can! It was all that Kenton could do to keep from leaping into the air and cheering as the mission was a success.

Andrea Berger, a thirty-year old woman living in a “town of dreams” on the Oregon coast, walked toward the bank, in hopes of making a better life for herself. Ever since she graduated from college, she wanted to tackle the world by taking fantastic photographs with the hope of someday seeing her work on a magazine cover.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Is it worth the sacrifice?”

However, like most daydreamers, fate dealt her a different hand as she found herself slogging away at a fledgling family photo shop. When she wasn’t frantically editing the photos on the computer, screaming babies and impatient families occupied the bulk of her “Nine-to-Five”. She knew the change was coming and it couldn’t some soon enough.

Pulling her junky, decades-old car into the bank parking lot, she pulled a cash envelope from her purse. Her ambitions were in the making for quite some time, but it was a challenge to get funding from family members accusing her of “crazy talk”. Eventually, she was able to get a sizable investment from her entrepreneurial uncle.

The bank was as busy as one could expect it to be on a typical Friday afternoon. It wasn’t long before Andrea’s daze was interrupted as a teller shouted out “I can get somebody over here!”

“Hi! How can I help you today?” The teller called out with an inflection that could be interpreted as “Forty-five minutes and I’ll be out of this god-forsaken hole.”

“Uh, yes, I want to make a deposit.” Andrea sheepishly said as she opened the envelope and slid a check accompanied by a deposit slip across the counter. The teller, now dropping what little of a cheerful facade that she had, snatched up the two pieces of paper and started mashing keys. After what felt like a small eternity, the teller flapped a receipt down on the counter and said “Okay, the first $100 of the deposit will be available by Monday morning. The remaining $9,900 will become available as soon as the funds from the check clear.”

Andrea, a bit surprised by the fact that her money wasn’t going to be 100% available at once, nodded and walked out of the bank. As she reached for the keys to her car, she could faintly hear the first few bars of her favorite song. Recognizing the name on the screen, she swiped it to answer.

“Hey, girl. Did you get the money deposited?”

The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Andrea’s best friend, Charmaine. Charmaine, three years older, was the “big sister” that Andrea never had.

“Yes. Well, kinda-sorta. Did you know that they hold the funds until the check clears?”

Charmaine smiled from her seat at the secretary’s desk at the local elementary school where she worked.

“Yes, Andrea, I know that. How else could they keep someone from writing a fraudulent check and making off with the money?”

While Charmaine certainly didn’t mean to come off as condescending, Andrea couldn’t help but take her response as such. She pulled the phone away from her ear and quickly slapped the steering wheel of her car while making a slight growl.

“But when you think about it, Andrea, pretty soon we’re going to be so successful that we won’t have to worry about trivial things like that.”

Andrea put the phone back up against her head and let the thoughts of being rich and famous drift through her head.

“You’re right and soon enough we’ll be the ones making the rules, am I right, Charmaine?”

Charmaine quietly sighed and sat back in her chair at the complete lack of logic that her friend was showing.

“Well, sure, why not?”

“Just think about it, Charmaine, we’re going to be big. We’re two ladies ready to tackle the world! We’re going to be the definitive model for female entrepreneurial society!”

The secretary looked up at the clock and silently rolled her eyes.

“We’re going to be on television…” Andrea continued to burble.

“Andrea, Andrea, girl, please. I know you’re looking at the glitz and the glamour, but have you thought about any of the short-term stuff? Like what’s on the menu?”

Charmaine smirked a bit at the silence coming from the other end of the line. This was a typical cycle for the two friends. Andrea would get a hair-brained scheme and Charmaine would be the one to introduce sanity and logic into the situation. If Andrea always had Charmaine, the universe would be in perfect harmony.

Being a single mother meant that Charmaine had the opportunity and the drive to learn how the kitchen worked. She loved cooking and when she wasn’t trying new recipes from her fellow faculty members, she was tinkering with new and creative ideas. Andrea, on a good day, threw butter and jelly on toast and called it supper.

“Charmaine, I don’t want to be a wet blanket, but we need to get some things lined up before we start talking about the big-time. You’re looking at the glorious part of the situation and not the long road leading up to that. We have to take this one step at a time.”

“Yeah… I guess you’re right. How about we meet up at my house tonight and we’ll sit down and talk about what’s going to be on the menu?”

Andrea looked down at the clock in her car. A quarter until five meant that they were on the cusp of the evening.

“Uh, I guess we could do that. What time would work for you?”

“Well, Kenton’s got basketball practice until 6:30. After that I’ll be home if you want to stop by.”

“Alright then, it’s a date. See you then.”

“You too, girl.”

Andrea pushed a rectangle on the screen of her smartphone to disconnect the call. As she turned the key to start the engine, she gave one last thought to the money that was sitting safe in the bank and the lengths she went through to get it:

One Hour Prior

“Hey, princess!” an older man said as Andrea wrapped her arms around him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“How are you feeling?” Andrea said as the man opened up a bag of potato chips and inserted one into his mouth.”

“Ah, I’m still here. Doctor says I need to back off the red meat, but what does he know?”

Andrea lightly chuckled. The doctor, a man who spent a long time in a medical school and went through his residency dealing with stubborn old men like her uncle, had a good point and she knew it.

“So, princess, what brings you here?”

“Well, I’ve been doing some thinking lately. Business has been slowing down at the studio and the boss doesn’t think that we’re going to recover thanks to the advances in smartphone cameras and such…”

“Oh, that’s terrible!”

“So, I was thinking about going back to school to become a graphic designer…”

“That’s wonderful, princess!”

“There’s a slight problem, however, while I can get a federal aid grant to help pay for the actual tuition, the materials for the class are out of my price range. Especially with the rise of computers and the excessive cost of software…”

“How much are you going to need?”

“About ten-thousand dollars.”

“Say no more. Get my checkbook from my bedroom dresser…”

There was no “maybe”. Andrea had to make her plan work. She just had to. She burned her last possible bridge by lying to the one remaining relative that would help her. If this wasn’t going to pan out, there were no more shoulders to cry on. This plan had to succeed come hell or high water.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

“Good morning! Good morning!” Mr. Baltimore cried out as the class filed into the room. As one could expect, the “better” students filled up the front seats as the slackers made their way to the back.

A young man in his final year of middle school, Kenton Hayes, found himself shuffling into a seat in one of the middle rows. While he was not the best in the class at solving equations and finding congruence between two objects, he never gave any less than his best. After all, he was the son of the former elementary school secretary and always had the burden of grand expectations laid upon him.

As the time for the tardy bell trickled closer, the remaining seats in the class started to fill up one-by-one. About thirty-seconds before the cutoff, a boy who typically sat front-row-center came in to find his usual seat occupied. The youth, a “prodigy” named Elias Connor, conceded to taking the closest seat in the row right behind Kenton.

Despite a slight difference in height between the two boys, there were no problems since poor Kenton found himself starting to doze off at his desk and beginning to slip into a sleep too deep for the loud bell to awaken him.

Mr. Baltimore, a teacher who after dealing with this group of children for almost three years, knew the routine all too well as he plucked his teacher’s edition of the math book up from his desk and let it fall onto the lectern with a loud bang that could wake up anyone sleeping in the room. Sure enough, Kenton snapped awake and flopped his book open.

“Good morning! Good morning! Turn in your books to page 294.” The teacher cried out as a chorus of flops of pages overtook the ambient noise. Mr. Baltimore glanced down at his book as he reached for a whiteboard marker before turning to the board.

“Yesterday, we left off with his equation: y = mx + b” He said as he wrote the expression on the board. “Think fast! What does m stand for? KENTON!”

The boy’s eyes widened as he went from being asleep to being put on the spot in the span of ninety seconds. “Uh… Uh…” He fumbled as he heard a couple mumbles from his classmates.

“Uh…”

“Time’s up! Elias, help Kenton out here.”

Kenton sighed in defeat as Elias gave the answer. Of course, Kenton couldn’t hear the vital information being said out loud, instead finding himself focused on the snickering of several people around him.

“Good morning! Elias has saved the day! The m represents slope, or rather the rate of change in the equation!” Mr. Baltimore said as he wrote “slope” with an arrow pointing to the variable.

The rest of the day continued with Kenton feeling only three inches tall due to his embarrassment. When lunch time arrived, the mumbles and the snickers faded away, but the resentment that he felt towards his peers did not.

Being one of the first ones at the lunchroom, Kenton grabbed his tray and headed for the table that was mostly occupied by the seventh graders instead of his typical table of choice. As he started to eat, the table started to become occupied. A few of the younger kids wondered about his presence among themselves, but everybody kept to themselves until two girls approached the table.

The two girls, named Olivia and Mia, stopped their conversation as there wasn’t enough room for the two of them to sit down comfortably. Kenton stopped eating and looked up at them.

“Oh, I’m sorry, this isn’t my usual table. I’ll move to another one…” Kenton said as he got ready to pick up his tray to move to another table.

“Don’t worry about it. Just scoot over a bit and there’ll be plenty of room for the two of us.” Mia said as Kenton nodded. It only took a couple of inches before the two girls wedged themselves at the table with Olivia quietly squeezed between Kenton and Mia.

“So, we still on for this afternoon?” Mia asked her best friend.

“Yeah, I’ll show you some pictures from my trip.” Olivia replied as she took a drink.

“Okay… how did you not get in trouble for missing Friday and yesterday?”

“By whom?”

“The school. You remember how we would get reamed and reamed by Mrs. Hayes when we would miss a day of school without a doctor’s excuse?”

Kenton sighed and quietly looked down at his tray at Mia’s remark about his mother’s “legacy”.

“Nothing was really said. So, what did I miss?” Olivia asked, moving on from Mia’s remark.

“Drama club might be going away.” Mia nonchalantly said as she continued stuffing her face.

“Wait, WHAT?”

“Yeah, Mr. Baltimore said that we need more people. It’s just you, me, two other guys from the sixth grade, and that one blonde jerk.”

“How many more people do we need?”

“At least two, preferably three.”

“What can we do to help?”

“Recruit more people, I guess.”

“Who in the world would we even ask? Anyone that would want to be involved is already in the club.”

“I dunno. Random victim? I could ask someone who’s a cool person and wouldn’t want us to be without our precious drama club. Someone like good ol’ Kenton!” Mia replied as she reached behind Olivia to pat the boy on his shoulder. Kenton turned around to see both girls looking at him.

“What?” He asked as he blushed at the attention.

“You should join our drama club. We need people otherwise we’re out of a job!” Mia enthusiastically said. Kenton glared at her in annoyance.

“What job? You’re like, twelve or something.”

“Twelve and eleven months. Bite me.”

“Mia, please. We would appreciate it if you would consider giving it a try.” Olivia graciously asked.

Kenton thought about the offer and the fact that there were two (or at least one) person who would appreciate his presence and would accept him without his knowledge of slopes, points, or any of that other whatnot. Plus, it would allow Mr. Baltimore to get another impression of him that didn’t involve screwing up complex math terminology.

“When does the club meet? I have basketball practice in the afternoons for the rest of the month.” Kenton asked, trying to see if there was a possibility that he could work it into his busy schedule.

“Friday mornings before. However, we are having an extra meeting next Thursday as we’re figuring out what play we’re going to make the school suffer through.”

Kenton thought about it. Math was the first class of the day, so at the very least he would be alert enough when first period rolled around.

“Yeah, I’m down for that.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! Thank you so much!” Olivia exclaimed as Mia smiled and gave a thumbs-up. Kenton smiled back before taking his tray and leaving the table.

“Well, that’s half of the problem solved right there.” Mia said as Olivia moved over to occupy the freed room created by Kenton’s absence.

“I’m kind of glad that we got Kenton. He seems nice enough and he’s kind of cute.” Olivia said as she rearranged her tray and drink. That remark was enough to make Mia almost drop her fork.

“Yeah, I’ve known him as far back as I can remember. I’ve never really noticed how cute he is, however.” Mia mumbled as she fidgeted with her food.

The two girls ate their food in peace and continued with their day. When school got out, Mia found herself standing in the hallway waiting for Olivia to get down from her locker on another floor.

“Excuse me, can I get to that?” a voice said to Mia, snapping her out of her end-of-day brain haze.

“Oh, my bad.” She said as she stepped to the side to let him get to the drinking fountain that she was blocking.

“Hey, uh… Elias, right?” she asked the boy as he got back up from getting a drink.

“Yeah?”

“We’re looking for someone to join the drama club. They meet on Friday mornings; would you be interested?”

“Uh… well, you see…”

“Please? I can see from your binder that you’re big on fantasy stuff. I think you’ll have fun.”

“But…”

“Oh, you’re not free on Friday mornings?”

Elias looked around and thought for a second before getting a look of determination.

“I’ll do it.”

“You’re so awesome! Thank you!” She cried out in excitement as she grabbed his free hand and gave it a shake.

“Well… see you then.” Elias awkwardly said as he took off down the hallway as Olivia approached.

“Problem solved.” Mia boastfully said.

“Oh, the drama club problem?” Olivia asked as she turned around to see exactly who Mia was talking to. Mia confirmed with a smile and an enthusiastic nod.

“Good job. On to my house?” Olivia said as she patted her best friend on the back with a smile.

Forty minutes later, Mia couldn’t help but yawn as she laid back on Olivia’s bed as a slideshow concluded on the large television that Olivia was casting photos from her phone.

“And this is me at the bakery with my cousin Toby.”

“Oh, this is interesting.” Mia said as genuinely as she could fake. Olivia could pick up on this and wanted to “pester” her best friend to keep her sarcasm in line.

“You think so? Well, we could visit it with the power of the internet!” she said as she picked up her laptop and turned it on. A click on the remote caused the television to show the desktop of the computer. Olivia opened the web browser and typed into the address bar and a few clicks later they were on a virtual tour of the bakery in question. For some reason, this was enough to get Mia’s upmost attention.

“Huh?!” she said as she excitedly sat up. Olivia smirked as she “walked” around the bakery and panned the camera on screen to look at the décor on the wall.

“Are you really walking through this place?!”

“Mia, do you see people walking around?”

“Uh… maybe they’re closed?”

“It’s a snapshot, Mia. Or rather, a series of snapshots.”

“Can you go anywhere with that?”

“Well, almost anywhere. See, we can go to our town.” Olivia replied as she typed into the search bar. Mia just about jumped off the bed when she saw the camera pan down to their hometown at the street level.

“This is amazing! We walked past there on our way here!” Mia cried out as she pointed to the screen.

“See, there’s even the abandoned building that’s next to the gas station.”

“Oh, someone told me that Mrs. Hayes is going to open a restaurant there!”

“That’s a new one.”

“This is amazing, Olivia. We can go ANYWHERE! What’s next? Niagara Falls? San Francisco? The Grand Canyon? WE COULD EVEN GO TO ALASKA!”

Olivia leaned back with concerned eyes and said, “How much sugar have you had today, Mia?”

In the meantime, an older looking “beater” car approached the only bank in the small Oregon town with the intent of parking…

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