A broad-shouldered boy’s phone rang as he walked down Williams Street and, after some shuffling through his jacket pockets and nearly dropping it into the snow beneath, he managed to answer it. “Hey Perce, I’m alm-- You’re overreacting. Take some deep breaths and close your eyes, I’ll be there in a minute.” The boy closed the call and took a moment to either sigh or groan, he wasn’t sure, before continuing down the street.
At the corner of Williams and Alms sat an inconspicuous coffee shop, the Cornerstone Cafe. Through the window of which, he could see a tall-but-thin girl holding a lighter to a pile of napkins while a small boy in a green apron tried to pull her hand away. “Oh god,” the boy muttered as he kicked up his step toward the entrance.
Above the clatter of the door and jingle of its bell, the broad-shouldered boy could hear the cry of, “Please stop!” A quick glance around the building showed that, while there were others inside, they were largely doing their best to ignore the two’s antics. Said antics were the boy desperately grabbing the pile of napkins away from the girl while she continued to pull more napkins from a container.
“Percy, Anna,” the two froze and looked at him, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Wess, thank goodness you’re here,” Percy rushed up to the larger boy and grabbed onto him, “Anna’s trying to set the building on fire!”
“Okay, but why?”
“It’s cold. I was just trying to start a campfire and warm the place up a little,” Anna smiled as she reached into her bag, “I even brought marshmallows!”
Wess took a moment to realize that, as Anna spoke and opened the marshmallow bag she had pulled out, a wisp of white evaporated from her mouth. Apparently in the rush, he’d yet to realize everyone in the building was still wearing a coat, that he hadn’t gotten any warmer when he entered the building, and that he'd actually gotten colder since he had arrived. Wess then turned to Percy. “So why’s it so cold in here?”
Percy’s desperately hopeful smile broke. “You’re siding with her?”
“It’s cold, man,” he slid in the booth seat opposite Anna, “Anything you can do to fix it?”
Percy’s gaze dropped to his twiddling thumbs. “The manager told me not to mess with the thermostat.”
“The campfire was a last resort,” Anna pointed a finger at Wess, “I kept trying to get him to change the temperature and he kept refusing! He left me with no other choice.”
“Judging by the marshmallows, you were already planning on starting a fire when you left your house today.”
Anna put her hands in the air. “You got me!”
A moment passed, filled with nothing but silence and cold air, before Wess realized someone was missing. He looked over to the bar, where Percy was currently trying to get water out of the faucet, though the stream had frozen into an icicle. “Percy!” Percy immediately ducked to the ground and out of sight. However, Wess quickly walked over and draped the cowering Percy in his shadow. “Dude, seriously?”
Cringing, Percy got himself back onto his feet. “It’s just-- I’ve been screwing up so much lately I’m on the verge of getting fired. I don’t want to upset the manager any more than I already have.”
“Whaddya do to upset the manager?”
“Mostly screwing up customer’s orders. There’s this one customer who I know is scamming us, but I’m too scared to do anything about it. He told me to use something from the bottom counters of the bar to defend myself with, but I don’t want to escalate things.” He sighed. “Even then, I sometimes just get distracted and miss some important stuff.”
“I’ll say,” Anna said, warming her hands by a napkin fire, “You guys are usually way more on the ball than this.”
Percy collapsed on himself as Wess pulled off his jacket, ran over to Anna, and quickly patted out the fire. “What the hell, Anna?”
“Yeah, I guess this one’s a bit too far, even for me.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a small notebook embroidered with stickers. After thumbing through, she found her list of ‘Banned Ideas’. “Let’s see. No animals, no theft, no guns (prop), no guns (real), no pillories, no jaywalking,” she pressed a pencil to the page and wrote her newest entry, “No fire.” Noticing Wess had left to walk back to the bar, she silently turned to the next page of ‘Considered Ideas’ and wrote ‘Fire Extinguisher’ between ‘Crossdressing?’’ and ‘Grand Theft’.
Wess peered over Percy, who was currently curled into the fetal position behind the Cafe’s bar. The barista seemed to fidget a bit as he did his best to imitate a ball that didn’t bounce and probably disappointed a child who was into basketball but not soccer.
“Perce, you doing okay?” Ball Boy did not respond so Wess walked around the bar and kicked him, like a child trying soccer as to not disappoint their parents but just didn’t have their heart in it.
“Ow!” Percy slowly rose, clutching his ribcage as he did. “What was that for?”
“I would have poured some water on you but the faucet’s frozen.”
“You didn’t have to kick me, though! You could have picked me up, or poked me, or pat my head, or-- Anna!”
Wess turned on his heel to find Anna taking long, exaggerated, steps to the thermostat, trying to be sneaky while at the same time doing her best to make it obvious she was being sneaky.
“Wess said I wasn’t allowed to start fires,” Anna pouted, “What else am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. Leave?”
Anna gasped and fell to her knees. She sniffled and put her hands to her head before breaking into a full sob. Tears streamed down her face as she rose to face Percy and choked out, “You-- You want me to leave? You-- You don’t like me?”
Stumbling back, Percy quickly slammed his eyes shut and used his hands to block his face, as if waiting for some form of impact. “No, no, no! I-- I didn’t mean it like that! I like you, you’re fine, you’re my friend!” He was then slammed to the ground by Anna, who had leaped over the counter and had tackled him into a tearful hug.
As Anna tried to nuzzle up with the obviously uncomfortable Percy, Wess frowned down on them. “Percy, she’s just using tear drops.”
Anna bounced to her feet and laughed, her eyes still watering, as she raised her hands once more, a small bottle of tear drops in one of them. “You got me again! You’re getting good at this.”
“You’re just getting predictable,” Wess smiled, then very quickly frowned, “That’s not encouragement.”
Percy rose a hand. “Can I stay down here? I don’t see the point in getting up if I’m gonna drop again in another two minutes.”
Wess grabbed Percy’s hand and yanked him upward. “Guys, we have to figure out this thermostat problem. No more screwing around.”
Anna frowned. “But that’s what I do best!”
“I know, but you have to stop it if you’re gonna get warmer.” He turned to Percy. “Perce, if you managed to kick that scam customer out, then we’d be able to change the temperature. Like, it would balance out, right?”
Percy looked to Wess’s side, only to find Anna nodding vigorously at him. He decided Wess’s sharp stare was the better option. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
“Think of it like this: You’re probably losing more money through the low temperature than the scammer. If we do this, you’ll basically be doubling the profits. So what does the scam customer look like?”
“Like that.” Percy pointed a finger at a girl with curly hair and sunglasses standing on the other side of the counter. Percy then fell to the ground. “I’m dead,” he squeaked out.
Wess glanced down at the wannabe corpse and sighed before turning to the girl, currently with clearly furrowed brows and a foot tapping so fast it would move dance instructors to tears. “So what’s your deal?”
“My ‘deal’ is this,” she slid over a nearly-empty coffee cup with the name ‘Draka’ written in marker on the side.
“You came to a cafe and ordered coffee. Shocking.”
“We also serve pastries.” Anna ducked under the bar and rose back up wearing a green apron similar to Percy’s and holding another in her hands. “Wear this.”
“No.” Wess returned his dull gaze to Draka. “So what’s wrong with it?”
“This is a frappe, I ordered a frappuccino.”
“Those are literally the same thing.” He paused as Anna put the top of the apron around his neck and began to tie it around his back. “Does that seriously usually work?”
“The waiters--”
“Baristas.”
“Whatever-- Here are either really stupid or have no spines. Sometimes both.”
“Well,” Anna grinned, “We’re only a little stupid and we definitely have spines.” She punched Wess in his back. “See?”
Wess hunched over onto the counter, his face red. “So just leave,” he choked out, his voice quickly inflating like a balloon, before turning to Anna, “Why do you hit so hard?”
“You know,” Draka said, grabbing her bag strap, “I could leave, or I could do this.” A knife suddenly bounced out of Draka’s bag. With a sharp, though completely unneeded turn around, the edgy girl caught the knife and pointed it at Wess. “Gimme all the money in the register or someone’s getting stabbed!”
Wess stepped back. “Th-- That’s a prop knife, right? Like one of yours, Anna. Right?”
Anna frowned and crossed her arms. “I don’t use prop knives, Wess. With those it’s all or nothing and I’m an ‘all’ kind of gal.”
Wess gritted his teeth, turned to Anna, and shouted, “Then do you mind grabbing one from your bag and getting this psycho away from me?”
“I would, but my bag’s all the way over on our seats,” she laughed, “Isn’t it funny how you’re always like, ‘don’t point knives at strangers’, but I can’t when you want me to?”
“Well then what the hell are we supposed to do? I don’t know how to operate a cash register!” He looked back at Draka. “Who the hell robs a cafe anyway?”
“I can bite her. Last person I bit still has the marks. Well, that’s because it was about an hour ago, but you get what I mean.”
“The knife has reach, though. It would reach you before your mouth reaches her.”
“Uh,” Anna looked around for a moment as Draka slowly brought her knife closer to Wess, “Oh, how about this?” Anna quickly brushed Draka’s hand aside and stepped over Percy as she grabbed the icicle hanging from the sink’s faucet, returned, and tossed it into Wess’s hands. “How’s that?”
“I’m gonna do it,” Draka shouted, slowing the knife’s already snail-like approach, “I’m gonna actually do it!”
Wess glanced between Anna and the nearly-still knife. “Why are you giving it to me? Aren’t you supposed to be the knife expert?”
“Our parents know each other so we have an agreement,” Anna yawned, “I don’t tell her parents about her doing stuff like this and she doesn’t tell my parents about, well, y’know.”
With shaky hands, Wess rose the icicle in front of the knife. “You mean everything you do?”
“Yep,” Anna smiled. Draka’s jaw dropped.
Draka lowered her knife and stepped back. “He-- Hey, no need to go that far. Th-- this is just all in good fun, right?”
Wess and Anna looked to each other, let their eyes meet, and smiled before turning back to Draka. “Anna, this is the part where the action hero drops a cool pun, right? Gimme one.”
“Not so cool now, huh?” Anna crossed her arms.
Wess turned to his friend and frowned. “Seriously? That’s all you got?”
“Oh-- like-- you-- could-- do-- better.” Anna pokes Wess as she said each word.
“Uh, how about… The knife age is over, now it’s the ice age!”
“That’s not even a pun.”
“Whatever.” Wess raised his icicle a bit higher as Draka lowered her knife further.
With a sudden thrust of the icicle forward, though still a good foot from the would-be-robber, Draka cut herself a bit as she quickly shoved the knife back into her bag. Tripping over herself as she rushed for the door, Draka shouted, “Y-- You’re freaking crazy! I was just pulling a little joke! I-- I swear!” With that, she threw open the door and dashed down the street as the bell above the entrance rang.
Wess smiled. “Dang, what’s her deal? She break a leg sliding on ice or something? Whatcha think, Perce?” Wess looked down to where Percy was previously curled over to find he was standing once more. As well, Percy was now holding a pistol.
“What the hell?” Wess jumped back, nearly falling over Anna, who had only slightly leaned back. While Percy’s eyes were held open further than they probably should and his hand trembled as he trained the gun on where Draka once stood, he didn’t seem to actually register Wess’s surprise. In fact, aside from his hand, he didn’t seem to be moving at all. “L-- Let’s get that away from you, buddy.” Wess slowly pulled the gun out of Percy’s grip, though Percy’s stance didn’t change.
“I think he fainted.” Anna poked the poor boy.
“He-- He told me to use it in case of emergencies,” Percy managed to get out before he once more collapsed.
Wess carefully placed the gun in a small shelf in the bar. ”What kind of cafe manager lets a kid use a gun?”
“Well, let’s think back through the facts,” Anna put a hand to her chin, “He’s a white male wealthy enough to own a business in a rural small town.” She sighed. “It just doesn’t add up.”
The bell above the entrance rang again as Draka, gasping for breath, returned. “Where’s-- my-- second-- jacket?”
“Is it black and leather?” Draka nodded and Anna promptly took off both the green apron and the black and leather jacket she wore beneath it. “Sorry, I borrowed it from the coat rack after it started getting cold.” With a smile, she tossed it to Draka, who then burst out the cafe once more, tripped onto her face as she left, picked herself back up, and ran out of sight.
“It was warm in here earlier?”
“Yeah, actually way too warm,” Anna said, “I had to turn it down a bit when Percy wasn’t looking.”