Chapter 2
Seasonal Sweets was named Seasonal Sweets because the menu changed when the weather did.
In the summer, they served ice cream, like sensible people.
In the fall, they transformed the store into a hot chocolate shop.
Personally, I thought November was the best time to visit Seasonal Sweets, because there were so many options, especially for the drinks.
From classic to peppermint to peanut butter, the hot chocolate flavors were endless.
My favorite was the salted caramel. Sweet and savory.
I always ordered it. But today, for the sake of our official review, I ordered orange.
“Are you sure?” Miss Joy asked. She knew about my deep and unshakable love.
“I’m sure,” I said with my mouth, even as my heart said SALTED CARAMEL.
While she got to work making our drinks, Jess snapped a handful of photos of the store.
Kat, Mary Heather, and I squeezed out of the way so our clothes and bags didn’t mess up the shots.
Once we had our cups, the four of us headed outside and crowded around one of the tiny street-side tables—and as close to the patio heater as we could get.
“Let’s do a photo of our hands around the cups,” I suggested.
Kat groaned, but Mary Heather nodded. “That’s actually a great idea.”
“I do have those sometimes.” I sniffed.
“Take off the cup sleeves for the picture,” Mary Heather ordered, already removing hers.
“Get into position and I’ll set the timer.” Jessica clipped her phone to a small stand, and then the four of us were squished side by side, our fingers curled around the slightly scalding sleeveless paper cups.
The camera went off and Jessica checked the photo. She sighed. “Kat, you’re covering the logo.”
“They shouldn’t have put their logo where my fingers go,” Kat pointed out.
“Ugh, hurry. I’m dying of cold.” Mary Heather shivered dramatically.
Jess forcibly rearranged Kat’s hands. “All right.” She went back to her phone to readjust focus and exposure. “Timer’s set.” She came back into frame and took hold of her cup. “This is going to be the shot.”
The phone clicked. Before Jess finished inspecting the photo, Kat, Mary Heather, and I were all in our seats and leaning toward the heater.
“I’m so glad our ancient ancestors discovered fire.” I took a sip of my cocoa. It was blisteringly hot. Sweet. Just the right amount of orange tang. “And this. Definitely one of humanity’s better discoveries.”
Mary Heather pulled out her notebook and fancy fountain pen. “So, you like it?”
“It tastes like chocolate sunshine,” I declared.
Mary Heather wrote that down. “Kat? Jess?”
Kat took a gulp of hers and groaned. She’d ordered a terrifying blend of cocoa, cinnamon, cayenne, and chili. “It tastes like fire. I’m becoming a dragon.”
“Vivid,” Mary Heather said, still taking notes. “Mine is good. Red velvet. You can’t go wrong with that.”
“It looks like blood,” Kat observed.
I peered over. The cups didn’t have lids; Seasonal Sweets was reducing their plastic use, so lids were request-only. “It does look like blood,” I agreed.
Mary Heather rolled her eyes. “It looks like the holiday spirit, you ghouls.”
“Jess?” I nudged my glasses back up the bridge of my nose. “How’s the gingerbread?”
Jessica was hunched over her phone, tapping through her editing app. “Not enough gingerbread,” she said without looking up. “I should have gotten the classic. It’s what most people will be looking for anyway.”
“Hmph.” Mary Heather wrote that down, too. “Can you think of something nice to say?”
“Jess can always think of something nice to say,” Kat grumbled. “It’s what makes her so annoying.”
“You should try being more like Jess,” I said. “You might have more friends than just us.”
Kat made a noise that suggested she hated everyone else.
Jess went on, as if we hadn’t spoken: “Good presentation. Doesn’t look like blood. Doesn’t turn me into a dragon.” She slid her cup across the table. “Do you want to try, Virginia?”
“I’ll ask Miss Joy for water first.” I stood up and slipped back inside to ask for four small cups of tap water.
“Well?” asked Miss Joy as she filled the paper cups. “Are we getting a good review on Deer Hill’s favorite scroll?”
Our scroll (an individual page on an app called Scrollr) was where we posted our reviews.
It had started as a group project for our seventh-grade computer science class.
Everyone was supposed to build a custom scroll using HTML—it could be about whatever we wanted—and keep it running for the semester.
Every week, we posted, pulled analytics, and talked about responsibly using social media and protecting our privacy. (Honestly, it had been a fun class.)
The four of us were in eighth grade now, and our scroll—called “Four Takes on Downtown Deer Hill”—was still going.
Over the summer, there’d been a little write-up about us in the local paper, and since then, pretty much everyone in town followed us.
The community actually liked our reviews.
Shops sometimes gave us discounts if we posted about them on “Four Takes,” especially since we generally gave positive reviews.
There’d only been one time we’d said something negative about a store—the owner had casually called Kat a name I’ll never repeat—and we’d mentioned that in our review, after discussing the problem with our teacher, Mr. Duncan.
Deer Hill had responded by taking their business elsewhere.
When the owner finally apologized to Kat, we updated our review and that was that.
The store was still in business, as far as I knew, but they’d lost a lot of trust.
Thankfully, the rest of Deer Hill was generally great.
I smiled at Miss Joy. “I can’t release that information yet. But between you and me, if your hot chocolate asked me to marry it, I’d say yes.”
She beamed and set the waters on the counter. “I’m pleased to hear that.”
I took the cups—hugging half of them against my chest—and pushed the door open with my back to return to the freezing November evening.
Mary Heather jumped up to take two cups. “Took you long enough.”
We sat again and passed the drinks around, everyone taking a sip of the different hot chocolates.
“Okay, let’s hear it.” Mary Heather sat with her pen nib poised over her notebook. “Thoughts on the orange?”
For the next several minutes, we discussed the flavors while Mary Heather took notes and Jess edited photos.
Those two were the driving force behind our scroll.
Mary Heather Haber was a natural leader—our queen bee.
She knew how to get people motivated and working together, even if she had to scare them into it.
Mary Heather was, and always had been, extremely popular.
Jessica Johanson was the creative genius.
She took the photos, designed the scroll’s theme, and edited our reviews to sound more professional and interesting.
I always got the feeling she was in our group because she was talented (and really pretty), not because popularity was necessarily important to her.
She just … was. And so of course Mary Heather wanted her with us.
That left Kat and me. Katherine Conrad was the rebel, the one who made outlandish suggestions and rude jokes that kept everyone both entertained and a little terrified. She pushed us to take creative risks—and she didn’t have to push very hard, because no one wanted to get on her bad side.
And me? I was the Cat Person. Ask anyone. Ask the fine layer of fur that covered all my clothes.
Abundance of cat fur aside, my role was to proofread our reviews. I wanted a better role. But, like … what? All the good ones were taken: the ringleader, the artist, the mean girl with a heart of gold. Sometimes I worried my friends only kept me out of habit.
So, like the viceroy butterfly mimics the monarch’s bright orange and black colors, I did my best to imitate the cooler girls around me.
Without them, I didn’t think I would be unpopular, but …
there was a real sense of survival of the fittest here, and I worried that if I didn’t contribute beyond proofreading, they’d replace me with someone better. Prettier. More confident.
“Okay, look at these photos.” Jess slid her phone to the center of the table. “What do you think?”
The first shot was of the front of the building: fawn brick with a forest-green awning over a yellow door.
To the left of the door was the patio—where we sat now—fenced in wrought iron.
And to the right was a rosebush, wrapped in hundreds of tiny golden lights.
Jessica had made it look cozy, warm, and aesthetically grainy.
“It’s perfect!” I zoomed in on the bush; you could see the individual lights and twigs. “Honestly, it’s stunning.”
Mary Heather agreed. “Pretty.”
“This shop is so beige.” Kat curled her lip. “But your picture is good.”
I rolled my eyes. The shop was cute, and everyone knew it.
The next shot showed the interior: a long counter on the right, a couple of tiny tables on the left.
The background was all shelves, chalkboard signs, and more twinkling lights.
Jess had worked the same magic with her edits, capturing the welcoming cheer perfectly.
You could practically smell the chocolate.
And finally, the picture of our hands around the cups.
The Seasonal Sweets logo was clear, along with our hands, but our bodies behind the cups were blurred, and our faces weren’t visible at all.
(Mr. Duncan had stressed the importance of privacy a lot in his class.
No selfies allowed on our scrolls! Even now that I was in eighth grade, my parents insisted on me keeping my face off socials.
Ugh.) But even without our grins, the photo screamed best friends forever.
What would it be like, I wondered, to see the world like Jess did? To be able to capture these places, these moments?
I wished I could do something special like that.