The Bee's Knees

Chapter 2

The kitchen's silence gave Anna goosebumps. There was no whir of the mixer, no hum of the oven. There was only a faint clicking coming from the refrigerator, one of the many appliances that needed fixing.

While her parents and grandparents kept their faces calm, their companions betrayed their anxiety. Bertrand sniffed the air as if he smelled burning cookies, and her dad's squirrel constantly twitched its bushy tail. Meanwhile, her mom's lizards bared their bright red throat sacks as if they were trying to ward off a predator.

No matter how badly her family tried to hide it, Anna knew something was wrong. Her bees clung to her skin, not daring to so much as twitch their wings as she waited for everyone to tell her what was going on.

Her grandma started their discussion with a quiet question. "How bad is it?"

"I have to double-check some of the numbers, but it's not looking good." Her mom laid a sheet of paper on the bags of flour they were using as a makeshift table. An angry red line ran down a graph like a jagged claw mark. "Sales are even lower than they were last quarter."

Oh, so they were talking about money again. Anna's family usually left her out of those discussions, but she'd overheard enough to know Sweet Surprise had survived plenty of rough patches before. "We could try simplifying some of our recipes or substituting ingredients to see if we can make stuff without spending as much money, " she said. "That way, we might not have to take anything else off the menu."

Her parents shared a look Anna knew all too well. It said they were going to treat her like a five-year-old, not a sixth-grader who'd been helping out at the bakery since she was old enough to hold a spoon.

"That's a lovely idea, sweetheart, but it'd take a lot of money to fix everything. Half the floor tiles need to be replaced, the refrigerator keeps making that awful noise, the wiring in the light fixtures is older than I am..." Her dad counted each reason on his fingers, his squirrel chattering up a storm as he rambled.

"But we could at least start with something." Anna's bees buzzed around her in a black and yellow storm cloud. "I bet if my friends and I sold cookies by the creek—"

"It's going to take more than a few kids' pocket change to get us out of this mess." Her mom massaged her temples. "We only have enough savings left to tide us over for a few more months, and that's assuming we don't lose even more customers to Cake Kingdom. If things don't start getting better by the end of March, we'll have to shut down the bakery."

Anna couldn't have heard that right. There was no way her family would ever shut down Sweet Surprise. Her grandpa had saved for years to open his own bakery, and she'd grown up surrounded by the warmth of its ovens. Her grandpa had promised her she'd run Sweet Surprise someday.

"But just for a little while, right?" Anna asked. Her bees' buzzing went up in pitch along with her voice. "Just until we can get enough money?"

"So we can close it in a few more months when the money runs out again?" Her mom shook her head, her lips pressed into a thin line. "No. We can't keep scraping by like this."

"You can't shut it down!" Anna balled her hands into fists by her sides as her bees' buzzing flooded her ears. Sweet Surprise was her home. She couldn't let anyone take it away from her.

"You didn't have to be so blunt with her, Alicia," Anna's grandma said, speaking as if Anna wasn't there. Her coyote whined quietly as it paced the kitchen. "She just wants to help."

"She can help by focusing on her schoolwork and letting the adults handle it," her mom said firmly. "Worrying about all this is our job, not hers."

"But we can't just give up!" Anna's eyes darted from one family member to the next, but she found nothing but slumped shoulders and silence. Her grandpa refused to meet her gaze as she hugged her apron close to her chest. "You'd never want us to abandon the bakery right, Grandpa?"

He chewed his lip as he so often did when he was lost in thought. He usually only did that when he was tweaking recipes, hunched over one of his many cookbooks with a pencil in hand.

At last, he sighed.

"I wish I could agree with you, Cupcake, but we need to make sure we save plenty of money to send you to culinary school when you're older." He smiled sadly as Bertrand plodded to her side and nuzzled her hand. "You will be an amazing baker someday whether or not Sweet Surprise is still open. Your future is much more important than some old bakery."

"But I don't want a future without Sweet Surprise!" It was where Anna had made many of her happiest memories. She'd decorated countless cupcakes, iced years of happy birthday messages, and taste-tested all of her grandpa's newest recipes in that kitchen.

She hadn't just baked there, either. She'd painted pumpkins to display in their front window every October and handed out mini chocolate bars to everyone who came to buy chocolate cupcakes topped with vanilla 'ghosts'. When she got her bees, her family had decorated the bakery with dozens of flowers and thrown a party filled with black and yellow desserts, presenting her with a beautiful beehive painted to look like a cake. Long before she got her companions, Sweet Surprise was where she'd first met Mason, one of her best friends.

What would she do with her life if Sweet Surprise closed forever?

Tears ran down Anna's cheeks hot and fast. Her bees crowded around her, but not even their buzzing could drown out her crying.

Bertrand wrapped his paws around her in one of his famous bear hugs, nuzzling the top of her head as she buried her face in his fur. Like Anna, the massive black bear had spent his whole life at Sweet Surprise. He was the only one who truly understood what she'd lose if her family shut it down.

The rest of her family wasn't nearly as understanding. "I told you we shouldn't have let her start working here," her mom said, her voice loud and clear even through Bertrand's thick fur. "She's gotten way too attached."

"Can't keep her out of Sweet Surprise any more than you can keep an alligator out of the bayou," her grandpa said. "She was born to bake."

"If we had just encouraged her to try other hobbies..."

There they went again. Treating her like she was invisible.

Anna's sobs faded into sniffles as her sadness gave way to frustration. Sweet Surprise was part of her life, not just theirs. Why should they get to decide when it was time for them all to hang up their aprons and call it quits?

They may have given up on Sweet Surprise, but she never would.

If she found a way to raise enough money, her family wouldn't have to even think about shutting down the bakery. All she had to do was figure out her recipe for success.