Extra Ordinary

4.

The hallway leading to Asa's living room looked friendly, with a bright, blue paint palette and flowers on a small table in the corner. It was a, quite literal, sharp contrast with Asa who was standing in front of me in a t-shirt with holes, faded jeans, and with a knife in his hand.

I stared at him. He stared back, then stepped aside to let me in.

"You're not going to kill me with that, are you?" I blurted, refusing to move from my spot at the entrance.

"Don't be absurd," Asa said, but before I could breathe a sigh in relief and step forward he added, "I wouldn't do that here."

Great. He had to go and make it creepy again.

I forced myself to enter the house anyway, sliding my coat off. "If I'm not, uh, here for you to murder."

I cleared my throat. No joking, definitely no joking because I couldn't pull that off when I was already close to peeing myself and throwing up. 

"Why am I here then? What's the knife... uh... for?"

Asa flipped the knife in one fluid motion. The handle was now pointing towards me, and that went way too smoothly. Like he'd handled stabbing weapons millions of times before.

Asa jutted the knife in my direction and I hesitantly took it.

"You're going to," Asa slowly started. I gulped.

"Bake cookies. Chocolate chip cookies."

I sputtered. Both from sheer surprise and disbelief. "What?" I finally managed to bring out. "But I don't know how to do that!"

Asa crossed his arms.

"Okay, okay, you don't care that I can't," I muttered to myself. "I can google it, I guess?"

A few seconds later I was in the kitchen, staring at a pile of chocolate, already crushed into pieces, and a stick of butter, already cut in pieces. That explained the knife.

I was glad Asa decided not to stick around and look over my shoulder while I, a seventeen year old guy, tried to figure out how the hell cookies were made.

The humiliation was complete when a young girl with two blond braids bounced into the kitchen and stopped next to me. It suddenly struck me she had to be the owner of the Barbie bike, especially because she was holding a Barbie in her left hand. The other she placed on her right hip in a sassy pose.

"You know you're not supposed to just throw the flour into the bowl all at once, right?" she chastised me. "You slowly mix it in with the other ingredients. And did you add the baking soda?"

"Sure I did," I replied, not-so-subtly reaching for a small package of baking soda and tossing the contents into the mixture.

The girl raised an eyebrow at me, in an eerily similar manner as Asa. Shit. They were probably related. I should be polite. What if she was a little snitch who'd go get her big brother if things didn't go her way?

"So, uh, you're Asa's sister I guess?" I asked carefully. I tried to smile but quickly gave up. "I'm Gabriel."

The girl leaned her weight back and forth, constantly moving. "No," she said. "I'm Cindy. His cousin."

"Oh, okay," I said, not sure what else to reply. "Cool."

The girl cocked her head to the side. "And you're Asa's new assistant?"

"Sure." That sounded better than I got Asa in trouble and I'm terrified of him, so I'm just doing whatever he asks of me right now. "But I honestly thought he would ask me to do his homework or something."