The Donut Shop ✔️

'O' stands for 'Open Up'

"Mrs. Heifenmeir, you can't close the bakery!" Ethan shouted, still reeling from seeing the men boarding up the sun-shaped windows, making the bakery's insides appear empty and cold. And it wasn't because the AC was cranked all the way up. Ethan never understood why old people were so hot all the time.

"Sorry to disappoint you, boys. I thought you would've been in school when we started packing up the old lass," she said, patting the once-yellow counter and wiping away a stray splatter of oil.

Ethan furrowed his eyebrows, and he took a different approach.

"Please, don't close Sol Bakery! We'll raise some funds to keep you open! We'll do a car wash, bake sale, anything!" Ethan pleaded, his voice reminding himself of a toddler whining.

He couldn't help it; Sol Bakery was their lifeline, their only tether to a world without as many problems as reality. If it wasn't for Sol Bakery, Ethan and his friends would be living in 'the real world' 24/7— the world with starving people on the streets, to whom no one paid a second glance or even a first, and children sold into things they shouldn't even know about.

"You didn't want us to know? But we would've found out, one way or the other," Tweed said, plopping onto a soft cushion and picking at his nails, a bad habit he had picked up from one of his many ex-girlfriends. Ethan hadn't liked any of them.

Mrs. Heifenmeir sat at her old stool behind the counter. "I'm sorry, boys, but with how crazy this economy has been, I can't afford to keep it open. And I bet no one would even notice this old bakery once the Red's Doughnuts opens up," she said.

"They're opening a Red's Doughnuts? Here?" Ethan asked, his expression changing from upset to confused as his eyebrows shot up like rockets under his black curtain of hair.

Mrs. Heifenmeir nodded, picking her wire-framed glasses off her chest and placing them on her nose to scan the newspaper.

"Don't you see what they're trying to do to you? They're trying to take over a small business! They're bullying you out!" he said, his face reddening as it often did when he was excited—or in this case, angry.

Mrs. Heifenmeir put down the newspaper. "Do you think I would let some corporate giants bully me?" she asked them, the red frames slipping to the bridge of her nose, the thick lenses magnifying her soft wrinkles. The boys were silent, so the old woman continued.

"I chose to sell because there aren't enough funds to keep this place open, and even if there were, I'm getting old. I might be gone in a few years, and then who will tend to this gal? My children have all grown up and moved away, and they have their own lives. Face it, no one wants an old-school bakery from the '40s around anymore," she finished, got up from her stool, and came over to the boys.

"Thank you for making this place so lively for the past few years, but it's best if you forget about this old lassie." Her thin, red-painted lips curved up in an almost-smile, and her eyes shined with a glossy glean, patting their shoulders as she hobbled over to the door, holding it open—a clear dismissal.

Dismayed, Ethan and Tweed rose from their cushions and mumbled their goodbyes to Mrs. Heifenmeir. They began walking back to Tweed's car in silence, both of them staring ahead with a barrier of unsaid words. Ethan didn't even know what to say.

"Tweed?" Ethan asked in a small voice.

Tweed turned to his friend, his tree bark eyes glistening with water. He hid his face and forced his lips up in a smile. "That was some prank Mrs. Heifenmeir just pulled on us, huh?" His voice was lighthearted, but his tone was serious as if he just needed someone to agree with him—that this whole thing was just one big episode of Punk'd.