I smiled. I liked this kid’s imagination. “I’ll make sure to keep candy in my pocket then. I have to go inside to speak to someone, but if I see you again, maybe you can tell me where to look for these fairies?”
The girl nodded. She had kind of serious eyes, but she smiled.
“I’m looking for someone named Muniba. Do you know where I’ll find her?”
The girl got off her tricycle. “She’s in here.” She held out her hand for me to hold and guided me to the door. “Muniba doesn’t believe in fairies, either,” she said. “She gives me cookies. Daniel’s are better, though.”
The shelter wasn’t what I expected inside. From the outside it looked like a simple, kind of industrial building, but inside it was bright, sunny, and colorful. The walls were each painted a different pastel color, the reception desk near the door was bright green, and a big living room–type space just past it had purple sofas and a red coffee table. There were people everywhere. A bunch of women on the sofas talking, some kids sitting on the floor around the coffee table, and three people talking at the reception desk, plus people in the hallway behind the sitting area. It looked like comfortable chaos here—not the depressing environment I expected in a shelter.
The little girl pointed me to the reception desk. “Ask there,” she said, before running off to the other children at the coffee table.
I asked, but apparently Muniba wasn’t one of the people at the desk. A woman led me to a room nearby and told me to wait.
I sat on a blue plastic chair in front of the messy desk in the tiny office overflowing with bookshelves and boxes. This room had white walls and looked like it had been forgotten when the rest of the place was decorated.
About three minutes later, a South Asian woman in her thirties and a tall Black man around the same age wearing a chef’s jacket walked in.
Without even a greeting, the woman eyed me suspiciously. “How old are you? I thought they were sending over a grade twelve.”
“Iamin grade twelve. I’m seventeen.”
She shook her head as she sat behind the desk. “Impressive. You’re going to love those forever-youth genes when you’re older. I’m Muniba, the executive director of New Beginnings, and this is Andre, the kitchen manager and head chef.”
A family shelter needed a head chef? Andre perched on Muniba’s desk, which made Muniba frown with annoyance as she shifted some files to give him more room. Andre had a short beard and longish dreadlocks pulled back, and one of those faces that looked like it smiled more than anything else.
“Do you have any experience working in a kitchen?” he asked.
“Not really. I sometimes help my mom make dinner.”
“Okay, what about baking experience?”
I shook my head. “My sister got into cupcakes back when thatCupcake Warsshow came on Netflix. I helped her a few times. I thought this job was more of a coordinating a bake-sale role than an actual baking thing?”
Muniba snorted. “It’s both. Your teacher told me that you had baking experience.”
I shrugged. I didn’t put it past Mrs.Singh to embellish my abilities.
“Andre doesn’t have the time to babysit teenagers. He’s also in charge of our sister facility—a drop-in center downtown. You don’t bakeat all?”
I shook my head again. Ugh. Figured that thisnot that much cookingjob was turning out to be avery much about cookingjob after all. Was it too late to find another way to get my volunteer hours?
“It’s fine,” Andre said. “Daniel can teach her. Lord knows that kid knows everything and more about baking. You and Daniel will be pretty much running the bake-sale project. Deciding what to make and baking every Thursday evening. If you don’t finish on Thursday, you come Friday, too. We won’t need you for the selling day on Saturdays. Me and Muniba got that, but you’re welcome to join us if you want to.As long as you’re not a complete kitchen disaster, you’ll be fine with Daniel running the show. Seriously, never seen a teenager that gifted with pastry before.” Andre chuckled. “Ice-cold hands. Probably from all the hockey.”
I had no idea what cold hands had to do with baking, but I kept my mouth shut. I was pretty sure, based on her expression, that Muniba had no confidence in me, but Andre seemed easy to please. I couldn’t say I loved the idea of working with a hockey player, though. In my experience, they were dude-bros dripping with toxic masculinity. But then again, the guy did bake—hardly a toxically masculine hobby.
We went over some details—with the number of hours they needed me each week, I’d finish my community service hours before the semester was done. But I told them if it worked out, I’d stay the whole semester anyway. I still needed the reference, after all.
“We’ll check out your baking skills later,” Andre continued with a mischievous smile. “But first, tell me this, Samaya: Can you count?”
I blinked. “I’m literally the top math student in my grade.”
He lifted himself from Muniba’s desk. “Excellent. We just got a massive donation from a restaurant downtown that had to close suddenly. It all needs to be inventoried. Leave your backpack here. Let’s get you practicing those math skills.” He grinned wide. So far, I liked him better than Muniba. Muniba seemed like a grump, while Andre’s cheerfulness was contagious.
I followed him out of her office.
We walked past the front desk and through the sitting area. I noticed the children, including the small girl I’d been chatting with, weren’t there anymore, but the women on the couch were. They smiled warmly as I walked past.
“All the stuff is just over here,” Andre said as we headed down an empty hallway. We passed a room that looked like a day care that was filled with all the kids I’d seen earlier. Eventually we got to a small room and stepped inside.
