“Welcome to the pantry,” Andre said. Shelves lined three of its walls, and a row of glass-front fridges stood along the fourth wall. The shelves were stacked with cooking ingredients. Flour, bags of sugar, the biggest jar of cinnamon I’d ever seen, that sort of stuff. The fridges looked full, too, but I couldn’t see what was in them from where I stood.
“The kitchen is there,” Andre said, pointing to a swinging door on the facing wall between two columns of shelves. “When the donation from the restaurant came in, the items were all stacked before anyone inventoried them.” He pointed to the three shelves that lined the wall with the door. “We need everything on these shelves, and in the first fridge, counted and recorded, then Daniel can decide what to make with all this stuff tomorrow.”
He handed me a clipboard with a blank piece of paper on it. “List everything here. How many cartons of eggs, how many bags of flour, chocolate chips, you know. Also mark the best-before dates so we know when we need to use it by. When Daniel’s done in the kitchen, he’ll join you. Shouldn’t take you more than an hour. You can leave when you’re done and come back tomorrow afternoon to bake.”
I took the pencil off the top of the clipboard. “Got it.”
Andre shrugged. “Okay. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.”
I slipped my earbuds in, put on my favorite playlist, and drew a chart on the blank paper, using the side of a box as a ruler. Then I started counting.
I wasn’t sure about the baking part of this job, but this was perfect.
I loved counting. Dad said once when I was a kid, he came to check on me well past midnight and found me still counting sheep—I was well into the thousands by then. Yeah, lately it had all been about complex math, theoretical equations, and of course, memorizing pi, but simple numbers—counting—were my first love. Honestly, I should have stuck with numbers instead of bothering with boys.
Three five-pound bags of all-purpose flour. Five ten-pound bags. Total of sixty-five pounds of flour. Twelve bags of white chocolate chips. Eighteen bags of semisweet chips. I counted to the beat of the indie music playing in my earbuds, smiling as the neat rows on my chart filled up.
Three bags ... of ... what were those? Unmarked plastic zipper bags ... I picked up one of the bags. A powdery white substance was inside.
Of course, I didn’t think there was anything shady about an unmarked bag of a white powder—this was a bakery. It was probably a type of flour or baking powder or something like that. Or maybe it was rat poison.
It wasn’t cocaine. Or ricin. I was being ridiculous.
I gingerly put the bag away. I didn’t know what it was, and I’d taken enough chemistry to know that something that looks inert might not be. I’d ask Andre about it when he came in. But it was bugging me. My list was so tidy, and I didn’t have a place to put things I couldn’t identify. I’d already written the number three in the column. Maybe I could leave it blank? I tried to erase the three, but the eraser at the top of the pencil Andre gave me was completely worn down. I picked up the bag again. Was there a way to search this on my phone? Google search for “white powder” or something?
I carefully opened the bag and held my phone up above it, ready to take a picture of the mysterious white substance, when something solid, like a wall, hit me in the back. The impact made one hand launch my phone in the air, and the other launch the bag into my face. I was engulfed in a thick white cloud of ... sugar.
At least now I knew what it was—the powdery icing sugar used on doughnuts. I yanked out my wireless headphones.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” said a deep voice.
I turned and saw a big stack of towering, teetering white bakery boxes and someone’s arms trying to steady them so they wouldn’t fall. The boxes were all labeled on their sides:PIE.
I’d just been hit by a wall of pies.
The tower moved as the person—a guy—holding the boxes turned to put them on an empty shelf near the floor. I still couldn’t really see his face, but he was big—not exceptionally tall, but with broad shoulders andbuilt.
“That was my fault—I should have knocked,” he said, his deep voice sending a shiver down my spine. That was a nice voice.
I looked down at myself. My black Fibonacci T-shirt was covered with powdered sugar. And I was pretty sure that my face was even worse.
I started brushing the sugar off my shirt, when the guy stood and handed me my phone. I took it, relieved to see that the screen hadn’t broken in the fall—the lock screen picture looked flawless. I looked up at the guy to thank him and ... I nearly fell into the spilled sugar around me.
It was LostAxis.
The warm brown skin. The dimples. The dark hair. This was the guy from the picture Aimee had photo manipulated. My gaming buddy. My friend.
I looked at my phone, and the fake picture with him with his arm around me was still on the screen.
Shit.
6
This Pie-Guy Looks Familiar
Several thoughts went through my head quickly when I realized I was standing in front of LostAxis. Well, more specifically,fourthoughts.
One—three seconds earlier, LostAxis had been holding my phone, which had a picture of the two of us standing with our arms around each other on it on the lock screen. Two—Ihadnever sent him a picture of me, so he likely didn’t realize I was GreenEggsAndSam, his gaming friend. I was just the random stalker who kept a picture of him on her phone. Three—LostAxis was even better looking in person than in his picture. His hair was ink black and shiny; his eyes were wide set and large. His skin was a perfect warm, tawny brown, and he wore a pristine Toronto Raptors shirt with jeans and sneakers. But his cheekbones ... those were what stole my focus. They were utter perfection. Sharp, defined, andstunning. His lips were full, wide, and ... laughing. Which brought me to my fourth and final thought—it was possible he hadn’t looked at the picture when he had my phone, because he was currently laughing at me. If he’d thought I was some sort of stalker who copied herself onto a picture of him, I would think he’d look horrified, not amused.
