The Lost Thought

23. Ned

14th, September

Ned had other plans.

  Baking to him was like blowing up two dragons with one coin, or whatever that saying was. Even if it's not done well, you're amazed it can be done at all. No one can blow out two dragons with one coin. Coins don't blow up.

  He was in charge of dry ingredients. Flour, sugar, and hazelnuts. A lot of the ingredients were dry. Barely any wet ones. Addie only had to get cream, milk, butter-melted chocolate syrup, flavouring syrup, and about a cup of water to make do with the mix. Ned had so much more...

  It was a vegetarian dish because Jeff consistently said that he preferred eggless cakes to egg-based cakes in terms of flavour.

  "Can't we do it tomorrow?" Ned groaned.

"No, I don't have time tomorrow." Addie replied, mixing furiously. "Jeff's coming tomorrow,"

All of a sudden, the door burst open, and a man, as tall as a door, walked in. His expression was rude. It was not Jeff. Not at all Jeff. Ned and Addie stared at him in complete shock. "Um," Addie started. Lots of great conversations started with "Um."

  "Oh, I'm Adam, by the way," the man said, grinning. "Jacqueline's half brother."

  Addie's spoon fell to the ground.

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Jeff

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Jeff was completely taken aback by the whole 'Jacqueline has a brother who is staying in my hotel' thing.

  He was also shocked to discover that Addie had baked a cake for him, but in a good way. So basically, Jeff was totally freaked out.

  He was also happy he came back; he had missed Addie."So, what are we supposed to do?" Jeff asked Addie.

  "Get him out of here!" she exclaimed, as if that was not already the most obvious thing in the world. Jeff rolled his eyes. "I know, but how?" Addie shrugged. She didn't seem concerned about it. She was looking out the window. What was so interesting about a window? Jeff thought.

  He went over to the window. A guy was sitting on a bench. Every once in a while, the guy would get up and do one sit-up. Jeff left the room and went to a restaurant to feed his hungry stomach.

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Ben

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"Benjamin," Ben's teacher called, waking him up. "I would hate for you to fall asleep in 10th grade." The whole class burst out laughing.

  Ben turned red. "I'm sorry."

  "That's okay, Benjamin. If you can tell me what 11³ x 9 + 94 - x is equal to, please. " She wrote that equation on the blackboard as she was saying it and circled something else in the corner which said 'x = 19²'.Ben didn't understand all the numbers.

  "To the power of what?" Ben's teacher flapped her arms in despair, "Okay, what is this angle called?"

  She pointed to a sharp point she had made with two lines on the blackboard. "Umm," Ben tried to think. Letters were around the lines. There were four of them. P, E, T, and A. Maybe the angle was called...

  "Pete," he blurted out. The whole class burst out laughing again. "His name is Pete." The bell rang. Ben was so happy that he didn't want to look at his teacher to see her expression. He just got up and left.

  "Chestnut," his teacher called, just when he was out the door. Uh-oh, he thought. No one said his last name unless he was in trouble.

  He turned around slowly. "Yes?" His lips quivered.

  "Detention." The remaining kids in the class snickered. The teacher handed Ben a white piece of paper. The detention pass of doom.

  Ben gulped. He took the card and left. Sometimes he hated school. JRC school. Such a dull name for a school.