The hostess furrowed her eyebrows in frustration and anger from the behavior of one of her customers, a twelve year old girl named Cassie. The girl had been mischievously playing around the kitchen to take a slice of the restaurant's famous, rich, and sweet chocolate cake. The chefs had been trying to chase her off with threatening knives and spatulas, telling her to go off to her parents. She would laugh and grin from the chefs' action and continue on her journey to desserts. No one had ever met her parents. She explained to the people who asked about them that they were a busy couple in the lawyer industry.
Everyone knew her. She was quite popular with the children and a burden to the adults. Parents told their children not to play with her and the children denied them. They'd give anything to be Cassie's friend. Not because she was popular, but because she lifted everyone's spirits and kept their imagination alive.
She was a tenant in the boarding house Mr. and Mrs. Dullen owned. They had a large house with many big rooms, perfect for renting out. They were both reaching their seventies, having had no children. They were kind, gentle people with hearts of gold. Cassie was one of their few renters, her rent money would mysteriously reach the household each month from her unknown parents. She helped with chores and tended to the animals there.
As Cassie finally managed to sneak past the chefs, she accidentally knocked down a large platter of various, expensive dishes to the ground. It caused much tenseness in the kitchen. Chefs, one by one, began to surround her, angrily. She swiftly passed through two of the skinnier chefs and ran out of the kitchen. She bumped into multiple tables, disturbing the customers. She stopped dead right before she ran into the hostess, Ms. Walters, and flinched. The woman began to scream at her and banned her from ever entering the restaurant again. This put a frown on Cassie's almost always happy face. She gloomily left the building and headed home. A storm had been brewing up all day, and now she was stuck in it.
The wind violently stabbed her back, cold and like a knife. Hail was pounding on the Earth, the size of baseballs. The rain was freezing and it was pitch black. She was cold, lost, and scared. It seemed the world was all packed in buildings and houses, warm and safe. She was alone and has walked far away from her home without knowing. She sat on the curb, trying not to freeze to death.
