Call Me A Freak

Privacy

We headed down to the kitchen, setting up everything that we needed and beginning the spell. It was supposedly going to end up being baked as a cookie.

"Alright, it says that we still need one tear," I said, looking over the book as Evie threw some nuts into the mixing bowl.

"Let's just chop up some onions," Carlos offered, but I shook my head.

"No. It says we need one tear of human sadness."

Jay huffed behind me. "A tear's a tear."

"That's not true, Jay," Evie stated. "They both have antibodies and enzymes, but an emotional tear has more protein-based hormones than a reflex tear."

I froze as I listened to her talk. I rarely ever heard Evie speak in full sentences. Much less about something like science.

"Yeah, I knew that," Jay tried, but Carlos was quick to disagree.

"Did not."

"Yeah, I did."

In front of us the door handle to the kitchen began to jiggle and I only had a brief second to cover up the spellbook before Lonnie looked in.

"There you are, Mal. I was looking for you. You know, all the girls want you to do their hair."

I laughed politely as I continued to mix together our spell.

"Midnight snack, huh?" she asked looking over the contents. "What you guys making?"

"Nothing special. Just cookies," I tried to explain, but before we could stop her, Lonnie reached her finger into the mix and popped some into her mouth.

As she glanced over our concerned expressions she chuckled. "What? I'm not going to double dip."

Evie knit her eyebrows together. "Feel... anything?"

"Like it might be missing something?" I covered.

Jay was quickly beside us, leaning toward Lonnie. "Hey there," he flirted.

We all held our breath to catch onto Lonnie's reaction, but we got nothing but a blank stare.

"Could use some chips," she finally replied, walking towards a cabinet in the back of the room.

I let out a sigh as Jay slowly sat down once more next to Carlos. "And those are?"

"Chocolate chips," she said. "Just the most important food group."

She dropped a bowl of what I had to assume was the chocolate chips in front of me.

"Wait, didn't your mom ever make you guys chocolate chip cookies?" She grabbed a handful and added them to the mix.

I looked up at her, unsure what to do.

She looked between all of our confused expressions and started again.

"Like, when you're feeling sad? And they're fresh from the oven with a big ol' glass of milk and she just makes you laugh and put everything into perspective and..."

My eye began to twitch as she explained. She spoke to us like this was some sort of universal experience, but what she was describing was too specific. She was remembering something.

And god did that hurt. We didn't even have chocolate chips on the Isle, why on earth would she expect us to know this experience she was describing? I thought back to earlier that day, when Jane came to talk to her mom and how it made my chest ache to see them together.

"Why are you all looking at me like that?" Lonnie interrupted my thoughts and I quickly pulled myself together.

"It's just different where we're from," I snapped, mixing in the new ingredient.