Lela stood behind the counter of Jolt in her yellow and brown apron smelling of French roast and Sencha. A low hum chattered in the atmosphere as she stared at the coffee cup shaped clock straight ahead slowly ticking like a sloth climbing up a Cecropia. Everyone in the cute, corner café littered with the under-thirty crowd had their brewed beverages. 

In her peripheral she viewed Harmony, Alyssa, and Safiya around a little black metal table in the corner talking, sipping lattes over their stack of the daily mail. Time ticked slower. Trevor was lying out on a super, soft salmon-colored sofa reading Entertainment Weekly, while Cairo was sitting on an over plush chair playing on his new iPhone.

When the hour hand and minute hand crossed each other on the twelve Lela ripped off the little linen apron. She pranced to the back to the locker room. She spun in the combination 3-6-9; a combination that was hard to forget and easy to break. The locked clicked open; she yanked the door open and threw the apron in with a fling of her wrist. She pulled out her black Michael Kors duffle with a smile. She basked in her aptitude for hard work, which she had to do to collect all the funds to purchase this season's purse, before Safiya.

"Lela cover Maureen's shift. She can't come in." Larry barked standing in the doorway.

"No." Lela slammed the locker closed. "I can't. I worked ten hours yesterday after class. I gave you my schedule. You know I have class at two" She pushed him out the doorway. "I'm not in grad school like you, Larry. I have the education to earn. I can't pour coffee my whole life."

Larry scratched the beard that was slowly taking over his face, "Then I guess I'll call in Jeff."

Lela walked behind the counter "That would be a good idea, Larry! You should've done that before you did this." She picked up a red mug hanging from the rack.

"One more thing, can you make me some more of those mini cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip sandwich cookies, two blueberry pies, and two sour cream pound cakes for the weekend rush." Larry tipped up his fedora and rubbed his itchy forehead.

Lela stopped pouring soymilk in the steaming cup, "No! Hell no! I can't, not with receiving just fifteen percent of the profits."

"Okay, I'll give you five percent more and I need it by Saturday." Larry pushed the hat back down glancing at an incoming customer.

Lela stirred the coffee and milk together doing the simple math in her head. "A whole twenty percent let me drop out and plan that vacation to the Bahamas." She deadpanned. "I want fifty percent. I buy the ingredients. I bake it all to perfection with love and care. And you want eighty percent for allowing me to place them on your pristine, dollar store, lead-traced crystal plates. Hell No!"

"Thirty percent." Larry bargained quickly before the man reached the counter.

"Thirty percent affords you chocolate chip sandwich cookies and either pies or cakes; not both. I'll have it here Saturday morning." Lela swiped the spoon across the rim of the mug and tossed it in the sink.

"Cake". Larry shouted as Lela took a sip of coffee trotting over to her friends sitting in what has become the loudest corner in the café.

Lela collapsed in the empty chair next to Harmony sitting in front of the massive window while people bustled by on their everyday excursions. Alyssa was sitting next to Lela with a biology book open taking up half the table. Safiya stared in the distant pondering about what to do with the foreigner calling her body home.

"Lee, where were you this morning." Alyssa cleaned the lens of her metal-framed glasses with the sleeve of her cardigan. "I went to wake you for class and you weren't there."

Safiya pushed her coffee away, "She started panicking, with delusions of you being gagged and roped in the back of someone's Jetta." She took a breath, swallowed hard. The nausea was coming back. Or morning sickness, she corrected. "I had to stop her from calling 911 on her speed-dial."

"I wasn't the fruit loop panicking after coming from the bathroom wiping the vomit from your mouth in need of a Tic-tac; a word of wisdom, Fiya no one likes a bulimic, they're toothless with dead hair." Alyssa pulled the plastic covering off the thin slab of cardboard getting to her new highlighters.

"I'm not bulimic....you controlling, neat-freak and if anyone at this table formed an addiction it would be you, on your quest to Oz for perfection you wannabe Martha Stewart." Safiya hit at the half-opened package in Alyssa's hand.

"Ha! Oz!" Cairo laughed on his phone composing a tweet.

"Stop!" Harmony watched the staring eyes digging into their backs. "We are in public, your immaturity is showing."

Alyssa slapped Safiya's hand away and lowered her voice to a light whisper, "If I do I know you'll write about it being the fake Anderson Cooper that you are." Alyssa scooted her chair and shifted her body to Lela returning her speech to its normal volume. "Anyways Lee where were you? Did you do a walk of shame and I missed it." She smirked.

"I had to help Cairo prepare for his marketing exam and fell asleep." Lela took another sip of the tepid java.

"Yeah, that exam I took Wednesday was a beast." Cairo broke off a corner piece of Harmony's untouched brownie; tossed it in his mouth.

Lela kicked his foot, "The test I was helping you with last night!" Her eyebrows bunched up. "Thursday night!"

Harmony refolded the cable bill, "The test you had today."

Cairo raised his eyebrow back at her, sucking the rich milk chocolate off his finger.

Harmony's eyes shifted to Trevor burning a hole through Cairo's shoulder then Lela biting on the rim of the mug.

Cairo followed her eyes along its trail. "Oh, that test!" He faked laughed. "The one I took this morning, as on Friday. Silly me. It wasn't that bad because Lela helped me, all night."

"Are ya'll still drunk?" Alyssa pushed the frames over her nose leering at them oddly.

"Whoo," Samuel fell onto the couch. His plain grey t-shirt stuck to each one of his six abs from the sweat that the towel left behind. The cool that blew up his baggy athletic shorts soothe his achy hamstrings restoring the energy the sun zapped out.

Trevor sat up closing the magazine, "What's up little Monroe?"

"You could've hit the shower on your way out," Alyssa said covering her nose.

"They worked me like a slave in the cotton field, they beat down on me like one too. I wanted to get out of their eyesight before they thought of something else they wanted me to do." Samuel stretched his sore limbs out.

"You wanted to be a quarterback. Seniors and juniors aren't going to make it easy for a fresh-breathe sophomore. No matter how cute you are, little brother" Harmony picked up the last unopened letter. Her eyes read over the name, Laurent O' Connor, written in black ink so delicately as if a typewriter struck the envelope. She ripped the envelope open quickly like a squirrel peeling an acorn. As her eyes swiped over the first line she disappeared.

"Speaking of cute little brothers. I need to write an article about you for T.U.G." Safiya added breaking from her daze.

"You already know me and Harmony can fill in the blanks." Samuel leaned his head back closing his weary eyes. "I have practice, an econ test to study for, and a British lit paper to write. I don't have time for exposés."

"You're the quarterback of a division one team that went to the Rose Bowl, last year. Exposés—go with the position." Safiya picked up the little brown box in the middle of the table.

Lela flipped through the opened stack of white envelopes. "All bills; money hunger vampires."

"You didn't say that when you were watching their cable." Cairo chirped.

Lela ignored him opening up the sales paper.

"It's for you," Safiya said shaking the box in Harmony's face..

Confusion dawned Harmony's face. She felt like her lungs were empty and her heart stopped to a beat per minute. Her world crumbled and the sound stopped. Her copper eyes rushed over the single-spaced, twelve sized; Times New Roman font, two-paragraphed letter. A mist swelled over her eyes.

"What is it?" Safiya took Harmony's hand.

"Sis! What's wrong?" Samuel said sitting up forgetting about all the pain that plagued him.

Although, no one asked their eyes were planted on the single sheet of printer paper trying to bore through it like a superhero. Even Alyssa who had returned to the table with a freshly filled cup and a slice of Lela's sweet potatoes pie was staring.

"My father's not my father." Harmony proclaimed to dropped jaws and wide eyes.

What was your after-school job? Did you like it? Did you hate it?