Sarika Paprika
@TheSarikaPaprika
Coffee lovers! I’ll be at @AdamsPhillyCafe a little later today, around 11-ish. Come say hello! #SarikaTheBarista
8/23/17, 7:47AM
16 Retweets 47 Likes
Ali @YohananAliQ 9m
@TheSarikaPaprika @AdamsPhillyCafe yes!
Leila @WithouttheY 7m
@TheSarikaPaprika @AdamsPhillyCafe see you soon!
XV
“You sure you don’t want to wait?” Mr. Hathaway asked as Leila handed him a dollar for a small coffee. He plucked the dollar from her hand, stuffed it into the already-open, totally broken cash register, and made his way over to the coffee station. He started pouring the thick, black liquid into the contrasting white mug.
“I mean, she’ll be here in fifteen minutes, a half hour tops,” Mr. Hathaway continued as he pulled the mug away from the coffee machine, and started filling it with an amount of sugar offensive to most coffee drinkers. Just how she liked it.
“It’s not like you’re in your thirties, balancing graduate school, a full-time job, and a family,” he went on, talking as he stirred away, the metal spoon clinking about merrily in the cup. “I think you can live without all this extra—”
Leila interrupted, holding up a hand, “Not right now, okay? I just need to, like, clear my head.”
Mr. Hathaway scowled and slid the coffee mug across the surface of the countertop.
“Fine, fine,” he said, returning to the register and fussing with the door. “I’m just saying. She’ll be here soon, you coulda waited for her to make it. She’s the master, not me.”
“It’s alright. I need some ‘me time’ for a bit.” Leila grabbed the coffee and carried the mug over to a table in the back. She had her choice, the place was utterly barren, though it was only a matter of time before it filled up.
She sat down and the chair squeaked as she pulled it across the hard floor. She wrapped her hands around the hot mug and sighed. The warmth was comforting against her palms.
How was she going to explain all of this to Sarika?
She blew at the steam rising off the hot coffee as her thoughts wandered, playing the scenarios in her head over and over again.
Hey, so yeah, I ended up hanging out with Landon. We explored the woods, scoped out this abandoned historic mansion, and oh, I found my birth mother and biological aunts, who are trees living in the grounds behind the mansion, and they’re in danger, and we need to save them in order to save the entire city.
Yeah.
That was going to go over well.
The door to the café swung open, and the small bell above it chimed out loudly in the empty place, the happy sound reverberating off the walls. Sarika bounced in, a satchel over her arm, and jumped over the coffee counter to wrangle herself into position behind the bar.
“Let’s do this!” she shouted in a silly, overly deep voice, flipping on the giant espresso machine. Leila put her elbow up on the table and leaned into her hand, watching her get things set up. Sarika poured milk into the steamer and plucked old espresso beans from inside the machine. She made quick work of the thing, her movements precise and meticulous, much like the machine itself. For Leila it was a joy to watch her best friend, someone she’d been through so much with, be truly at home.
Especially now, knowing what she knew about herself. Or, at least, sort of knowing. There were so many unanswered questions. How did her father even meet her mother? Why hadn’t the dryads spoken to anyone other than her? And how was she supposed to save them? No one was going to believe that there were these mythological creatures living in the woods and that the fate of the city’s breathable air basically depended on them. Landon had already expressed as much, as they wandered away from the forest and mused over text messages throughout the evening.
Leila scowled at the thought.
Most boys texted with girls long into the evening about other things. Flirting. Long discussions about life. Flirting. Talking about the future. More flirting. Instead, that option had been ripped away from her, replaced with conversations about conservation, government officials, and environmental justice groups. She wasn’t even sure she wanted those warm and fuzzy discussions with Landon, especially after the disaster that was Shawn. But the option would have been nice.
How was she going to tell Sarika?
And Jon? Lisabeth? Or the B.E.A.C. club or the message board? She couldn’t tell them the real story, just that they had to save that section of the park. Was there a way to talk about saving the grove without giving the real reason why?
Even she’d made assumptions about the crumbling, old building. Would she have cared if it hadn’t been for the dryads? How could she make anyone care about this?
Sarika looked up from what she was busy fussing with and caught Leila’s eye. She smiled and waved excitedly, leaping over the coffee countertop again to hurry over.
Leila breathed. One thing at a time.
“Tell. Me. Everything,” Sarika said, swinging a chair out from under another table and whipping it around to the one Leila sat at. She straddled the chair and put her elbows on the table, her head in her hands in an exaggerated fashion. “When you left enrichment, I thought it was to, like, go home and unwind, not run off into the woods with the gorgeous park ranger. Was he into you?”
“Maybe,” Leila said, smirking with a shrug. “Things got a little weird, but—”
“Shawn weird?” Sarika asked, standing up and moving the chair around to sit normally.
“No, few things are Shawn weird.” Leila laughed uncomfortably. She took a deep breath, and looked up at Sarika. “Look, there’s something I need to talk to you about before your rush comes in, and I just . . . I don’t think it can wait. There’s something I have to do, and I need to know we’ll be okay because it’s weird, Sarika, alright? It’s really weird, and if I don’t have you here, I’m not sure—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Sarika said, reaching out across the table and grabbing Leila’s hands. Leila hadn’t realized they were shaking. Her breath had gone quick, her heart hammered in her chest. “Relax. I won’t go anywhere. Come on, what could be so awful that—”
“I followed the voices, Sarika,” Leila said. The color seemed to drain out of Sarika’s face, and she let go of Leila’s hands. She blinked and took a short breath before looking around the café and facing Leila again.
“Why . . . why would you do that?” Sarika asked, sounding almost angry. “We spent, like, years trying to bury all that. What if, what if the voices, which are all in your head, led you somewhere that got you hurt? Or killed? They aren’t real, we both know that, you know that, and—”
“They are real,” Leila said. “Or at least, she’s real. The woman who has been talking to me. It’s always been only one.”
Sarika blinked, her expression full of worry.
“Leila, you can’t—”
“She’s my mother, Sarika,” Leila said. “My birth mother. All those jokes and dreams about our birth parents being millionaires or whatever are definitely thrown out the damn window.”
Sarika looked around the coffee shop, her eyes wide, expression panicked. She turned back to Leila, grabbing her hands again.
“Do we need to go to the hospital or something?” Sarika asked. “Because I’ll go. I’ll be there all the way.”
Leila squeezed Sarika’s hands harder and closed her eyes, feeling the tears welling up.
“It’s not like that,” Leila said. She opened her eyes and looked at her friend. “I’m here. One hundred percent. And I need you to believe me.”
Leila took a deep breath, and let it all pour out.
The way plants had rustled around her, the voices on the bike ride home, the phone call to Landon, the walk through the woods and down the darkened path to the bursting, brilliant light after the canopy cleared. The old mansion, the grove, the three dryads, and finally the ranger station named after her missing birth father.