Lydia Takes the Leap

After a delicious dinner, Lydia tucked the cordless phone under her arm and dragged the box of glue bottles to her room. She then proceeded to dial the phone number Veronica wrote down the other day.

“Road-kill grill, you kill ’em and we grill ’em!” a young boy’s voice greeted her; she assumed it was one of the brothers answering the phone.

“Erm… Hi… This is Lydia calling for Veronica. Does she live there and can I talk to her please?” she inquired awkwardly.

This was the first time she’d ever talked to a boy she didn’t know over the phone. She silently prayed she was calling the right number. “Hold please!” she could hear him set down the phone and yell out for Veronica.

“Hellooooo!” a girl’s voice called into the phone.

Lydia recognized it as Veronica even though the phone had slightly distorted the girl’s voice. “Hi, Veronica? It’s Lydia… from the business club…” Lydia let her words trail off as she was hoping Veronica would recognize her voice.

“Um, yes I know dork! What’s up?” Veronica chuckled.

“Well, I was going to make bookmarks as my product to sell, but all my paper was ruined in a freak milk accident. So now I am on to my next big idea of pencil holders! I have everything except something to wrap the tin cans in… do you have any nice paper I could borrow? I will pay you back with the profits, I promise!” Lydia pleaded with Veronica, hopeful her friend could help her out. “If not, I have four other ideas as backup plans,” she added in order to reassure her club mate she wasn’t giving up if there was no paper to be found.

Veronica told her to hold on for a moment while she asked her mom about some paper. After being placed on hold for a couple minutes, Veronica’s voice came through the phone.

“Ok, here’s what I’ve got,” and she began to list every variety of paper she could find. “First up, what about the newspaper?”

“I can’t put trash on trash, it will look like I pulled it out of the recycling bin!”

Lydia didn’t go for the first three options Veronica listed, but she continued with suggestions.

When she got to the fifth suggestion of “wrapping paper” Lydia stopped her excitedly, “Yes! Wrapping paper, but only beautiful wrapping paper. All I have are cheesy Christmas and shiny birthday gift wrap. Do you have nice wrapping paper?”

“Um, well I think it’s nice… do you want to come over tomorrow after school? We can work on our products in my room.”

Lydia accepted the invitation and thanked her for the offer. They continued to talk until interrupted by one of Veronica’s older brothers shouting that he needed the phone.

They said their goodbyes and Lydia put the phone back in the living room. She threw her hands in the air shouting “WOO HOO!” before slipping into the garage to collect a few cans to take to Veronica’s house. She picked a couple out that were similar in size, washed them in the sink and set them on the dishrack to dry.

“Good news?” her father looked down at her with an eyebrow raised in curiosity.

“Oh! Great news, Veronica has some wrapping paper I can use to decorate my pencil holders. And she invited me over after school so we can work at the same time.” She was grinning so wide her cheeks were starting to ache.

“Nice, low-cost idea! You guys have fun!”

Her dad usually tried to add some sort of “business talk” to their conversations. Some days it would get on her nerves, but today she appreciated his effort. She said her good nights to mom and dad, then went to bed already prepped for the next day.

“The early bird catches the worm,” she thought while watching the night shadows dance on her walls. “And I’ve prepped a day early so I must be a SUPER early bird!” she gave a tiny laugh at the silly idea and fell asleep dreaming of pint-sized birds wearing capes and eating gummy worms.