The Teashop Girls

by Laura Schaefer

  8. The Tea Handbook is full to bursting … so I must know more about the Way of Tea than practically anyone.

  Louisa chuckled as she read it over.

  “This is some list, Annie. Did you talk to your parents about this?” she asked gently.

  “Yes, and Mom even said it was okay.” You would not believe what I had to go through to get my parents to agree to allow me to try to get a job. I knew my mom would cave eventually; she loves the Leaf almost as much as I do. The shop has been around forever, even when my mom was my age. I didn’t mention how my mom had said she’d like to see Louisa taking it easier. Louisa was vibrant, but she was nearing seventy. Meanwhile, I was bursting with energy.

  “You sound very serious, Annie. I respect that.” Louisa nodded carefully. I could feel myself holding my breath. I let it out sharply as I prepared to further build my case. I could see a couple of the customers staring at me. Was it just my imagination, or had people stopped chatting?

  “Thank you. I would like to come in a few afternoons after school, and maybe one full shift on the weekends.” I looked my grandmother right in the eye. She smiled at me, bemused. There was a long pause. I wondered if I should talk some more or forget the whole thing and tell her I was just kidding.

  “All right then, dear, consider yourself hired.” Louisa’s eyes sparkled as she watched my grin widen. She pulled me into a big bear hug.

  “Really?” I asked, breaking away from her hug. “Really, really?”

  “Really,” she replied.

  I clapped my hands and looked around the shop through new eyes, feeling proprietary. My first workplace. A girl just couldn’t ask for a better one.

  “Let us toast!” Louisa laughed as she refreshed our cups. We clinked our china and sipped the tasty brew. I set my cup down, still bursting with excitement. I decided to do a little victory dance—a cross between a spastic sprinkler and the Charleston, I think.

  I could feel the eyes of many a shop patron fixed on my impromptu celebratory hopping, but I didn’t care one bit.

  “So, my dancing queen, when would you like to start?” Louisa asked me.

  “Today? Tomorrow? I don’t know … soon!” I kept jumping happily from foot to foot.

  As the words left my mouth, I heard something behind me. It sounded like muffled snickering. I shimmied around and saw Jonathan come out of the back room. How could I have forgotten he was here?! I abruptly stopped moving, midhop, as my face reignited. I smoothed my hair a bit and cleared my throat, trying to look normal. The one thing I have going for me is memorable hair. But it only looks okay when it is under house arrest by various products such as gel, styling cream, mousse, etc. Which I had not bothered with today as Beth was hogging the bathroom. Curly red hair is the pits. Curly red hair when your face is blushing is the double pits. Maybe triple. Jonathan looked at me and smiled, opening his mouth as if to say something and then closing it before any words came out. Why, why, why did he have to come out in the middle of the celebratory Sprinkler Hop?

  “Wonderful news, Jonathan! I’ve just this minute hired Annie as our newest barista,” Louisa explained.

  “Cool. Welcome.” He moved to a chair and started paging through a notebook. His long legs barely fit under the table, and his dark blond hair hung in his eyes. I waited for some crack about not letting me in the storage room, but I guess older boys are too mature for that sort of thing.

  “Come in tomorrow at eleven, dear, and I’ll show you the register,” Louisa said to me over her shoulder. I wondered if he would be working. I couldn’t take my eyes off him; thank goodness Louisa was on her way to her office and pretended not to notice.

  I surveyed the Leaf once again. It had been a pretty good day as days go. Got job, check. Met extremely cute boy, unexpected, but check anyway. Completely embarrassed self in front of grandmother, teashop patrons, and aforementioned extremely cute boy, check, check, check.

  As I was carefully placing my cup in the sink, something very strange happened. The music abruptly stopped playing and the cozy interior of the Leaf went dark.

  This is an ad Louisa gave me. It’s from the 1940s and shows how many people used to consider tea a summer drink. Louisa explained to me how, when she was a kid, no one had air-conditioning in their houses. So they would sit on their porches with cool beverages like iced tea and visit with neighbors. I think this is the reason Louisa barely ever uses her air-conditioning at home. She would rather be outside with her friends and a cool drink, just like the lady in the advertisement.

  Chapter Three

  “I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea,” said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically, “and asking Diana if she takes sugar. I know she doesn’t but of course I’ll ask her just as if I didn’t know.”

  —LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

  So, did Barista Boy say ‘welcome,’ like, with an eyebrow thing, or just ‘welcome’ like Mr. Nelson when we show up late for social studies?” Genna was the master of guy-versation, especially since she discovered the Relationship section at the University Bookstore. Zoe, Genna, and I were sprawled out on the floor of my room, having a miniparty to celebrate my official entrance into the working world. We made guacamole and biscotti, an odd combo, I admit, but always a crowd pleaser. With Genna flinging her arms around, some of it was sure to land on my rug or bedspread. It would not be the first time.

  “Um, somewhere in between?” I answered her kind of halfheartedly. I had a fairly massive homework assignment to finish and my parents said my grades had to “impress them” if I wanted to work at the shop. But Genna could talk voice tone for hours. She wanted to become either an actress or an artist, which meant that she liked to dissect human—mostly boy—behavior a lot. Her name was actually Jenny, but she changed it when we were in the sixth grade and insisted on the g spelling because she thought it was more “cinematic.” I still can’t believe all the parents and teachers we know are okay with this.

  I was so happy to see both Gen and Zo, but the fact that the lights went out in the Leaf was nagging at me. Right after it happened, Louisa sent Jonathan home and closed early for the day. The look on my grandmother’s face worried me. Something was really not right. I kept remembering how my mom said the shop wasn’t busy enough lately and how she was concerned Louisa wasn’t paying all the bills promptly. My stomach knotted up a little when I thought about it.

  “The important thing is that she got a job, okay? Not that some high school boy said ‘welcome.’” Zoe was lying in the middle of my floor, perfectly straight. She is half Indian, and her amazing, shiny, perfectly smooth straight hair, which I’m totally not one bit jealous of, was cascading around her. Unlike Genna, with her constant wild gesturing, Zoe conserved her movements. She was an athlete and pretty much unflappable. Zo usually wore almost all white; she had this ability to never spill anything on herself. If more than 30 percent of a conversation drifted to the topic of boys, she got annoyed. “If my parents let me have a job I’d want to work at the Leaf.”

  Zoe raised her straight legs four inches off the floor. I stayed where I was, draped over the director’s chair stolen from my brothers’ bedroom.

  “Thank you, Zo.”

  The last time we all managed to hang out outside of school was a week ago, when we went to the Memorial Union terrace, by the university union. And by hang out I mean I hid under an umbrella most of the time, coated in SPF 175, while Genna and Zoe ran around with a Frisbee and some boys from our class. Okay, I’ll admit it, I felt left out, and as sunny as it was, the extreme measures to prevent further frecklege was a little bit of an excuse. As you might have noticed, I get kind of shy around boys, not sure what to say. We’d all been friends for so long—since kindergarten, when Genna taught Zoe and me to braid hair—but the thing is, I still look and feel mostly like a kid, and my friends are starting to seem like actual, I don’t know … women. It’s weird. Really weird. The fact that we were all in my ro
om talking about my new job and my new crush was heaven.

  “So, how is Louisa?” Genna asked. She scratched at the fake tattoo on her lower back.

  “The same; she’s good,” I replied.

  “You remember how she always called us the Teashop Girls when we were in elementary school?” Genna asked. I grinned.

  “Of course I remember.” She still does, I added to myself.

  “You were the president!” Genna said, whirling around and pointing her finger at me. Zoe laughed.

  “And you were the life-long queen.”

  “We were awesome back then.” Zoe nodded. “We were the princesses of the Steeping Leaf kingdom.”

  “That’s right. While all the other kids were eating PBJs, we were making scones.” Genna arched her eyebrow. I giggled. “Hey, whatever happened to the Handbook? I want to read the rules again.”

  “Umm … the ones we wrote in third grade?” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to tell my friends how carefully I had saved them after we stopped talking about our little club. Even though Gen and Zo didn’t add to the Handbook anymore, I still worked on it quite a bit. Suddenly I felt a little embarrassed.

  “Come on, you remember,” Zoe said. “No boys allowed at tea …”

  “I have them right here,” I confessed. I dug in my messy closet for a few moments and unearthed a big purple box filled with treasures. Right on top was the Tea Handbook itself. Among the recipes, advertisements, and snapshots of us were several colorful copies of the TSG rules written in Zoe’s precise penmanship. It was more perfect than any other nine-year-old’s writing, that was for sure. I grinned and did a little curtsy as I presented them.

  The Official Rules of the Teashop Girls

  1) Teashop Girls are best friends forever.

  2) Tea is held every week, no matter what.

  3) All tea and scones must be split equally at all times.

  4) Tea must be drunk out of proper cups, like china.

  5) No grown-ups or boys allowed at tea.

  6) Burping is not allowed at tea unless it is really quiet and you say “Excuse me.”

  7) Teashop Girls don’t keep any secrets from each other.

  8) No Teashop Girl can say anything mean about another Teashop Girl.

  9) Teashop Girls do adventurous things so they have good stuff to talk about when they drink tea.

  10) A Teashop Girl will always help other Teashop Girls in need.

  “I forgot how hilarious these were! I want a copy,” Genna demanded.

  “These are pretty good for a bunch of third graders,” Zoe agreed.

  I wondered why we no longer followed the Rules. When had we abandoned the weekly tea ritual? Zoe and Genna huddled around the Handbook, laughing and reminiscing. Would my friends care as much as I did about what was going on at my grandmother’s shop? We had already stopped having tea together. They were so busy with theater and tennis and things. These were two people who were actually ready for high school and all the stuff that came with it. Unlike me.

  “So the lights went out when I was in the Leaf,” I finally blurted out, trying to sound more casual than I felt. I tapped a stack of books with my foot, which promptly fell right over and made a huge mess.

  “What?” Genna and Zoe both turned to me.

  “Off, off? Or just, like, flickered?” Genna asked.

  “Off, off,” I replied. “No lights, no music, no power at all!”

  “It must have been a mistake,” said Zoe.

  “That’s what I thought at first, too,” I said. “Stuff happens. But I think there might have been an unpaid bill. Louisa says that the Steeping Leaf doesn’t have a hip crowd; it has a hip-replacement crowd. What if they’ve mostly all croaked, and there’re no new customers?”

  Zoe’s eyes got wide, and Genna looked worried. The chip Genna had been eating fell to the floor, forgotten. Both of them stared at me, as if I’d just said we had to repeat the eighth grade.

  “Confession.” Genna paused as she searched for the right words. “I was on the Leaf’s block a few days ago … but I went into that new place across the street … for a whipped-cream espresso thingy.” She looked ashamed and didn’t say anything for a moment, which was unusual. “I feel soooo horrible, I swear I’ll never do it again. We must go in there more.”

  “Yes,” Zoe said. She was still holding the years-old Teashop Girls manifesto. “We’ve got to do something.”

  “We definitely do,” I said, relieved that Gen and Zo seemed as bugged as me. Well, a little bit relieved. “I’m worried about the Leaf’s bills. There has got to be a way to get people to love the teashop as much as I—as we do.”

  All three of us nodded.

  Maybe

  A Taoist story

  as told by Annie Green

  Many ages ago there was an old farmer whose horse ran away. When his friendly neighbors heard the news they said, “What bad luck!”

  “Maybe,” said the farmer. He was a pretty calm guy, like my dad.

  The next day the farmer’s lost horse returned and brought with him three wild horses. To that the neighbors said, “How wonderful.”

  “Maybe,” said the old farmer.

  The following morning his son tried to ride one of the wild horses and broke his leg when he was thrown off. Again the neighbors said, “What bad luck.”

  “Maybe,” said the old farmer.

  The very next day the army came to the village and drafted all the young men to fight. They passed over the farmer’s son because of his broken leg. Once more the neighbors congratulated the old man on his luck.

  “Maybe,” said the farmer.

  Chapter Four

  If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.

  —WILLIAM GLADSTONE, 1865

  Genna stayed behind with me after Zoe went home. Zoe and her family always ate dinner at precisely the same time—her stepdad was a retired navy officer and liked things to be on a schedule. Her house was the cleanest I’ve ever seen in my life. Zoe and her younger brother probably had to, like, vacuum under their beds and present their fingernails for inspection. I knew she missed her real dad a lot. He moved back to Mumbai after her parents split up, and now she sees him only once a year. Genna’s family was different. She was an only child and pretty much got to do whatever she wanted. Her parents were in the south of France for the weekend, so she was home alone again with her dog, Barley, and her housekeeper, Sarah.

  Gen gets lonely sometimes—even with her five million cable channels—so I always tell her she can hang out here whenever she wants. Our townhouse is anything but lonely. My family consists of two parents, four kids, and three pets (five if you count the fish, which I don’t). It is never, ever, quiet or peaceful here. I’m not really sure how I ever think with my two brothers slamming into walls. I brought home chamomile tea from the Steeping Leaf once to try to calm everyone down, but so far it has done nothing except put my dad to sleep in his recliner. My little brothers, thank goodness, are now addicted to Guitar Hero. It actually brings the decibel level down about half a notch, if you can believe that.

  “Did Zo tell you that Zach Anderson made the tennis team? They’re going to have to scrimmage,” Genna said as she puttered with my nail polish collection.

  “Ugh, I don’t want to hear about Zach,” I said. “Poor Zo.”

  Zach Anderson was the type of boy who would pour warm Red Bull on a young plant. He’d been a sworn enemy of the Teashop Girls since kindergarten. There are even pictures of him and his annoying friends spying on us on the school playground in our elementary school yearbook. (Obviously, they were terrible spies.)

  “He’s kind of cute lately,” Genna said. She had started talking to Zach and his rich, snotty friends a bit in homeroom. Seriously, does she not re mem ber when we were all in fifth grade and he put the cockroach in my desk?

  “You are beyond disgusting.�
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  “I know.” Genna refused to acknowledge the rather large stack of schoolbooks I had pulled out and was trying to organize. I always forgot that when I invited Gen to hang out at my house I never got anything productive done. It was like this one time when we were nine and Louisa asked me to help her reorganize and dust all the Leaf’s bookshelves. Much to my grandmother’s delight, I brought Gen and Zo with me. But while Zoe and I carefully wiped and alphabetized, Genna sprawled out on one of the Leaf’s comfy couches and continually squealed out beauty tips from the first book she had picked up: Leaves of the Goddess. It had pretty much always been like that, since the three of us had become friends. Zoe and I were Genna’s guaranteed audience. But to be fair, it was a Friday and I am a freak for even thinking about homework on a Friday. “So how are you going to make Jonathan fall in love with you?”

  “You mean my mere presence won’t be enough?”

  “A strategy never hurt.”

  “I’ll just try to do my job well, I guess. You know, talk to him and stuff.” I shrugged and blushed a little.

  “Just think about accidentally getting locked in the storage room with him, okay? I’ll help.” Guerrilla tactics, Genna’s favorite. “Hey, Jonathan, Annie needs some help with stock in the back. Click.” Genna smiled devilishly.

  The thing is, even if I was locked in a storage room with Jonathan—and not causing a calamity with an ill-advised yoga pose—I wouldn’t know what to do anyway. I had never really kissed anyone—Daniel Hansen in the seventh grade did not count. I am terrified I’ll totally mess it up. Everyone else at my school seems so experienced, and I’m not even sure where noses go. I quickly ran through my very short list of romantic encounters.

  1. Danced with Jake Chang twice in sixth grade. If you call swaying at arm’s length dancing.