The business of lemonade

Four little heads petalled around a torch erected in the middle, each with a pencil and a piece of paper, scribbling something. Heads turned one way then another, looking for ideas to steal. Hands curved over drawings, preventing ideas from being stolen. When finally everyone ran out of things to jot down, a meeting was called. 

Jo, the oldest of them all at ten years of age, said, "What do you guys have? Show me." Ella, nine, looked at the boy sitting across from her and rolled her eyes. 

"Why don't you show us yours first, Jo?" she asked.

"Because I'm the oldest."

Eli, the boy sitting across from Ella of the same age as her, presented his diagram voluntarily, wanting to avoid an unproductive argument. There were boxes with words on the page: less effort + less time + high demand = high profit.

Jo examined the piece of diagram with his hands crossed before his chest, nodding energetically. "And what then should we sell?" Jo continued, "What do you have, Wyatt?"

Wyatt, an eight-year-old with pale complexion and patches of freckles, revealed his paper to the group. The other kids tilted their heads, squinted their eyes, trying their best to understand the scribble on the page. Ella attempted to read it out loud, "Soooomethiiiing ssssw… something… sweet?" Wyatt nodded with a smile. "What a coincidence! Mine is something tasty," Ella said, turning her paper around to face the others.

Everyone turned their head towards Jo, whose paper was still lying face down on the floor. He read their thoughts and finally picked up his card to reveal a drawing of a lemon. Sitting proudly above it was the title in print: LEMONADE.

* * *

The following day, the group met again in Jo's kitchen to draw a plan for their business. Jo prepared a load of blank paper and boxes of green crayons. Ella brought her own box of crayons; hers had a lot more colours. Eli came with a calculator and sheets of paper with rows. Wyatt dragged in a bucket of ice and a plastic that contained two lemons. Jo opened up the meeting with his address, "We're going to do a test run today. If the lemonade is sweet and tasty, we'll be open for business within two days. Agreed?"

Eli and Wyatt nodded, Ella got her word in, "My mom's recipe will work. It all depends on Eli's numbers and whether we will really make a profit from this."

"I will look at the costs of ingredients and give you my thoughts today. It all depends on whether we've had everything we need here now," Eli said. The group then turned their attention to Wyatt, who was sitting behind the bucket of ice and the bag of lemons. Realising it was his turn to talk, Wyatt extended his hands and placed them on top of the two items he was tasked with purchasing.

"Ella, is this enough?" he asked.

Ella took out a folded paper from her pocket, inspected it closely, then said, "I think we also need sugar and water."

"I've got some," Jo said, then dashed for the pantry. The rest of the group laid some groundwork for the test run. Ella cut the lemons and removed the seeds. Wyatt rummaged around the cupboard for four plastic cups of the same size, as instructed by Eli. Eli busied himself among the little crumpled receipts. He occasionally looked out the window searching for numbers to transfer to his spreadsheet. Jo came back a while later with a jar of white sugar and a glass jug of cold water. "How much do you think we should put these two down for, El?" he asked.

"How do I know, Jo? I'm not the cost guy here," Ella responded, her little hands working hard to squeeze the lemons dry.

"Not you. I was asking Eli," Jo corrected her.

"Well then you should have said Eli and not El," Ella said.

"I'm sorry, El. It's business, you know. We're on our feet and should do anything to save time."

"I will calculate the costs for those," Eli said.

Wyatt laid out the cups on the bench and filled them all with ice, some with a bit more than others. Jo looked over each of the cups and dug out a cube or two until they all had a consistent amount of ice in them. Ella finished the rest of the lemonade, washed her hands and walked over to the boys. With her hands on her hip and her lips tightened, she said, "We should have added the ice last. It's easier to mix the lemonade that way." Jo rolled his eyes, then ordered Wyatt to tip the ice back into the bucket. Presently, they passed the four empty cups back to Ella. She laid them on the bench one next to another and tipped the lemonade jug into each cup, one small amount at a time. The boys looked on in silence as she moved back and forth from cup to cup until every one of them had exactly the same amount of lemonade. She then added two teaspoons of sugar to each cup and filled them up with cold water and stirred. Before the spiralling liquid settled down, she tipped in each cup a few ice cubes.

They each took a sip and the taste test concluded with everyone agreeing they had never tasted a better cup of lemonade.

* * *

As other kids ran amok on the playground and gathered by the sparkling pond feeding the ducks, the group set up their lemonade stand. Jo barked strings of orders to the rest of the pack, who struggled to catch up with him.

Eli and Wyatt used their tiny hands to lift up the timber poles and sink them into the hardened ground and put a top on it where the sign would go. Jo counted the lemons, scratching lines and jotting down numbers on his notepad. The big, bold double-digit figure represented the number of lemonade cups they should sell on their first day to make a profit. He tore it off and stuck it to the back of the table where all members could see. "This is our goal for today," he said. Wyatt and Eli, once again tasked with most of the heavy lifting, almost broke their backs pouring the ice into the esky. Their poor attempt tipped a few cubes onto the ground. Jo took the opportunity to remind them, "We're not going to make it if we keep losing ice." The boys sat down to catch their breath, taking no notice of Jo's words. They were content that the rest of the job was now on Ella.

Ella had been working on the sign; she was the first and only to volunteer for the job. Yet, her handiwork needed much improvement. She still tried. When she finished with the artistic endeavour, she laid the banner on the ground, walked backwards a few steps then looked down at it. She scrutinised the sign from afar; the crooked words, faded cursives, tiny fonts. The rest of the group also stood up, studying her. A few minutes went by then she said, "This will not do. I have to redo everything."

Before she picked up her crayons, Jo was in her way. "El, that is perfect. All we need to see is the word Lemonade, and you did it."

"Don't call me El. And I'm not happy with how it looks," she said.

"That's ok. Everyone else is. Right, guys?" said Jo, imploring other boys to nod in agreement. They obliged.

Despite Ella's quiet protest, Jo proceeded to open the stand for business. Not long after the sign was up, a group of smaller kids wandered over with their handful of coins. "How much?" one of them asked.

Jo pointed to the sign and said, "$2.5 apiece."

The kid that asked looked into her purse and counted its interior with her little index finger. "We only have $2. Is it ok?" 

Jo hesitated until Ella voiced her thoughts, "Come on, Jo. It's only 50 cents less. We can let them have one surely."

A few minutes later, Jo said to the group of kids, "Ok, you can have it," then he turned to Ella, "Go easy on the lemon for this one, El. We need to cover our cost." Ella rolled her eyes then worked on the drink. She kept the same amount of lemon as they had planned and finished her first lemonade for the day. She handed it with much pride to the kids, who walked back to their group of friends on the playground, who said something to one of the girls and the girl pointed in the direction of the lemonade stand. Not long after, a horde of kids approached the stand, the coins chinking in the palm of their hands. Everything that happened behind the stand thereafter could only be described as frantic. Wyatt laid out lines of plastic cups on the table and poured in each a scoop of ice, though he was slow so Jo demanded that Eli lend Wyatt a hand, but there was only one cup to use between them two, so Eli scooped up the ice with his hand and dropped it in the cups, causing quite a mess as he worked. After a few minutes, his hands had grown red from the cold and he sat down for a rest, using a towel as mitts to keep warm. Wyatt picked up speed as he got more used to the task. Ella handled the rush of the day with skill at first with a bowl full of lemons she had cut up earlier that morning, and when the number of kids in line mounted quickly, she rushed to slice some more, but her hands were wet from the juice and the small knife she brought with her was blunt so very soon she cut one of her fingers and had to stop to have a cry. No one in the group had a bandaid. Eli took over the cutting and juicing of the lemons while Jo and Wyatt bent over Ella's bleeding finger and discussed what they should do. Ella's cry—which grew louder the longer she sat with her finger bleeding—brought over a young mother who was watching her son in the playground. The woman poured some water over the cut and retrieved from her purse a bandaid with animal print and wrapped tightly Ella's wounded finger. She then took the knife from Eli and proceeded to cut the rest of the lemons herself. "Kids and knives aren't a good combination," she said and turned to Ella, "I'd keep that finger from the lemons, too."

Wyatt and Eli kept the stand busy as the queue slowly dispersed because several kids had decided to stop waiting—for kids are notoriously impatient—while others had been ushered home by their parents. By afternoon, the group had run out of lemons and decided to pack up.

At home, Jo unloaded the box of coins on the kitchen bench and the four little heads petalled around it. They watched as Jo grouped the golds and silvers in groups of ten and wrote down a two-digit figure on a piece of paper. When Eli had worked out the cost they needed for the next day, Jo divided the rest—the profit—into four even heaps and they pocketed fifteen dollars apiece. "We need better profit tomorrow," Jo said when the rest of the team were scooping up the coins.

"We need more money for more ingredients then," Eli said.

"Can we use less lemon?" Jo asked no one in particular.

"No way. The recipe says two lemons and I'm going to stick to it. If it's too bland then no one will buy it," Ella said.

"What if we reduce everything, not just lemon?" Jo asked.

"But that will make it too expensive," Ella said, then turned to the other two boys, "What do you guys think?"

Wyatt offered no thought—he had none. Eli looked at his spreadsheet; it was wet from melted ice. He moved his finger down the sheet and stopped at one point and moved it sideways to the right. "We can buy cheaper lemons," he suggested at length.

"Where?" asked Jo.

"I know a place we can try," Eli said. "My mom goes there for groceries every day because they're much cheaper, but it's also further away."

"How far?" asked Ella.

Eli looked for an invisible figure from the ceiling and said, "Five or seven minutes longer."

"That's not too bad," Jo said, then turned to Wyatt, "Do you think you can go there tomorrow instead, Wy?"

"Ok," said Wyatt.

* * *

Jo, Ella and Eli met in the park to set up the stand. They moved faster this time as the holes for the stakes were still intact, and Ella had slowly made peace with the imperfect sign. Eli's father had dropped him off with a bucket of ice and a bag of plastic cups. Wyatt was nowhere to be seen, and because he was in charge of the lemons, the group could not get started until he arrived. "He's fifteen minutes late," Jo said, growing impatient.

"Just give him some more time," Ella said, worry showing on her face as she looked at a couple of kids who were approaching the stand.

"But it's supposed to be five minutes extra at most. Why is he taking so long?" Jo said.

"Maybe it takes longer than that," Eli said, "Maybe it only takes five minutes because my mom drives."

"El, you should have said that in the first place," Jo said.

"I'm not El," Ella and Eli said in unison, then Eli went on, "I didn't think about that at all. But look, here he is."

Wyatt was riding along the footpath; a medium-sized plastic tub strapped to the rear seat of his bicycle. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, though a line of kids had already started to form at the stand. As soon as Wyatt handed the tub of lemons to Ella, she opened it and was surprised to see all the lemons cut up perfectly in halves.

"Wow, Wyatt, you cut up the lemons?" asked Ella.

"My mom did. I told her you cut your finger yesterday so she said she would cut them up for us," he said.

"That's very kind of her," said Ella, who found the job exceedingly easy thanks to the pre-cut lemons and went through the first rows of plastic cups rather quickly. The cut on her finger stung badly, but she was the maker of the lemonade and wanted it to stay that way so she kept the complaints to herself. 

"Wy, can you leave earlier tomorrow to get the lemons so you can get here on time and we don't have to wait to start?" Jo asked.

Wyatt gave it a thought, then said in his sheepish way, "I… can try."

* * *

When the alarm bell sounded the morning after, Wyatt tossed and turned in bed; he struggled to keep his eyes open. He forced himself to get up and paced the room until he no longer felt the heavy weight of snooze. He left home on his bike just as sunlight pierced the top-heavy trees on the streets. Wyatt was the only figure on the road, riding slowly forth with his feeble headlight on. Sleep had slowly come back to him a few minutes into the ride. His eyelids turned heavy and his mind weary. The autumn breeze that was cooling his face and toying with his hair made it much harder for him to resist the gravity of slumber. He slowly lost control of his handle of the bike and started riding in a jagged line. He heard from a small distance the rumble of a car approaching on the opposite side and willed himself to get off the road before it was too late, but by the time he finished that single thought, it had already been too late. Wyatt's tired hands couldn't keep the bike straight; they stirred him towards the direction of the travelling car on the opposite side. Soon the vehicle caught his bike, chewed it up and sent him stumbling onto the road.

When Wyatt woke up, Jo, Eli and Ella were there. He was in a world of pain, though his mom assured him that nothing had been broken and that he could run around very soon. She also said he needed to rest, but he wanted to stay up and talk to his friends.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Don't be. It's good that you're okay," Ella said.

"You can come back whenever you're good to ride again, Wy," Jo said.

At these words, Wyatt welled up. "But my bike is gone. I can't ride to the shop anymore," he said in between sobs.

"No it's not," Jo, Eli and Ella said in unison.

Wyatt looked at the trio with wide watery eyes, curious. Eli left the room. Jo and Ella curbed a smile that seemed to hide behind it a secret—perhaps a good secret. Wyatt had stopped sobbing because he wanted to know very badly what they were hiding. Then a "ding" of a bike's bell came from outside his room. When Eli shuffled back into the room with a brand-new bike alongside him and Wyatt giggled loudly and his friends couldn't take their eyes off the excitement that very quickly shone on his face, all four of them knew then nothing could replace their mighty friendship.