A Borrower's Anthology

Bakery

Butter, brown sugar, eggs, flour, vanilla extract, baking soda, ground cinnamon, salt, a cup of oats, and--last but not least--butterscotch chips. The recipe certainly called for a lot of halves and three-fourths of those items, but the most important step then was lying them all out on the counter. Though that part was Philip's job as the heavy-lifter of their cooking lesson--all Michelle had to do was wait for him to measure out their ingredients in the cups, spoons and bowls.

The kitchen was warm thanks to the preheating oven, and Michelle had rolled her sleeves back to her biceps. Her calves were present company for the day as she'd been instructed to pick a wardrobe that would have been easy to wash. The more skin she showed, the better it would have been to shower off the dirt and grime from chef's work. Ideally, nothing should have gotten on her at all, Philip said, but they had to account for any and all accidents. After all, the recipe anticipated human hands--not the ones of a borrower. Yet that was not enough to discourage Michelle.

"Like I mentioned before, they're not going to be made for your size. Honestly, I can't wrack my brain behind the logistics of making cookies like you would toy ones. I wouldn't know how to portion it," Philip said. "Not to mention 350 degrees sounds like it'd be too much for cookies an eighth of their normal size. It would char them--"

"Philip." As she caught his attention through his rambling, Michelle laughed. "I told you, it's fine. I'll figure out a way one day. How small did you say I can roll them?"

"About this big." He held his fingers apart a marginal distance. "When they're done, they'll be about the size of a half-dollar. Maybe a little bigger."

"See? I can break that up way more than I could most of the cookies your mom makes! They're huge."

Philip smiled. "Well, yes. We have four sweet-tooths in the house--you included."

Michelle's feet swung back and forth as she perched on the pale pink cartoon of eggs, surveying the gallery of items around the kitchen island once more. They had to wait on Darius to return from the store. When Philip had offered to teach her, he hadn't known then that they were out of cookie sheets, so he'd asked Darius if he wouldn't have minded going to fetch them. He'd been eager to for once; it hadn't been long since Darius had graduated from permit to license, which meant he was allowed to drive the family car or Philip's. And since Philip was home, his Audi was the only free one available. It'd been a little funny watching Darius practically dance to be lent the keys. After all, when Philip graduated in the coming month, his car would be leaving with him.

All Michelle knew of cars were that they were expensive, loud, and apparently a source of pride depending on the make and year. Borrowers didn't really have any denotation of status--not as far as Michelle knew anyway. There were borrowers who lived outside and ones who lived in. Maybe she had the luxury of items, better food and better clothes, but she didn't think that'd have made her better than any other one out there. She'd heard stories of some borrowers forging bonds with animals to treat as mounts--how cool was that? She'd tried for weeks to turn Baron into something similar, but the cat only seemed to like treating her as a sleep toy than a rider.

Her attention warped back to the present when Philip's arm passed overhead, grabbing the large container of milk and pouring into one of the smaller measuring cups. To think that he would eventually be leaving the family house made Michelle a tad forlorn. She still hadn't decided whether or not she would leave with him--or any of her family and Nick's, for that matter. Her parents seemed pretty content to remain where they were despite the close-calls of mice detoxing and such. It had been a stability they'd wished for, for years. No realtors showing off the estate to scores of humans; no fear of fleeing quickly because the old building may have been torn down.