Sweet Jazz City!
A bustling metropolis where it snowed seven months of the year. Although it was still August, the trademark wintery feel of the town was already returning to the air. The breeze coming off of the nearby ice-blue ocean kept temperatures below seventy even on sunny days, and at night the city’s multicolored skyline sparkled a rainbow of blues, pinks, and purples. An iron aurora borealis.
Sweet Jazz stood as a center for business and the arts, home to first-rate corporations and a world-famous art museum, which had only suffered its first break-in! That’s not too bad! Sure, there were a few
dozen . . . thousand dollars in damage. But that price was nothing for the rich elite of the nation’s capital! Well-to-do socialites happily wandered the city’s glowing shopping centers and gorgeous diamond-white beaches without a care in the world. Even the emptiest stretch of coastline had a respectable number of beachgoers, all of them happy with smiles as bright as the sand.
Well.
All except for one.
One little girl under a lamp post, who was flipping back and forth like a pinwheel on the edge of a panic attack.
“ . . . Am I at the wrong intersection?”
Molly Blyndeff had been standing alone on a street corner across from the beach for about twenty minutes now, and she was getting worried. It was Tuesday, which meant that today was one of the rare times she had the afternoon off.
Molly had a strange schedule.
In order to make ends meet at her family’s toy store—The Blyndeff Toy Emporium—they needed to stay open every day of the week. They didn’t have the money to hire any outside help, and that meant that someone from the family had to work the register every single day.
Her father had somehow managed to negotiate a system with her school where Molly would attend school on odd days and manage the store on even ones. Her older sister, Lorelai, worked the opposite schedule, and the two would switch off shifts while their father—a toymaker and “inventor”—would spend all day tinkering away in the basement making more doodads to sell out front.
In addition to her work shifts Molly was also in charge of the family finances. Running the business side of the toy store had been her mother’s job, but after she passed away Molly inherited all of her paperwork along with her headaches. To most people it would’ve seemed insane to have a twelve-year-old managing their taxes.
Because it was!
But the alternative was leaving her father to handle things, and that was a no-go. Molly had learned the hard way that relying on her father for anything was a one-way ticket to disaster. Once she came home from school to find that he had purchased a massive inflatable kiddie pool and several expensive pool toys that now occupied 90% of their floorspace. He was all geared-out to swim with a snorkel and inflatable duck ring around his waist, but found himself unable to fill the pool because he had forgotten to pay the water bill.
Her older sister was no better. Constantly shirking her shifts and always distracted . . . there was no way someone like her could make it through all the bylines of a tax sheet.
And so, yet another responsibility had fallen to the youngest daughter.
On top of all that, Molly was also in charge of cooking and cleaning most of the time, which meant that Molly Blyndeff had almost no free time at all. Every second of free time she had was precious . . . and she was starting to freak out.
“Oh . . . um . . . We were supposed to meet here, right?” Her star-sprinkled afro bounced back and forth as she glanced up and down the street. “I’m pretty sure I wrote the address down right . . . But what if I got it wrong?! Oh no. Oh no!” Molly shook with anxiety.
