She turned around, confused, and was met by that early-bird hobo, holding her book in his left hand, and half a pancake in his right.

"Excuse me?" She asked, confused.

"Your book," he explained, "you left it on the table when you left."

She looked down at the pancake in his right hand, still dripping with sugary syrup, as if he had just plucked it right off his plate.

He extended her book towards her, "You're lucky I was just leaving and happened to notice it," he said, a little gruffly, "don't be so stupid next time."

She was taken aback, "Excuse me?"

"What, is that all you can say to me for graciously picking up your stupid book and bringing it so kindly to you. You should be grateful I even noticed you left it!"

With that, she snatched her book right out of his hand and quickly crossed the street.

"You're welcome!" he shouted out to her.

Ignoring him, she stomped into the station and crashed down into her chair behind the front desk, not caring what she looked like. How dare he?! How rude! One would think people could learn manners in this damn city.

"Looks like someone's a little upset this morning," someone said. Looking up, she noticed Officer Notting standing in the doorway, looking quite disgruntled himself. He was only about ten years older than her fresh-out-of-college self, but he had already been seen worrying over a few grey hairs on his mane of a head. Seriously though, he kind of looked like a lion.

"I thought little Miss Sunshine here would know how to control her anger by now, or should we postpone your reexamination until next year, eh?" he smirked at her.

She smirked back, eyeing his crooked nose, "I thought you could take a punch, but it looks like we were both wrong."

Notting squinted at her, mumbling a low "you watch yourself, girlie," before sulking out of the room.

She released the breath she had been holding and reached for the book once again. It wasn't a bad book; in fact, she rather enjoyed it. It was about these two unfortunate people who are roommates paying for an apartment together. One of them is a thief and the other is a bank robber and they're both trying to hide it from each other, dancing around everything suspicious at all.

She picked up the book and looked at it how it was coated with a small, sticky layer of syrup. She sighed and brought it to the bathroom to see if she could rub some of it off with a wet paper towel. She carefully rubbed at the paperback's plastic cover, ridding it of any syrup that had been there before.

While working on one particularly sticky patch of syrup, she glimpsed at the author's name, but it was worn away. She could almost make out some letters, but couldn't. Shaking away her stray thoughts with her head, she tossed the soiled paper towel over her shoulder and into the waste bin, and walked back to her desk.

Looking around and, noticing that nothing of interest was happening at the moment, she sat down and opened the book to where she left off.

He first got into the business when working at a lemon stand in the third grade. He had seen Wendell's mom put cash in the big grey box, and he had been itching to get his hands on it.

It was a hot summer day and his mom had dropped him off with Wendell and his mother to help sell lemonade. It wasn't his first choice in activity today, he wanted to leave a one of his special presents for his brother for being the favorite of the family, but his mother would not have that.

Grabbing a slice of lemon from the table, he sauntered over to where Wendell was drawing with chalk on the sidewalk.

"Hey Wendell," he said innocently.

"Hello" the boy replied, quietly.

"Wanna play a really fun game?" Wendell looked at him a little fearfully, so he added, "c'mon, it'll be fun! Bella played it with me just the other day and I bet she's better than you at it!"

Indignant at this, Wendell stood up, "okay," he mumbled shyly, "what is it?"

He smirked at Wendell's ignorance, "just open your eyes real wide look up at the sky."

"Why?"

"Just do it, stupid."

Wendell opened his eyes as wide as he could and looked up at the clouds, "what now?" he wondered aloud.

But instead of getting an answer, he got an eyeful of fresh-squeezed lemon juice. Screaming and immediately rubbing at his eyes, he ran as far away as he could.

Wendell's mom jogged to where Wendell had just ran from, "what happened?!" she asked, accusingly.

"I don't know, he just started screaming and running, maybe he needs some help, I can take care of the stall while you're gone. Don't worry about me Mrs. Wendell, you just take care of Wendell."

She looked at the boy for a second and then nodded, who knew what kind of trouble Wendell could get in just by himself.

He had first got into the business that day when he stole nothing more than two genuine dollars from lemonade stand lockbox. It was what first introduced the thrill to him and it was a crowning moment of his life. No longer was he the snotty little pranking brat, he was the Trickster King himself, P-

"What exactly do you think you're doing Sabrina?!"

She jolted to attention, successfully dropping her book right at Officer Notting's large, and what she assumed were hairy, feet.

"M-Manning the desk of course," she finally managed to answer.

Notting squinted at her once again, a habit he seemed to be adapting, and promptly dumped a stack of manila envelopes right in front of her.

"Get this done," Notting looked her right in the eye, "today."

Sabrina nodded quickly, assuring him it would get done. He started to leave but turned around right before exiting through the doorway.

"Oh, by the way," he put his hand on his hip "your friend called."

He sighed, "I told you before and I'll tell you again: no private calls." He turned and started to leave again, scratching his head he muttered, "I don't even know how that lunatic got my personal number."

Sabrina stayed quiet until she knew he was gone, then she took one look at the unorganized pile of paperwork and thought about the hours she would undoubtedly be wasting and sighed; at least tomorrow was Saturday.