Day One - Saturday
I stared at the door to the café. Well, the back door. Well, this is it. I opened the door and went in, grinning nervously at Kristoff, who was waiting for me, and fished my phone out of my pocket. He smiled. "Welcome to Arendelle Café."
He led me round to the kitchens. I stared at the multitude of people working there, but, although the crowd terrified me, I could only feel welcome from their minds. "This is where you'll be working," he said, gesturing around and grabbing an apron for me. I put it on over my hoodie and tied the strings, feeling a bit ridiculous. At least everyone else is wearing them, I thought.
I glanced around nervously. No one was staring at me or whispering. It was kind of a new feeling. Speaking of feelings...
And there they came – the hopes, the worries, the fears – all crowding around me and clamouring for my attention. When I was a child it was too overwhelming, but I had learnt to ignore it by then and it only distracted me for a moment and then I was in control. There was a lot of curiosity about me, naturally, but no suspicion or pity. Pity is the worst I thought – the feeling that they were better than me just because they could speak and I cannot.
"Anna!" Kristoff called. A redhead looked up and ran over to us, grinning widely.
"You must be Taelor!" she said, smiling at me. I grinned back nervously. She grabbed my hand and pulled me over to a cooker. "Kristoff says that you already know how to cook, so I'll..." I tuned out as she continued chattering, finding it much easier to just follow the general line of her thoughts than to understand the avalanche of words that I was supposed to make sense of.
Eggs and bacon. I could cook eggs and bacon. "So you know what you're doing, yeah?" she asked nervously. I smiled, nodded and reached for an egg. She grinned as she got an idea. I could actually feel something click in her mind. "Wait there!" she squealed, running off to another part of the kitchen. I waited, standing there with an egg in my hand, and feeling stupid.
Soon enough Anna came back, a little boy bouncing along beside her. He felt so happy...I just couldn't believe it and stood there staring. He saw me and grinned. "Hi! My name's Olaf!" I grinned back, regaining control of myself.
"Hi, my name's Taelor." His eyes went wide.
"Your phone talks for you?" he gasped, delighted. I nodded.
"Olaf, I want you to help Taelor today, okay? It's his first day here and it's all a bit new for him," Anna said. Olaf grinned and hopped up onto a stool next to me.
"Cool," he said. "I can do that."
I suppressed a sigh. The kid was obviously hyper and his mind was buzzing with curiosity. As Anna vanished back into the kitchen, Olaf asked his first questions. "How old are you? Do you still go to school? Where do you live? Have you always wanted to work in a café?"
The lunch rush was just over and I was taking my first break of the morning, sipping a coffee and eating a bacon and egg baguette. Olaf was sitting next to me, having devoured his own lunch in seconds. He has realised that he could only ask one question at a time, but he hadn't quite realised that I could only answer yes or no with my phone in my pocket.
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" he asked. I nodded.
"Sisters?" I shook my head.
"You have brothers?" he squealed. "How many? Hans had twelve brothers, you know. Do you have twelve brothers?" I shook my head. Hans? Who the hell is he?
"How many?" I held up one finger.
"Oh." He looked sad for a moment, but then brightened. "What's his name?" I sighed. "I know lots of names. Max? Mark? Alex? Joshua? Luke? Sean? Colin? Christopher?" I sighed again as he continued listing names. This is going to be one long lunch break.
I reached for my phone, but it wasn't in my pocket. I panicked, whirling around. Not at my workstation either. I glanced around the kitchen, momentarily distracted by Olaf tugging at my sleeve. "What's wrong?" he asked. Oh hell. How do I tell him?
Frantically I mimed typing into my phone. He didn't understand. "It's okay. I can guess your brother's name." I paused, really wishing that I could yell and then mimed writing something down. He grinned. "Good idea! Wait there!" he called, dashing off.
Five panic-filled minutes later and he appeared again, holding a notepad and pen. I grabbed them and scrawled across the paper, I've lost my phone. Olaf frowned.
"It's important?" he asked cautiously.
Yes! I need it to talk to people!
"You're talking to me fine," he objected.
It takes too long and I need my phone for other reasons too. He shrugged.
"Okay," he said, grinning. "It's like hide and seek, right?" He grabbed my hand, leading me through the kitchen. I shook my head, wondering why he was so weirdly happy all the time.
I went to Arendelle Café every day at this time. There was no point going any earlier because Anna wouldn't be able to talk to me because it was so busy at lunchtime. Leave it until one o'clock though, and it was much quieter.
I went in through the back door – everybody knew me there so no one objected. I exchanged nods with the kitchen staff, waiting for Anna. She appeared briefly in the doorway. "I'll be just one minute!" she shouted, disappearing again before I can reply. I smiled slightly and shook my head. Good to know that some things never change.
As I waited I let my gaze wander around the room, noticing what had changed since the last time I had been in there. I was normally at university during the day, and I had a job at the library in the evening, so the only time that I could really come was during the weekends and I had had too much work to do that recently. The day before had been an uncommon evening off, but Anna had persuaded me to go since it was my birthday. She had then sprung a surprise party on me. I was still astonished over how many people had shown up, and the sheer amount of chocolate that had I managed to eat.
As I gazed around, I noticed a phone sat on the side. I frowned and picked it up, wondering who had lost it. Just then Olaf burst through the door, dragging someone behind him. "Elsa!" he exclaimed. "You found it!"
"Found what?" I asked. Olaf skidded to a stop in front of me.
"Taelor's phone!" he said, as though it was obvious. I glanced at Taelor, guessing he was the boy from last night.
I didn't mean to stare at him, but I ended up doing so anyway. He was about my age and a couple of inches taller than me, but still not Kristoff's height. He was dressed casually in hoodie, jeans and scruffy trainers, and wearing a blue apron. He had long black hair that he was nervously brushing out of emerald green eyes. Very bright emerald eyes, in fact...
He looked at me searchingly and I snapped back into reality. "Here," I said, handing him back his phone. He smiled and typed something into it.
"Thanks," the phone said. I jumped, then smiled nervously.
"His phone talks, Elsa," Olaf said, jumping up and down. "Isn't it cool?"
"Certainly surprising," I muttered, faintly embarrassed.
I reluctantly followed Olaf through the kitchen to the back door. I had just about given up finding my phone and was instead drafting an apology to Jon in my head, when Olaf burst through the door. "Elsa!" he shouted. "You found it!"
I tuned out their conversation and focused on Elsa. She was a little shorter than me, I noticed, and she had long blonde hair in a plait over one shoulder and ice blue eyes. She was wearing a light blue blouse, smart black trousers, posh black boots and...gloves? In this weather?
I heard Olaf mention me and she glanced up, looking me up and down. I brushed my hair out of my eyes nervously and gave her a weak grin, suddenly conscious of my scruffy trainers and my fraying hoodie. She was dressed perfectly.
She held out my phone, snapping me out of my trance. I smiled, taking it and typing, "Thanks." She jumped at the voice coming out of my phone and seemed embarrassed when Olaf explained. I was trying to think of something to 'say' when Anna entered.
"Elsa, sorry I was so long. Taelor! I see you've met my sister. How is your first day?" I smiled politely and started typing, but she barely waited for my reply. "Did Olaf pester you too much?" she asked, glancing at him. I shook my head, but her attention was already diverted to Olaf, who was telling her all about me.
I winced as he went into a particularly detailed rendition of my epic cooking failure earlier – how was I supposed to know that it's practically impossible to flip two pancakes at once? – and glanced at Elsa. She was smiling gently at Olaf and Anna, patiently waiting for them to finish. She looked up and noticed me looking at her. I quickly typed a question.
"Does he always talk this much?" I asked. She smiled slightly, but I knew that she was taken aback by my question.
"Only when he meets someone interesting," she answered. I smiled.
"So I'm just lucky then?"
There it was again! I searched deeper, fascinated. Despite her smile she felt uncomfortable talking to me. Is that because I'm me? I wondered, Or does she just generally feel uncomfortable talking to people, like I do?
Anna stood up and noticed our conversation, but unusually for her, she was tactful and didn't mention it. "Come on then, Elsa!" she said, linking her arm with mine. "Let's go shopping!" I smiled apologetically at Taelor, and not just out of politeness. I was uneasy talking to him, but I was also interested. He was so different to everyone else.
Anna smiled mischievously at me as we left the café. "So," she said. "What did he say?" I shrugged.
"He was asking about Olaf," I replied.
"And...?"
"And nothing. That was it."
"Of course it was," she laughed. "Come on, Elsa, I know you. You like him, don't you?"
"He's interesting," I said defensively, before realising that I had just admitted that I liked him.
"Very handsome," Anna said.
"I didn't notice," I replied.
"Lovely jade-green eyes."
"They were more emerald, I thought." I groaned as she laughed again. "Let's just go shopping," I said, feeling myself blush, and walking faster. Anna ran to catch up, laughing the whole while.