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A low groan rings out inside the otherwise empty donut shop, the sound bouncing off the walls and reverberating right back at her. Her hair limp and frazzled, and the cut under her right eye just beginning to scar, Sadie Miller flops face first across the counter like a mannequin who had their strings cut. This job is often slow and lonely, that’s a given fact. That’s expected. That’s normal. But with Lars (understandably) a no-show it may as well be her cosmic punishment, she muses, just how lonely today is fated to be.
Her muscles cry out as she lays there motionless, stringy hair fanning out around her like a broken halo. Oh gosh, does her body ache. Remind her to never go fishing with a spear ever again for as long as she lives.
As she leans upright again, she catches a familiar glimpse of salmon pink and blue sprinting across the sand at full speed in a pair of flimsy flip flops, in her opinion his most extraordinary superpower of all. Hah. Of course her first customer would be him. He may not come for a donut every day, but when he does it’s like clockwork, arriving almost exactly five minutes after they open, clothed in the same faded pair of jeans and star shirt she’s always seen him in. She can’t judge. She’s no stranger to seeking the comforts of routine too, after all.
Sadie watches as he finally reaches the shop entrance, hand excitedly grabbing the handle. And like a burst of sunshine emerging from between the murky grey clouds, the young boy swings the door open wide, face alight with a level of enthusiasm that before, she didn’t even think was humanly possible on an overcast Monday morning. It’s almost as if the stiff, stagnant air in this establishment grows a degree more bearable with his presence.
“Gooooood morning, fellow castaway!” he chimes, and skips all the way across the laminate to the display case she stands behind. He puffs out his chest, and slaps a slightly crumpled pair of dollar bills down on the counter. “I’m here for my usual!”
“Hah, hi Steven,” she says with a faint smile, and slides the offered cash next to the register. “Gimme a sec, let me grab that for you... chocolate and caramel swirl right?”
He nods enthusiastically.
Smiling despite herself, (Steven simply has that effect on people, she’s found), Sadie grabs a napkin out of the dispenser sitting atop the refrigerated glass case. The kid bounces in place as she reaches in and purposefully picks the donut with the most caramel drizzled on it of the whole bunch, her way of thanking him for his energetic presence on a lonely morning and for helping rescue her and Lars from that remote island. She hopes he can understand her silent message.
She passes the donut over to him. With a starry eyed grin, he eagerly begins munching on it. Gathering his crumpled bills in her hand, she cracks open the appropriate drawer of the cash register, and deposits them into their rightful place. His mouth full, Steven speaks again.
“So is Lars watching movies in the back again, or?”
“Nope, just me today!” she says, chest growing heavier as she speaks that reality into existence, outwardly acknowledges it herself. “He‘s out sick. Which is probably code for ‘slept in,’ but honestly I don’t have the heart to call him on it any more.” Her mood plummets right alongside her body as she sinks forward against the counter, cheeks squishing against her forearms. “I messed up bad, Steven.”
“Whatdya’ mean?”
“With... y’know, with Lars. You saw it. I feel so terrible! He genuinely didn’t want to be there, and I tricked him into it! I trapped us there!” she exclaims, throwing her arms out. Sighing heavily, she clunks her forehead against the counter, ignoring the mild pain blossoming between her temples in response. “Oh, well,” she mutters, desperately blinking back the burgeoning tears for this kid’s sake. Taking a deep breath, she threads her fragile self together again, pushing herself upright. “Can’t change the past now. I just hope he’s doin’ okay. I wanted to apologize this morning, but of course he didn’t come in.”
Steven gawks at her with rapt attention, his eyes blown just as wide listening to her ordinary human problems as they were when faced with deadly Gem monster danger two days ago.
She purses her lips, twirling a stray strand of hair between fidgety fingers. “Maybe I’ll call him tonight, I dunno...”
“I bet you’ll figure it out!” he says, so earnest, so innocently. Oh, how she misses those days. “You both care for each other a whole lot. I’m sure if you’re honest about what happened and how sorry you feel he’ll understand.”
“Well,” she says with a small laugh, “you’ve got a bit more hope than me, but I guess I can at least try. Anyways, what’s going on in your life lately? Go on any more magic missions since you got back?”
A shake of the head. “Not really. They’re all kinda twitchy after we were stuck on that island for a week.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Oh, but... my birthday’s close! It’s on Thursday. And Amethyst said she’d take me to this super cool jungle temple as my present!”
“Hah, that sounds awesome! How old are you gonna be, again?”
Thought subtle, Steven‘s face flushes. He lets out a soft laugh as he runs his hand through his dark curls, voice tinged with a sense of self consciousness uncharacteristic of his typical demeanor. “Thirteen,” he says. “Pretty wild, right?”
She smiles at the revelation, remembering with great clarity how exciting it felt to hit that long-awaited milestone when she stood in his shoes. “Finally a teenager, huh? Nice!“
The kid (although she can’t really call him a kid anymore, can she, with this new knowledge?) seems strangely taken aback by this response. He narrows his eyes at her.
“Wait, you’re not, like... surprised?”
“About what?”
“Well, I don’t usually tell people my age anymore,” he ventures. “Most people just assume I’m a little kid. I think Mr. Smiley thinks I’m eight, or something?” His mouth falls into a lopsided frown, and he shrugs rather pensively. “I don’t know how to respond to stuff like that, so after a while I stopped talking about it.”
Sadie pauses for a moment, considering her words carefully. It’s true, Steven does look far, far younger than she’d generally assume a preteen to. But his age, almost thirteen, holds up. He’s grown up in this town alongside her all his life. She has clear memory of Mr. Universe hauling around a baby when she was just starting kindergarten, of watching Steven dash around the boardwalk in too-big t-shirts when her mother was dragging her to softball practices. He looks young, and he (very) often acts young, but there’s nevertheless an air of newfound maturity about him that grows with each and every day, maturity that would never exist in the hands of a hyperactive eight-year-old boy. So obviously he’s grown older in some manner. If even a little.
Come to think of it, it’s almost as if he only stopped physically aging, after a certain point. The three who take care of him, the Gems, they’ve never aged a day in all the years she’s known about them. Perhaps Steven having a gemstone like them leaves him partially subject to the same laws they are. Perhaps he’s just... destined to age slowly. But hey, she knows personally that there’s no shame in that.
“Just means you look a little young for your age, nothing wrong with that,” she says. With a light chuckle, she continues, leaning her chin against her hand. “Heh, y’know, people actually thought I was a fifth grader in my first year of high school. Comes with being short and having chubby cheeks, I guess.”
The glint of light in his irises is one filled with shades of hope. “Y’think so?”
“Trust me, you’ll fare all right in the end,” she nods. And hey, at least it means we’ll look younger longer, right?”
Steven’s normally bright expression falters for a short while, plunging deep into a chasm of melancholy that- if she’s honest- is jarring to see reflected on his youthful face. Faint stress lines appear under his eyes as he speaks, his voice cracking with the promise of suppressed emotion.
“Yeah... it sure will, huh.”
And then in a flash, he bounces right back into his chipper attitude as if he’d never slipped away from it a second in his life.
“But hey, thanks for listening, Sadie!” he says, grinning. “And for this delicious donut, which I have now devoured. May it rest in peace,” he whispers, giving the empty napkin in his hands a kiss. “Anyways, I gotta dash now! See you later! Good luck with calling Lars, if you do decide to do that, okay, byyye!”
With a wave, the preteen exits the Big Donut with the same level of vim and vigor he carried in minutes earlier.
Sadie steadily blows air through her lips as she watches him disappear around the side of the cliff, grounding herself. Back to a quiet, lonely morning, she thinks. But as she grabs the broom perched in the back corner, preparing to clean up the crumbs he left on the floor, somehow she doesn’t feel quite as lonely as before.