The Empty Lemonade Stand

Rachael loves to write.  Her teacher is always raving to me about her writing and sharing with me the latest thing Rachael has written.  She expects Rachael to pass with a Pass-Advanced on the writing portion of her SOLs and told me the other day that she would love to see Rachael become published someday.  Rachael agrees.  She writes all the time at home, too, and I have many stories from her.  Her best is this macabre zombie apocalypse story she wrote that maybe I will share another time. This time I will share a short story she wrote for school about a lemonade stand the kids had in our driveway last year.

Standing with the jellyfish she painted on the school mural before the wall was torn down for the remodel.

The Empty Lemonade Stand

     I paced back and forth along the edge of the table, Trevor set and reset paper cups, and Ariel whined about how much she wanted an icy pop.

     "No!" Trevor snapped at her.

     Stress and tension was a thick cloud in the hot, humid air.  We had had no customers at our lemonade stand!  Not one person had walked by to buy an icy cold cup of fresh lemonade!  Then our first customer rode up on his bike.  Trevor stopped stacking cups, Ariel stopping whining and I sat down.  We smiled and asked him what he would like.

     "Hmm," he thought as he looked at our short menu, "I'll take a glass of lemonade."

     I grabbed a cup and raced to the jug of lemonade.  I watched as it drained into the cup.  Ice cold in my hand, I raced back to the front of the table with it.  I was careful not to spill a single drop as I put the cup on the table.

     "50 cents please," I told him.

     He pulled out his backpack and dug around for some money.  Finally, he pulled his hand out and in it was what we thought was 50 cents.  Then he rode away with his lemonade in hand.  When he was out of sight we counted our money.  To our disappointment he had only given us 15 cents!  After a long day of hard work we  went inside with our earnings, 15 cents for a cup of 50 cent lemonade.