We were decorating sugar cookies for a bridal show that was being held at the stately brick hotel across the street.
Cassie shook her head. "Oh, it was definitely real."
So far, I'd learned nothing, except that Cassie was still insisting that the fight was a physical one, and not just some verbal altercation.
I gave her a pleading look. "Just tell me the whole story, okay? You said you saw it. But what happened?"
"Alright, let me start from the beginning. You know how the ice machine's been on the fritz lately?"
I nodded. As her only part-time employee, Ididknow. At the cookie shop, we sold not only baked goods, but smoothies when the weather was warm enough to justify it.
Smoothies needed ice, sometimes, lots of ice. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, Cassie's ice machine had died a long, noisy death, and she hadn't yet replaced it.
"Right," I said. "And?"
"So, youalsoknow that I've been buying all of my ice from that dispenser near the beach, right?"
Again, I nodded. Occasionally, it wasmegetting the ice. This involved lugging a blue, plastic cooler – luckily, a coolerwithwheels – four blocks to the beach and back again.
I didn't mind. It was actually sort of fun. But what this had to do with the fight, I had no idea. "So…?" I prompted.
"So," Cassie continued, "I'm there, filling the cooler, and I see Derek at the hot dog stand. And there's this huge line behind him." She paused. "You know which stand I mean, right?"
"Yeah." I made a forwarding motion with my hand. "Duffy's Dogs, I know."
She gave me a look. "Hey, don't get all impatient. It's relevant to the story."
I gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry."
She reached for a tube of icing and began drawing pink flowers on the cookies that I'd just frosted. "So you know the guy who owns the stand, right?"
"Yeah. Duffy." I wasn't a huge hot dog fan, but I'd chatted with him a few times. He seemed like a nice guy.
"Right," Cassie said, "but that day, it's not Duffy manning the stand. It's his son, Spencer."
I tried to think. "Skinny kid? Maybe in junior high?"
Cassie nodded. "Right. That's him. He works the stand sometimes, you know, on weekends and stuff."
I did know. But I still didn't know why this mattered. "And?"
"And, like I said, there's this huge line." She frowned. "And guess who's at the front."
"Who?" I asked.
"Derek." Cassie looked up. "And he's with Angelina the Skank. You know her, right?"
Angelina DeLotta? Did I ever. I'd gone to high school with Angelina. She was loud, obnoxious, and very popular, in that easy good-time sort of way. "Yeah, I know her."
"Doesn't everyone," Cassie said. "Anyway, Derek's totally giving Spencer a hard time."
"How?" I asked.
"Oh, you know. The usual stuff." She gave it some thought. "Like, from what I heard, he'd already rejected like five hot dogs before I'd even got there."
I felt my brow wrinkle. "Rejected? What do you mean?"
"Well, from the bits people told me after, he was like, 'This one's overdone.Thisone's not done enough.Thisone's got a mashed-up bun…"
