Free Ellie Quin Book 2: The World According to Ellie Quin by Alex Scarrow Page B

line; a scruffy looking old man who smiled with a lecherous twinkle in his eyes.
    She mustered her best Miss Cheerful singsong voice.
    ‘Good morning, how can I help you sir?’
    ‘Can I have some more sauce, please, love.’
    *
    Their lunch break was mid-afternoon, after the usual midday torrent had settled down to a steady trickle of business. The restaurant was just ticking over with one or two of the counter staff still serving whilst the rest of the girls hurried out to enjoy their twenty minute break.
    Ellie and Jez wandered across the plaza and found a street vendor selling coffee and meatie-flasties. They sat down on a bench towards the edge of the plaza to enjoy a view of the hazy city as they ate their lunch. The sinking afternoon sun from the baking clay-orange world outside, cast a strong peach hue through the foggy dome and across the shimmering urban skyline. Every now and then, the flash of reflected sunlight off the hood of an aircar, or the metallic flanks of a skyhound.
    ‘I’m really not sure I can do this counter job,’ said Jez after her first bite.
    Ellie wasn’t entirely surprised. Every now and then, when things were a little less busy she had been checking to see how Jez was doing. And it seemed every time she had looked across, Jez had her back to the counter, was scowling furiously and was muttering something under her breath.
    ‘I’m used to being ogled at. I can handle that, Ellie. It’s just this stupid daggy pompom that’s really getting under my skin. I feel like a complete cret’.’ Jez turned to her. ‘You know how I look is important to me, don’t you?’
    Ellie nodded. ‘I know.’ Jez was singularly the vainest person she had ever met in her short life.
    ‘Did you know, they don’t wear this kind of crud at any of the other StarBreaks? Did you know that?’
    Ellie shook her head, ‘I thought that was standard counter uniform.’
    ‘Yeah, well, what
you’re
wearing is. But the skirt thing and the pompom thing is Noah’s big idea. Dirty old sod. It’s…it’s…’ Jez took another bite out of her meatie-flasty, barely tasting the soyo-tang filling.
    ‘Demeaning?’ offered Ellie.
    Jez’s eyebrows furrowed, ‘if that means it makes me look like a complete idiot, then yes.’
    They watched a skyhound approach the plaza and then disgorge several dozen people onto a bubble-stop nearby, before sailing gracefully down to join a traffic stream below them.
    ‘I’m going to ask Noah if he can move me to some other job. It’s those shavs that gather outside; those cocky young boys that get under my skin the most. Little…little runts think they can hit on me, just because I’m dressed like a fregging bunny rabbit.’
    ‘Well, you could see if Noah will let you work in deliveries. You know they get paid a commission per delivery, so the more you can deliver, the more you’ll get.’
    Jez nodded unenthusiastically. ‘Yeah, I suppose I could.’
    ‘And you get to wear the normal version of the uniform.’
    ‘Bonus,’ replied Jez.
    Ellie thought about it some more. ‘Actually, I could cherry-pick your orders.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Give you orders grouped closely together…so that you can take more than one at a time. You know this part of the city like the back of your hand, right?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘You know all the shortcuts. We could really stack your deliveries. I’ll give you all the ones in the same area, and you could do two or three customers with each run. I think it’s like a cred per delivered order that Noah pays out in delivery bonus. You could be earning two or three creds every twenty minutes, that’s another nine creds per hour.’
    Jez sat upright and stared at her. ‘On top of my basic pay….that’s…that’s-’
    ‘Fifteen and a half per hour,’ replied Ellie. ‘Not bad, uh?’
    ‘Ellie-girl,’ Jez said, grasping her narrow shoulders with both hands. ‘You may not be a cutie-chik, but you are most definitely the brains of