It was a Wednesday like any other. Lydia Rice’s mother had told her that she was going to drop off a latte for Lydia that morning. Lydia left chemistry class and headed down the Atrium stairs to pick up her latte from the front office.
She had been waiting for it all morning. Little did she know someone else would be enjoying her latte today.
“I walked in, it was the first day back from break,” the culprit explains. As she was making her way through the door she noticed an untouched, mouth-watering latte just sitting there on the counter. The culprit looked around to see if anyone had their attention on the latte.
“I wanted it,” the culprit said, “so I grabbed it and went about my day.”
Disclaimer- this is a reenactment of the latte theft, and no lattes were stolen in the making of this photo.
Moments later Lydia entered the office and asked if her mother had dropped off her Latte yet. Joannie, the women in the front office looked up from her computer. “Oh yeah,” she replied, “it’s right over there.”
She pointed to the counter where the latte had been left, but it was empty. The only thing you could see was droplets of water in a circle that mimicked the round bottom of the latte.
“It was sitting right there,” Joannie said, confused. The latte had been swiped from right under her nose.
Lydia stared at the empty counter thinking. “Oh my gosh,” she said, “someone stole my latte!”
Lydia’s mind raced, thinking of who would take her latte. She was in shock, and in denial that someone would have the audacity to take it. She walked back up to chemistry with an empty hand and an empty heart.
Lydia entered the classroom with a blank look on her face. “Where’s your latte?” a classmate asked her as she walked by.
Lydia stopped walking and turned her head around and said, “Someone stole it.” She daydreamed of someone savoring and enjoying her latte throughout the class. Her eyes squinted, and her jaw clenched at the very thought.
Something had to be done about this. She needed justice, so that was exactly what she was going to get.
Later on that day Lydia saw the principal.
“Steven, I have a mission for you,” she said, half-jokingly, half serious. Steven, thinking that this was probably a non-important thing replied with
“Okay, what is it?”
Lydia looked at him with determination in her eyes and said,
“You gotta look at the security cameras because someone stole my latte.” She didn’t think that Steven would really look at the cameras.
Meanwhile, as the day went on, a democratic roots classroom was interrupted by Steven. He pulled out a young sophomore from the class and said sternly
“You took a latte.”
The culprit was shocked that her identity had been revealed.
“Oh my god, I remember that,” she said, “my dad told me he brought me one.” The blood flushed through her face as she realized that she had been caught. She wasn’t very fazed about stealing the latte until she found out who it had belonged to.
“If I had known who it belonged to, I definitely wouldn’t have taken it.”
Later in the day,` Steven stopped by Lydia’s calculus class to let her know that he had “solved the mystery,” and that the thief would be bringing her a latte the following morning.
