A record to be broken

It was a quiet morning as Edwin and Alisha were enjoying their coffee, it was their normal ritual, they were usually accompanied by Ellie but she was nowhere to be found and she wouldn’t return and text messages.

“So how was your weekend,” asked Alisha purely out of politeness, while also staring at her phone, she was like that before she got coffee.

“It was pretty good, I had to-”

Out of nowhere, the door burst open and Ellie came running towards the group. 

“Hey sorry I’m late, but we have to go, We’ve only got a month left to do this!” she said gasping for air mid words but still being incredibly loud.

“Do what?” said Edwin.

“The project I’ve been planning this whole time. I’ve talked to you about it.”

“That cookie thing, I thought that was just a joke,” said Alisha

“Well it’s not a joke, I’m very serious, look into my eyes. I’ve worked all night making the blueprints about how we are going to do the heating if we try hard enough we could finish it within 24 hours. I think it’s well within our budget, not accounting for the thousand dollars we’ll have to-” 

“What do you mean we, I have-” Alisha interrupted Ellie.

“Wait what’s this about cookies.”Now Edwin was the one doing the interrupting.

Ellie sighed and turned her head.

 “We are going to bake the world’s largest cookie, we could be in the Guinness book of world records, we will be famous and all that jazz if only we go right now!.”

“Wow, that sounds amazing.” Edwin said in a sarcastic glee, then his expression turned back to serious and confused: “But why, why are you doing this, why all of a sudden.”

“It’s not all of a sudden, and I wanted this year to be “my year” but it got totally ruined, but I’m not going to let it stop me from completing my bucket list for this year. Are you guys in or not?”

“Well-”

“Of course you’re in let’s go!”

“Go where.” Edwin still confused

“Shopping, we need dough, let's go now!”

“But we haven’t finished our coffee.”

“Coffee can wait, dough can’t.”

Alisha slams her hand on the table.

“You might make me come with you on this stupid escapade but you sure as hell won’t deprive me of my much-needed caffeine, so you either wait or you’re going alone.”

Ellie sighed and sat down.

She acted just like a small child, sat in her chair with her arms crossed and a quiver in her lip.

After 5 minutes of complete silence between the group.

“Ok,” Alisha exclaimed

‘You done?’ glee filled her face

“Yup.”

“We’re going.” an even bigger smile stretched across her face

“Yup.” Alisha emotionless as she picks up her stuff

“Let's go. To my car!”

As they exited the coffee shop they came to a stop.

“Where is it?” Ellie exclaimed, with

“I don’t know I parked it on the road here- ohh.”

“Al, we’re taking your car.”

“I’m sorry but I am not going to have hundreds of pounds of cookie dough in my Benz.”

“It’s not hundreds it’s thousands.”

“What! I highly doubt that the store has even a fraction of that much.”

“Only one way to find out and it will be a great way to also find out how much cookie dough can fit in your car, double experiment, two birds with one stone come on let’s go.”

They entered the nearest retail store and Ellie ran up to a worker, who was stocking up the bottom shelf.

“We’ll need all your cookie dough.”

“I’m sorry?” said the young shy girl responded

“Oh sorry let me rephrase it. We want to buy all the chocolate chip cookie dough that you have in stock.”

It was obvious the worker didn’t have much experience in customer service, by the fact that she was surprised by the stupidity of the question and her overall interest to help.

“I. um let me ask the manager.”

“Come on Ellie this is ridiculous,” said Edwin exhausted at this point.

After half a minute or so the girl came back.

“That what’s on the shelves is all we have as of right now, mam.”

Ellie made a quick glance at the aisle.

“This isn't even close to how much I need.”

“We should be getting a new shipment next week.”

“I don't need it till next week, I need it now.”

Alisha and Edwin just stared at her audacity.

Ellie sighed: “Fine we’ll take it, Alisha hold the cart.”

She started throwing the dough in the cat, cleaning the shelf, and knocking them into the cart. A little mountain formed in the cart. 

The cashier just gave them a blank stare as they went into the checkout and Edwin and Alisha  followed it up with one that said “We know!”

“Why don’t you make it yourself, on that it would be cheaper,” Edwin asked as they were trying to fit the massive quantities of packaged cookie dough in the trunk of his car.

“Because I want it to be a chocolate chip cookie.”

“Why don’t you just add chunks of chocolate?”

“I did the math, and I know what I’m doing. Plus I have loved this brand ever since I was a kid, I think having premade dough would be the surest option, I don’t want to mess it up, if I’m going to eat a world record cookie then at least it has to taste good.”

“Wait, You’re planning on eating it?”

“Yeah that’s the point of a cookie”

“I mean won't it be outside, and it will take a long time to eat so it doesn't seem like the healthiest option.”

“The previous record-holder gave it out to people to eat, so why can’t  I ?!”

“Do you even know what you are doing?”

“Of course I know, well at least I hope so.”

“You hope so?”

“Where are you going to build this thing,” said Alisha

“In Edwin’s backyard.”

“WHAT!?!” screamed Edwin, turning around to face Ellie who was seated in the back seat.”

“What, it’s big enough and plus, you owe me.” The car started to drift on the other lane, while Edwin just sighed and turned back.

“I guess you’re right.”

Alisha burst into laughter

“Hahahaha are you seriously going to let her make that near your house.”

“I have no choice, she is right I do owe her, I just never thought that I’d repay her like this.”

“What did she do that requires this kind of payment.”

“None of your business that’s what”

Ellie pops her head between the two front seats.

“Well if you want to know, he caught-”

“Hey hey hey! No talking about this end of discussion.”

The three of them continued on their way, visiting multiple retail stores and emptying them fully out of their supply of chocolate chip cookie dough and aluminum foil. They made multiple trips between Edwin's house and the different stores. When the car stopped in front of Edwin's home for the last time, Ellie was the first one to get out of the car and enthusiastically said.

“Here we are, on the frontier of making history.”

Edwin lived in a more desolate neighborhood, where every home had enormous plots of land...

Just like them, he had a huge backyard. He inherited the home from his grandfather but still doesn’t know what to do with all the space he has. He always thought he could make something really big in it but never really knew what.

“So what’s the plan now?” asked Alisha

“The first step is to place the aluminum we got on the ground to create a makeshift pan. It would have been better if we were to line the ground with gravel but we’re short on time. For step two we will need propane heaters ”

“Where are we gonna get those.”

“The hardware store of course.”

“What do you mean you don't have 30 of them.”

“Sorry mam, the most we have are 20.” said the overly patient receptionist.

“Why in the world would you only have 20, what if someone wanted to buy 50, seems to me like bad business practice.

“I highly doubt that anyone will buy that many propane heaters.”

Ellie just sighed.

“Fine, I’ll take ‘em. Anywhere else in this town where they sell them.”

“Nope.”

“Ughh why does this always happen to me.”

“Don’t worry we can just order it online.” Edwin tried to reassure her.

“I don’t have that kind of time, you know that! Let’s just set everything in place and break this stupid record.”

Alisha chimed in “Girl, we don’t even have enough dough. How do you expect this to break a world record.” 

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought”

“Wait, I have an idea.” a lightbulb had just gone off in Edwin’s head.

“What if instead of making the biggest overall cookie, we made the cookie with the biggest area in the world. We would make it incredibly thin that way we can maximize the total area while using the dough we already have.”

“Screw that we're not quitters, go big or go home.” Ellie tried to sway them.

“I’m with Ed on this one, you gotta start realizing this ain't realistic,” said Alisha.

“Fine, we’ll have it your way.”

After more than two hours of placing down aluminum foil and applying the thinnest layers of cookie dough, they were done with the preparation phase. But as it was winter, the night quickly came and the three friends were forced to use flashlights. After placing the propane heaters it was very clear that they weren’t enough, at that moment Ellie somehow managed to convince them that it would be a great idea to do the rest of the heating with blow dryers. 

“How does it take this long to heat up, it’s like 2 centimeters thin,” Edwin said.

At this point, his vision adapted to the night, like a cat, so he just continued without his flashlight

“Keep blowing we’re almost done.” proclaimed Ellie

“My back is starting to really hurt from all this bending.”

“Fight through the pain soldier, just think about the glory of what awaits, when we finally make the biggest cookie by area in recorded history.”

“This is going to be one awful cookie,” said Alisha

“It probably is,” admitted Ellie

“Are you sure you're going to eat this? We have been standing on it all this time”

“Every last crumb.

After an hour, the cookie had gotten a nice brown color, it might have looked appetizing to someone unaware of its production method.

“Are we.. are we done, I can’t believe we are actually done.” Edwin proclaimed as his blow dryer fell out of his hand out of pure joy.

“Hmm, it appears so,” Ellie said, still not satisfied with the results

“Finally. Now what?” Alisha said, completely tired out.

 “Aren’t you going to call the Guinness book of world record or something?”

“I guess so.” Said Ellie, “To be honest I didn’t really know what I’ll do after, I just wanted to do something big with you guys.”

“Aww,” said Edwin

“Are you sure you want to show them this because, to be honest, it’s really bad

“I mean, it could be worse.”

“You can see our footprints on it.”  Alisha shone a light over the giant cookie.

“I’m pretty confident in our work. I promise you once they try it they’ll certify me in no time.”

“El, you can’t feed this to people,” Alisha said in complete solemnity.

“I’m sure it’s fine. In fact, I'm going to try a small piece right now.”

She then proceeded to break a small piece out of the giant disc, even though it was a nice brown on the outside, the inside was gooey. Strings of dough held onto that piece as she pulled it.

“Oh my god, it's raw.” Edwin expressed his shock.

“How can that be? We made it as thin as possible.”

“Don’t worry it's just a little texture, you know, crunchy on the outside chewy on the inside.” Ellie tried to hide her doubt.

“Please don’t eat it, I think you might get salmonella.”

Ellie slowly brought the chunk to her mouth, while she did try to express confidence in her work, you could see her arm trembling and hesitating with every movement. As she brought it just before her lips, she paused.

“I can’t do this.” she threw the piece away

“Finally nice to see you come to your senses” Alisha was relieved.

“I guess I just didn’t want to admit I was wrong. I don’t know why I even did this. I wasted so much money.”

Ellie quickly started to tear up, and in a moment burst into full-on crying, as she covered her face with the inside of her elbow.

“Hey listen it’s OK, at least we had fun.” Tried to comfort her. “I think, did we had, right?” he looked over to Alisha who just had no response.

Ellie started crying even more.

“Hey, hey, hey listen... It’s better to have tried something even if it is a complete mess than to never do anything.”

“I wasted your time, I just dragged you all into this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Alisha learned a little so she could be eye level with Ellie.

“Listen, we don’t care, we’re your friends, we would follow you to the end of the earth if we had to. Now let’s go inside, it’s freezing.”

“I love you guys,” Ellie said with her snot quavering voice.

“We love you too.” Edwin and Alisha said in unison.