Surplus

Surplus had not always known the difference.

When she was small, she ran her first lemonade stand and took in thirty coins. She felt enormously proud and told everyone she'd made thirty coins. Then her dad reminded her, very gently, that he'd bought the lemons, the sugar and the cups for her, and that had cost twenty-two. She'd made eight.

Eight felt so much smaller than thirty that she wanted to cry, and then she felt silly for wanting to.

Her dad sat beside her on the step. "Eight is real," he said. "Thirty was the money that came in. Eight is the money that stayed. The money that stays is what you can save, or spend, or use to make next week's stall better." He handed her a pencil. "Always write down every cost, even the little ones. Then take them away. What's left is the surplus."

She liked that word so much she kept it.

When she was old enough, Surplus came to VentureQuest, because it was a place for learning how to run something well.

The mentor met her at the gate. "What do you bring?"

"Two jars," said Surplus. "One for money coming in, and one for what's left after the costs. People get excited about the big jar. I make sure they look at the small one."

The mentor smiled. "You belong here."

So Kai sat down with Surplus and her pencil.

"Ingredients were fifteen coins," he said. "My sister was eight. The stall fee was five. Bags were two." He added them up. "That's thirty."

"And you took in forty," said Surplus.

"So forty take away thirty," said Kai slowly. "Ten. I made ten coins of profit, not forty." His face fell a little, then he frowned and looked at the list. "But wait. If I bought the chocolate chips in a big bag, they'd be cheaper. And if I make bigger batches, the stall fee is the same no matter how many I sell." He looked up. "I could make more profit without even charging more."

"Now you're thinking like a business," said Surplus, warm and pleased. "The big jar tells you how well you sold. The small jar tells you how well you ran it."