The Cupcake Queen

by Heather Helper

  “I am,” I say, and I realize it’s the truth. I just hope I’m still here to go to it.

  Mr. Fish drives slowly, steering carefully through the deep ruts. Even so, we bounce around so much that I have to hang on to the handle above the door.

  When we reach the paved road, he turns to me.

  “Where to?” he asks. “Home or school?”

  “Actually, could you drop me at the bakery?” I ask. “I need to talk to my mom.”

  “Sure thing,” he says.

  When we pull up to the door, I thank him for the ride. “Sorry to take you away from your work,” I say.

  He waves the thought away. “It’s good for a guy to come back down to earth every once in a while. And this is a tasty destination.” He points to the

  bakery window. “I like that your mom named the place after you.” I look at him, surprised.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know,” he says. “You are The Cupcake Queen. It’s a well -deserved title, I must say.” He waves as he pulls away.

  The CLOSED sign is on the front door when he drops me off, so I have to go around to the back . It’s cold in the kitchen. My mother is sitting with her

  back to me, her head in her hands.

  I take a deep breath. “I want to know what’s going on,” I say before I have a chance to lose my nerve.

  My mother turns to look at me. Her eyes are puffy

  and red. She sniffs slightly and tries to smile but can’t quite make it happen. “Hi,” I say. It comes out soft. Almost a whisper.

  “Hi,” she says just as quietly.

  “You’re back early.”

  She looks at me and then at the clock over the sink. “You’re out of school early.” I sit down on the stool across from the table without saying anything.

  She looks back down at the table. “I should have talked to you long ago.” She sniffs again and reaches into her pocket, pulling out a very crumpled

  tissue. “I was just waiting for the right time.”

  I almost ask why in five months there wasn’t a good time. But I keep my mouth shut. I want to hear what she’s been waiting so long to say. She takes a

  deep breath. “All these meetings your father and I’ve been having . . . they’re about you.” S he looks back up at me. She seems to be searching my face

  for something.

  “We’re moving back,” I say.

  She seems surprised. So surprised that I know I’m wrong. “No,” she says. “We aren’t.” She sniffs again into her tissue.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “Dad said—”

  “Penny.” She sighs. “Your father and I are getting a divorce.” And there it is. The announcement that I’ve been waiting for, bracing myself for. I wait for

  the tears to come, but they don’t. I just feel numb.

  “The meetings . . . your father wants you to come live with him,” she says, gazing just past me, like I’m already gone. “He said you and he talked about

  it.” She looks right at me, her eyes wet now. “He said you begged him to let you come back.” I feel off balance and grab onto the table for support. I think of the e-mails, the voice-mail messages.

  The conversation we had weeks ago. All that time I

  wanted us to go back. Not just me. I wanted all of us to be in the same place. I kept thinking if I could push their lives closer to each other, they’d figure out

  how to put our old life back together. But maybe this was as much as they could do. Half.

  “We have a good life here, don’t we?” Mom says.

  I nod. She’s right. Aside from a few things, it is a good life.

  “Is it that you miss your dad?”

  “I do miss him, but . . .” I shrug.

  “What is it, then, Penny?”

  “It’s just not the life I thought I’d have,” I say. I think about what Mr. Fish said about how sometimes life isn’t what you thought it would be. It’s just what it

  is.

  “I know. It isn’t for any of us,” my mother says. I see teardrops on the table in front of her. I want to say something that will make it stop hurting for her, but

  the gap between us has gotten so big that I don’t know how to reach her.

  “So, what now?” I ask.

  She sits up straighter, like she’s bracing herself. “It’s your decision,” my mother says. “At fourteen, it’s your choice.”

  “But, I’m not—”

  “You will be by the time all of this is done,” she says.

  “So, I’m just supposed to choose?” I ask. “Choose between my own parents?” If someone had asked me two months ago whether I wanted to stay here

  or move back to the City, it would have been a much easier choice. Then my mother would have been the only thing holding me here. Now? There are a

  lot of things. I just hope I haven’t wrecked some of those things forever.

  “I’ve gotta go somewhere right now, Mom, okay?”

  She stretches out her arm. “Don’t go, Penny. We just started talking. I know how hard this is on you,” she says.

  I shake my head. “You have no idea.”

  My mother looks down. “You’re right. I can only imagine.”

  I stand up and tuck my stool under the table. “I need to go,” I say.

  From the expression on her face, it looks like she thinks I’m talking about forever.

  “We’ll talk later, okay? I promise,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says.

  And this time we both mean it.

  chapter twenty-three

  Tally answers the door when I knock. “What do you want?” she asks.

  “Can you come out?”

  She looks at me for a moment, then—thankfully—she nods. “Give me a second,” she says, stepping back into the house. She returns quickly, zipping

  up her purple fleece. We walk slowly up the driveway toward the road. Tally doesn’t even pause as we pass the mailbox.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have talked to you the way I did. I was a jerk.”

  “You’re right,” she says, and I wince a little. We walk past the Cathances’ driveway, leaning into the wind. “But I shouldn’t have pushed you. I should have

  just let you tell me when the time was right.”

  “There’s never a good time to tell someone their parents are getting a divorce.” Now I sound like my mother.

  Tally looks over at me. “Divorced? Really?”

  “Yeah, my mom just told me,” I say. We walk past the Fishes’ driveway, then past Gram’s. As it starts to drizzle, I tell her my dad wants me to move in

  with him. “They say it’s my choice.”

  “You’ve been wanting out of Hog’s Hollow ever since you got here,” Tally says. Her voice is flat when she says it. I look at her, but she keeps her chin

  tucked into the neck of her fleece, watching the ground in front of her. “I guess you got what you wished for.”

  “I didn’t wish for this,” I say. We step off the road and make our way down toward the water. We stop, looking out past the point, where the lighthouse is

  making its slow turns, sending its beams into the fog. “Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be,” I say. “I mean, how am I supposed to choose between my

  own parents?”

  Tally stares out into the fog. “You just pick, I guess,” she says. Her voice is tight, like it hurts her to talk.

  I look over at her, but she won’t meet my gaze. “Tally, are you still mad at me?” I ask. “I said I was sorry.” Then it hits me. “If I move, I’ll still visit,” I say.

  Tally laughs, but like her words, it’s hard and sharp. “Penny, both of your parents want you to live with them. Having two people fighting over you is a

  good problem to have,” she says. “What if neither of them wanted you?” On her face, tears are mixing with the rain.

  “Tally, your dad is coming back. He’s just busy,” I say. “He’ll contact you
soon.” She shakes her head. “Now who’s spinning things?” She pushes her hand into the pocket of her fleece and pulls out an envelope that’s been folded in

  half. “The problem with spinning things is that you can get too good at it. You can make it seem real, so real that even you start to believe it. But

  underneath, the truth is still there.”

  She unfolds the envelope and hands it to me. I recognize Tally’s handwriting on the front, her careful letters, the slight upward slant. It’s addressed to

  someone with the same last name who lives in Seattle. Right over the address and her father’s name is a big red stamp. DELIVERY REFUSED.

  RETURN TO SENDER.

  “Tally . . . ,” I begin. I pause, not sure what to say. What kind of father does that to his daughter? “I’m so sorry.”

  Tally looks at me for a long moment, then out at the lighthouse on the point, its beams trying to cut through the fog. “It hurts,” she says. “A lot.”

  I just nod. Like my mother said to me, I can only imagine.

  “But, in a way it’s good,” she says. She laughs when she sees the shock on my face. “I’m not spinning. I swear,” she says, raising her right hand. “It’s just

  good to know where you stand, you know?”

  I think about my mom’s announcement and how long I’ve been waiting for it, dreading it. “I guess it is better to know for sure what you’re up against,” I

  say.

  “Yeah, better than hoping every day, just to get a nasty surprise.” She takes the envelope back from me, rips it up into little pieces, and throws them into

  the ocean.

  Watching the pieces float away seems to make her feel better. “Speaking of nasty surprises, find anything new in your locker today?” she asks.

  “I didn’t stay long enough to find out.” Then I tell her about Charity’s talk with me in the girls’ room.

  “Oh, well, at least the lard worked for a little while . . . ,” Tally says with an evil smile. Then she sees the worry on my face. “You know, there’s only one

  way for you to find out what’s going on with Marcus.”

  “I know.” But there’s something else I need to do first. Something more important.

  My mom is sitting at the kitchen table, talking on the phone, when I get back to Gram’s. “I have to go,” she says, and clicks it off. “Are you okay?” she

  asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, realizing I am. I unzip my coat and slide it off.

  “Are you staying awhile?” my mother asks. That’s an old joke between us, Take off your jacket and stay awhile.

  “I am, Mom,” I say. “I’m staying.”

  She looks at me for a long moment. For the first time in a long time, she looks exactly as she should.

  Exactly like the mom I remember. And when she

  hugs me, it feels exactly right, too.

  chapter twenty-four

  The wind is cold on the walk over to Tally’s house and it smells like it’s going to snow. The idea of going into the bakery extra early this morning was my

  mom’s. The design was mine. I have to shift the box I’m carrying to one hand when I knock. Poppy opens the door.

  “Come in, come in,” she says. She has her hair pulled away from her face under a handkerchief, just like the first time I met her. “Tally’s not here, but I

  want you to see something.” I follow her into the kitchen, putting my box on the island. She walks to the window hung with her witch balls and touches one

  speckled with purples and blues and silvers. A long dark trunk grows out of the bottom of the ball, touching the colors dancing across the top. “What do

  you think?” she asks.

  “It’s perfect,” I say, and it is. It looks exactly the way I remember. I keep looking at the ball, thinking about my decision not to go back. It makes me sad to

  think that part of my life is gone, that things will never be the same, but like Tally, at least now I know what I’m dealing with.

  “Tally’s over at the ARK,” Poppy says. I had forgotten she’s there every Saturday. “I’ll drive you over. I know she wants to see you.” Poppy smiles. “And I

  know she would want whatever is in that box.” I reach over and lift up the top so Poppy can take a peek.

  “They’re perfect,” she says. “You really are the

  Cupcake Queen.”

  I laugh. “That’s what Mr. Fish said, too.”

  “Really?” She looks surprised, then pleased. “How’s he doing these days?”

  “Good,” I say. “Though I think he’s going to have a lot of free time on his hands soon.”

  “Sounds like he needs to find a new project,” Poppy says.

  “Maybe he could help you design some planet witch balls,” I suggest.

  “Hmm,” Poppy says thoughtfully as she walks over and picks up her keys.

  “Unless you prefer working alone . . .”

  “Two heads are often better than one,” she says. “Look how you helped me wi th winter.”

  “Oh, that reminds me, could I make a call before we go?” I ask.

  Gram sits in the front seat with Poppy while I sit in the back, the box of cupcakes balanced on my lap. I knew Tally would be disappointed if I didn’t at least

  try to get Gram to come with us. The ARK is exactly like I thought it would be and nothing like I thought it would be. I was picturing something like the

  shelter where we adopted Oscar, a big gray building that looked blah enough to be a warehouse. The ARK is actually in someone’s house, or part of it. I

  leave the cupcakes in the car and follow Gram and Poppy around to the back of the house. When Gram and I walk in, there are about twenty cats, sunning

  themselves on the windowsills, chasing little Wiffle balls across the floor, or climbing up the sides of carpeted condos. The whole room is filled with cats,

  living in what has to be cat heaven. Tally walks out from the house part of the ARK with a plastic pitcher full of cat food and a stack of plastic bowls.

  “You came!” Tally says. She has ditched her “normal” look. When she walks toward me, the sun catches her hair, which is streaked in not one, but all

  three primary colors. She’s wearing green tights with denim shorts and a jacket that once belonged to someone named VINNIE. I raise my eyebrows at

  her, which makes her laugh. She puts me right to work, handing me the bowls and pointing out where they go. She follows me around, tipping a bit of food

  into each. Gram picks up a Wiffle ball and tosses it for a tiny white kitten, who chases it down and actually returns it to Gram.

  “Smart cat,” I say, placing the final bowl on one of the windowsills.

  Tally opens the door to the rest of the house and calls, “Monica, I’ll be right back.” A woman with long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail comes to the door, holding another stack of bowls. “You must be Penny,” she says, pulling the

  door shut behind her. I nod, smiling. “I’ve heard good things,” she says.

  “I’m going to show her around,” Tally says.

  “I’ll stay here,” Gram says, tossing the ball again. She laughs as the kitten brings it back and drops it at her feet. Poppy picks up a big black cat and

  cuddles him in her arms. I wonder if he is destined to be cat number ten.

  Tally and I head out to the backyard, where the rest of the animal s are kept in several outbuildings. It’s easy to tell which building houses the dogs.

  “I’m staying,” I say.

  It’s barely out of my mouth before Tally grabs my hands and starts jumping up and down. The strands of her hair float up and down as she jumps,

  making a rainbow around her head.

  “So, what happened to your pageant look?” I ask when she finally stops jumping.

  Tally shrugs. “I guess I just had what my dad used to call a Come-to-Jesus meeting.”

  “A what?”

  “You kno
w, just an honest heart-to-heart.”

  “With yourself?” I ask.

  “Yup.” She wrinkles her nose when she says it, making me laugh.

  “Tally, you are an inspiration,” I say, making her laugh.

  “I should have my own television show,” she says. “Heart-to-Heart with Tally.” I shake my head and smile. “So what now?” I ask.

  “I’m just going to let my life be what it is, you know?”

  I do know. “So, you’re not doing the pageant? But what about the money for the ARK?”

  “I’m totally doing it. I’m just doing it my way.” She flips her hair with her hand, making the rainbow effect again. “Do you doubt my ability to win?”

  I shake my head. I don’t doubt much of anything anymore.

  “You’re still going to help me, right?”

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  “Good, because I’m going to need a new dress and new shoes and . . .”

  “They’re not going to know what hit them,” I say.

  “You got that right.” We walk through the dog building. The barking is so loud I have to cover my ears as we step inside. Tally pauses and greets each

  dog as we pass, offering a scratch behind the ears or a pat on the head. We walk all the way to the end and then out into the yard.

  “What are in the other buildings?” I ask as we step back outside.

  “That’s just a storage shed,” Tally says, pointing to the nearest building. “That one has rabbits, ferrets, and rodents.” I squinch my nose up. We had a rat

  problem in our building in the City. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think about rodents as pets.

  “What about that one?” I ask.

  “That one holds the exotics,” Tally says, pointing to last building on the lot. We are about h alfway there when something white and round comes

  barreling through the yard straight toward me. I barely have time to scream before it’s on me. It hits my legs and bounces off. I look over at Tally, expecting

  her face to be a combination of terror and surprise, like mine, but she’s just laughing. I look at the round ball of what I now can see are feathers. A

  completely bald pink head pokes out of the top of the ball. Matching pink feet poke out of the bottom.