He shook his head, then did a double take. “Your dad?”
I swallowed miserably. “Yeah. I’m sure he’s around here someplace.” I didn’t want this guy freaking out because my dad left me alone. I could handle it—I was a fifth grader. “He went to get dinner.”
The man glanced at the clock. “It’s ten o’clock. You must be hungry.”
I shrugged.
He turned to a shelf behind him and took out five oatmeal packets. “Here. On the house.” He squinted at me. “You come back here at midnight if he hasn’t shown up. Okay?”
I managed to nod, too torn up to say thanks. I took the packets and ran back to the room. I knew I wouldn’t come back. That guy would call the police. I sat up all night, looking out the window, worrying.
When Dad got back after dawn, I was asleep on a dining chair instead of enjoying the bed. “Sorry, Buttercup.” Dad rubbed his eyes. “Dang. I’m so tired I fell asleep at the McDonald’s lot. Guess that’s what happens when you don’t sleep for three days.” He handed me a bag. “Your mother would be so mad that I’m feeding you this.” He sat on one of the beds. “She always said this was trash.”
“That doesn’t exactly make me want to eat it.” Mom had high standards. She would never have let us set foot in that motel. Of course, if she were alive, my dad and I would never have had any problems in the first place.
The food was hot, hash browns and pancakes, my favorite. I didn’t think he was telling me everything, but it was pointless to argue. I just ate.
What if Shell is really like Dad? My insides move like hot lava. What if she doesn’t come home until tomorrow, either?
Tom jumps on the table. “Mewarrrr,” he howls, as if he’s asking why I’m all curled up. I try to think logically. If I’m alone, then I can eat from the garden. Jay will help me. I have everything I need.
Then I spot a yellow Post-it note flapping on the refrigerator door. Gone to town to do errands & pick up dinner. Back by 6. Shell.
Relief washes over me. Of course it wouldn’t make sense for Shell to leave. And Shell’s not going to fall asleep or whatever and not come home tonight. Why did I think that? Because I just met Shell, and for all I know she’s exactly the kind of person who’d run off.
I remember the thing about Oregon and realize I don’t know anything at all, really.
Tom howls again. He wants his dinner. I feed the animals, and this makes my blood pressure go down the rest of the way.
What can I do to keep busy? “You know what?” I say to the dogs and the cat. “I bet Shell would love some cake.”
The thought of baking makes my heart speed up. This is going to make up for me messing up earlier. Shell’s going to be so impressed. Cady, she’ll say, you’re a natural baker. The next Mary Berry!
And then she’ll tell me that my father and I can stay here forever. If we want. She’ll help him find a job and everything will be fine.
I look at the clock. Five thirty. I bet I can at least mix cake batter before she gets home.
Without further ado, I run upstairs to fetch the big cookbook. I open it to where an ancient construction paper flower marks the page. Lady Baltimore Cake. I’ve wanted to try this forever. It sounds positively elegant and grand. I grab the mixing bowls from the open shelf. I open drawers until I find a whisk and a measuring cup. Thank goodness the recipe’s not in grams, like they are on Bake Off, where they have to use a measuring scale. Then I search the cupboards until I find baking soda.
Shell doesn’t have any shortening, so I decide to use butter instead. I don’t know why, but everything in this cookbook has shortening instead of butter. It should probably work the same. I hope.
There’s no fancy stand mixer like on Bake Off, and I can’t even find a hand mixer. I settle on the wire whisk and a wooden spoon.
I take the butter out of the fridge—remembering from the show that it should be soft or it won’t mix. Because how can it, when it’s solid? Then I look for the eggs. None in the fridge. There are three eggs on the windowsill.
First of all, why aren’t the eggs in the fridge? I examine them. One’s kind of blue and two are brown. The blue one’s also too small. I guess these are what real chicken eggs from farm chickens look like.
The chickens. Of course! They might have eggs. Who knows if I’m allowed to do this—but Shell had mentioned that the chickens would be one of my chores. I run out to the chicken coop, Jacques and Julia hot on my heels. “Stay,” I warn them, before I unlatch the door and go in. The chickens squawk, all excited, flapping and pecking at my feet. “Sorry,” I say, and duck into the wooden coop.
There are feathers and droppings all over the place and it’s super stinky. Almost as bad as a gas station rest stop, and that’s really saying something. At least the smells in here come from chickens and not random strangers.
I look in the nest boxes, pulling out egg after egg. Ten of them. I hope Shell wants them collected. It seems like she would. I lay them in my shirt hem, forming a basket of sorts, and head back inside.
The eggs are dirty, because they came out of a chicken’s you-know-where. Ew! I never thought about that before. I wash them carefully with the dish soap, scrubbing and rinsing until they’re shiny clean. Then I read the recipe again.
I need a sifter. I think I know what those look like—a canister with a handle. I look in every cupboard but don’t see one. I stop and Google “how to sift flour without a sifter” on Shell’s laptop. “Use a mesh strainer.” Okay, I saw one of those by the pots and pans. That’ll work.
First it says to preheat the oven, so I do that. I’ve never touched an oven before, but I’m good at figuring things out on my own. So I press the buttons until the display says PREHEAT. Easy enough.
I sift the flour through the mesh strainer. I wonder why you have to sift it twice, once by itself and once with the other ingredients. Oh well. I’ll have to look into that later.
The butter’s hard to cream by hand, but I’m getting it done. Luckily for me I remember what creaming looks like from Bake Off.
One of the best parts of the show is how the bakers explain why they’re doing things a certain way, like they’re giving secret scientific tips. I know why two different bowls are used instead of mixing everything at once. You cream the wet stuff together separately, to whip up air bubbles. Then you add the dry ingredients in, little by little, so the gluten in the wheat doesn’t get too developed, which will make the cake tough. The egg whites have to be whipped separately from everything else, because that will add even more air, and then very, very gently folded in. This will give the cake height. Mary Berry would be proud.
I tip the flour bowl into the creamed sugar and butter, but the entire bowl of flour mix falls in at once. Oops. It’s super hard to stir. I think it’s okay, though.
I begin cracking the eggs and separating the whites, but I’m not good at it, and a bunch of shell fragments fall in. It takes a while to pick them out and I still don’t think I got all of them. Hopefully no one will notice. It’s hard to separate the eggs, too. It looked easy on the show. Bits of yolk get caught in the whites and I drop a couple of yolks on the floor. The dogs lap them up.
I whip the egg whites with the whisk. They don’t fluff up. Two minutes, then three. Muscles I never knew I had, on my wrists and in my armpits, burn. I take a moment to let go of the whisk and flex my bicep. A pitiful muscle pops up. “That’s going to change,” I tell it. And, since nobody’s here, I give it a little peck. Mwah. Then I do the same for my other arm.
The work makes me happy, calming my buzzing head. I don’t think about Dad or anything else, just the batter and the cake. I’m not worried about Shell. The oven warms the room as it heats. So cozy. The dogs and Tom keep watch over me, though in reality, they probably just want to lick the bowls.
Nothing bad is going to happen.
Finally the eggs look pretty good. I think. They’re white now. Good enough, I decide, and fold them gently into the batter.
&nbs
p; I want to be someone who can follow directions. Someone Shell will look at and say, “Now, there’s someone worthwhile.” It surprises me that I want to impress her. I think about what Jay said earlier—that he doesn’t like to depend on people. Maybe that’s why he works so hard.
Maybe I want to be the kind of person who gives instead of takes, too.
The oven beeps and just says 325, the temperature, instead of PREHEAT. Guess that means it’s ready for the cake.
There are still dry spots in my concoction, though. I mix more, and then some more. Finally everything looks nice and combined. It actually looks like a batter.
Tom hops onto the kitchen chair, judging me with his violet eyes. If he could talk, he’d probably tell me I’m doing it all wrong. But Shell’s going to love it. It’ll make up for the bad pie. She can relax and put her feet up and enjoy some cake instead of helping me.
It’s a little after six, but there’s still no sign of Shell. I glance out the dark windows, that old fear coming back. She’ll be back soon, I tell myself. I stick the cake in the oven, careful not to touch the hot rack or sides. Done.
Feeling like I just got first place in a race, I decide to watch TV while the cake’s baking.
Shell’s remote has about ten million buttons, but somehow I figure out how to make the cable box and TV come on. I find a Food Network show where a lady’s making a cake out of olive oil. Olive oil? I don’t know if that’ll be any good. I rewind and watch the lady pouring olive oil into the batter again. “Be sure to use good olive oil,” she says with a little smile that might be more of a smirk. What the heck is good olive oil? Does anybody use bad olive oil?
I hit LIST on the remote to find the recorded shows. I scroll through the Bake Off episodes, reading the little descriptions.
Gluten-free. Jenna would like this, too.
I hit play. FIVE SURVIVE, the screen proclaims. WHO WILL WIN?
The two British ladies tell the contestants that this week they have to leave out either dairy, gluten, or wheat in their “bakes.” What? How are they going to do this and still make the stuff taste good?
First they have to make bread with some “nontraditional” flour. Chestnut or spelt. I didn’t know these existed.
The second challenge, the Technical, is supercomplicated. Of course. It’s for some weird recipe nobody’s ever heard of, a French gluten-free dessert called “hazelnut da-KWAAZ.” Luckily they show the name on screen—“dacquoise.”
If I had to make that, I would give up and walk out. But they all tackle it and do a pretty good job. I want to try making this thing, too. I hit pause, run upstairs for my notebook, and rewind it, writing down the word “dacquoise.” I’ll look up the recipe later. Tom jumps up, settling by my side. “This remote thing is going to come in very handy,” I tell him. I fast-forward the show through the commercials. Awesome.
Chapter 13
A bit later, Julia’s head bobs up. “Woof!” Then Jacques goes crazy, barking and whining and running back and forth from the kitchen to the front door. Julia just stares alertly, waiting. Keys jangle. It has to be Shell. My body goes weak with relief.
Shell appears, pizza box first. “Hi, Cady. I’m sorry that took so long. The pizza place had a wait, and then I stopped by the Ranch restaurant to talk about orders . . .” She trails off. “I hope you weren’t worried. I guess we should get you a phone so I can contact you.”
A phone? That would be pretty cool. “I wasn’t worried,” I lie. “Did the Ranch order a bunch of pies?” I remember the bills I sent today and my stomach turns.
“No.” Shell’s voice goes low. “They actually canceled their contract with us. They want to offer cake instead. Twenty pies a week gone.” She sighs. “Oh well. Can’t please everybody.”
That’s awful. “Why?”
She doesn’t answer, instead sniffing the air. “What’s that smell?”
Uh-oh. I was supposed to leave the cake in for twenty-five minutes. I’ve watched the olive oil lady and almost an entire Bake Off episode. They’re already on the Showstopper Challenge. That means it’s been way longer.
Then I smell it too.
Burning.
“My cake!” I jump up and run into the kitchen.
“Cady!” Shell’s right behind me. She opens the oven door, letting out a plume of smoke. The fire alarm screams. She takes out the pans with potholders, tossing them on top of the stove. The Lady Baltimore is Lady Burnt-a-more.
“You used the oven?” Shell’s voice rises. “Alone? You could’ve burned the whole house down.” She reaches up and turns off the shrieking alarm.
Shame rushes into my face. I know the proper thing would be to say I’m sorry, but I’m afraid admitting to that would be admitting something more. Like I don’t deserve to be here, or I meant to burn the cake. She must think I’m the worst kid in the world. I cross my arms. “I’m twelve. I know how to do all kinds of things.”
“I thought you’d know better at twelve. When I was twelve I was working.”
When Shell was twelve she had two parents and a sister. I think about my life before. My dad, always there but never really there. Making sure he remembered to pay for everything. Making sure we ate. Yes, I’m twelve, and I can do way more stuff than Shell could ever dream of doing. She’s so unfair. Suddenly I’m madder than I’ve ever been in my whole life, plus a little sick to my stomach. “I’m way mature for my age.”
Shell’s eyes narrow and her jaw tightens even more. “So you’ve used an oven before?”
I reluctantly shake my head.
“Do you know how to use a timer? Or a fire extinguisher?” Shell continues. She waves at the dirty bowls (I ended up with three, somehow), the eggshells, the measuring cups, the whisk. “And look at this mess.” She presses her fingers into her temples. “It’s not a good time for this.”
A good time for this? Does she mean making a cake, or me? I stand still, trying to do my deep breathing. “I was going to clean up and put everything back. You weren’t going to have to do anything.” I did it for you, I add in my head.
Shell rolls her eyes. “Sure.” She opens the box marked Margherita and throws a piece onto a plate for me. It’s mozzarella with basil and tomato. I like pepperoni. “And Cady—Mrs. Moretti, the owner of Grandma’s Pies, came to see me.” She crooks an eyebrow. “Do you know anything about anyone writing on her sign?”
I pray for a huge earthquake and the ground opening up to eat me whole. “No.”
Shell’s mouth purses, turns downward. “We can talk about that later. Eat.”
The tears that I’ve been crushing down for three days come to a full boil. “I’m not that hungry,” I say in a choked voice. I run out of the room, forgetting my cookbook. I’ll get it tomorrow.
Chapter 14
I stomp upstairs, my feet making satisfyingly loud whacks on each step and on the wooden floor. The walls shake. I’m so mad at myself.
I’m too much trouble. I should have waited for her. I shouldn’t have tried to use the oven.
And I definitely should not have written on that other store’s board. I bet Mrs. Moretti, whoever she is, was furious and is going to get even with me, like the time I hid Anna-Tyler’s lunchbox and then she spilled my food tray on purpose. I punch the wall and all that happens is I hurt my knuckles. I’d feel worse if I dented this innocent house.
Plus there’s the fact that Shell’s shop is obviously not doing that great. It’s not a good time for this. Having another mouth to feed probably isn’t going to make Shell sleep better.
Shell’s going to send me to a foster home. I mean, I probably would, too. Who wants some kid hanging around trying to burn down your house when your customers are canceling their orders?
I lean my head against the wall and take a couple of deep breaths and accidentally smell my own armpits. I smell like the chicken coop and sweat. No wonder Jay’s grandma mentioned it. A bath will make me feel better.
I go into my bedroom and get the fluffy robe and paj
amas Suzanne left me. I wish she’d come home. With Suzanne here, I might have a chance. I get the feeling Suzanne’s sort of a soft padding between Shell and the rest of the world. But with Shell—I don’t know. Now I know why Shell and Señora Vasquez are friends—they’re practically twins.
Quickly I open the dresser drawer to check on my food. It’s all still there. I might need it sooner than I thought.
Tom meows from the bed. “I need to get clean, dude. I can’t cuddle yet.” He rubs his face against my hand and I lean down and kiss his head.
The room doesn’t feel like “my” room. It’s pretty and it’s nice, but it’s strange, like a motel room. I’m not going to get attached to it. I don’t want to miss it when I leave.
The bathroom’s down the hall. A pull-down vinyl shade covers the small window, with lacy white curtains over that. There’s a pedestal sink and a white tub with brass claw feet. I tap one. It looks like someone cut the feet off a mythical creature, like a griffin, and stuck them on the tub.
There’s another bedroom upstairs, but since I’m the only one here, this is basically my own private bathroom. I feel sort of like I’m walking into a library when I go inside—I want to use everything in it, but also keep it clean. I carefully wipe up the hairs from the sink. There’s even a toothbrush holder for me and a cup. It looks like something out of a magazine.
Feeling calmer, I turn on the shower and wash myself with the flowery-apple shower gel Suzanne told me was all mine, and the funny poofy sponge. My plan is to clean all the gunk off me, then get in the tub. I don’t know the order of what I’m supposed to do.
I stop the shower, sit down, close the drain, and turn on the tub faucet, squirting more soap into the tub to make bubbles. Something I’ve only seen on TV. It foams up so much I’m afraid that it’ll overflow, but it doesn’t. I lean back, resting my head on the wall.
Just five nights ago, we were sleeping in the van. Dad parks it under a freeway overpass, someplace where people mostly don’t go. Well, I mean, there are homeless people there too. But not regular people.
Summer of a Thousand Pies Page 9