Summer of a Thousand Pies

by Margaret Dilloway

  Shell’s right. Truthfully, I wanted her customers to come to Shell’s, just like I do right now, and that wasn’t how to get them. With difficulty I raise my head and look into Mrs. Moretti’s eyes. They have deep laugh lines around them and a very kind expression, and I realize she’s probably a perfectly nice person. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.” And I mean it this time. I feel better as soon as the words come out, the same as when I apologized to Jay. Does everyone who messes up and apologizes feel like this?

  Mrs. Moretti touches my arm. “Thank you. Apology accepted.” She glances at Shell. “I think my windows could use a cleaning.”

  Shell nods. “Sounds like a plan.”

  I spend the next hour or so cleaning Mrs. Moretti’s windows with a squeegee and a bucket of suds. Outside the jewelry shop next door, a tied-up rottweiler lies panting. He looks up at me and whines.

  “Are you okay, boy?” I let him sniff my knuckles, then scratch his head. He looks sadly across the street. “It’s a hot day.”

  I pick a pie pan out of Mrs. Moretti’s trash, wash it out, and fill it with water for the dog. He slobbers it all up, splashing all over the sidewalk. I pet his huge head. I’m really getting used to dogs.

  “I was just about to do that. Thanks.” A man about Shell’s age comes out. “I don’t know where the owner went—they’re not in my store.”

  “Oh.” I keep washing the windows. The man looks a little familiar, but I shouldn’t talk to strangers. Dad’s told me a billion times.

  “I’m Grant Anderson. Gable’s father.” He smiles. “Gable told me about you. He says you’re hilarious.”

  “That’s because I am,” I say in a serious tone, just to make him laugh. It works. He’s got dark hair and the same kind of features as Gable, just with a little more flesh and wrinkles. “You look like him. Except older. And with no earrings.”

  He laughs. “Not anymore.” He shows me his earlobes—full of holes. “But I sell them.”

  “Oh.” I touch mine. “I don’t have pierced ears.” I’ve always wanted them. Pretty much every girl at my school has earrings. But Dad wouldn’t let me. He was afraid they’d get infected because we couldn’t keep them clean. And also, who knows how expensive it’d be.

  “Well. If you wash my windows too, and your aunt lets you, I could pierce them as a trade.”

  “Deal.” I stick out my hand. I guess this morning didn’t spell my doom after all.

  For the next week, I go to the bakery every day with Shell. I like working alongside María, who plays a Spanish-speaking music station, singing along as we prepare the pies. It’s what I imagined a home to be like. Shell tacks a piece of paper up on the wall so I can tally how many crusts I make. It gets tedious after the third crust, and my shoulders ache and my hands hurt. María watches me but only offers help if I ask. Which I try not to.

  “What if I become expert level before one thousand?” I ask Shell.

  “You won’t.”

  “But I could,” I argue. “My crusts are two hundred percent better than they were the first day.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Shell is immovable. “One thousand.”

  Other than that, I slice up Granny Smiths and Galas and prepare the fillings. I’m not used to using a knife, so I cut my fingers a bunch of times and have to wear blue rubber coverings over my Band-Aids. But it’s never life-threatening. And it’s what the Bake Off contestants wear.

  On the Saturday before Memorial Day, I have Band-Aids on three different fingers. Shell comes in the back and watches me peeling the apples. She smiles a little.

  “What?” I work the peeler around a Granny Smith. We’re actually kind of busy today because of the holiday, and I want to make as many pies as I can.

  Shell points to my hurt fingers. “You’re not a complainer.”

  I shake my head, pleased that she noticed. “No point.” I grumble plenty in my head. Then I tell myself, Just get on with it, as Dad would say. Plus, nobody whines on Bake Off if they get hurt.

  “María.” Shell narrows her eyes and does a big, dramatic head nod. “It’s time. Show Cady how to use the machines.”

  María demonstrates a large contraption bolted to the side of a counter. The apple goes on a spike and then you push a button, and the machine does all the work, peeling it, pushing out the core, and slicing it into neat pieces. “That’s all there is to it. Just don’t stick your fingers in.”

  And then—we move on to the pie crust machine! I stand in front of it like it’s a treasure and I’m a pirate.

  “I feel like I should, I don’t know, bow down.” I bend deeply at the waist. “Greetings, King Pie Crust Machine.”

  María laughs and imitates me. “Yes. We must pay our respects.” She shows me how to curtsy. “Just in case you ever really do meet a king.”

  Then she shows me how to use the pie crust machine. This is going to be a hundred times easier now. I’ll have a thousand pies done in no time.

  I wonder if we’ll have the customers to eat them. But things are going so well with Shell, I don’t want to say anything that’ll upset her. I keep my mouth shut and my hands busy.

  June

  83 Pies Down

  917 to Go

  Chapter 16

  The first Tuesday in June, Shell takes me to an indoor mall in Escondido and we pick out a bunch of stuff for me at Old Navy. Underwear. T-shirts. Jeans. I think of Dad’s words. We don’t need your charity. He’d want me to tell her no. But I don’t want to. Because guess what? I need clothes. Dad hasn’t bought me any in forever. I’ve grown—I hadn’t realized how short my pants were.

  Shell points out the sale signs and lectures me about how to calculate percentages. Then she makes me do it. “If this shirt is thirty dollars—well, twenty-nine ninety-nine, but we’re rounding up, and it’s twenty percent off, how much will we pay?”

  I purse my lips, doing the math. “Twenty-four?”

  Shell holds up her hand. I slap her palm.

  Then, of course, Shell makes me calculate the price of every single thing we look at. “This is making my brain hurt,” I complain.

  “It’ll get stronger,” she says. “It’s a muscle. You have to use it.”

  Shell picks out a jacket that has a zip-out lining from a clearance rack. “Nights and mornings are always cool,” she says. “You’ll need it no matter how long you stay. Not that I don’t want you to stay,” she adds when she sees my face. “You’ll stay for as long as you need.”

  But what if that’s forever? I swallow hard, unable to decide if that’s good or bad.

  “Plus.” She points to the sign: 80% OFF. It’s only twenty dollars right now.

  I grin. “Four bucks? That’s a bargain!” We smile like we just shared a secret.

  I try on blue jeans and find a pair that fit, but as we walk to the register I spot colored ones. Pink and teal and regular blue. I’ve never had jeans like these. They’re so pretty. I run my hand over the material. The model in the picture smiles, wearing pink ones with a flowery shirt. “Do you like those?” Shell says.

  “These are fine.” I hold up the blue ones in my hand. We’re already headed to the checkout. I don’t want Shell to get annoyed and impatient.

  But she gets annoyed and impatient anyway. “If you want the colored ones, just say so.”

  I shake my head. I’m going to stick with what I said. The colored ones cost more, and I don’t want Shell to hate me for making her spend too much.

  Shell sighs and picks out colored jeans in my size. “It’s okay to change your mind, Cady. Go try these on.”

  Finally, we’re in line, and I’m looking at the earrings they have on display along the way. “I could get you a pair,” Shell says. “They’re half off.”

  “My ears aren’t pierced.” I lift my hair to show her.

  “Huh.” Shell frowns. “That’s funny. Your mom had them done when you were a baby. In our family, in our culture, actually, that’s really common.”

 
; A sharp imaginary jab pokes my stomach. That’s another thing I didn’t know. I tell her about Gable’s dad and his offer. Shell purses her lips. “I’m not sure. We should ask your dad.”

  “But you’re my guardian, right? And besides, they were pierced before, so what does it matter?” I don’t want to wait for the next time we talk to Dad. And I’m also afraid he’ll say no. Just his usual, automatic no.

  “It’s a permanent change to your body.” Shell sighs and seems to be talking to herself. “We’ll ask him next time we talk.”

  While Shell’s busy paying, I look out of the store across the mall corridor, to the pretzel place. Those pretzels smell so good, like salt and sugar. I head straight toward the girl handing out samples before she goes back inside.

  “Cady, you should ask if it’s okay before you go running off.” Shell rushes to catch up with me. “I looked behind me and you were gone!” Her eyes are big.

  I only went twenty feet. Dad didn’t make me ask permission for samples. Or for a lot of things. I stop in my tracks. “Shell. May. I. Please. Get. A. Pretzel. Sample?” I sound like a resentful robot.

  “Sure. See how easy that was?” Shell hands me the bag of clothes. “Carry your own gear.”

  So many rules. I’m not sure that I like them all. I make a face at my aunt and clomp over to the pretzel place.

  Chapter 17

  A few days later, Jay takes me to see the stream. He has me sit on the back of his bike, giving me his helmet. I’m pretty sure this is highly dangerous and probably illegal, but when I tell Jay this, he shrugs. “This is Julian. We’re old school.”

  We ride to the state park’s main entrance, where the ranger waves us through. Then he locks up the bike and we begin the next part of our journey, hiking through a field with waist-high grass. The dirt gets into my tennis shoes, which have netting on the toes. “This grass is so dry.”

  “Yeah. It burns every once in a while.” Jay crushes a blade. “It needs to. That’s how some of the wildflowers get their seeds out. If they don’t burn, they’ll die out forever. Isn’t that funny?”

  The wind kicks up, searing my nostrils. I shiver a little anyway. I don’t like the idea of fire—who would? But there’s always something to deal with, no matter where you go. In California, there are earthquakes and wildfires. In Florida, there are hurricanes and alligators. In Kansas, there are tornadoes.

  “There aren’t that many year-round streams, but this is one of them. And you won’t find it on any map.” Suddenly Jay veers off the trail and into the underbrush. “Try not to break any branches.” Jay holds the brush so they don’t thwack me in the face. “Technically you’re not supposed to go off trail.”

  This makes me mighty nervous. “I don’t want to get into trouble.” That’d be all I need. Getting booted out of a state park like some hooligan.

  “Don’t worry.” Jay holds a particularly thorny palm branch for me. “The ranger lets me dig out the non-native plants. Like this Mexican palm.” He taps the huge thick fan-shaped branch with spikes protruding from the sides. “So it’s like a good deed, really.”

  “How do I know which ones are native, and which ones aren’t?”

  “It’s not that hard. I’ll show you the worst ones.” Jay holds up his hand. “Watch out for the poison oak.” He points down. “‘Leaves of three, let it be.’ It’s got this oil on it that’ll give you a bad rash.”

  I examine it. There are three leaves coming out of a branch. The bushes spread all over the place. “Why don’t they get rid of all of it?”

  “It’s native, and besides, we’re in nature. You can’t get rid of all possibly dangerous things.” He grins. “If there was no risk, it would be no fun.”

  I laugh at this. I remember what Ms. Walker said about ecosystems. Things exist for a purpose. Bees might sting, but we need them to pollinate crops. Sharks keep down seal populations. “What good does poison oak do?”

  “Squirrels eat the berries.” Jay shrugs. “I don’t know what else.”

  I pretend to have a heart attack, clutching my chest. “Something Jay Morales doesn’t know?”

  He snorts out a laugh. “I know, right?”

  We keep on hiking. Before long I hear the trickle of water nearby and the deep croaking of frogs. Jay leads me down a bank that gets squishier and muddier, and suddenly there’s an honest-to-goodness stream, trickling over rocks. It’s pretty small, but it’s a real proper stream. The closest I’ve been to something like this is a concrete drainage ditch (where sometimes I actually did hear frogs). And also the San Diego River, which always has some trash in it, plus very tall, thick reeds hiding its edges. There are homeless camps by the river, but Dad wouldn’t let us go there.

  The frogs stop making noise as soon as we get near the water. “They don’t want humans catching them,” Jay tells me. “Sit down.”

  We rest on some flat rocks by the water. It looks like a museum painting again, with the sunlight glinting through the trees onto the water. It’s so quiet. No car noises or other people—nothing but the moving stream, birds, and the leaves rustling in the breeze. “This is so cool.” That word seems kind of inadequate to describe it all. I sneak a peek at Jay, wondering why he would want to hang out with me. Why exactly he thinks we’re friends. He’s so much more confident than I am.

  Jay looks around, then grabs a plant with a feathery green top, crushing the top in his fist. “Smell that.”

  I do. “Smells like black licorice.”

  He nods. “Fennel. It’s not supposed to be growing here, so the ranger wants it gone.” He takes a Swiss Army knife kind of thing out of his backpack and flips it open to a knife. I gasp, but all he does is use the blade to pry up under the plant. It sort of looks like a fatter, whiter chunk of celery. “Ta-da! You can sauté it or bake it. It’s kind of sweet, but not too sweet.” He presents it to me with a flourish.

  I sniff the stem, which also has that black licorice scent. “What does it taste like?”

  “Like a harder apple that’s crossed with celery?” Jay shrugs. “Fennel is fennel. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  I wipe the dirt off the bulb with my shirt, thinking of Bake Off and how they use “unexpected ingredients” all the time.

  Jay leans over. “If you ever forage, the first rule is to make sure you don’t do it where the Park Service sprays weed killer. They only spray in the picnic areas to get rid of the poison oak. The second rule is to show the ranger everything we pick.

  “Fennel has yellow flowers and these feathery leaves.” He points to another tall plant with white flowers. “That one looks similar, but it’s poison hemlock. It doesn’t smell good, though, so they’re easy to tell apart.”

  “Who taught you all this?”

  “The ranger. And Shell. Sometimes she takes us hiking.”

  “Shell?” A jealous pang hits me. “I thought she was too busy.”

  “You’ve only known her a few weeks.” Jay looks a little sad, too. “Yeah, she does work a lot. She didn’t use to be like that. Neither did my mom. Even Claudia used to be nicer.”

  I think about Claudia and her alleged non-boyfriend, Gable. “She seems kind of . . . out of place.”

  “My mom’s trying to get her to go to college, but all she wants to do is hang out with that guy.” Jay frowns, digging out another bulb. “I’m going to college, though. I’m going to be a game developer.”

  This surprises me. “I thought you’d want to do something outside. Like be a park ranger.” I have no evidence for this, except for what I’ve observed about Jay. He seems like he’s as important to the land as one of Shell’s trees.

  He gives me a fierce look. “I want to do something to support my family. Like create an app that makes a million dollars.”

  I understand that. If I made that much money, my dad wouldn’t have any more trouble. I think. But then I see all these magazines with stories about celebrities with all kinds of money who are addicted to bad things. Maybe how much money you have doe
sn’t matter when it comes to things like that. Maybe you’re the same on the inside, no matter what you have.

  I don’t know if that thought is the greatest one I’ve ever had or the worst.

  “What do you want to be, Cady?” Jay works on digging up another bulb.

  I’ve thought about that one. I want to be a chef. But until I got to Shell’s, I had no idea how I was going to do it. “I want to take over Shell’s Pie one day,” I answer without thinking. “How about that?”

  Jay raises his eyebrows. “We’d better make it succeed, then.”

  Yeah. “I don’t think we sold enough yesterday.” I picture Shell’s worried face. No wonder she never has any fun anymore. I don’t know how I could help, though. It’s not like my mad table-wiping skills are going to make people come buy her pie. And writing on the competition’s sign wasn’t the answer.

  Jay grabs my shoulder. “Don’t move.” He points across the creek.

  I turn my head and follow his finger. A group of deer slowly make their way down to the water through the bushes. I hold my breath. There’s a female. A smaller female follows, and then two babies on long, slightly wobbly legs. They’re gray brown, tinged with a hint of cream on the tips of their fur. I really want to pet one. Obviously I know I shouldn’t even try.

  The lead cocks her head and looks right at us, though neither of us has moved. It’s like she read my mind and said, Uh-oh, that girl wants to touch me! She pivots and so do the others, all of them bounding back through the brush.

  I let out my breath. “That was awesome!”

  Jay’s eyes shine. “I’ve never been that close before.”

  “Will they come back?” I want to look at them again.

  “After we leave.” He checks his watch. “Oops. It’s getting late.” We run for home.

  Chapter 18

  The following evening, Shell teaches me how to make a lattice crust. We set the ingredients out on the big, square butcher-block island in the middle of the kitchen. “In the old cookbook, almost all the recipes say to use shortening, not butter,” I tell Shell.