“That’s actually a really interesting question. Scientists don’t know whether sharks sleep at all. It has to do with—”
“Jeanine! Do you want me to do this or not?”
“Oh, fine. But you really need to work on your focus.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay, Mexican, Mexican…chicken…avocado?”
“Chicken and avocado? We’re talking about Can You Cut It? not Chipotle,” Jeanine said.
She was right. How much more blah could I get? I pressed my palms hard against my closed eyes until I saw purple blobs. “Eggplant?”
“Let’s stop.” I felt Mom’s hands on my shoulders. “You’re just fried. Nobody’s creative juices flow when they’re fried. Besides, I’ve got to run.”
I opened my eyes. “Where?”
Her eyes slid from my face to the floor. “Albany. Zo Zo, go get ready and I’ll drop you at Larissa’s.”
“I am ready.” She was wearing bear pajamas.
“Zo Zo, what did we say?”
“We said clean clothes. These are clean.” Zoe pet her furry sleeves.
“You woke up and put on clean pajamas?”
“We did.”
Mom looked at her watch, then up at the ceiling, clearly calculating how much time it would take to argue Zoe out of pajamas. “Fine.”
Zoe grinned, poking her tongue through the space where her two front teeth were missing.
“Did we brush our teeth?”
“We didn’t.”
“Go.”
“Bears have teeth and they don’t brush,” Zoe said as she slowly climbed the stairs.
I cleared my bowl and put it in the sink. “So why are you going to Albany?”
“Oh…” She squirted dishwashing liquid onto a sponge. “Walter and I are taking turns going to Albany to pick up food.”
“What happened to your suppliers?”
Mom leaned forward and scrubbed hard at a perfectly clean plate with a sponge.
“Mom, what happened to the suppliers?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Mom, I’m not little anymore. I can—”
“Yeah, what’s up with that, anyway?” It was Dad, coming down the stairs with his laptop. “There’s been all too much growing recently. Cut that out, will you?” He flashed me a goofy smile.
Would it kill them to be straight with me?
“I have to go. Knife skills practice.”
“Bye,” Dad said.
“See you later,” Mom said.
I was at the door when something inside me broke loose, and what I’d been looking for just floated up.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, turning back.
“Yeah?”
“Butternut squash, goat cheese tacos with a tomatillo salsa.”
“Woah. I’d eat that,” Mom said.
“Me too,” Dad said.
“I hate squash,” Zoe said from the top of the stairs where she’d been sitting instead of brushing her teeth.
Maybe I really did stand a chance.
Chapter 13
The Petersville Gazette
Vol. 1, Issue 11
Town Happenings
Petersville’s First Gamemaker Named: At its last meeting, the Petersville Town Council voted to create the position of Town Gamemaker. The Gamemaker will be charged with designing, scheduling, and running live action games to be held in town. The first Gamemaker will be Clyde Hammond, who had this to say: “I’m fired up! The kickoff game will be my own safe-for-all-ages version of Assassins. I think people are going to flip for it.”
Five brand-new calves born at Stinky Cheese Farm: Owners Riley Carter and June Simms invite anyone and everyone to come visit with Sparky, Spanky, Spartacus, Sprocket, and Spy.
The Petersmobile hits the road: Tris Levin, along with his family, Josh Bell, Mayor Jim Partridge, and Winnie Hammond head out tomorrow for NYC. If you see Tris around town, wish him luck on Can You Cut It?!
Featured Series
Things Most People Get Wrong and How YOU Can Get Them Right
By Jeanine Levin
Have your parents ever told you that you can’t swim right after you eat? Not true. Studies show that swimming immediately after eating poses no risks. So next time you want to take a dip right after a meal and your parents tell you to wait thirty minutes, give them the facts.
The truth will set you free!
You’re welcome!
The ceiling of the Airstream was so close to my face, I had to just lie flat and stare up at it. The thing is: that first night, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if I had been able to lie on my side with my feet against the wall like I usually do.
The problem was my brain. I couldn’t turn it off. I couldn’t even slow it down. It was on fast-forward. It was already at tomorrow, at the Can You Cut It? studios. It was facing off with Chef JJ and Dieter Koons and those five kids who were going to cook circles around me. It was already busy losing, making mistakes, and forgetting everything. And while it was doing that, it was playing a soundtrack of everyone I was letting down yelling at me.
Mom: At least two spices per dish, not including salt!
Zoe: Don’t cry!
Josh: Remember the Tea King! Love to compete!
Winnie: Tick-tock, watch the clock!
Walter: Chop even so it cooks even!
Dr. C: It can’t just taste good. It’s got to look good!
When I closed my eyes, Jeanine was there, dancing on the insides of my eyelids flinging spatulas like pom-poms and cheering, “Believe and achieve!”
Orange light from the streetlamp filled the Airstream. I’d forgotten how much lighter nighttime is in the city. In Petersville, dark is a can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face, are-my-eyes-closed-or-open blackness.
We’d had to scratch the plan to keep the Airstream in front of The Food Connection building at night. Parking there during the day wasn’t a problem, but a security guard had come out when it started getting dark to tell us we couldn’t keep it there overnight. What he actually said was, “This isn’t Jabours Motor Lodge.” None of us had a clue who Jabours was, but we got the point.
Since my parents knew the guy who owned the lot across from our old building, we drove uptown to camp out there for the night. This meant we’d be able to eat at Barney Greengrass at least once, possibly twice each day. It wouldn’t make up for no longer living around the corner from the best deli in the world, but by the time we went back to Petersville, I’d have gotten my fix of eggs and onions, at least for a while.
I know what you’re thinking, eggs and onions? How hard can it be to make scrambled eggs with onions? Any old eggs and onions: piece of cake. Barney’s eggs and onions, where the eggs are creamy like custard and the onions are so sweet, they taste like they’ve been cooked with brown sugar: impossible. I’ve tried. My mother’s tried. Walter’s tried. They can get close, but it’s never exactly right.
Don’t believe that any scrambled eggs could be that mind-blowing? Ask Josh. We went to Barney’s for dinner after we parked the Airstream, and he tasted them for the first time. I swear he didn’t look up from his plate until he’d eaten every last bite, and Josh isn’t even an egg fan.
Zippo almost dropped a tray of matzoh ball soups when we came through the door. He rushed over to give us all hugs that smelled like garlic bagels and then had the kitchen make a fresh batch of latkes. Before we moved to Petersville, we saw Zippo every Saturday morning and had for as far back as I could remember.
On our way back to the Petersmobile after dinner, we walked by our old apartment. Zoe wanted to ring the buzzer to see if we could go up, but Mom said we couldn’t, so Zoe cried and sat down on the stoop and refused to get up, no matter how many Dessert Days mom threatened to take away. Mom made us all walk away like we were actually going t
o leave Zoe there, even though everyone, including Zoe, knew we wouldn’t.
“What do we do now?” Jim asked when we got to the corner and Zoe was still on the stoop.
“Just wait here and don’t turn around,” Mom said.
I’m pretty sure Zoe won this round because Mom did eventually turn around and go back for her. Also, because as she was walking back, Zoe ran her hands up and down the whole buzzer panel, ringing every apartment in the building.
I don’t think I would have gone up to see our old apartment even if we could have. I’d been looking forward to going back to our old neighborhood, but when we got there, whatever I thought I was going to feel, I didn’t. I felt the way I do when I see baby pictures of me, like it’s not me, like it’s somebody else, somebody I won’t ever get to meet and don’t even remember but somehow miss. This neighborhood, our old building, none of it was mine anymore.
I lay there staring at the rusty screws in the Airstream ceiling hoping that eventually, when I got tired enough, I’d drift off. But I didn’t. I just lay there feeling like a rubber band someone was stretching a little farther every second.
Besides not being that dark, it wasn’t that quiet either. You wouldn’t think sleeping makes much noise, but the thing about seven people in an RV, really everything they do makes noise, even sleeping.
We were only seven because Dad had gone to G-Mare’s—that’s what we call his mom—for dinner and decided to stay over. He was the least into the Petersmobile, which wasn’t a surprise. He wasn’t into much these days, besides his newspaper. He was on his laptop so much, it was basically his new face. Part of me wondered if he even cared if I won Can You Cut It? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think he wanted me to lose, but that’s not the same as wanting me to win. I think what he wanted was for me to want to write dumb articles for his newspaper and go around with a lying, happy face all the time. I guess right now, we both wanted the other one to want something different. And maybe that’s okay. What wasn’t okay was that I was the only one who could admit it.
Just then, I heard a scritch-scritch.
“Shh.” It was Zoe. “Go to sleep.”
“Zo Zo, who are you talking to?”
She didn’t answer. Then there was another scritch-scritch, and our bunk bed shook.
I jumped down.
“Shh! We’re sleeping,” Zoe whispered.
I grabbed my phone from my bunk and aimed the light at Zoe.
She was on her knees, holding her blanket down over a lump.
“What’s under there?”
The lump twitched.
“You didn’t.”
“He didn’t want to stay home all alone.”
I ripped off the blanket. There was Henry. “Rabbits don’t get lonely.”
“Mini lops do!” Zoe stroked Henry’s droopy ears.
“Where did you put him when we went to dinner?”
“In his cage. But he wanted to cuddle before bed.”
Zoe didn’t put up a fight when I told her we had to put Henry back in his cage. She’d either gotten in enough cuddles or was too tired to keep chasing him around the bed.
Before long, she was asleep. I could tell from the way she was breathing. It sounded almost like what you hear when you hold one of those big seashells up to your ear.
“Go to sleep, Slick.” Winnie’s voice was extra loud and scratchy in the dark.
“How’d you know I was awake?”
“ESP.”
“Really?” It would explain a lot if Winnie had the power to read minds.
“No, not really. It’s bright as day in here, and your eyes are open.” Winnie was in the bunk across from mine. She had some theory that the air would be better on the top.
“I can’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”
“That helping?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you gonna do better because you stayed up all night stressifying yourself?” This was followed by the sound of Tic Tacs rattling.
Just then, there was a thud and a groan.
“Josh?”
“I was dreaming,” Josh said, soft and slow like maybe he wasn’t fully awake. “We were at a town meeting and…we were all wearing Chef JJ wigs. Then something happened. I don’t remember what. I think that’s when I fell out of bed.” He pulled his pillow and blanket down onto the floor. “I’m gonna stay down here.”
Josh usually sleeps diagonally because he’s so tall, but the bunk beds were too narrow for that so he’d hung his legs over the end with his feet resting on the table. Not an easy position to hold in your sleep, I guess.
“Sorry I woke you,” Josh whispered.
“You didn’t wake anybody.” Winnie paused and we could hear the crunching of Tic Tacs. “Slick’s planning to stay up all night and work himself up into a lather.”
“Work himself into a what?” Josh asked.
“Oh, you know, get good and stressified so he can bomb tomorrow and get kicked off on the first day. Like pulling a Band-Aid off nice and fast, right, Slick?”
“Maybe he’s just too excited to sleep,” Josh said.
“Is that it, Slick? You excited or stressified? Which one is it?”
“I’m just worried that everything I know about cooking is slipping out of my brain as I lie here.”
“That would be stressified then,” Winnie said.
“Hey, I have an idea,” Josh said. “My mom does this thing if I’m having trouble falling asleep the night before a game. It’s going to sound kind of dumb—”
“Fantastic,” Winnie said.
“But it works.”
“I’ll try anything,” I said.
“Okay, so close your eyes…”
“Close eyes. Check.” The streetlamp was so bright, the insides of my eyelids were orange.
“Picture yourself floating on a lake.” Josh was using this voice like Mom uses for Zoe’s bedtime story. “The sun’s shining down. And the water’s the perfect temperature.”
“What does that mean?” Winnie said. “The ‘perfect’ temperature? What’s that?”
“It’s whatever ‘perfect’ means to you. That’s the point.”
“Fine,” Winnie said. “I’m floating in the perfect water on the perfect day. This working for you, Slick?”
“I’m not done yet,” Josh said. “So now you focus on relaxing each part of your body floating on the water. Start with your toes, think about letting them just float.”
I made little fists with my toes, then tried to let go and let them just float. But they wouldn’t. The more I told them to relax, the heavier they got, the more they pulled me down. My toes were so heavy, they were going to drown me.
“Okay, now your ankles…”
When Josh was done, every part of my body had sunk to the bottom of that lake where it was dark and cold. Winnie was snoring.
“Isn’t that cool?” Josh said. “It always works for me.”
“Uh-huh. Thanks.” It wasn’t Josh’s fault I was too stressified to float.
“You think you can sleep now?”
“Oh, yeah,” I lied.
Then I lay there at the bottom of the lake waiting for morning.
Chapter 14
Winnie cut a sharp right out of Central Park onto Fifth Avenue, and I grabbed onto one of the bunk bed chains to keep from flying across the Airstream. “What’s the rush? I don’t have to be there until nine.” It was so early, the streetlights were still lit.
Winnie swerved around a delivery truck. “We gotta be parked out front for Breakfast with Brit.”
“I think her name is Brynn,” Mom said. She was still in bed. Zoe had somehow squeezed in there with her during the night and was asleep, curled in a ball, her butt in the air.
“What’s Breakfast with Brynn?” I said.
<
br /> “Oh, my mom loves that show!” Josh called from the bathroom.
“You know.” Jeanine sat up in her bunk. “That show with the lady in the bed they roll out onto the street. Sometimes they show ads for it during Can You Cut It?”
“Oh, right. People really watch that?”
“Oh, yeah.” Josh opened the bathroom door holding his toothbrush. “It’s kind of weird. She has guests come on in their pajamas, and they make breakfast together, and eat it in this big bed.”
“So why do we care about Breakfast with Brynn?” I said.
“Renny says people love her!” Jim called from the passenger seat.
“I still don’t get it. What does this have to do with us?”
Josh, mid-tooth brushing, held up a finger, then spat into the tiny sink. “All her fans, they line up on the sidewalk in front of the building every morning because she comes out there with her bed and her cameras and talks to people. My mom had this idea that if we were standing out there in front of the Petersmobile, you know, in our T-shirts with our signs, we could get her to talk to us on air. Talk about buzz, right?”
Winnie stopped short, and we all jerked forward. “Will you look at those boneheads,” she said. “Don’t they have anything better to do? I mean, we’re here trying to save a town. They’re just…wasting their lives.”
Police barricades ran across the plaza, and behind them stood a crowd of maybe forty or so people, many holding signs saying stuff like, “We love you Brynn,” and “Came from New Orleans to have breakfast with Brynn.”
Josh stooped down to get a better look out the window. “Are they wearing pajamas?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Way too many polka dots and team logos for regular clothing.”
“Look at that lady with the huge Elmo slippers.” Jeanine pointed.
“All right, everybody. Time to suit up.” Jim popped open a panel, pulled out a bag, and began handing out T-shirts.
• • •
The Petersmobile was a hit. Not with the Breakfast with Brynn fans. They were too busy trying to make sure they were up front when Brynn came out. Most of the people rushing to work also didn’t give us a second look. So who were all those people taking selfies with the Petersmobile and Zoe and Henry? Tourists. Summer in midtown Manhattan is packed with tourists—hopefully tourists who were going to make Petersville their next destination.
The Doughnut King Page 9