“What about my backpack?” I said.
“Do you think he’ll be able to breathe in there?” Josh asked.
Mom inspected my backpack. “And if you keep it open, I think he’d get out,”
“No! I’ve got it.” Jeanine popped up from the table. “Somebody give me a phone.”
• • •
An hour later, we were walking single-file through Central Park along a narrow strip of shade, me followed by Jeanine, followed by her friend Kevin, followed by Henry riding in Kevin’s sister’s doll carriage, followed by Zoe, who was pushing the carriage, followed by Josh. The park was closed to cars because of the holiday, and the road was filled with bikers and Rollerbladers whizzing past.
We made a brief detour into a large playground at Seventy-Second Street to cool off in the sprinklers. Even Henry got a turn. The only one who didn’t was Kevin, who refused to leave the carriage unguarded. According to him, kids had tried to make off with it in the past. It wasn’t one of those doll strollers you see all around. It was a fancy, old-fashioned baby carriage that his parents had bought on a trip to London. I did notice it was attracting a lot of attention, though I couldn’t tell whether that was because of the carriage itself or the bunny riding in it.
As we cut across the park toward the East Side, we could hear “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” floating across the baseball fields.
“That’s it!” Zoe pushed the carriage faster, and the rest of us hurried to keep up.
“Boy, she’s pretty excited, huh?” Josh said as we passed the popcorn cart by the carousel’s ticket booth.
“You have no idea.” I grabbed onto the back of Zoe’s T-shirt to make sure I didn’t lose her in the crowd waiting at the entrance. “Jeanine?”
“Over here.” She poked her head between a man and a woman carrying identical girls in matching dresses.
Just then, the music stopped.
I tugged on the back of Zoe’s shirt. “Hold on. We still have to get tickets.”
“Here, give me the money,” Josh said. “I’ll get the tickets. You stay with Zoe.”
I fished the cash my parents had given me out of my pocket and handed it to Josh.
“Wait, this too!” Zoe reached into the carriage, felt around under Henry and his blankets, and pulled out a ziplock bag filled with coins.
Zoe, it turned out, had been saving up for rides on the Central Park carousel ever since we’d moved out of the city.
So after Josh, Jeanine, Kevin, and I enjoyed the two rides my parents had paid for, Zoe stayed on for another eleven. Henry was done after three. I don’t think Zoe minded though. Holding on to him cramped her style.
“Maybe she should stick to wooden horses,” Josh said as Zoe flew past us for the zillionth time, calling, “Yeehaw!” and slapping her horse with the reins.
When she was finally out of tickets, we grabbed hot dogs at a stand by the ball fields and headed for El Mariachi.
Even though Zoe was pretty tired by then, she didn’t complain that we weren’t heading back yet because I’d promised that I’d get her Grom, the best gelato in NYC, on the way back to the Airstream if she was good and didn’t ask questions. In case you don’t know, “gelato” is fancy for extra-creamy ice cream. Kevin didn’t ask questions because Jeanine had already filled him in.
El Mariachi was located on the thirtieth floor of a fancy skyscraper that towered over Central Park. The lobby was lined with matching marble storefronts, and the air was deliciously cool. “Is this a mall?” Josh asked. “I didn’t think they had malls in New York City.”
“There are a few,” I said. “Come on. I see the elevators.”
“Woah,” Josh said as we got off the elevator opposite a floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooking the park.
“I think I can see Grandma Esme’s building from here,” Jeanine said.
“This would be a great place to watch the fireworks tonight,” Kevin said.
“Let’s get this over with.” I pointed to the EL MARIACHI carved into a pair of dark wood doors.
A clear plastic garbage bag filled with folded white napkins sat just inside the restaurant’s entrance. Chairs were stacked on tables. It was quiet, but somewhere a radio was playing. Glass lanterns hanging from pipes that crisscrossed the ceiling flashed bits of color everywhere.
“Ooo.” Zoe put out a hand and tried to close it over a piece of ruby-colored light.
“We’re not open yet,” a woman said. She was unloading wine bottles from a box onto the bar.
“Um, we’re actually—”
“I’m looking for somebody who worked here with Kira Levin,” I said over Jeanine. This might have been Jeanine’s idea, but it was my mission.
The woman turned around, and seeing us for the first time, gave a little shudder. It was a pretty swanky place, and after a day in the park in one-hundred-degree heat, we were definitely too grimy for El Mariachi.
“Who are you looking for?”
“Someone who knew someone who used to work here, Kira Levin. She worked in the kitchen,” I said.
“You’re looking for someone who knew someone? That sounds kind of shady.” She went back to unloading bottles.
Maybe it did sound a bit shady. In the movies, somebody looking for somebody who knew somebody was always bad news for one of the somebodies.
“It’s for a project,” Jeanine said.
“What kind of project?”
“We’re doing this, um, special birthday project. For our mom,” Jeanine said.
Jeanine really was a genius sometimes. Who wouldn’t want to help kids complete their special project for their mom’s birthday?
“I still don’t get it,” the woman said.
“We’re collecting stories from people our mom worked with,” I said, “or, you know, just knew at different times in her life, and we’re gonna, um…”
“Make them into a book,” Jeanine added.
“Right!” I said. “A book, album thing.”
The woman stopped and wiped her hands on her apron. “What did you say her name was again?”
“Kira Levin,” I said. “She worked here in the kitchen for a couple of years when it first opened.”
“That’s like, a really long time ago. Nobody in the front of the house is here from back then. Maybe somebody in the kitchen knew her. Some of those guys have been here forever. That long, I couldn’t say, but you can go check.” She waved a bottle in the direction of a swinging door at the end of the bar.
We all started for the kitchen.
“Hey, I can’t let you all back there. Two of you. That’s it. Tell them Kaitlyn sent you back.” Then she ripped open another box and started unloading it.
“I’m definitely going,” I said. “Who else is coming?”
“Jeanine should go,” Josh said.
“Definitely,” Kevin said.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Jeanine wanted to take a back seat on her field research? “Then who?”
Jeanine reached out and boinged one of Zoe’s curls.
Zoe growled and snapped her jaws at Jeanine’s hand.
“And make sure people see her holding Henry. Trust me.”
But Jeanine was wrong. The kitchen staff couldn’t have cared less about Zoe and her adorableness. They didn’t even look up when we came in.
Four men and one woman in white kitchen uniforms stood over shiny steel counters chopping and stirring to music on the radio.
“Excuse me,” I said to a guy mincing a mountain of garlic cloves.
“Hey, hey, hey!” A man wearing a backward baseball cap barked from the oven where he was stirring an enormous pot. “What you talking to him for? He’s got work to do.”
“Um, Kaitlyn sent us back?”
The gu
y gave one more stir, covered the pot, and crossed the kitchen to us. His skin was so pale, it was almost see-through. “What do you want?”
“Sorry, I know how busy restaurants are before the dinner rush but we’re…”
As I talked, the guy gave me the move-it-along sign with his finger.
“Hold up. Is that a rabbit?” he said.
Maybe Jeanine was on to something…
“Uh-huh.” Zoe scooped up Henry and cradled him against her chest.
“I love rabbit,” the chef said.
“Me too,” Zoe smiled. “They’re my favorite.”
“Mine too.” He put up his hand for a high-five.
Zoe smacked his palm, then stroked Henry. “Because they’re so soft.”
“And tender,” he said. I could have sworn the guy was drooling.
“Anyway, I’m looking for anybody who might have worked here with my mom.” We needed to get what we came for and get out of there before this chef started to rub Henry down with butter and rosemary.
“And who’s your mom?” he asked.
“Kira Levin? She worked here with Walter Ramirez.”
“Oh, the leeches.” He laughed.
“The what?”
“You know what a leech is, right?”
“You mean those blobs that suck your blood?”
“Hey, everybody!” the chef yelled. “It’s the little leeches.”
The other cooks laughed.
The chef then went on to tell me about how Chef JJ had flipped out when Mom and Walter left El Mariachi to work at another restaurant, how she never forgave them, and how she still talked about “the leeches”—the slimy, bloodsucking blobs who betrayed her by going to work for the competition.
That’s when I finally got it.
Chef JJ didn’t let me on the show as some kind of favor to Mom. She’d let me on the show so she could torture me as payback for what Mom had done.
She was never going to let me win. I was going to lose, and she was going to make sure I suffered.
I’d never had a chance.
Chapter 21
The Petersville Gazette
Vol. 1, Issue 22
SPECIAL EDITION: Reporting from the Petersmobile in NYC
Town Happenings
Lost Chicken: Winnie Hammond’s prize-laying Rhode Island Red, Queen Elizabeth, last seen headed west at the intersection of Main Street and County Road 7.
If found, approach with caution. Reward: two dozen eggs.
Featured Series
Things Most People Get Wrong and How YOU Can Get Them Right
By Jeanine Levin
You know how people are always saying it takes seven years to digest chewing gum? Wrong! Most gum isn’t even digestible and it moves through your digestive tract at the same speed as anything else you eat. I’m not saying you should eat chewing gum. I’m just giving you the facts. Facts are freedom!
You’re welcome!
Two more challenges. I just had to hold it together for two more challenges.
Why did I care anymore? Why did I even bother trying when I knew there was no way I could win? Because even if there was no chance we were getting a Donut Robot out of this, I could still reach millions of television viewers planning road trips. So until I got kicked off, I’d take whatever Chef JJ dished out and talk up Petersville every chance I got.
I’m not going to lie, I was mad—mad that I’d never stood a chance at winning, mad at all the hours of training that were for nothing, and mad at Chef JJ for holding on to some stupid grudge. I was even mad at Mom for being completely clueless.
But I also felt like this part of me that had been twisted up so tight it was hard to breathe had finally come loose. And it wasn’t just because the pressure to win was gone. It was because the cheating was finally over. Nothing could erase the cheating. But the cheating would never end if I won. I’d see it every time I looked at the Donut Robot. It would go on forever. Now, at least it was over, because I was over. And that seemed fair.
Luckily, Josh and Jeanine were so worked up that they didn’t even notice that I really wasn’t, but even Jeanine knew there wasn’t anything we could do about it. Nobody expected Can You Cut It? to be fair. It was like its own planet, and Chef JJ wasn’t just the boss. She was the supreme ruler. It might not have been written in the contract we signed, but we all knew it.
Josh was already brainstorming our next move. How else could we get the money for the Donut Robot? How could we increase doughnut production without it? “Remember the Tea King,” he told me. “There’s always a way to make it work.”
Listening to Josh, I wondered if I’d ever be able to tell him that I’d cheated. I didn’t think I could make the words come out of my mouth even if I wanted to.
The day of the Egg-Off, we woke up to the sound of rain thrumming on the roof of the Airstream. So when Mom and I left for the show, instead of heading out with their Petersville signs, everybody stayed inside, Dad and Jeanine working on the newspaper, Josh scribbling ideas to save The Doughnut Stop, and Zoe scrambling around the trailer building an obstacle course for Henry.
The Egg-Off rules were simple. Cook a perfect soft-boiled egg, with a set white and a runny yolk. There was no way to figure this one out. It’s not as if you could watch the egg as it cooked inside its shell. You just had to know how long it took.
And, thanks to Mom’s cooking lessons inspired by the hundred folds in a chef’s hat, I did. One very long winter break, she’d taught me all one hundred ways to cook an egg. I’d gotten hooked on soft-boiled, something about dipping toast fingers into the creamy yolk kept warm inside the shell. I’d even started an eggcup collection. What’s not to love about a breakfast food that has its own dish, particularly if that dish has feet and is wearing moose-head slippers?
A perfect soft-boiled egg takes five minutes—or three hundred “Mississippis” if you don’t have a timer, which we didn’t. The clocks were disabled for the Egg-Off.
Phoenix had never made a soft-boiled egg. Phoenix had never even eaten a soft-boiled egg. And from the nasty green film encasing his yolk, I’m pretty sure he’d never hard-boiled one either.
But instead of admitting he had no idea what he was doing, Phoenix doubled down, claiming he’d cooked his egg to oblivion in protest. His face turned purple as he ranted about how eating runny eggs could give you salmonella. It turned out his Swedish chef fit after the Cloning Contest was just a warm-up for his Perfect Egg-Off tantrum. Definitely GIF-able.
He was still shouting after Randy called, “Cut” and invited his parents to “remove their son” from the set and, ideally, the building.
That left Harper, Keya, and me.
• • •
The next day, Mom’s alarm didn’t go off, and we all overslept. Dad managed to get us from the Upper West Side to The Food Connection building without hitting a single red light, but even with me dressing on the way and skipping breakfast, I was still late.
“Thanks for joining!” Randy made a violent check on her clipboard, then pulled down the mouthpiece on her headset. “Okay. He’s here.”
Keya waved to me from her counter, and I waved back. There was no point in hating the competition anymore.
“Looks like somebody didn’t get his beauty rest? Super juice?” Marco held out a clear plastic cup filled with a thick green…something. Whatever it was blurred the line between liquid and solid.
“No, thanks.”
“You sure? Does wonders for the complexion. Even those circles.” He waved the cup at my face.
“What circles?” Randy peered over her clipboard. “Oh, boy, you’re not kidding. And what is that?” She pointed at my nose. Marco leaned in close.
My face went hot.
“Makeup!” Randy barked.
Without thinking, I leaned over the sink, tur
ned on the water, and held my hands under the tap. I needed to do something, something that wasn’t standing there watching Randy freak out because I had a pimple.
“What am I going to do? He looks awful,” Randy said to Marco like I was deaf. “Should I cancel?”
“Don’t worry. Barry will fix him up good as new. As long as it’s not oozing. There’s nothing he can do with crusty.” Marco checked me out from different angles, clearly searching for signs of ooze.
I squirted soap on my hands again, then glanced quickly at Keya’s station. At least she was pretending not to listen.
“It’s a zit, not the plague,” Harper said. Unlike Keya, she was clearly listening and had decided to weigh in. “It’s a cooking show with kids. This can’t be the first time somebody’s had a zit.”
Every time she said the word “zit,” I felt like I was getting zapped with an electrical shock.
“You’d think,” Randy said. “But I really can’t remember this happening before.”
“All those hormones, I guess,” Marco said.
The word “hormones” was actually even worse than “zit,” like two electrical shocks. Zap. Zap.
“Buddy, your hands are clean.” Marco turned off the water and handed me a paper towel.
Clean, and numb.
“Makeup’s here!” someone shouted.
Before I knew it, I’d been whisked off the set and into a chair in front of a lit mirror. I squinted against the light and watched as Barry, a mustachioed guy wearing a tool belt brimming with small brushes, examined my zit like it was a live bomb he had to disarm.
Randy gnawed a fingernail. “Is it crusty?”
“You must chill,” Barry said. “It’s not crusty.”
I’m invisible. I’m invisible.
“See, it’s fine.” Marco massaged Randy’s shoulders. “We’ll just spray it with a little antiseptic. Barry will cake on some foundation, and we’re good to go.”
Just then, static exploded from Randy’s walkie. “Go for Randy…” Her eyeballs bounced left and right as she listened. “No! No, no, no. We have a little…”
“Situation?” Marco offered.
The Doughnut King Page 15