“What else did he say?” Was she really going to have that conversation right in front of me and then pretend everything was great?
Tap-Tap. “Just some restaurant stuff.”
“Like what?” I swear I could feel my molecules zooming around faster and faster, bashing against my insides, looking for a way out.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you cutting the menu again?”
“Business is…” Tap. Tap. “We’re just experimenting. You know how I am.”
“Right, this is all just about how you are. Because everything is great, right?” In my lap, I squeezed my napkin into a tighter and tighter ball.
Tap-tap-tappity tap. Mom studied me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s great, right?”
Zippo appeared and set the soups on the table. Each bowl held one enormous matzoh ball surrounded by a narrow moat of chicken broth.
I blew on a spoonful, sipped it, then waited for the Barney’s chicken broth to make the world go all happy endings, at least for a bit.
And I waited and waited…
• • •
We had the next day off, and by the time I woke up, light was pouring into the Airstream. I rolled over.
Josh jumped up from the table. “I have an idea. It’s not the Donut Robot. But it’s something.”
I swiped crud from the corners of my eyes. “What?”
“Sorry. I’ve been up for a while. Cronut?” He picked up a paper bag from the table and shook it.
“You got Cronuts?”
“I woke up early.”
I climbed down from the bunk. “Where is everybody?”
“They went to your grandmother’s. Something about your cousins coming into town today? They said they’d call later about where to meet them.”
That was the last thing I needed: a family reunion where all anyone would want to talk to me about was Can You Cut It?
When I came out of the bathroom, Josh had put the Cronuts on a paper towel on the table.
“You didn’t eat yours yet?”
“I’m not going to lie. It took superhuman strength to wait—oh, I almost forgot.” He pulled a carton of milk from a plastic bag on the floor and set it on the table.
“It’s okay. I only drink milk with chocolate.”
“It’s not to drink. It’s my idea for The Doughnut Stop.”
“Milk?”
“Not just any milk. Mohawk River.” He tapped the container.
“Still not following.”
“Okay. So, all day yesterday, I was reading about the Tea King and Majani, trying to get ideas and coming up with nothing. Then last night, we came back from the movie, and I was lying in bed googling on my phone, and there was this video of Okello giving a speech, and it was all about how Majani was Krakow, and about how if he’d started the business someplace else, it would be a completely different business. He said he used Krakow’s strengths, the people there who needed Majani to succeed as much as he did. And that’s what made me think of Mohawk River.”
“You lost me again.”
“Okay, so Mohawk River is a dairy collective up by us. It was created by the dairy farmers in upstate New York because they couldn’t compete with the big dairy companies by themselves, so they work together. And that’s when it came to me. What if we created our own sort of collective to make the doughnuts? What if The Doughnut Stop was like Mohawk River and we could find people to make the doughnuts for us?”
“You mean, other people would make our doughnuts in their houses and then we would sell them?”
“Yes! We’d be able to give people jobs and grow the business.”
“But how are people going to know how to make the doughnuts?”
“Easy. You’ll teach them.”
Now that I understood the plan, I began to run through it step-by-step. “So, first we’d have to find people who are good at following directions. I mean, they don’t even need to know how to cook. They just have to be able to follow really specific directions. Then we train them and get them the ingredients they’ll need. We’ll probably have to buy some equipment for them too.”
“We can get a wholesale discount and probably buy the equipment secondhand.” Josh grabbed a pad and pen from his bed and began to take notes.
“Then they just show up to deliver the doughnuts wherever we need them. We could even take advantage of different people’s home locations. Remember how Betsy’s in Crellin said they would sell doughnuts if we ever had enough? Maybe we could find someone who lives close to Crellin to make doughnuts for her.”
“Yes!” Josh scribbled away.
“You know what? I think this might actually work.”
We spent the next couple of hours hammering out a plan. We even wrote a want ad to put in The Petersville Gazette:
NEEDED: PART-TIME WORKERS
Want to be a part of The Doughnut Stop team?
Flexible hours. You can work from home. No experience necessary.
Interested? Send email to [email protected].
At noon, we headed to Barney’s for latkes and eggs and onions, then climbed an enormous rock in Central Park, and sat there making to-do lists.
We were just starting to come up with a budget when my phone buzzed with a text.
Dad: So dinner is at G-Mare’s at 6. Wear something nice, okay? Or at least clean-ish.
I’d gone almost a whole day without thinking about Can You Cut It? and I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to have to sit there while my aunts and uncles and cousins and grandmother grilled me about what it was like on the show and told me over and over how awesome I was for making it to the finals.
Me: I don’t think we’re coming
Dad: Come
Me: Dad I really don’t feel like it
Dad: Everyone wants to see you
Me: Sorry
Dad: Not okay. Command performance. We won’t stay late
Me: I really can’t
A second later, he was calling. Even though I really didn’t want to, I picked up. “Dad, Josh and I are—”
“I understand this is not how you want to spend the evening. Tant pis.”
The French was out. A bad sign.
“It’s more than that,” I said.
“You know what, Tris, you’re not a little kid anymore. Sometimes you just do stuff because you have to.”
Unreal.
“Tris?”
If he thought I had to stop acting like a little kid, why was he always trying to sell me fairy tales about everything being all rainbows and unicorns?
“Can you hear me?” he said.
“Fine, see you there,” I said, and hung up.
The dinner was just as painful as I’d thought it was going to be. Everyone wanted details about the callback and each challenge. And they all told me how “great” it was that I’d made it to the finals. Can You Cut It? was basically the only thing anybody wanted to talk about. Plus, my grandmother was doing the traditional French meal with like, a zillion courses, including separate ones for salad, cheese, and dessert, so we were trapped at the table forever.
I didn’t say a word to Dad at dinner, or on the way home, or back at the Airstream. He went right on talking to me though, either not noticing I wasn’t talking back, or pretending not to.
• • •
That night, I dreamed I was back in Petersville on Main Street right under the traffic light. Dr. C was there too, hammering away at a huge block of something that looked like yellow soap. I was just standing there, watching bits of the stuff fly off as Dr. C carved away at it. Then he stepped back, turned to me, and said, “It stinks, doesn’t it?”
That’s when I saw: it was me. Not all of me, just my face, as big as a refrigerator,
carved out of a giant hunk of butter.
“Tris?”
I could even smell the butter.
“Tris, wake up.”
I opened my eyes. Hanging above me was a white paper bag. Someone shook it, then pulled it away.
There was Dad, Muppet-smiling down at me. “Went all the way to Patisserie Claude. Got there just as these babies were coming out of the oven.” He put his face in the bag and inhaled. “Still hot.”
I looked around. Everyone else was still sleeping. “What time is it?”
“Early. Come on. Get dressed,” he whispered.
I rolled away from him. “I don’t have to be there until nine.” I was awake enough now to know I was still mad.
Dad shook the bag again. “When was the last time you had a real croissant?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Come on. I want to show you something.”
“Is this another command performance?” I said, face to the wall.
“Just come.”
Clearly, that was a yes. I was too awake to go back to sleep anyway. And it had been forever since I’d eaten a real-deal croissant.
Dad had driven us to The Food Connection building as we slept that morning, and he waited outside by the fountain while I got dressed.
Last day, I said to myself in the bathroom mirror as I pulled on my PETERSVILLE, THE PLACE TO EAT T-shirt.
By the time I got outside, the Breakfast with Brynn crowd was already lined up along the sidewalk. Since the heat wave had broken, there were even more Brynn-heads, and instead of trying to snake my way through them, I took the long way around to the fountain.
“Here.” Dad handed me a croissant wrapped in a paper napkin.
I sat down beside him on the bench that circled the fountain. Water shot high into the air behind us, spraying the back of my neck with a cool mist.
I pulled the croissant apart slowly, watching the greasy layers stretch, break, and rebound. You can’t do that with those tasteless, horn-shaped rolls people pass off as croissants. The trick is butter, sheet after sheet of butter, and Claude never skimps.
I dropped a piece onto my tongue. It melted like a snowflake.
Dad popped the last bite of croissant into his mouth, stood up, and brushed flakes off his pants. A good croissant will leave you covered in golden flakes.
“What’s that for?” I pointed to a cardboard tube tucked under his arm.
He took a deep breath, pulled a paper scroll from the tube, and unrolled it flat on the bench.
It was a photo of a box, an enormous, bright orange box sitting on some grass with two matching lawn chairs beside it. Judging from the chairs, the box was about the size of the Airstream. “What is it?”
“Guess?” Dad waggled his eyebrows.
“Do I have to?”
“Come on. It’s more fun this way.”
“I guess it sort of reminds me of those things on boats they use to ship stuff.”
“Ding! Ding! Ding!” Dad was in full-on game show host mode. “Exactly! Shipping containers. Okay, hold that thought.” He rolled up the photograph, unrolled another scroll, and held it flat. “Now, what do you see?”
Jeez, how many rounds of this game were there? “A room? A bed. A chair. A desk.”
“Yes? All in the”—he held up the first scroll—“shipping container.”
“Still not getting it. Why are people hanging out in shipping containers?” This had sycamore syrup all over it. Where was Jeanine when I needed her?
“Because it’s cool and cheap and environmentally friendly!” Huge smile.
“And orange.”
“You can get them in any color.” Even bigger smile.
“And claustrophobic.”
“You can put in as many windows as you want. You can even make one whole wall glass.”
“You want us to live in a shipping container?”
“No. It’s Petersville’s first inn!” He opened a third scroll, a map of town. “See, these…” He tapped four rectangles labeled A, B, C, and D in the field beside The Station House parking lot. “…are cottages.”
Whatever this was, Dad must have been working on it for months.
“So here’s what I was thinking. No matter how incredible we make the Petersville experience, no matter how much publicity we get, Petersville is too far for most people to travel to just for the day. If we want visitors, we need to provide a place to stay.” He jabbed at the rectangles. “And a place to eat.” He pointed to The Station House.
“You’re opening a motel where people stay in shipping containers?”
“It’s not a motel. It’s an inn. But, yes, I am! Remember Barton?”
“Who?”
“My friend from college?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway because I didn’t see how it mattered either way except that if I said that I didn’t, I’d have to listen to some story about who Barton was and the good old college days.
“Well, Barton is starting this company that refurbishes shipping containers, and he’s going to give the first four to us at a huge discount because he needs to drum up business. They’ll come and take lots of photos to put on his website!”
“How long have you been planning this?”
“I don’t know. I guess I first got the idea the night of the meeting.”
“And you’ve been keeping this secret all this time?” It didn’t make any sense. This was actually a good idea, and way more useful than the paper. Why did he wait so long to tell anybody about it?
“I didn’t want to tell you until I had everything finalized, until I knew it was going to work out.”
Now I got it. He didn’t tell me until he could say it was going to be great.
“Why does it matter when I told you?”
I stood up. I couldn’t look at his smiling face one more second.
How could he not get it? I didn’t need another story from him about how everything was great. I didn’t need a story about how he figured it all out. Those stories were never going to help me. What I needed was a story about how he messed up so bad, he had no idea how to make it right or even which direction he had to go to get to right.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I…” I couldn’t tell him what was wrong. He didn’t want to know. He wanted me to believe his stories about rainbows and unicorns. He wanted me to say school was a ten; he wanted me to write articles for his paper; he wanted me to believe that I could win a Solve-a-Thon if I tried. “I gotta go. I can’t be late.”
He looked at his watch. “You won’t be. You still have time.”
I backed away. “Yeah, but I need…I need some time, you know, just by myself before, to focus.”
“Oh, okay. That sounds smart.” He started rolling up his plans. “We can talk more about this later.”
“Sure. I’ll catch up with you guys at the parents’ lounge after,” I said, still moving away.
“Hey, Tris, hold on a sec.” He came closer. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look—”
“Yeah, sure. I’m…great.”
Then I turned and walked away.
I heard him call something after me but I didn’t stop. I think it was “good luck.”
Chapter 23
Zooming up in the elevator, I tried to shut Dad, all sycamore-syrup smiley, out of my head.
As much as I wanted to run out of The Food Connection building right then and forget about Can You Cut It? forever, there was something I needed more.
I needed to prove I deserved to be in the finals. I needed to prove that I’d deserved to be there all along.
It wouldn’t erase what I’d done, or make it okay, but maybe it would help me figure out how to face up to it.
Just outside the greenroom, my phone buzzed with a text from Josh: “Co
ncentrate! Create! Crush the Competition! Concentrate! Create! Crush the Competition!”
Me: Jeanine?
Jeanine: I borrowed Josh’s phone
Me: What happened to believe and achieve
Jeanine: Time to step it up
Me: She’s never going to let me win. U know that right?
Jeanine: U don’t need her to say it to know if u won. B THE SHARK.
My throat went tight. Jeanine had been cheering from the beginning for all kinds of reasons, for Petersville, for herself for coming up with the idea in the first place, but this time felt like it wasn’t for anything but me.
Me: Thanks
Jeanine: Never, never give up
Jeanine was right. I could do more than just prove I deserved to be there. I could blow Keya out of the water. I could win, even if Chef JJ was never going to say the words. I just needed to focus.
Be the shark. Be the shark.
I threw open the door to the greenroom.
“Gut margn!” Keya was sitting in the armchair closest to the door smiling her freakishly friendly smile. “That’s ‘good morning’ in Yiddish.”
Did she really expect that we’d come in here before the finals and talk like we had when we were stuck in that elevator? Everything was different. We were winner and loser now, even if we didn’t know who was who yet.
I headed for the couch on the other side of the room, as far from Keya as I could get. Sharks were loners.
“My mother says there’s some great Yiddish plays people still perform. Maybe you already know that, but I thought I’d say, just in case you didn’t.” As Keya chattered on, she wandered over to the food spread, which was down to one lonely plate of lemon poppy mini muffins. “I’m knackered. I couldn’t sleep at all last night. Can you believe this is it?”
I stayed quiet. Sharks were not chatty.
“Tris?”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my headphones, plugged them into my phone, and turned up the music as loud as it would go. Then I closed my eyes.
A few seconds later, I felt the earbuds being ripped out.
“What’s your problem?” Keya’s freakishly friendly smile was gone. Finally.
“What’s my problem?”
“Just because it’s down to the two of us, you won’t even talk to me?”
The Doughnut King Page 17