“No,” Deja admits, and it’s true. Auntie has always come through for her.
6
Big Plans
Nikki
Nikki is in the kitchen poring over a cookbook. She’s just come across a beautiful picture of little cakes the size of ring boxes—called petit fours—when Deja knocks on the door. Nikki quickly puts a folded napkin on the page before she closes the book. Then she opens the door.
Deja is standing there with her backpack. “Wanna do homework together?” she asks.
“I guess,” Nikki says, even though she’s not very happy about the interruption. She’d really like to get back to looking at the petit fours recipe. Petit fours are going to be her secret weapon, but she has only a little bit of time to work on it.
Nikki’s plan is to present a tasty sample of the dessert she’s going to include on her menu to each of the girls who’ll be judging the wedding planners teams. She can’t let Deja know about this plan because Deja would just copy it.
Deja seats herself at the table. She glances at the cookbook. But then she seems to turn her attention to emptying stuff from her book bag. She takes out her spelling folder and her pencil and her pencil sharpener. Nikki knows that Deja hates a dull pencil. Deja reaches for a napkin, places it on the table before her, and carefully sharpens her pencil over it. When she looks up, she says, “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?” Nikki asks.
“Why are you sitting there looking at me? Where’s your homework?”
“Oh, yeah.” Nikki gets up and retrieves her backpack from just inside the front door. As soon as she returns, she sees the cookbook in front of Deja, opened to the page with the petit fours recipe.
“What’s this?” Deja asks.
“My mom’s cookbook.”
“What were you doing with it?”
“Nothing—just looking at it.”
Deja looks at the beautiful picture of pastel-colored petit fours decoratively placed on a crystal cake plate. “Why were you looking at this page?”
“I was looking at the whole book, not just that page.”
Deja stares at Nikki. Nikki can feel Deja’s eyes on her even as she starts pulling stuff out of her backpack. It’s quiet except for the ticking of the rooster clock on the wall.
“You’re going to make something from your mom’s cookbook, aren’t you? Then you’re going to bring it to school so you won’t just have a menu, you’ll have real food, too,” Deja says. “Admit it, Nikki.”
“It’s my idea, and you can’t copy, otherwise you’re a copycat.”
“I’m not copying your stupid idea. Anyway, your mom is not going to let you do it. You’re too young to cook.”
“My mom will let me do it. She let me help make those election day cookies when you were running for student body president of Carver Elementary School.”
“Those cookies were already made. We just had to put them on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven. You can’t just make something from scratch.”
“Oh, yes, I can.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Yes, I can,” Nikki persists.
“Did you get permission?”
“Not yet, but I’m going to.”
Deja chuckles. “Here,” she says, handing Nikki the list of that week’s spelling words. “Test me.”
After Deja goes home, Nikki begins to worry. Deja might just steal her idea. She could get her auntie to make something yummy for the judges—and then Deja’s team could win the contest. Nikki decides to get back to her spelling words later. She has petit fours to make.
But first she has to get some kind of permission. That’s going to be tricky. Only her father is home. He’s in the den watching football and he’s not going to want to be disturbed. Nikki knows it must be a close game, because her father has been doing a bunch of whooping and hollering and talking bad about one of the teams. Perhaps this can work in her favor.
She walks quietly to the den doorway and looks in. Her father is sitting on the edge of his special recliner with his eyes glued to the TV screen. Suddenly he jumps up, throws his fist in the air, and does a little dance in place. Nikki sighs. She has to see or hear this scene almost every week.
His huge grin tells her that this is a perfect time to ask him for permission. He won’t even register what she’s asking. She could probably ask him for permission to drive the car and he would say yes.
“Daddy?” she says in her sweetest voice.
“Yeah, baby, what is it?”
Good sign, Nikki thinks. “Can I ... make some petit fours?”
“What?” His total attention is on the replay.
“Some petit fours.”
“Petit fours—what are those?”
She knows he’s still not really paying attention.
“These little cakes.”
He stops then and looks at her squarely. “Have you made those before?”
“No,” she says truthfully. “But I looked in the recipe book and they’re really easy to make.”
If a touchdown hadn’t been scored just then, her father might have asked her more questions. But now he’s so excited about the game, all he can do is make a brushing-away movement with his hand and yell out, “Yeah, sure!” Then he adds, “Be careful.”
Good. She has the permission she needs. Now the trick is to get everything done before her mother gets home from her book club meeting.
Nikki has watched her mother in the kitchen enough to know that she needs to get out all the ingredients and utensils and line them up on the table. She knows how to measure, pretty much, and she knows the different cups for dry ingredients and liquid ingredients. But she doesn’t know stuff like “sift dry ingredients.” And what’s a level tablespoon? And how do you soften butter? And then there’s the eggs. What does it mean to separate them? And what’s confectioners’ sugar? Maybe it’s just another way of saying sugar. And what’s corn syrup? Do they have any? Maybe she can use maple syrup or molasses.
First, she has to get out the regular sugar and measure a cup and a half. The canister is half full. Nikki wonders how she can get the sugar out of it and into the cup. Some will probably spill. She knows what she’ll do. She puts the cup in the kitchen sink and pours the sugar into it that way. Unfortunately, she turns the canister over too far and the sugar not only fills the cup, but the remainder goes into the sink.
Oh, well, Nikki thinks. At least the mess can be rinsed down the drain.
Nikki studies the recipe again. She jumps up and preheats the oven to 350 degrees. She knows how to do that. Then she begins to measure and dump the rest of the ingredients into the big bowl her mother always uses. She doesn’t pay any attention to the sifting part. As long as everything is in the bowl, she thinks.
She doesn’t know what creaming butter and sugar together means, so she just puts those ingredients into the bowl as well. The eggs are in there, too—unseparated, because she doesn’t know what that means, either. She grabs a big wooden spoon from the counter and begins to stir, but the stick of butter is not mixing in the way it should. The ingredients aren’t turning into a batter, not like when her mother makes a cake. Nikki wonders if heating everything in the oven would help. That way, the butter will melt and she can stir everything together.
Nikki knows that you can’t put a mixing bowl in the oven, so she dumps everything into a big roasting pan, mentally patting herself on the back for thinking of that. Then she watches it through the glass window in the oven door. When the butter is melted, she puts on her mother’s big oven mitts and very carefully takes the roasting pan out. She places it on top of the stove and stirs everything together. It still doesn’t really look like batter, but it’s closer. She leaves it on the stove to cool while she figures out how to grease and flour a cake pan.
She has the pan. It’s shaped like a rectangle and is not too deep. But it’s not greased and floured. While Nikki is looking for something to grease the pan with, she comes across the can
s of frosting her mother keeps on hand. There’s chocolate and vanilla. She decides to use it to decorate her petit fours. But she’s also going to put strawberry jam on some of them so they will look more colorful.
When she feels the roasting pan is cool enough, she carries it—wearing the oven mitts—to the table and pours the batter into the cake pan. Then she puts the cake pan into the oven, happy that nothing got on the floor.
Oops ... she realizes that she forgot to grease and flour the pan. Oh, well, she thinks. She’s sure everything will turn out all right anyway.
Nikki knows to set the timer on the stove. She knows how to clean up after herself as well. Once she’s finished, she opens the window to air out the kitchen and checks the wall clock. Her mother is due home in about an hour. Perfect. Her petit fours will be baked by then. The pan will be covered with foil and hidden under her bed, along with the cans of frosting and the jar of strawberry jam, and she’ll be sitting at the table, putting her spelling words into a story and remembering to underline each one.
***
That’s exactly how it works out. When her mom comes home, she sniffs the air in the kitchen suspiciously, but Nikki has done such a good job of cleaning up and putting things away that she doesn’t ask any questions.
The next morning when Nikki wakes up and checks the cake under her bed, though, it has sunk in the middle. When she presses on it the way she has seen her mother do, it doesn’t give. It’s rock hard. That’s okay, Nikki thinks. She gets out the knife she squirreled away in her dresser drawer and smears chocolate frosting on one part, vanilla frosting on another part, and strawberry jam on what’s left. Then she saws the whole thing into squares. Well, they aren’t perfect squares. They don’t look anything like the pretty little pastel-colored petit fours pictured in her mother’s cookbook.
Doesn’t matter, Nikki tells herself. She manages to get most of her little cakes out of the pan and into the plastic container she had also sneaked into her room the night before. The container will go into her backpack, and no one will be the wiser—until lunch recess, when she surprises everyone with their own delicious little petit fours. It’s all planned.
***
“What’s that bulging out in your backpack?” Deja asks as soon as she sees Nikki come down her front steps.
“What?” Nikki asks.
“You’ve got something in your backpack.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Nikki, anyone can see you’ve got something big and square in your backpack.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Whatever,” Deja says.
Nikki changes the subject. “What color do you like best on me, Deja? Peach or lavender?”
Deja looks over at Nikki suspiciously. “Here we go again. You know lavender is my favorite color.”
“I like it, too.” She glances quickly at Deja, then looks straight ahead. “You can’t own a color, Deja.”
“But I was hoping to wear lavender, Nikki.”
“I thought your auntie couldn’t get you anything new.”
“She can’t buy a dress already made from the department store. But she can get Miss Ida to make me something. We’re going to look for a pattern and material on Saturday.”
“You’re not coming with me on Saturday?”
“I can’t come with you and go with Auntie Dee at the same time.”
Nikki looks disappointed. She was looking forward to having Deja as an audience: to watch her as she got her new dress and new shoes and bought a present from Ms. Shelby’s actual registry.
“I know what you have in that stupid backpack, anyway,” Deja adds.
Nikki is silent.
“It’s something you made for the wedding menu. You think it’s going to make your team win.”
“I don’t think. I know,” Nikki says.
Deja rolls her eyes to show she doesn’t care. Nikki knows better. And she knows that Deja probably didn’t put all that much work into her menu, anyway. She probably just found some dishes out of Auntie’s vegetarian cookbook. Yucky tofu and maybe nuts and dried fruit for dessert. There’s no way Deja could help her team win with that stuff. Plus, a person can’t own a color. Nikki is perfectly within her rights to choose a dress in lavender. Then a funny feeling comes over her. She spent so much time on the petit fours that she didn’t put much time into her menu, either. None of the dishes even came out of a cookbook. Oh, well...
7
Roses vs. Lilacs
Deja
As soon as they enter the schoolyard, Rosario runs up to them. “Today’s the contest, remember?”
“We remember,” Deja says as unenthusiastically as possible.
“What’s in your backpack?” Rosario asks Nikki.
“It’s a surprise,” Nikki says.
“It’s something to go with her wedding menu,” Deja says, not caring that she’s spoiling the surprise.
Nikki sighs.
Rosario looks extra excited at this. She spreads the news once the bell sends them to Room Ten’s lineup area. “Nikki brought something from her wedding menu!”
Deja is getting super tired of the word wedding. She can’t wait until the contest is over and they don’t have to focus on Ms. Shelby’s wedding anymore.
As soon as Deja puts her jacket in her cubby and takes her place at her desk, she’s happy to see the morning journal topic: What Really Bugs Me.
She rummages around in her desk until she finds her morning journal. She loves opening to the first clean page when she has a lot to get off her chest.
Things Nikki is Doing to Bug Me on Purpose
My friend. Nikki is really bugging me these days. And I know shes doing it all on purpose just because she gets to get a new dress and Ms. Shelby’s present and new shoes and plus she gets to go to a beauty salon and get her hair done. And now we have this contest. A wedding planner contest where we all get to be wedding planners and ChiChi and Keisha and a bunch of other people know they want to be wedding planners when they grow up. And Nikki she’s all the time talking about what she’s going to do for the menu and the color of her dress and getting to see the registry for Ms. Shelbys present. She acts like she doesn’t even care that I can’t do those things. Shes acting like everything is fine with me. I would be nicer to her. if it was me that could do all those things and she couldn’t. Now I wonder, if shes a true friend. I just wonder.
She added that last part for emphasis. It makes her feel better.
Just as she’s putting her journal away, a note is passed back to her. It’s from Queen Rosario. (That’s what Deja has come to call her, secretly.) The note reads:
Isamar, Angela, Cynthia, and Myrella are going to be the judges. Bring everything you have to lunch recess.
Deja pulls her backpack off the back of her chair. She gets to keep hers with her because she isn’t one of the kids who go into their backpacks all day looking for little toys or candy to sneak into their mouths. Like Ralph—he has to keep his in his cubby. Deja looks over at him, and sure enough, he’s got some little action figure on his lap and all his attention is on it. Poor Ralph. He has such a hard time sticking to the rules.
Deja rummages around until she finds her menu. She looks it over:
WEDDING MENU
Beverages
Apple Juice
Water
Lemonaid
Rootbeer
Main Course
Tofu Spaghetti
Whole Wheat Bread
Spinach/Arugula Salad
Dessert
Soycream with Carob Sauce
Deja thinks it looks pretty good. She wrote it on a piece of folded lavender construction paper so it would look like a menu. And she decorated it with her usual rainbows and balloons. The only problem is the food itself—but Auntie only has vegetarian cookbooks. So what is she to do?
Just as she looks up, another note comes her way. It’s from the queen once again:
Its going to be 10 points for each thing so the
team who gets the most points wins.
***
The Purple Lilacs and the Red Roses convene at an empty lunch table as soon as the bell rings, sending everyone to the yard for recess. Rosario—who thinks of everything, it seems—has already gotten permission from the teacher on lunch duty to use one of the tables.
“Roses over here,” she says, indicating one end of the table. “And Lilacs over there.” She indicates the other end. The judges are already there, standing with their arms crossed for some reason, probably trying to look serious.
Nikki has brought her mysteriously lumpy backpack with her.
Rosario goes on. “We’re going to do wedding dresses and bridesmaids’ dresses first, then the decorations, and then the invitation, and then the menu.”
There are some blank looks; some shrugs. Without any more pomp and circumstance, Myrella picks up the Lilacs’ poster board with a drawing of a bride in the middle. The bride looks as if she’s wearing a fluffy white cloud on her head and a long, white gown. Deja can tell immediately that it was drawn by Rosario’s older sister, the one in high school. She’s seen Rosario’s drawing and it’s never been that good.
“Did you draw that?” Antonia asks.
“Yes,” Rosario says.
“By yourself?”
“Yes, by myself.”
“Let me see you draw it again,” Antonia says.
“I don’t have to, and anyway, we don’t have time.” Rosario turns to the judges. Angela has some index cards in her hand. “How many points do we get?” Rosario asks.
The judges put their heads together; then Angela writes a number on an index card and holds it up: 8.
Rosario grins. “Okay, hold up your drawing,” she says to ChiChi of the Red Roses. ChiChi’s is on two pieces of folded copy paper, one for the bride’s dress, and one for the bridesmaids’. It looks as if she drew them while watching television. They’re not very good.
Wedding Drama Page 4