“It was great,” I said. I told the class how much everyone appreciated the sauce and how many people were happy to have something that was made from fresh, local produce. “We could have given away another hundred jars,” I said.
After Monday Madness, Eli and I were face-to-face at our desks.
“I’m glad it went well,” he said.
“It didn’t,” I answered coldly. “We didn’t have enough for everyone. Abby didn’t even get a jar. Because of you.”
He frowned, confused. “How is that because of me?”
“You messed up the Sauce Day with all your video stuff.”
Eli’s face fell. “You’re the one who knocked into your mom!”
I sighed, shaking my head. “Everyone else was helping, and you weren’t. Abby was so disappointed.”
I turned away from Eli without saying another word.
At home that afternoon, I moved Penelope and Dash’s paddock to an enclosure by the orchard. That would give them a chance to graze on different grasses, which was good for their tummies. It was also a way to put Dash to work doing something super-useful: eating poison ivy and other plants in places we didn’t want. Goats aren’t allergic to poison ivy the way people are.
“That’s the cutest weed-whacker ever,” a voice said from behind an apple tree.
“Hi, Marco,” I called. “Doing your thinking here today?”
“Yes, indeed,” he replied from where he was sitting against a tree. “And I was just thinking about your big project. How did everyone like the sauce?”
“They liked it … or at least the ones who got some did. We didn’t have enough for everyone.” I walked over to Marco and sat down across from him. “I barely made a difference at all.”
“How many jars of sauce did you give out?” Marco asked.
“Seventy-six.”
Marco shook his head and smiled. “Seventy-six jars sounds like a big difference. Besides, it’s the smallest amounts that become the biggest amounts.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was growing up in Mexico, my father owned a construction company. He scheduled one hour every week for himself. Do you know what he did during that time?”
I shook my head.
“He did house repairs for people who could not afford to pay him. As soon as I got old enough, he let me work with him. That was how I learned to make old things new again. But we only had one hour each week, and often it wasn’t enough time to fix a problem.”
I nodded. I knew how that felt.
“So every week, we went back. We kept working on the same problem until it was fixed. Sometimes it would take two weeks, and sometimes it would take two months. However long, my father did not give up.”
Marco was quiet for a while. I thought about the seventy-six families we had helped with our sauce.
“There is no helping that’s too small, Blaire,” Marco said, standing up. “Maybe you have to go back and do some more, but that doesn’t mean the first bit didn’t count.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said quietly. “Thanks, Marco.”
“You’re welcome. You see—a different perspective can make all the difference.” With that, Marco stood up and brushed off the seat of his jeans. Suddenly, I jumped up, too.
“Marco, wait!” I cried. “From my perspective, I see poison ivy. You’ve been sitting in it!”
Dash wandered over and started eating the clump Marco had been sitting on. “So now you show up?” Marco said to the goat.
“Maaaah,” Dash said with his mouth full.
Marco looked at me and we both started laughing.
At school the next morning, Ms. Lewis announced that Eli had something he wanted to share with the class. He glanced nervously at me before going over to the class computer. I hadn’t said a word to him since the day before.
After a moment, a picture came up on the Smart Board at the front of the room. White letters against a dark red background. THIS IS OPERATION AWESOME SAUCE.
OMG. Was Eli actually going to show us the videos he made during Prep Day and Sauce Day? That was pretty much the last thing I wanted to see.
The video started with some shots of the Bluefield Helping Hands Center from the outside. Then there were images of the food pantry shelves and the mostly empty refrigerator where fresh produce is stored. When had Eli gotten those shots?
Next were some things he shot from our Prep Day. There were the chickens, and Penny and Dash, and then everyone pulling carrots and picking zucchini. Dad was explaining how we got donations of mason jars from the local hardware store. The way the video was edited, it was clear that lots of people had come together to make this project happen.
Then the screen faded to black. When it lit up again, there was a girl on the screen.
Just like when I watched the Room Revolutions video, it took me a second to realize, that girl was me.
I was peeling carrots, talking about how I’d come up with the idea for Operation Awesome Sauce. Eli had added music, which made what I was saying seem even more dramatic. Then the video cut away to a shot of me and Abby walking through the orchard on Prep Day. You could only see the backs of our heads, but I could tell it was us. Abby reached out and took my hand.
The rest of the video showed the kids in our class picking and chopping the vegetables, and Mom stirring the pots of simmering tomatoes in the restaurant kitchen.
The video ended with another shot of the Helping Hands Center. Eli zoomed in on a family walking out of the building, holding bags of groceries. The final screen said, THE BLUEFIELD HELPING HANDS CENTER NEEDS MORE HELPING HANDS! LET’S GET MORE CANNED FOOD TO OUR NEIGHBORS WHO NEED IT!
Below that was the website and phone number of the center.
When it ended, we all sat there for a few seconds. The room was totally silent.
Wow, I thought. Eli is really good at this video stuff.
I started clapping and everyone joined in.
“Awesome video, bro!” someone said.
“That was epic,” Amadi added.
Eli shrugged, but he also smiled.
For the first time since he came to our school, Eli wasn’t sitting alone in the cafeteria. All the boys in our class squeezed into his regular table at lunch, asking him questions about how he had made the video. His face lit up as he was talking, and the other boys were laughing.
When we came outside for recess, the boys invited him to play basketball with them, but he shook his head and went to sit in his usual spot, by a tree near the edge of the playground.
“Come on, Blaire,” Thea said, tugging on my jacket sleeve. “Race you up the spiderweb.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I told her.
Thea went off to join our other friends, and I headed over to the tree. When Eli looked up and saw me, he actually rolled his eyes.
“What do you want?”
I took a deep breath. “I want to apologize.”
Eli looked surprised.
“You were right,” I said softly. “Spilling the sauce was at least partly my fault. I’m sorry I got so mad.”
Eli stared at me for a few seconds. “Thanks,” he finally said. “I’m sorry my videoing got in the way.”
I pointed to the ground next to him, asking if I could sit. He shrugged again. I was learning that a shrug was Eli language for Yeah, let’s talk more.
So I sat down and said, “Your video was really great.”
“Thanks,” Eli murmured.
“I had no idea you went to Helping Hands.”
“Before I went, I didn’t really get how many people needed help.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
We were quiet for a moment. I picked some dirt out of the sole of my sneaker, and Eli started tugging at a weed in the grass.
“So what are you going to do with that video now?” I asked. “Are you going to show it to Eileen?”
“I don’t know,” Eli said. “I guess so. But I didn’t make it for any
one besides our class. Really I just made it for myself. And for my—”
He stopped and bit his lip.
“And for my dad,” he continued. Then he took a deep breath. It sounded shaky, as if he were about to cry. “He died last year.”
“Oh …” I said, not sure what to say next. “Gosh, Eli. That’s awful.”
“That’s why we moved here. To be near my mom’s family.”
“You said you made the video partly for him,” I said. “What did you mean?”
“Well,” Eli began, tugging at the weed again. “He’s the one who taught me how to do all that. We, um, made videos together all the time. We’d post them on a private account and send them around to our online friends. We had a whole group of people on a message board who were like us, who loved making videos.”
“That’s really neat,” I said. “Do other kids know about your dad?”
“No. It’s not like I’m going to get a T-shirt that says, MY DAD DIED, FEEL SORRY FOR ME. Ms. Lewis and the principal know, though.”
“You must miss him a lot.”
Eli nodded. “All the time. You know what’s weird? This is the first place I’ve made a video since he got sick. And the first one I made without him.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I just started taking video of Bluefield whenever I was driving around with my mom, pretending I was showing our new town to my dad. That was another thing me and my dad used to do before he got sick. We moved around a lot for his job, and we’d get to know the town by driving all over and taking video of it.”
Eli paused, staring at the sky. I thought of him and his dad, exploring those other towns they lived in.
“Then,” Eli continued, “at your farm, I pretended I was showing him the kids in my new class and what we were doing for Operation Awesome Sauce.”
“I can’t imagine moving around that much,” I said, finally telling him what I’d been thinking since he first arrived. “I’ve only ever lived here. Wasn’t it hard to leave your friends every time?”
He shrugged. “I never really had any friends. Wherever we went, I knew we’d only be there for maybe a year, so it seemed pointless to try. My dad was my best friend, anyway.”
Eli tugged really hard on the weed this time, and it finally popped out of the ground. We both looked at it in his open palm.
“If you’re going to stay in Bluefield,” I said, “you can make friends now.”
“I’m not very good at it,” he said, then looked right in my eyes. “I’m not good at being part of things.”
“You were part of Operation Awesome Sauce …”
“I still feel different from everyone else,” Eli said. “Like no one really gets what it’s like … to be me, I guess.”
“I feel different from everyone else, too,” I said.
“Because of the dairy thing?”
I nodded. “It feels really weird to eat something different when everyone else gets to eat yummy stuff with milk and cheese in it. My mom says it’ll get easier.”
Eli smiled a little. “My mom says that, too. About missing my dad.”
“Oh my gosh,” I said, suddenly horrified, because my being dairy-free felt like nothing compared to losing a parent. “I didn’t mean … I mean, I know me being dairy-free is not as serious as—”
Eli shrugged. “It’s not, like, a contest,” he said. He flipped the weed over in his hand. “What’s the hardest part about being dairy-free?”
“Feeling left out of things,” I replied. “And other kids don’t always get that I feel that way. They don’t understand what it’s like, so they’ll accidentally say or do something that makes me feel even worse. It was really cool when you brought in those dairy-free brownies, because for once, I wasn’t different.”
Eli nodded. “It’s a huge bummer, feeling different.”
“Ms. Lewis wants me to talk about all that with the whole class. Maybe I should. Or maybe I could just get a shirt that says, PLEASE REMEMBER THAT I CAN’T EAT DAIRY AND THAT IT MAKES ME FEEL WEIRD SOMETIMES.”
Now Eli laughed. At something I said!
Yes, it had happened.
Eli and I were officially friends.
A few days later, I was covering the front desk for Grandpa when the phone rang.
“Pleasant View Farm,” I said. “May I help you?”
“Hi, Blaire.”
I recognized the voice. “Eileen! Hi!”
“Blaire, something really exciting is happening,” Eileen said.
I pictured a blimp hovering over the Helping Hands Center, dropping crates of food attached to little parachutes.
“Did you see Eli’s video?” she asked.
“Yes! Did he send it to you? It’s great, right?”
“I cried the first five times I watched it,” she said with a little laugh. “He told the story of our food pantry and our challenges so well. I asked him if I could post it on the Helping Hands social media pages, and he said yes, so we put it up last night. Guess how many emails I had in my inbox this morning?”
“Ummm … I’m guessing, a lot?”
“Over three hundred! The video’s been viewed over a thousand times and the number of shares goes up every hour. It’s crazy!”
“That’s great that people are sharing it.”
“They’re also really inspired by it. People are stepping up. I’ve received so many inquiries from people and groups wanting to organize donations. Folks asking how to volunteer. And a lot of them are really interested in getting involved in more canning events like Operation Awesome Sauce.”
“More helping!” I cried. “That’s amazing news.” But then my excitement faded. “But I don’t think we can use the Pleasant View Farm kitchen anytime soon.”
“So we’ll find somewhere else,” Eileen said, her voice sounding cheerful and confident. “Would you still help out even if it’s not at your farm?”
“Of course!”
Now that I’d found a way to make a difference in Bluefield, I couldn’t wait to make an even bigger one.
The next day, Cat and I went to Helping Hands to drop off another produce donation.
When I hopped out of the truck, I heard a roar and looked up to see a bright red motorcycle pulling in next to us. Marco!
Just then, a blue van rolled up and stopped right next to Marco.
Marco got off his motorcycle. “Right on time!” Marco announced, waving at the van. The door slid open and a little boy scrambled out of it, followed by his sister. I recognized them right away from the Room Revolutions videos.
“You’re her!” Jack said when he saw me. “The girl who made our attic a playground!”
“The best attic EVER!” the girl added.
A woman climbed out of the van and came over, offering her hand. “I’m Mrs. Mason, and I feel like we’re meeting a real celebrity.”
I felt my face flush. Me? A CELEBRITY?
“And what am I?” Marco asked. “The fake celebrity?”
“Marco, you’re in a class by yourself,” her husband said as he unbuckled the twins from their car seats, and we all laughed.
“My kids want to live in the attic,” Mrs. Mason said. “They don’t care if the rest of the house is ever finished.” Then she noticed the produce crates in the back of Cat’s truck. “Need a hand?”
She and Marco helped us carry the produce into the lobby, where Eileen was waiting. Along with Eli, holding his tablet.
Wait, what?
“Okay,” I said. “What the heck is going on?”
Marco broke into a huge laugh. He nodded at Eli, who held up his tablet, shooting video.
“Blaire,” Mrs. Mason began, putting down the crate of produce. “When Marco showed us the Operation Awesome Sauce video, we were so inspired by how you gathered up your family and classmates to help the food pantry. We’re new to Bluefield, but watching everyone work together like that to help their neighbors … it made us proud to be part of this town.
“We want to get
involved, too. So, we’re going to sponsor a kitchen renovation, right here at the Helping Hands Center, so you can have more of these kinds of canning events.”
“Oh my goodness,” Eileen said, putting her hand to her chest. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious,” Mrs. Mason said. “Marco has generously offered to design it.”
“A kitchen right there at the center?” Eileen said breathlessly. “More canning events would be wonderful, and we’ve talked about offering cooking classes, especially classes where people can train for restaurant jobs. And take-and-bake events for folks to come to assemble large casseroles and bring them home.”
“I love it!” Mrs. Mason said.
“I could help you guys make more videos,” Eli said. “You know, to spread the word about what you’re doing.”
Marco turned and smiled. “Of course! Fantastico idea.”
“What do you think, Blaire?” Marco asked. He must have seen the stunned look on my face.
“I think it’s … amazing.” Then an idea-spark came to me. “Eileen, do you think we could plan a class that’s all about cooking with dairy-free ingredients? And maybe more classes, that deal with other diet restrictions?”
Eileen smiled and said, “Absolutely, Blaire.”
“Can you show us your current kitchen space so I can start designing?” Marco asked. Eileen nodded and started leading everyone down the hall. I hung back, still making sense of this amazing news. The center was going to get a kitchen renovation!
Or should I say, revolution.
A revolution that was going to change a lot of things, for a lot of people in Bluefield, for the better.
Okay, kids,” the photographer said, “squeeze in a little closer so I get everyone?”
My whole class was seated in front of the COMMUNITY SERVICE ALL-STARS sign in our school lobby. I sat in the first row with Thea and Eli. We were each holding up a jar of Awesome Sauce.
They were from a separate batch I’d made with my mom and Abby.
“Ready to rock?” Ms. Lewis called out from her spot.
“Ready to roll!” we all shouted, and a camera flash went off.
Blaire Cooks Up a Plan (American Girl Page 8