by Cari Simmons
“Hello?”
“Hey,” Finn said. “It’s me.”
“Hi.”
“So here’s the thing,” Finn said. “I know I’m supposed to come over this afternoon, but—”
“But you can’t,” Gigi finished for her. “Because of something that has to do with Lauren.”
Her words were met with pure silence, so much so that Gigi wondered if their call had gotten disconnected. “Hello?” she said into the receiver. “You still there?”
“Yeah,” Finn said. “And it’s not that I can’t come over. It’s just that . . . well, Lauren’s dad scored some last-minute tickets to the Union match, and she asked me if I wanted to go.”
“The what now?”
“The Union match,” Finn said. “It’s the pro soccer team in Philly.”
“Oh, right.”
“And you know how I’ve been dying to go see a real game—”
“Actually,” Gigi said, “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, I have been,” Finn said. “I really, really have. And the best part is that Lauren has an extra ticket for you too. Isn’t that awesome?”
“Awesome” was not the first word Gigi thought of when it came to going to a professional soccer match, but she didn’t say this. Instead, she said, “I can’t go. I have a friend coming over.”
“Who?” Finn asked.
“Miranda.”
“Weird Girl? From cooking class?”
“She’s not weird,” Gigi said. “She’s my friend.”
“Oh,” Finn said. She paused a moment. “That’s cool.”
Gigi thought she might have heard a note of sadness in Finley’s voice. But then Finn said, “So you’re okay if I go to the game then?”
“Yeah, sure,” Gigi said, resigned.
“You’re the best, Gee,” Finn said. “Call you tomorrow, ’kay?”
But Gigi had a feeling that Finn wouldn’t call tomorrow. In fact, she was pretty sure that at some point soon, Finn wouldn’t be calling her at all.
One of the first things Gigi learned about a Miranda sleepover was that girlfriend came prepared. In addition to a literal bucket of mani-pedi supplies—a rainbow of polishes, glitter, decals, sparkling jewels you glued on in fun patterns—she brought:
A Hello Kitty sleeping bag, complete with a pillow shaped like Hello Kitty’s head
A fat stack of cooking magazines
Two decks of cards
Several half-used pots of finger paints
An electric-blue camera
But the best thing Miranda brought was her big plastic box of cake-decorating supplies. It was the fancy purple-and-white one they sold at craft stores—the one that had compartments for just about everything you could think of, including specially marked slots for all the different decorating tips. Better yet, Miranda had almost every single decorating tip in it!
“Jealous!” Gigi declared, looking through the collection. “Where did you get all of this?”
“Ebay,” Miranda said matter-of-factly. “That’s about two years’ worth of birthday, Christmas, and Easter money right there.”
“You bought it yourself?”
Miranda nodded. “I even sold some of my old books and video games at 2nd and Charles to raise the cash.”
Gigi was impressed. She’d never known anyone so enterprising. There was that time that Kendall had “saved” up for the American Girl Girl of the Year doll, but since her grandparents had given her the majority of the cost, she wasn’t sure that counted.
They ate dinner in the family room, wearing their pajamas even though it was only five thirty. In fact, Miranda arrived wearing hers, a pair of pink polka-dotted pants matched with a long-sleeved T-shirt. She held a pair of blue Cookie Monster slippers in one hand and said apologetically, “My mom told me I had to wear real shoes on the way here.”
As they munched on pizza, the girls watched old episodes of Good Eats on the Cooking Channel.
“Don’t you just love Alton Brown?” Miranda said in a dreamy, breathy voice. She sounded like Katie did when she talked about her latest Hollywood crush object.
“He’s pretty cool,” Gigi agreed.
“You know, he was my first cooking teacher,” Miranda said.
“Like . . . in person?”
“Well, no,” Miranda said. “But, like, his show? That’s where I first learned the difference between the creaming method and the muffin method, and how important it is to measure dry ingredients by weight instead of volume.”
“You weigh your flour?”
Miranda’s eyes widened. “Don’t you?”
Gigi laughed. “I guess I will tonight.”
After dinner, the girls rolled up their sleeves and got down to the very serious business of cupcake baking. Gigi showed Miranda the recipe she’d patched together, as well as the inspiration recipes. Miranda sized them up like a scientist. With a pencil, she did some quick math calculations on a piece of scratch paper, then made a couple of adjustments to Gigi’s recipe. Gigi stared at her in amazement.
“It’s all about ratios,” Miranda explained. “If you reduce the flour by two ounces, it will weigh slightly less than the sugar, which will make the cake a little more tender. And if we add an extra egg yolk, we’ll get a smoother cake that’s moist but holds its shape.”
“Unbelievable,” Gigi said, shaking her head. “You’re like some kind of genius.”
“Nah, just some kind of math nerd.”
But Miranda was being modest. She really was a genius. Or, at the very least, she was someone who took her baking super seriously. Gigi watched her work, fascinated. First, Miranda checked the oven thermometer to make sure the heat inside matched what it was supposed to be. (“Five degrees off—not bad!”) Then, halfway through baking the cakes, she rotated the pans so that they would cook evenly. “I don’t know your oven,” she said. “So frankly, I can’t trust it. Yet.” Miranda made sure to chill the metal mixer bowl in the freezer for fifteen minutes before starting the mascarpone cream topping. “It keeps the fat matrix from collapsing,” Miranda explained, and even though Gigi had no idea what she meant, she nodded her head like she did.
“Where did you learn all of this stuff?” Gigi asked, beyond impressed.
“I told you,” Miranda said, smiling. “Alton Brown.”
They assembled the cupcakes together, but instead of just dusting cocoa powder over the top, Miranda pulled a block of semisweet chocolate from the pantry and, using a vegetable peeler, made little shaved curls to garnish.
Gigi reached for a cupcake, eager to try the new concoction, but Miranda gently slapped her hand away.
“These need to set overnight,” she said.
“You’re really going to wait until morning?”
“Sure,” Miranda said. “What could be better than cupcakes for breakfast?”
“True.”
After the girls had cleaned the kitchen top to bottom—a feat that impressed Gigi’s mother in a major way—they headed up to Gigi’s room to work on their nails. But Miranda took barely two steps into the room before stopping short and exclaiming, “What is that thing?”
It took Gigi a few beats to realize that Miranda was referring to the Wall. “Oh,” she said. “That. I guess it looks a little crazy if you’re not used to it.”
Miranda walked up to the Wall and ran her finger along some of the images. Gigi watched her drinking them all in. Seeing the Wall through Miranda’s amazed eyes made Gigi feel even sadder.
“So you and Blondie really have been best friends forever, huh?” Miranda said.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You’re lucky,” she said. “I’ve never had a BFF like that. Ever.”
This gave Gigi pause. She’d never known someone who was completely best friendless. Sure, plenty of the girls at her school had spent time in between best friends, but that was normal.
“Why not?” Gigi asked. “I mean, just curious.”
Miranda shrugged. “My mom and I
moved around a lot when I was younger. In fact, Fletcher’s the first school I’ve ever attended for more than a year.” She laughed, then added, “Also, I’m not sure if you noticed, but some people find me a little weird.”
“But you’re a good weird,” Gigi reminded her.
Miranda was rather quirky. The perpetual pigtails, the superfunky clothes, the blunt way she spoke to people . . . these things had put Gigi off to begin with. But their shared appreciation for the culinary arts helped Gigi see past all of that surface stuff, and want to get to know the girl underneath.
And, she was finding, she was very very glad that she did.
“Knitting, French club, clarinet, fencing . . . wow, you have one serious to-do list,” Miranda said.
Gigi’s head snapped over to her desk, where Miranda was reading off the items she’d written in her composition book. She fought the urge to run over and snatch it away from her.
“It’s not a today to-do list,” Gigi said. “It’s just some stuff I want to do eventually.”
“Like fencing?”
Gigi’s face flushed hotly. “Yes, like fencing. I read somewhere that it was one of Angelina Jolie’s hobbies when she was a kid. And Kiera Knightley looked kind of cool swinging her sword in Pirates of the Caribbean.”
“Oh, it is cool,” Miranda said without a hint of sarcasm. “Like, crazy cool. And not something I would ever expect your BFF to be into.”
“She’s not,” Gigi said. “I mean, she might be, if I asked her. But I didn’t. I mean, it’s not like I do everything with Finn.”
Miranda waved her hand along the length of the Wall. “Either way, this is some serious history here. So, um, what’s the story behind number eight?” She gestured towards Gigi’s notebook.
Number eight? Gigi peered over at the open page. Oh, right.
Find a new best friend?
“It’s nothing,” she said quickly. “Just me being dumb.”
Miranda’s right eyebrow arched upwards.
Gigi squirmed a little. Discussing the Finn situation felt uncomfortable, like she was going behind Finley’s back or something.
“Anyway,” Gigi said, “part of the reason I made that list was because I wanted to do more stuff on my own. I’m actually going to this free fencing class tomorrow. You should totally come!”
Miranda burst out laughing. “Um, doesn’t bringing a friend kind of defeat the whole purpose of doing more stuff on your own?”
Gigi frowned. “I guess so.”
“It’s way nice of you to ask, though,” Miranda said. “Why don’t you call me tomorrow afternoon and tell me how it went?”
“Deal.”
Miranda turned away from the Wall and pulled a vinyl tablecloth from her backpack. She shook it out and placed it in the middle of the floor. When Gigi shot her a quizzical look, Miranda said, “Duh, to catch the drips.”
“Drips?”
“From the nail polish,” she explained, dumping all her nail supplies out on the tablecloth, then sorting them based on function and color.
They started with their toes. Miranda painted hers neon green, while Gigi opted for a hot pink. Then they switched polishes, and Miranda dipped a straight pin nestled in a pencil’s eraser into Gigi’s Passion Pink to put polka dots all over her big toenail. “Want me to dot you up?” she asked Gigi.
“Yes, please!”
When their nails had gotten dry to the touch, Miranda carefully extracted her camera from the front pocket of her backpack. “We simply must document this momentous occasion,” she said, in a really bad British accent. “Hold up your hands.”
Gigi obliged, Miranda snapped the picture, and what looked like a piece of white paper shot out from the bottom of her camera.
“What was that?” Gigi asked.
“It’s the picture,” Miranda informed her. “It’s a Polaroid camera. Instant film.”
The only cameras Gigi had ever seen or used had all been digital. In fact, most of the time her mom didn’t even bring her camera, opting instead to use the one built into her phone.
“That,” Gigi said, “is crazy cool. Can I see it?”
Miranda handed her the camera, and Gigi asked if she could take a picture.
“Sure,” Miranda said.
Gigi trained the camera on Miranda, then paused. “Better idea,” she said. “Let’s take one together.”
The girls huddled together, their heads smushed together in classic selfie formation. Gigi snapped a picture of the two of them grinning. Even before it developed, Miranda said, “Take another one, so we can each have a copy.”
Gigi stared at the rectangle of white as their faces begin to appear on it. “Amazing,” she said. “Like magic.”
When the photo dried, she thought about how badly she wanted to paste it onto the Wall. But, as was the case with the lion label from the yarn, something about that impulse didn’t feel quite right.
Then it hit her—she’d start a new Wall! There was a clean stretch from the left-hand corner on down. Gigi scrambled over to her desk drawer and pulled out some paint-safe foam tape, then snagged the lion label from under her pen cup. Then, on the new Wall, which was perpendicular to the first one, Gigi pasted the label and, overlapping it slightly, tacked on the totally adorable Polaroid of her and Miranda.
“There,” Gigi said, feeling satisfied. “I will call it ‘Wall Two-Point-oh.’”
“Nice,” Miranda said. “And hey—thanks for thinking I’m Wall-worthy.”
It was such a small thing, really. Starting the new Wall. But in that moment, it felt like some giant gesture to Gigi. And if the perma-grin on Miranda’s face was any indication, it felt good to her too.
CHAPTER 13
When Gigi woke up the next morning, she peered over the side of her loft bed. Miranda was sprawled out on top of her sleeping bag, reading through an issue of Food Network Magazine with a flashlight. She shined the light up on Gigi’s face. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah,” Gigi said through a yawn. “Have you been up long?”
“Um, sort of,” she said. “I mean, do you even know what time it is?”
Gigi looked over at the alarm clock that sat at her desk. The big digital numbers read 8:32. “It’s not that late,” she said. “I thought your mom wasn’t picking you up until ten.”
“She’s not,” Miranda said. “But let me ask you again: do you know what time it is?”
“Yes, it’s eight thirty-two.”
“Who cares about clock time?” Miranda said. “It’s cupcake time!”
“Ohmigod,” Gigi said. “Tasty goodness!”
“Race you downstairs!”
Miranda got there first and immediately pulled the airtight container of cupcakes from the fridge. “They’re even prettier than I remembered.”
Gigi reached for one. She peeled the wrapper down some and went in for a bite.
“Wait!” Miranda exclaimed. “Don’t eat it yet!”
She ran out of the room, and Gigi could hear her feet pounding up the stairs, and then back down. Miranda reappeared with her blue Polaroid camera.
“Okay,” she said. “Dig in.”
As Gigi’s teeth sank through the creamy pile of mascarpone topping and into the velvety cake, Miranda snapped a pic. Then she handed the camera over to Gigi and said, “My turn!”
The two girls ate their entire cupcakes, chewing thoughtfully.
“It’s good,” Miranda said finally.
“But not great,” Gigi chimed in.
“Yeah, and I’m not sure why. It’s got the right amount of sweet, but . . .” Her voice trailed off. “But it’s missing something. Or is it just because I’ve never had tiramisu before?”
“No, you’re right,” Gigi said. “This won’t win us the bake-off.”
Of course, that didn’t stop them from eating another cupcake once Gigi’s mother joined them in the kitchen. “It would be rude to let your mom eat alone,” Miranda said. “Right?”
Later, as Miranda packed
up to head home, Gigi asked her again if she wanted to go to the fencing class with her.
“Nah,” Miranda said. “It’s nice of you to ask, but this is a you thing, not an us thing.”
Gigi remembered how hard it had been to walk into the library to meet up with the Purl Jammers and felt a little jolt of panic strike her insides.
“You’ll be fine,” Miranda said, almost as if she could read Gigi’s mind. “Just pretend you’re Angelina Jolie.”
Miranda’s words ran through Gigi’s head as she entered the Chinese American Community Center. Her mother was right behind her, as Gigi insisted she at least walk her in. In the gym, where the class was held, a handful of kids Gigi’s age, and some younger, milled around a table displaying what Gigi assumed was fencing equipment—lots of long swordlike things and mesh masks like you see people wear in the movies. On one side, parents sat in metal folding chairs. There was a knitter in the bunch, working on something wide that pooled in her lap in a big, shapeless lump. There were a few moms and dads glued to their iPads, and one woman absorbed in a paperback book.
Gigi turned to her mother. “You have to stay.”
“No, the gentleman I spoke with said that wasn’t required.”
“Mama!” Gigi whisper yelled. “Look around! Everybody’s parents are staying.”
Her mother surveyed the room. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll stay. But for the record, I think you’re perfectly capable of being here by yourself. I raised you to be a strong, independent—”
“Yeah, okay, fine,” Gigi said, cutting her off. “Now go sit down. Over there. With the other parents. Please.”
Gigi sized up the kids looking at the equipment. From what she could tell, there were four boys and one other girl. The boys looked like they were in fourth or fifth grade, Gigi thought, but the girl looked way younger. She was really short—Gigi guessed her head wouldn’t even reach Gigi’s shoulders—and stick thin, with long black hair that ran down her back like water.
She took a deep breath and said to herself, “I am Angelina Jolie. I am smart, I am fierce, and I don’t care what anybody thinks of me.”
Except that last part wasn’t true. Of course she cared what people thought. It didn’t help that her mother had waited until the last minute to tell her she needed to wear sweatpants to the class. The only pair she could find in her drawers was lavender and had a bedazzled patch on the front right thigh that read GURLZ RULE! in swirly, sparkly letters.