Sugar and Spice

by Sheryl Berk

  “You have nothing to worry about,” Kylie said reassuringly. “It’s Meredith who should be nervous.”

  Lexi had only worn a pair of high heels once—to her cousin’s wedding. But Delaney was determined that she learn to master a three-inch heel. Delaney placed a math textbook on Lexi’s head to remind her of her posture.

  “Gracefully,” she instructed her friend. “Not like you’re walking on thin ice.” Lexi practiced walking around the hardwood floor of her living room, trying her best not to teeter or fall. The book slammed onto the floor.

  “They make my ankles all wobbly,” Lexi complained. “And this big, poufy skirt keeps catching on them.”

  Jenna’s mother, Betty, adjusted the long layers at the back of Lexi’s gown. “No problema,” she said. “I’ll fix it.” Jenna’s mom, Betty, had outdone herself, taking an old, lavender satin prom dress from Jenna’s sister Gabby and beading the strapless bodice with white pearls and clear sequins so it glittered. The skirt was shimmery, purple tulle.

  “You look like una princesa,” Betty said, pinning up the hem ever so slightly.

  Delaney took out her clipboard and checked off “Gown.” She scanned the list. “I’m only giving you half a check for walking,” she told Lexi. “You’ve got some work to do in that department.”

  “Whoa, you’re a tough coach.” Sadie chuckled. “Let me know when you want to practice her dribble.” They had decided they would train all weekend for the pageant. With only three weeks left till the big day, time was flying by.

  “Fitness after we work on talent,” Delaney insisted. “We still don’t have a song lined up.”

  Lexi twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “About that…”

  “Broadway show tunes always score well, but if you really want to impress, I’d suggest an opera aria,” Delaney said thoughtfully. She cleared her throat. “You know, ‘Me, me, me, me’!”

  “It’s not me, me, me, me,” Lexi said, sighing. “I’ve never sung in public before, Laney. I don’t think I can do it.”

  “Of course you have! You sang in front of my baby sister and brother—and they loved it. They gave you a napping ovation.”

  “Remember how I got horrible stage fright when we did Romeo and Juliet at school? And that was just speaking lines. Now you want me to sing them?”

  “What if we get Jeremy here?” Jenna teased her. “You can serenade him with a love song.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Lexi replied. “We’re barely speaking. He’s still mad at me over the blowup in the hallway.”

  “I think you should find a song you can connect to,” Delaney said. She pored over a book of show tunes. “‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’? ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’? ‘I Whistle a Happy Tune’?”

  “I can’t whistle either,” Lexi said, pouting. “This is hopeless.”

  “Wait! What about this one!” Delaney said, shoving the sheet music under her nose.

  “‘Shy’?” Lexi gasped.

  “It’s a song from Once Upon a Mattress. It’s the story of the princess and the pea.”

  “Lexi knows she’s shy,” Jenna piped up. “I don’t think we need to advertise it.”

  “There must be something that you’d feel comfortable singing, Lexi,” Kylie continued. “Some song that you love and know by heart.”

  Jenna nodded. “Sí, like ‘Duérmete, Mi Niña, right, Mami?”

  Her mom laughed. “I don’t think Lexi wants to sing that! It’s telling a baby to sleep so the mom can wash the diapers and do the sewing! That was my lullaby for you and your brothers and sisters.”

  “My mom used to sing me a song when I was little and couldn’t fall asleep,” Lexi recalled. “But could I really sing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ at the pageant?”

  “Why not?” Kylie said. “And you could wear a golden yellow dress when you sing it—something sunny.”

  Jenna’s mom nodded. “Sí, I could make you a dress that looks like el sol.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Delaney said, placing a check next to “Talent” on her list. “You’re pageant perfect, Lex!”

  Herbie insisted that PLC hear him out before they put the finishing touches on the pageant order.

  “I know you’re set in your ways,” he said, “but sometimes it’s good to shake things up a bit.”

  He rolled a strange-looking machine into the teachers’ lounge where they were working. It looked a lot like a treadmill with a pillowcase hanging from a shower curtain above it.

  “What is that thing?” Kylie asked.

  “None other than my pipe-o-matic,” Herbie replied proudly. “I tested it out in the robotics lab, and I think it will work like a charm.”

  Lexi looked at the ingredients piled high on the counter. They’d managed to get fifty dozen cupcakes done the past two nights at Kylie’s house, working till nearly midnight. Another thirty-three dozen still needed to be baked and decorated.

  “We can do half today, half tomorrow,” Jenna suggested.

  “It’s still a lot to do and a lot to assemble,” Lexi pointed out. She stared at the calendar on the wall—the pageant was Saturday morning, and it was already Thursday afternoon.

  “Precisely my point,” Herbie said. “Give the pipe-o-matic a go.”

  Kylie hesitated, then saw Lexi’s frantic expression. “Lex, you probably should be home with Delaney running your pageant routines, not worrying about the last batch of cupcakes,” she said.

  “But how will you ever get this all done?” Lexi said, sighing. “I can’t just abandon you.”

  “You’re not abandoning us,” Sadie insisted. “You already made all the gold fondant stars and the pulled-sugar tiara for the top of the tower. We can handle the rest.”

  “I promise! My machine will be a huge help,” Herbie assured them.

  Jenna handed Lexi her backpack and gave her a push toward the door. “Ir a casa. Go home!” she said.

  When Delaney and Lexi had left, Herbie began tinkering with his pipe-o-matic. “Can we get the frosting ready?” he asked, opening the large sack suspended from the rod.

  “Yeah,” Kylie said, tasting the white chocolate buttercream on her fingertip. “We have one batch done. How much can that thing hold?”

  “Let’s see,” Herbie calculated. “If that mixing bowl holds five quarts, I’d say my pipe-o-matic piping bag can hold about twenty-five quarts.”

  “Whoa!” Sadie gasped. “That’s a lot of frosting.”

  “Which means you don’t have to keep refilling the bag,” Herbie explained. He’d attached a large metal cone to the bottom of the sack. “The machine uses air pressure to squeeze the bag. A few puffs and the cupcake is all piped. Then the conveyor belt moves it on its merry way.”

  “Hmm,” Kylie said, examining the machine. “And how fast do the cupcakes move across the belt?”

  “One every few seconds, but I can crank it up even faster if you want,” Herbie bragged.

  Jenna handed him a platter of cooled cupcakes. “Here’s two dozen. I say we give Herbie’s thingamabob a whirl.”

  “Pipe-o-matic,” he corrected her. He checked all the settings as the girls whipped up five more bowls of frosting. When he was done scraping them into the sack, he stepped back, cracked his knuckles, and took a deep breath.

  “Here goes nothing!” he said.

  Kylie covered her eyes. “I can’t watch. Tell me when it’s over!”

  At first, the machine sputtered and sparked. But eventually, the conveyor belt started up and a cupcake moved in under the pipe-o-matic nozzle.

  “It’s working!” Herbie cheered. With a loud plop, a dollop of frosting landed right on the cupcake. Sadie picked it up.

  “Okay, that’s pretty cool,” she said. “I mean, it’s not anywhere near as artistically beautiful as if we piped it. But it’s not ba
d. Not bad at all.”

  She held the cupcake up for Kylie to examine. She opened one eye.

  “I guess it’s okay,” she said.

  “Okay? It’s brilliant!” Herbie patted himself on the back. “A machine that frosts cupcakes at the speed of light.”

  “Um, I don’t want to sound like Debbie Downer here,” Jenna interrupted. “But that was pretty slow. So far, I’m not impressed.”

  “Stand back!” Herbie said, “I’m cranking her up to full power.”

  Again, the machine made some funny noises—a few pops, burps, and gurgles—then started up. Plop! One cupcake was frosted. Plop! Then another. Plop! Then another.

  “Can it go faster?” Jenna asked. Plop! Plop! Plop! The cupcakes whizzed down the belt as Kylie caught them on the other side and placed them on platters.

  “Check it out!” Herbie called over the humming motor. “I call this mode ‘warp speed.’” Suddenly, the cupcakes were flying across the machine, faster than the girls could grab them off.

  “Wait!” Kylie called. “Slow it down a bit!”

  Herbie pushed several buttons but nothing happened. The belt had now run out of cupcakes and was still squirting frosting everywhere.

  “No worries!” Herbie replied. “I installed an emergency brake.” He pulled on a lever and it came off in his hand. “Whoopsie!”

  Now, the sack was swelling up with air. Sadie tugged on Herbie’s sweater sleeve. “Uh-oh!” She pointed above their heads. “That doesn’t look good.”

  “No worries! No worries!” Herbie continued reassuring them as he frantically tried to make the machine stop piping. “If I can just figure out where I plugged it in…”

  “I once overfilled my basketball with an air pump,” Sadie told Kylie and Jenna.

  “What happened?” Jenna asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” Sadie replied. “But I think we should duck for cover.”

  She grabbed the girls, and they hid behind the kitchen counter.

  Suddenly, there was a loud Bang! and white frosting exploded all over the teachers’ lounge, ceiling to floor and wall to wall.

  “Dios mío!” Jenna cried, surveying the damage.

  “You can say that again,” Kylie exclaimed. Then she noticed Herbie standing in the center of the room, his entire head buried under a mountain of white chocolate buttercream. He looked like the Abominable Snowman.

  “Herbie? You okay?” she called.

  He wiped his glasses—which were covered in frosting—with the back of his hand.

  “Yeah. I’m fine. But I feel like a giant cupcake.” He licked his lips. “Tastes good though.”

  The girls slipped and slid their way over to him, stepping in the sticky icing. “Principal Fontina is gonna kill us,” Sadie said.

  “Look on the bright side,” Kylie said, trying to cheer up Herbie. “You can use your flour-nator to clean it all up in a jiffy.”

  Herbie frowned. “I don’t think the flour-nator can make a dent in this mess,” he said. “I think we’ll have to do it. After I go change into something a little less frosted.”

  He stumbled out of the room.

  “So much for making our pageant order go faster,” Jenna said, sighing. “Now we have all this to clean up on top of it. We’ll be here all night.”

  Mr. Mullivan and a few of his custodians peered into the room. “I heard the explosion,” he said. “I don’t want to know what happened, but I assume Mr. Dubois had something to do with it.”

  Kylie nodded. “He meant well. But now we’re in a real bind. Can you help us, Mr. Mullivan?”

  “Tell you what, girls,” the custodian said, resting his mop against the wall. “My staff and I will clean this mess up in no time—if you bake us a dozen of your best cupcakes.” He wiped a smudge of frosting off the wall and took a taste. “I have a serious sweet tooth.”

  “Deal!” Kylie said.

  “And if you need some help, I’m pretty good in the kitchen myself. And a few of the guys aren’t bad bakers either. Mr. Gordon here makes a mean fruitcake at Christmas.”

  Kylie looked at the clock on the wall. They had already wasted forty-five minutes.

  “Gentlemen,” she asked, smiling. “Who needs an apron?”

  Thanks to the custodial staff’s quick cleanup—and help baking—the order was all ready by Saturday morning. Lexi, however, wasn’t ready. She’d tossed and turned all night. She had a horrible dream that when she got onstage to sing at the pageant, everyone in the audience booed and hissed. “Wait! Stop! Give me a chance!” she cried in her nightmare. Her mom shook her awake.

  “Honey, you’re dreaming,” she said. “Wake up.”

  Lexi sat up in bed. She felt cold and clammy and out of breath. “It was the worst nightmare I’ve ever had!” she exclaimed.

  “Really? Worse than the one about all your paintbrushes getting sucked up into a flying saucer and taken to outer space?” her mom asked.

  “Okay, that one was really bad too,” Lexi admitted. “But this was worse. I was the laughingstock of the Miss New England Shooting Starz Pageant!”

  “It was just a dream,” her mom said, planting a kiss on Lexi’s forehead. “And you know what dreams are, right?”

  Lexi sighed. She knew her mom was about to launch into one of her long-winded medical explanations. This is what she got for having a mother who was a veterinarian!

  “A dream is just images, sounds, and sensations we experience when we sleep,” her mom said. “Often, they’re just our fears and anxieties fighting to be heard.”

  “I know that,” Lexi said. “And I know I’m super nervous about making a fool of myself tomorrow—which is why I’m dreaming about it.”

  “You mean today,” her mom said, glancing at the clock. “It’s 6:00 a.m.”

  “What?” Lexi yelped, jumping out of bed. “I have to curl my hair! And polish my nails! And practice my speech! Delaney will be here by seven, and I’m not even up yet!”

  She ran past her mom into the bathroom and began setting her hair in hot rollers. When Delaney arrived, Lexi was swiping on mascara and lip gloss and walking around her room in her pj’s and pageant heels.

  “Is that your evening-gown look?” Delaney teased. “These peace sign pj’s are cute, but I think I liked the rainbow unicorns more.”

  “You told me to practice walking in my heels—so I’m walking in my heels,” Lexi huffed. “And I’ve recited my speech about a hundred times.”

  “Relax,” Delaney said, flopping down on her friend’s bed. “You are more than ready.”

  “I don’t feel more than ready,” Lexi said, staring in the mirror. “I feel like a disaster.”

  “You’re going to do great,” her big sister Ava said. She was standing in the doorway. “I brought you something.” She handed Lexi a small velvet box. When she opened it, there was a tiny silver horseshoe necklace inside. “For luck. It helped me win all my spelling bees, debates, class president election…”

  “You win everything.” Lexi sighed.

  Ava took the necklace out of the box and fastened it around Lexi’s neck. “And now you will too.”

  • • •

  Lexi’s mom, dad, and sister drove with her and Delaney to the hotel where the pageant was taking place. “We’ll park and meet you inside,” her mom said, planting a kiss on Lexi’s cheek. “You’ll do great, honey.”

  “Break a leg, squirt,” her father added.

  “Actually, don’t break a leg—that would be embarrassing,” her sister chimed in. “Just win a big prize, like a giant plasma TV.”

  “So you can put it in your bedroom?” Lexi teased.

  “Exactly!” Ava replied. “But I’ll be a really nice sister and let you watch it when I’m not home.”

  The girls unloaded the bags from the trunk and went to check in and get t
he lay of the land. A large crowd was already assembling in the grand ballroom, and girls were pouring into the hotel lobby with their moms, coaches, and enough sparkling evening gowns to stock an entire department store.

  “Excuse me,” said a tiny blond carrying a large duffel bag. Lexi noticed she had a Southern twang to her voice. “Do y’all know where we drop off our things for talent?”

  Lexi shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m new to this whole pageant thing and totally lost.”

  The girl smiled. “Well, why don’t you come with me? We’ll figure it out together.” She seemed so smart and confident and super friendly. Maybe not everyone was like Meredith, bent on winning no matter what.

  “Have you done this before? Pageants, I mean?” Lexi asked as they followed the signs pointing to the dressing rooms.

  “Oh yes! I’m Miss Preteen Atlanta Dreams,” the girl said sweetly. “It’s no biggie.”

  “You won?” Lexi gasped. “You won a whole pageant?”

  “A bunch, actually,” the girl replied. “I love competing—it’s kinda my thing. Along with silks.” She pulled two long strips of fabric out of her duffel bag.

  “What do you do with those?” Lexi asked. She’d never seen anything like them.

  “Well, we hang ’em from the ceiling, and I do this kind of upside-down aerial dance.”

  “Wow,” Lexi exclaimed. “That is so cool. Way cooler than what I do.”

  “What do you do?” the girl asked.

  “I sing. Just sing.”

  “Well, I think that’s amazing,” the pageant pro replied. “I can’t sing worth a lick. My mom says I sound like a cat getting her tail pulled.”

  Lexi giggled. “I’m Lexi Poole.”

  “And I’m Harleigh Park.” She smiled brightly. “Poole and Park. We could be a great song-and-dance act. If you promise to do all the singing!”

  Just then, the girls noticed a commotion coming from outside the hotel entrance.

  “Move it!” shouted a woman dressed in a red suit and large sunglasses. She was bossing around a bellboy as he struggled to unload stuff from her car onto a luggage rack. There were dozens of garment bags, shoe boxes, and something that vaguely resembled a giant silver crescent moon.