Harley took a small spiral notebook and pen from his shirt pocket.
“Ready,” I said.
The room went dark.
Zoe clapped. “Is there popcorns?”
“Is that really necessary?” Jeanine snapped. She was on the couch studying for the State Solve-a-Thon. Both she and Kevin had cleaned up at regionals.
“If you want light, go in the kitchen,” my mother said.
Jeanine got up and stomped out of the room.
“Where’s the popcorns?!”
“Shhh, it’s not a movie,” Dad said. “This is for Tris’s doughnuts.”
“So there are doughnuts?”
“No. There’s no food. Quiet.”
Josh switched on the projector his mom had lent us, and our first slide popped up on the sheet we’d hung on the wall:
The Doughnut Stop: What is it?
A doughnut stand on Main Street in Petersville that will operate on Saturday and Sunday mornings from 8:00 a.m. till we sell out.
Josh went first. He read the slide, then explained how we were going to limit each customer to two doughnuts. I’d come up with that after I’d read that a good way to keep demand high when you’re starting out is to keep your supply low, like limited edition sneakers.
“So doughnuts, huh?” Harley said again. This seemed a little weird since he’d asked the same thing five minutes before, but I figured he just wanted to make sure Josh and I were on the same page.
“That’s right, doughnuts,” Josh said.
“Doughnuuuts,” Harley repeated slowly as he wrote on his little pad.
“We’ll probably increase our numbers over time but—”
“What about candy necklaces?” Harley interrupted.
“What about them?” I said.
“You gonna sell those?”
“Uh, no, no candy necklaces,” I said.
“No caaannndyyy nnecklaaces,” Harley repeated as he wrote.
Josh finished his lines, then flipped to the next slide:
Why is the Doughnut Stop guaranteed to succeed?
Simple: Winnie Hammond’s famous chocolate cream doughnuts have a devoted following. This product will draw customers from miles around.
After I read the slide, I did my lines about how people had gone crazy for Winnie’s doughnuts. I was just about to quote from the article when Harley said, “So, it’s not just any doughnuts then. It’s only chocolate cream doughnuts. Is that what I’m hearing?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“So no old-fashioneds or glazed or sprinkle?”
“Nope.” Harley was beginning to get on my nerves.
“Noooo olllld-faaaasheeeoooned, glaaaa—”
“Okay, Josh. Next slide, please.” Harley’s questions were really messing with our flow.
Why should you invest in the Doughnut Stop?
• Great return on your investment.
• Give doughnuts back to the community.
Before Josh had even finished reading the slide, Harley was at it again.
“And what about Chinese checkers?”
“No! Of course not. Just doughnuts!” I’d completely lost my cool. “What’s going on here?” I said, turning on the lights. If I’d let things go on like that, Harley would have ruined the whole pitch.
“I’m going to put everything you’re not going to sell on the business license. That way, if you sell anything you’re not supposed to, we can shut you down,” Harley explained.
“Oh no!” Jeanine yelled from the kitchen. A second later, she was standing over Harley wagging a finger at him. “I know what you’re doing.”
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
“He’s trying to keep you from selling anything he sells at his store.”
“Oh. But we don’t want to sell anything he sells. Really,” I said to Harley.
“That’s not the point!” Jeanine said. “The point is you can sell anything you want. That’s your right.”
“No. That’s not the point,” I argued. “We only want to sell doughnuts. That’s what this is about.”
“But you can’t let him refuse to give business licenses to people unless they promise not to sell anything that he might. He’s trying to stop people from competing with him.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Turnby.” Mom grabbed Jeanine’s pointing finger and forced it down. “Jeanine, I’m sure that’s not what he’s doing.”
“Oh, no, that’s what I’m doing,” Harley said, nodding. “But if these boys promise they’re just going to sell chocolate cream doughnuts, there’s no problem.”
“No problem? No problem?” shrieked Jeanine. “You know what you are? You’re a monopolist!”
“I am?” A smile exploded on Harley’s face. He clearly knew about as much as I did about what a monopolist was.
“You can’t keep people from selling the products you sell so you can force them to buy from you. It’s illegal! And un-American!” Jeanine looked like she was seconds away from whipping out her Future Lawmakers of America badge and making a citizen’s arrest.
“I can’t?” Harley looked around like he suddenly didn’t know where he was. “Jim?”
“Technically, it’s a no-no, Harley,” Jim said. “This is actually Harley’s first term, so he’s still learning. Jax, you want to sell candy necklaces or Flowbees, you go right ahead. You got my blessing and the license too. Right, Harley?”
Harley shrugged his shoulders. “I guess. I mean, if I have to.”
“Thanks, but I think we’ll stick to chocolate cream doughnuts,” I said.
“But now you don’t have to,” Jeanine said, flashing her Yes, I won! smile at Harley.
“Fine,” I said. “Can we get back to the pitch now?”
“Fine? Don’t you mean thanks?” she said, her smile caving in to a big black hole of what’s-wrong-with-you.
I could have tried to explain that Josh and I would have been perfectly happy promising never to sell anything but chocolate cream doughnuts even if it did violate the Constitution, but I knew that would have taken too long.
“Right. I meant thanks,” I said.
Then we turned out the light and started from the beginning, and this time everything went perfectly. Nobody interrupted, and at the end, not only did my parents decide to invest but so did Jim and Harley.
By the time I went to tell Winnie we had the money that afternoon, I’d started to wonder why people had invested. Did they really think the Doughnut Stop would succeed, or had they given us money just to be nice?
“People don’t give you money just to be nice, especially when people is Harley Turnby,” Winnie said.
That should have made me happy. It meant people believed us when we said the Doughnut Stop was guaranteed to be a hit. The problem was, we didn’t actually know that, not for sure.
So what happened if we were wrong?
What happened if we couldn’t even make enough money to pay them back? What if the business was a complete and total flop? What if we were the Flowbee of the doughnut world? We’d promised Harley Turnby we’d make his money back and then some. What would he do to us if it turned out we’d lied?
I knew where to go for answers: the only twenty-seven pages of Starting Your Own Business for Dummies I hadn’t read…Chapter 19: Bankruptcy. It seemed like a jinx to read about what happens when your business goes belly up, so I’d just skipped that part.
But now I wanted to know. Now I had to know.
Just in case.
21
My parents had all kinds of rules when we lived in the city: never take a shortcut through a parking lot; never take the subway by yourself; and if someone tries to take your stuff, just let them have it. But since I’d gotten to Petersville, my parents had given me just one rule: no biking after dark.
Since I didn’t have school or really anywhere I had to be, I’d stopped paying much attention to what time it was. I’d even stopped wearing my watch. The afternoons Josh and I spent skating on the pond, it didn’t matter how late it got since he always stayed for dinner and his mom just picked him up afterward. The problem was when he and I were hanging out at the library. We’d be sitting there making Doughnut Stop plans, and all of a sudden, I’d notice that the bookshelves opposite the front windows were lit up all orange. Then I’d jump up, yell goodbye, and race home. Even though the sun was usually behind the mountains by the time I got there, the sky just above them was still light or at least light-ish, which I thought was good enough. If my parents disagreed, they never said so.
The thing is, there are no windows in the little office behind the circulation desk, and that’s where Josh and I met Winnie two days before the Doughnut Stop’s grand opening. We’d told her we had to meet that afternoon to work out some stuff for the opening. The real reason for the meeting? We were finally going to tell her I’d messed with her recipe. That’s not how I saw it, but I was pretty sure that’s how she would.
“Oh, good, snacks,” Winnie said when she came through the door. “I think better on a full stomach.”
I’d made a batch of doughnuts using the new recipe and arranged some on a paper plate in the center of the table.
“You roll ’em right after you take ’em out of the oil, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Because it looks like you were being a little stingy with the sugar on these, Slick. Don’t do that this weekend.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t forget.”
“He won’t,” Josh said.
“Maybe he should write it down to make sure.”
“Uh, okay.” I looked around for something to write with and on.
“I got it,” Josh said, writing in his Doughnut Stop binder. “Why don’t you just tell Winnie about the…um…your news?”
“What news?” Winnie reached for a doughnut.
“No!” Before I knew what I was doing, I’d snatched the plate out from under her hand.
“What? Those just for decoration?”
“I need to tell you something first.”
“I can eat while you talk. They call it multitasking.”
“Actually…” Josh pushed the plate back across the table. “Maybe she should taste a doughnut first.”
I shot Josh a look.
“What’s wrong with you boys?” Winnie picked up a doughnut and took a big bite.
I squeezed the edge of the table and held my breath.
“Mmm. Mmm.”
“Good, huh?” Josh said.
“’Course, they’re good.”
“They don’t taste…a little different?” I said.
“From other doughnuts? Yeah, a lot better.” She laughed.
“No. I mean, from before.”
She took another bite and chewed slowly. “I haven’t made my doughnuts for more than a year, Slick. But these are them.”
The pressure was killing me. I just had to say it and get it over with. “I changed the recipe!”
“What are you talking about? You don’t think I know my own doughnuts.”
“They’re still your doughnuts. I didn’t change much. I just added a little mashed potato and instant coffee.”
Winnie looked at her doughnut. “You expect me to believe there’s mashed potato and coffee in here.”
“There is. I’m serious.”
“O-kay, Slick. Whatever you say. Maybe some chili peppers in here too?” She took another big bite.
“He’s not kidding,” Josh said.
“You know how I know you couldn’t have changed my recipe?”
“How?”
“Because anything different would be worse. And these are just too good,” she said as she helped herself to another one.
And just like that, what was right and what was wrong got all mixed up. It hadn’t felt right not to tell Winnie what I’d done, but now that I had, it didn’t feel right to make her believe it. I just knew she’d think I’d changed the recipe because I didn’t think it was good enough and that wasn’t true. Not even close.
I gave Josh a now-what look.
“Uh, I just remembered something,” Josh said. “My mom wanted us to move some books. We’ll be back in a second. C’mon, Tris.”
“Take your time. I’ve got my doughnuts for company.”
I followed Josh out of the room and into the computer nook.
“We have to let it go,” he whispered.
“I know. That’s what I was thinking. Does that make us liars?”
“No. We tried to tell her,” he said. “I’m just worried that if we make her believe it, she’ll think we thought there was something wrong with her doughnuts.”
“I know, but there wasn’t. Maybe I should just go back to using the recipe like it was.”
“Why? She loves these doughnuts. We love these doughnuts. Plus, she thinks they’re the exact same ones she was making anyway. What’s she going to think if you go back to the other recipe?”
“She’ll realize we were telling the truth, that these are different, and then…probably think I didn’t like the doughnuts the way she made them.”
“Right. She’ll feel…”
“Bad,” I said.
“Really bad.”
“Okay, so we agree. We’ll let it go, but not because we were too chicken to tell her the truth.”
“Right,” Josh said. “We told her. We just don’t want to make her feel bad by making her believe it.”
“Right. And everyone’s—”
“You boys done whispering yet.” Winnie’s head popped up from behind a computer monitor.
I jumped. “Sorry. We were just…”
“About to come back,” Josh said.
“Don’t bother. I ate all the doughnuts. I’m going home to get some Pepto,” she said. “See you Saturday, bright and early.” It was only then as I watched Winnie walk out of the library that I realized that the sun had already moved all the way down the bookshelves.
“Oh no! What time is it?”
“After four thirty. Call your parents and tell them my mom will drop you off after closing.”
I felt bad asking Josh’s mom to drive just because I couldn’t keep track of time. “Nah. I can make it.”
And I did, but just. Only a thin band of light blue was still above the mountains when I reached the driveway.
I ditched my bike in the bushes at the bottom of Terror Mountain because I was too winded to drag it up. And even without it, the hike took forever. After blasting my legs biking home, they felt so heavy, it was as if I had bricks loaded on my feet.
“I’m here! I’m here!” I jumped up and down, waving my arms as I came out of the woods onto the lawn. My mother was at the kitchen window, and she waved. She must have heard me, but it was definitely too dark to see me by now. She didn’t look like she was mad. She didn’t look like she’d even noticed it was getting dark.
Safe!
I dropped to the ground and lay there in the dead leaves, breathing hard.
“Tris!”
It sounded like Jeanine, but I couldn’t see her. I sat up and looked back at the house. My mother wasn’t at the window anymore, and the front door was still closed.
“Tris!”
“Jeanine?” I stood up and looked around.
“Up here!” Something rustled high in the branches of a tall, nearby tree. I walked over to its base and look
ed up. In one of the highest branches, I could just make out the shape of a person.
“What are you doing?”
Jeanine made a loud, long, snot-slurping sound. “I’m stuck.”
“Are you okay?”
“No! I’m stuck.”
“I meant, are you hurt?”
“Like physically?”
“Yeah, like are you too hurt to climb down?”
I listened for an answer. “Jeanine?”
“I got a scratch on my hand!”
“And you can’t climb down?”
She didn’t answer.
“Jeanine?”
Still nothing.
“Jeanine, did you try to climb down?”
“I can’t. I told you. I’m stuu—” Her last word was eaten up by loud sobs.
“You’re not stuck. You’re just scared.”
The sobs got louder.
I looked back at the house. Mom was afraid of heights, and she hadn’t even let Dad climb a stepladder since his concussion.
“Okay, Jeanine. Just hang on.” I reached up, grabbed onto a thick branch with both hands, jammed a foot in the groove where the trunk met the branch, and pulled myself up.
Climbing that tree was actually easier than climbing the rope ladder up to my room. Unlike a rope ladder, a tree does you the favor of standing still. Also, unlike other trees, this one had branches in just the right places so you never had to stretch too far.
“This tree is awesome,” I called when I was about halfway up.
“It scored highest for climbability.”
I laughed. “You ranked the trees.”
“I studied branch spacing and thickness to determine best climbability.”
“Of course you did,” I said to myself.
In no time, I was straddling a branch on the opposite side of the trunk from Jeanine.
“Cool view,” I said. Sky was all around us. It was darker now, and a few stars had already popped out.
“Oh, yeah?”
I peered around the trunk and squinted at her. “Are your eyes closed?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think I know how to get you unstuck.”
“I’m not opening my eyes.”
“Jeanine.” I laughed.
The Doughnut Fix Series, Book 1 Page 16