“This isn’t funny! Can you please just help me?”
“I’m trying, but you have to open your eyes.”
“If I open my eyes, you’re going to make me climb down.”
“That is the goal, isn’t it?”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then we’ll get a crane.”
“I mean it.” She squeezed the trunk tighter.
I thought for a minute. Climbing down was the big goal, but maybe I could start her on a small one. “Don’t think about going down yet. Just open your eyes and see how cool it is up here.”
“Just open my eyes? That’s it?”
“That’s it. Just open your eyes and tell me what the really bright star right over our heads is.”
She was quiet for a bit. “It’s not one star. It’s four.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’s Capella. Two giant yellow stars and two red dwarves.”
“It’s super bright.”
“Yeah, it is pretty,” she said like she didn’t like admitting it. “You know, I hate it out here, but I love how you can see the stars. That’s one thing you can’t do at home.”
Home was still somewhere else for Jeanine.
For a while, we sat there, not talking, looking up the sky. I kept covering one eye and trying to see the four different stars in that one bright light, but it was impossible.
“Hey, can I ask you a question?” I said.
“I’m not climbing down.”
“I know. I know. Relax. I just want to know why you climbed up in the first place.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on. Yes, you do. You plan everything. You even ranked the tree for climbability.”
“It’s dumb. It’s too dumb.”
“I do dumb stuff all the time.”
“But I don’t.”
“I hate to break it to you, but, yeah, you do. It’s just a different kind of dumb stuff.”
She took a deep breath and blew it out hard. “Fine. Mom got a call from Waydin Elementary, you know, just about stuff for when we start school, and it got me thinking about the kids here and how they’re gonna to think I’m, you know, weird.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Thanks.”
“Sorry. I just meant, ‘Uh-huh, I’m listening, keep going,’ not, ‘Uh-huh, you are weird.’”
“Anyway, I was looking out the window, and I just started thinking about how I’d never climbed a tree. And how probably if you grew up around here, you’d have to, I mean you just would have, right? Like how could you grow up here and not? So I thought, I’m going to do it, just so I can be someone who’s climbed a tree, so at least there’ll be one thing about me that’s not different.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, it turned out to be super, super dumb.”
“But just think about all the money you’ll make selling your climbability formula to the other kids.”
“That’s not funny,” she said, though I thought I heard her smiling against her will.
“Hey, you know, Josh and I were talking today about how if the Doughnut Stop does well, we may want to branch out to other flavors of cream. Starting Your Own Business for Dummies says customers get bored if you don’t offer new product lines. Anyway, so I was thinking, it was good you made Harley say it was okay for us to sell things other than just chocolate cream doughnuts.”
“See.”
“Yeah, well, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Neither of us said anything for a while after that, and I began wondering if my parents were looking for us. Unlike when we used to live in the apartment, there were lots of places we could be in the house, and it could take a pretty long time before they thought it was strange that they hadn’t seen us.
Finally, Jeanine peeked around the trunk and said, “I’m cold. I want to go home.”
“You know the only way home is down, right?”
“I know. Can you, like, hold on to me somehow?”
“Like carry you? I don’t think so.”
“No, just hold on to me. So I know you’re there.”
It took me a while to come up with a system that worked, but eventually we were making our way down the tree. First, I’d lower myself to the next branch. Then I’d reach up and guide Jeanine’s ankle to the branch I was holding on to. Since it was almost completely dark now, we had to feel our way from branch to branch.
When my feet finally reached the ground, I held Jeanine’s hand and she jumped down. Then she did something that is not at all Jeanine: she hugged me. And not a quick hug—a long one, tight like she’d hugged the tree.
“Okay, let’s go. I got to get back,” she said, suddenly taking off for the house.
“What’s the hurry?” I called after her.
“I just wasted like two hours up in that tree. The Solve-a-Thon’s in five days!” When she reached the porch, she turned around. “Hey, what do you think of butterscotch?”
“For what?”
“Your next doughnut flavor. It’s just an idea.”
“I love butterscotch.”
“I know,” she said. “Why do you think I thought of it?”
“It’s genius,” I said and meant it.
22
Here’s one thing Starting Your Own Business for Dummies doesn’t tell you: if you’re not a morning person, don’t start a doughnut business.
The doughnuts and I would have to be ready to leave the house by seven thirty if we were going to be set up on Main Street by eight o’clock. Even if I made the dough and the cream the night before, I’d still need at least two and half hours to cut, fry, roll, and fill all forty doughnuts. That meant getting up at four thirty in the middle of the night. I know, technically, it’s morning then, but who are we kidding? If it’s dark, it’s still night, and no matter what kind of clock-changing is happening, it’s always dark at four thirty.
“Can’t you fry and fill the night before?” Josh said when I explained the problem. It was the day before our grand opening, and we were on the pond.
“No way. There’s no point unless they’re fresh,” I said.
“I know, but four thirty? That’s crazy,” he said, sweeping the puck from the goal and passing it to me.
I put out my stick but came up short, and the puck flew by.
“Maybe we can just open later,” he said.
“I thought about that,” I called as I chased down the puck. “I don’t think we can. It says eight on the flyers.”
The flyers weren’t fancy or anything. Josh had just taken a photo of a doughnut and put it next to a photo of Winnie giving a thumbs-up. Underneath it said, “Winnie’s Famous Chocolate Cream Doughnuts at the Doughnut Stop, Main Street, Petersville. Come and Get ’Em! Saturdays and Sundays at 8:00 a.m., starting Saturday, December 20.”
“Oh, yeah. It says so on the bumper stickers too,” he said. “And who knows how many people have seen those by now.”
Honk if you like chocolate cream doughnuts! and I stop for the Doughnut Stop! were everywhere. Winnie was giving them away at the General Store. Clive, her brother, was in the printing business.
We had serious buzz. Changing the time was not an option.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll just go to sleep really early. You know, like seven thirty.”
“Yeah, as long as you get the same amount of sleep, it shouldn’t matter what time you’re getting up, right?”
“Right,” I said.
Wrong.
The problem was, I wasn’t tired at seven thirty. Really, who over the age of five is? It was just too early. Plus, I was too excited and too afraid my alarm wouldn’t go off, or that it would go off and I would just go right back to sleep. What kind of nuddy misses his own grand opening? Even if Josh made it, h
e wouldn’t have anything to sell, and the book says if you let your customers down once, they won’t give you a second chance.
I know I did finally fall asleep because when the alarm went off, I dreamed the beeping was the kitchen timer and that I couldn’t reach it because I was stuck under a doughnut the size of an elephant. When I eventually woke up enough to realize that I wasn’t actually stuck under an enormous baked good, I leaped out of bed.
Fear of failure must work a lot like caffeine does, but only if you care about the thing you might fail. I definitely never woke up feeling like I’d been sleep-guzzling Coke on days I had tests at school.
I’d left my clothes in a pile next to my bed, and in seconds, I was dressed and climbing down the ladder. Halfway down, I heard something scurrying around just below me.
“Zoe?”
Whoever it was took off down the hall.
“Hey, I don’t care!” I whispered-yelled. I figured I’d caught her creeping into my parents’ room again. Since we’d moved, she preferred sleeping under my parents’ bed than in her own.
I climbed down the next couple of rungs and then jumped to the floor.
That’s when I heard it, the Darth-Vader-phlegm-breathing from the other end of the hall:
“Cchhhhuuuu Whlluuuhhhh Cchhhhuuuu Whlluuuhhhh…”
I froze.
Unlike Darth Vader, whatever it was didn’t sound calm. It sounded crazy angry, like rip-my-arms-and-legs-from-my-body angry.
If I’d been able to move, I would have run, but I was too scared. So I just stood there waiting to be wishboned.
But nothing happened, and suddenly, the noise stopped. When a minute had passed and it hadn’t started again, I ran my hand along the wall till I felt the light switch and flipped it.
Just outside the bathroom was a raccoon the size of a Big Wheel.
I’m not sure what happened next. I may have screamed, but if I did, I don’t think I managed to get much sound out because nobody came running. What I do remember is that for a while, we—me and the raccoon—just stared at each other, and the weird thing was he looked almost as surprised as I was, like this was his house and I had scared him on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
As soon as I could get my legs to move, I ran to my parents’ room at the opposite end of the hall, slammed the door behind me, and jumped onto their bed with both feet.
“Ow, my hair!” my mother screamed.
“Who is that?” Dad grabbed my foot.
“It’s me.” I dropped to my knees.
Dad sat up. “Tris? What is it?”
“A raccoon,” I whispered, though I’m not sure who I was worried about hearing me.
“Where?” Mom said.
“Out there.” I pointed to the door.
“Why?” She wasn’t so awake.
“Really? A raccoon in the house?” I could almost hear Dad smiling in the dark. Of course. This was something different.
“Yes, really!” I said.
“Houses aren’t airtight. It happens,” Dad said like it was no big deal.
“It happens? This isn’t a mouse! It’s a raccoon, and he’s bigger than Zoe!”
“Relax. We’ll get someone to come set some traps,” he said.
“Okay, so what are you waiting for?”
“How about daylight?”
“But I need to go downstairs now.”
“So go.”
“You want me to go out there by myself, unarmed?”
“He’s not going to attack you,” Dad said as he hunkered down under the comforter. “Raccoons are shy.”
“How do you know?”
“I read it…somewhere.”
Ah. I see. In addition to being a master handyman, made-up Petersville dad was also a wildlife expert. “He didn’t look shy! He looked mad, really mad, like I’d invaded his territory. You should have heard this sound he made.”
“You’re bigger than he is,” Mom said.
“Not by much.”
“Stop exaggerating. You’ll be fine,” she said, snuggling up to my father.
“You guys aren’t actually going back to sleep, are you?”
Uh, yeah, they were.
“What if he’s rabid?” I said.
“Highly unlikely,” said the wildlife expert, his eyes already closed.
“Fine! But I’m taking this with me,” I said, grabbing The Art of French Cooking, the thousand-page cookbook Mom keeps on her nightstand.
Mom opened her eyes. “You gonna teach it to make coq au vin?”
“It’s for protection.”
“Sounds good.” Her eyes were closed again. “Have fun.”
“You guys are never going to forgive yourselves if that raccoon attacks me.”
“Good night,” Dad said.
Jeanine would have been able to get them out of bed, and for a second, I thought about waking her up so she could do just that. But then what? She’d probably make us evacuate the house till some official from the National Wildlife Federation got there. Who knew when I’d be able to get into the kitchen then?
I opened my parents’ door and peered out into the hall.
The raccoon was gone—or at least gone somewhere I couldn’t see him. He was probably in the bathroom, which was fine by me. I was prepared to let him go about his business so long as he let me go about mine. He could have the upstairs bathroom. I’d use the one next to the kitchen.
I stepped out into the hall, hugging The Art of French Cooking, and started for the stairs. The light was still on, and that made me feel a little better.
I’d just made it to Jeanine’s door when I heard a flush, and Zoe raced out of the bathroom.
“What happened?” I said, dropping the book and grabbing her arm as she sped by.
“Mommy promised me new glitter glue if I flush,” she said, breathing hard.
“Oh. Everything okay in there?”
“Yeah. Just number one.”
“No, I mean, you didn’t see anything…weird?”
She shook her head.
I’d really thought he was in the bathroom. That had, after all, been where he was heading. I picked up the book and marched past Zoe into the bathroom.
I peeked behind the bathroom door.
No raccoon.
I ripped open the shower curtain.
No raccoon.
Zoe, who’d followed me in there, threw up the toilet seat. “What are we doing?”
“Looking for a raccoon.”
The second I heard the words come out of my mouth, I wanted to shove them back in. Zoe was scared of the flush and the blow-up rat. She wasn’t going to be okay sharing the house with a rodent who weighed more than she did.
“Awww. Was he cute?”
“Huh?” I’d gotten so lucky. “Uh, sure, yeah. He looked really…cuddly.”
“And he was just walking around?” she said, laughing.
“Yup. Just walking around like he owned the joint.”
Zoe stopped giggling suddenly. “The mystery poop!”
“What?”
“On the rug, remember?” She ran back into the hall and jumped on the spot where the mystery poop had been.
“Oh right.”
“I told you it wasn’t mine.”
“I know. I believed you,” I reminded her.
“Jeanine didn’t.”
“Jeanine won’t believe that it was a raccoon either.”
“Can we take a picture?”
“Of what?”
“Of the raccoon, so Jeanine knows.”
“Sure. If I see it again, and if I have a camera on me, I promise to take a picture, especially if I see it pooping in the hall.”
“Thank you!” She threw her arms around my legs and squeezed.
We stood there for a few seconds like that, then she unhugged me, wrapped as much of her hand as would fit around mine, and said, “What do you wanna do now?”
Unlike my parents, Zoe wasn’t going back to sleep with a raccoon on the loose, not even if it was the cute, cuddly kind.
23
If I’m telling the truth, I never would have gotten the doughnuts done on time if Zoe hadn’t helped. She cut while I fried, filled, and rolled. She kept pestering to fill too, but I’d learned my lesson so she stuck to cutting, and when she was done, I put her in that big, cardboard box till the last doughnut was rolled and the pastry gun had been cleaned and put in a secure location.
At seven, my parents came downstairs.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Mom said.
“Isn’t what beautiful?” I said as I boxed up the last doughnuts.
“The snow.” Dad pointed to the window.
There had to be a foot of snow on the ground, and cotton-ball-size flakes were still floating down.
“No! No! No!” I shouted. We hadn’t planned for snow.
“How could you have missed that?” Jeanine said as she came down the stairs.
“I don’t know. It was dark before, and I was concentrating.”
“On what?” she said.
“On doughnuts.”
“They’re doughnuts, not brain surgery,” she said, opening a box.
“Don’t even think about it!” I warned.
“Jeanine, leave your brother and his doughnuts alone,” Dad said.
“I have to go to this doughnut stand opening, and I can’t even get a doughnut?”
Jeanine was on a mission to make my parents regret forcing her to come to the Doughnut Stop’s grand opening instead of letting her stay home to study for the Solve-a-Thon. Of course, the person who was really going to regret my parents’ decision was me. I’d told them I didn’t care if Jeanine came. And I really didn’t. She and I were okay. But my parents said there was no way she could miss it. They said we all had to support each other. I tried to get them to see that even though they could force Jeanine to come, they couldn’t actually force her to support me, but if you haven’t noticed, parents like to pretend they can control things they can’t.
“Tris maked believe he saw a raccoon,” Zoe said to my father.
The Doughnut Fix Series, Book 1 Page 17