FOR
David, Hannah, and Eli,
my best readers and eaters
—VH
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Text copyright © 2014 by Veera Hiranandani. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC. All rights reserved.
Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group,
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-698-40489-2
Version_1
Contents
Dedication
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A million thanks goes out to my amazing editor, Eve Adler, who understood Phoebe from day one; my magical agent, Sara Crowe; everyone at Grosset & Dunlap for believing in this project; Sarah and Adel Hinawi at The Purple Crayon, for providing an excellent work space; Anita, Hiro, and Shana Hiranandani, and the rest of my extended family, who have always encouraged this crazy writing habit of mine; to all the young foodies I know who continue to inspire me; and to my husband, David Beinstein, for all of it.
CHAPTER ONE
My name is Phoebe Gertrude Green, but that’s way too many letters for me to write every day at the top of my homework, so I write Phoebe G. Green. My parents call me Pheebs a lot, but most of the time I’m just Phoebe. I’m a very lucky girl (at least that’s what my mom says all the time). My mom bought me this sparkly purple notebook because I like purple and I like to make lists. Here’s a list of why I’m so lucky:
1. I live in a house with a blue door. Nobody else I know has a blue door.
2. My school is just around the corner and I get to walk there.
3. I have chocolate-brown, extra-curly hair.
4. I have exactly twenty-seven freckles on my face, which is my lucky number.
5. I have a best friend named Sage, who’s a boy, if you were wondering.
6. I have a blue betta fish named Betty #2. She’s named after Betty #1, a good fish who lived a long, happy fish life, but it makes me too sad to talk about Betty #1, so I won’t.
Today was the first day of the rest of my life (that’s what my dad always says). I started third grade and I wasn’t even nervous because my new teacher, Mrs. B, had the curliest, reddest hair I’ve ever seen and played the guitar. My older sister, Molly, who’s thirteen and thinks she rules the world, had Mrs. B as her third-grade teacher, too, and said she was “totally cool.” Also, Sage was in my class. Double also, I had a new girl in my class from France, named Camille, who was very tall and looked very embarrassed, because her cheeks were always red.
Mrs. B did the coolest thing today. She covered the whole wall with brown paper and told us to “go to it,” which meant we could paint anything we wanted on it about our summer. I thought and thought about it because you don’t get many chances to paint on the wall in your classroom.
Mrs. B came up to me and smiled. “Phoebe, do you need help deciding what to paint?”
“Well,” I said, “we went to the beach and we went to a fair. I can’t choose.”
“Which trip is clearer in your mind? Then it will be easier to paint.”
So I painted myself throwing up after I ate too much cotton candy at the fair. Sage also painted me throwing up because I guess it was clear in his mind, too.
“Phoebe, that certainly is a clear painting,” Mrs. B said after looking at it. Isn’t Mrs. B the best?
Then at lunchtime, Camille brought the weirdest lunch I’ve ever seen. I had to do a whole separate list for it:
1. A tiny loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth napkin
2. A piece of cheese with blue dots on it that smelled funny
3. A green salad in a little plastic bowl with tan-colored beans and pieces of meat
When I asked about it, Camille told me it was a butter lettuce salad with pieces of DUCK in it! She said this very quietly. Who puts butter on their lettuce and eats a duck? Camille might be crazy.
4. A small box of strawberries that she sprinkled with powdery sugar
One of my soggy noodles slipped off my plate and splatted on the floor. Sage took one look at Camille’s lunch and pointed at the cheese with blue dots on it.
“That cheese smells like rotten eggs,” he said. Camille looked down at her lap and started turning red.
“Sage,” I said, pointing at him, because sometimes Sage needs to be pointed at.
“Just saying,” he said. His older brother says that all the time.
“Well, say something else,” I told him, and smiled at Camille. Her face was still a little red, but a happier red this time.
“Sorry,” Sage said.
On the second day of the rest of my life, we were sitting at lunch and I watched Camille very carefully to see if she brought another crazy lunch. Sage and I had the school lunch like most of the kids. I looked at Camille’s lunch and asked her what was what. She answered in her movie-star French voice. This is what she had:
1. More tiny bread
2. A beet salad with cheese from a goat
I’ve never had cheese from a goat, so I asked her for a taste. It was creamy and not smelly at all.
3. A tiny little raspberry pie
She called it a tart, but it wasn’t tart. She said her own father made it because he’s-get this-a pastry chef! That means he’s like a regular chef, but he only makes desserts. Pretty cool, huh? I can’t believe that’s actually a real job.
I looked down at my sticky mac and cheese and mushy peas and sighed a big sigh.
That night at dinner we had meat loaf. We pretty much eat the same things every week:
MONDAY Dad’s famous spaghetti and salad from a bag
TUESDAY Mom’s famous baked chicken with mashed potatoes from a box and salad from a bag
WEDNESDAY Mom brings home meat loaf from the store and salad from a bag
THURSDAY Leftovers and salad from a bag
FRIDAY Pizza and salad from the pizza place
SATURDAY Turkey sandwiches and coleslaw from the deli and no salad
SUNDAY Wonton soup and beef and broccoli (my favorite!) from a Chinese restaurant
“You mean goat cheese, Phoebe?” she asked me.
“Yes, that’s the one!”
“Sure, but where did you have goat cheese?” she asked.
“This girl from France had it at school. She also ate a duck.”
“Hmmm,” my dad said.
“Huh,” my mom said.
Now they seemed confused. When this happens, I have to keep saying the same thing over and over for many days in a row until they understand. I might as well be speaking in French.
CHAPTER TWO
Camille kept bringing in all these weird and beautiful lunches every day, and I started to get very curious about what dinner at her house might be like. Did they eat with gold plates and crystal glasses? Did her dad make piles of pretty cakes and cookies and tiny little pies every night? So I asked my mom in my nicest, cutest voice possible if she could call Camille’s mom and see if I could come over, but Mom said that it’s impolite to ask myself over to people’s houses and that I had to wait to be invited over. Since Camille barely ever talked, I didn’t think she’d ask me over anytime soon. So this was my three-step plan:
STEP 1
Sit next to Camille during lunch all next week and look really hungry.
STEP 2
Tell her that no matter what anyone thinks about her lunches, I think they’re nice and strange in a good way.
STEP 3
Ask her over to my house for dinner, but then tell her we’re having spoiled leftovers that she’d probably think were gross. Then she’ll have to ask me over!
So that’s what I did. I finished my hamburger and fries really quickly so I could pretend I had no food and was starving. Then I leaned over and whispered to her, “I know people think your lunches are strange, and they are. But in a really good way.”
She looked at me and smiled her small smile, where her lips curl up in the shape of a heart. Then she held out her sandwich for a taste. She said it was smoky salmon with pickles and eggs. I took a bite and it wasn’t smoky at all, just sort of crunchy, chewy, salty, and sweet all at the same time. It was the craziest sandwich I ever liked.
“Yum! I always seem to be so hungry, the kind of hungry that lasts all the way to dinner!” I said.
Camille nodded as she ate her sandwich.
“Maybe you could come over to my house for dinner one night?” Sage stared at me when I said this. Camille stopped chewing.
“Okay,” she said, and went back to eating.
“Um, except that you should know that if we’re having leftovers, they might be spoiled.”
“It’s okay. I’ll ask my parents,” she said, and smiled the rest of the time she ate her smoky sandwich. Bummer.
After school, when we were walking home, Sage said, “Why didn’t you ask me to dinner, too?” He looked down, kicking a rock as he walked.
I took a deep breath and tried to explain. “I actually want Camille to invite me over for dinner so I can check out what her family eats. But I have to invite her over first.”
“Oh. Okay. You can come over to my house, if you want. My mom will make you potato pakoras.”
“Sounds great!” I said. I didn’t want Sage to feel bad, but I had been over tons of times. Sage’s mom is Indian, so sometimes she makes Indian food, which I really like as long as it’s not too spicy. Potato pakoras are these fried potato things that taste even better than french fries. But most of the time Sage’s family eats lots of chicken, pasta, and pizza, just like us.
After school, I told my mom she had to make something better than what we normally eat when Camille comes over. She frowned, which is not a good sign at all.
“Phoebe, you have to talk to me in a nicer way. Please go to your room and think about that,” Mom said.
“Good one,” said Molly, going off to her room to do her homework. I gave her my best angry face. Then I walked very slowly into my room with my head down and my knees a little bendy so Mom would know how not nice it was to make me stay in my room just because I didn’t want to eat old leftovers when Camille came over. What I thought about instead was what we could serve Camille for dinner.
When I was let out of my room, I grabbed my parents’ only cookbook, called The Wonders of Cooking, and looked through all the recipes. Then I made a menu and drew pictures of Betty #2 and lots of stars and a big rainbow on the top to make it extra special. I showed Dad instead of Mom. This was my menu:
1. Beef bourguignon
(I can’t say it, but I think it’s like beef stew.)
2. Chicken cordon bleu
(Dad said bleu is French for blue, but the picture of the chicken doesn’t look blue. I’m hoping it will be at least a little blue.)
3. Tomato and cheese tart
(It’s like a fancy pizza pie!)
4. Baked Alaska
(It’s not a piece of Alaska that’s baked, which is what I thought. It’s a dessert that has ice cream in it and is set on fire.)
Dad said he would help me cook something, but he changed the menu, which now is:
Beef bourguignon, with salad from a bag and ice cream that’s not set on fire.
CHAPTER THREE
Tonight, Camille came over for dinner. My dad got home early just to cook with me, which was really special since he’s an editor of television shows and sometimes has to work way late into the night. Mom writes articles for magazines, so she works at home and is in her office a lot, especially when she has a deadline like she had today.
We put all the ingredients that Dad bought at the grocery store out on the counter. The beef chunks were in the freezer, so Dad put them in the microwave to defrost. Then he started chopping the onions and carrots and got teary. He said onions make people cry, but I didn’t get what was so sad about them. I chopped celery and parsley, and Dad fried the bacon. Some of it started to burn and the smoke alarm went off, so we had to dump flour on the bacon and open all the windows.
Molly came out of her room with a mean look on her face.
“I’m trying to do my homework! And why does it stink in here?” she yelled over the smoke alarm while holding her nose.
“Molly,” Dad said. “We’re trying a new recipe. It’ll die down in a second, I promise.”
“You guys don’t even understand how much homework I have,” she said, stomping off.
Finally, the smoke alarm stopped. Dad took the beef chunks out of the microwave and we looked at them. They weren’t frozen anymore, but sort of half cooked and half raw. They were also a little green and shiny. I thought they were kind of pretty, but Dad said beef chunks weren’t supposed to be pretty. So we used some hamburger meat we had in the fridge instead and put everything in the pot at once, which isn’t what the recipe said we were supposed to do, but Dad said we had to take a shortcut. It smelled good once it started to boil. Camille would feel right at home.
An hour later, Camille and her mom, Mrs. Durand, arrived. Mrs. Durand was wearing a green sweater that looked kind of like the color of the bad meat, and Camille was wearing a red dress to match her cheeks.
“Smells good,” Mrs. Durand said in her fancy French voice. Dad poked his head out of the kitchen and waved hello—he was all sweaty and wearing Mom’s ugly flower apron that she never wears. Mrs. Durand gave him a worried look. Mom came out to say hi and she wasn’t sweaty or wearing an ugly apron, so after a minute Mrs. Durand kissed Camille on the forehead and left.
I took Camille to my room and showed her Betty #2.
“Can I feed her?”
“Sure,” I said, holding up the fish food. “But only a sprinkle or two.”
She nodded very seriously, took the bottle of fish food, and didn’t dump the whole thing on Betty #2, which I have do
ne many times.
“You’re so lucky you have a pet,” she said as we watched Betty #2 eat.
“Well, just a fish. I can’t get a cat or a dog because my parents are allergic.”
“Mine too!” Camille said, louder than I’d ever heard her speak, which wasn’t really that loud.
“That’s why a fish is perfect,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll ask my mom,” she said. “But we travel a lot, too.” She hung her head.
“That’s okay, I’m a really good fish-sitter,” I said, even though I’ve never actually fish-sat for someone else’s fish.
“Maybe if I tell my mom that, she’ll let me,” Camille said, and clapped her hands.
“Go for it!” I gave Camille a big pat on the back, which pushed her forward a bit and made her drop the fish food. Luckily, Camille had remembered to close the fish food right away and it didn’t spill.
Dad called us in for dinner. Mom brought out the salad and the bread, and then Dad brought out the bowl of steamy hamburger bourguignon and spooned it onto everyone’s plates. I looked on my plate, expecting to see chunky meat and vegetables covered in shiny brown sauce just like in the cookbook picture, but instead it looked mushy and gray. I took a bite.
“Um,” I said quietly, “does anyone else’s stew taste like chewy dirt?” A few things happened all at once:
1. Mom and Dad got a bit scared-looking, which they sometimes do when I say stuff.
2. Molly started nodding.
3. Camille looked like she had eaten a lemon.
4. I started to bite my lip, which is what I do when I feel stupid.
“It’s probably the way it’s supposed to taste,” Mom said, still chewing. Molly spit out her food in her napkin very dramatically. Mom gave her a look.
Lunch Will Never Be the Same! Page 1