by Sheryl Berk
“Whoa!” Clementine noticed the size. “That could be a world-record bubble.”
“How many pieces does it take to make one that big?” Nathaniel asked, curious.
Roxy examined her pack of grape Bubble Yum. “Well, there’s ten pieces to a pack…and I only have five left.”
“Gimme!” Whitney said, reaching back to snatch a piece out of her hand. “I challenge you to a bubble blow-off.”
“Yes!” Roxy cheered. “You’re on! Get this on your phone,” she instructed Nathaniel.
Whitney’s bubble-blowing skills were impressive, but Roxy was not going to be outdone. She popped yet another piece of gum in her mouth. It was almost too much to chew!
Just then, the van came to an abrupt halt in traffic—and the giant wad of gum flew out of her mouth and landed right on the big top!
“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” Brynn cried in panic. As she tried to pull the gum off, pieces of the fondant tore away—and the purple dye stained the yellow stripes a weird shade of gray. The gum hung in a sticky, stringy mess from the top of the tent.
“Don’t touch it!” Nathaniel pleaded with her. “You’re making it worse.”
“It can’t be any worse,” Brynn shot back. “The big top is destroyed!”
“What’s going on back there?” Kylie called, hearing a commotion.
“Oh, nothing,” Roxy said. “Nathaniel just burped.”
“Did not!”
“Did too!” Roxy shouted. “You know how boys are!”
“I’ve got two brothers… I do,” Sadie said, chuckling.
“We have to do something—fast!” Brynn whispered to her junior crew.
“There’s traffic up ahead. We’re going to be sitting here for quite a while,” Mr. Harris warned his passengers.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Brynn said, mopping her brow. “Nate, can you climb back here while we’re standing still in traffic and fix it?”
“After you just humiliated me by saying I burped in public?”
Brynn looked him in the eye. “We need you to fix this,” she said sternly. “Before Kylie and Sadie see and we get kicked out of the cupcake club for good.”
“Fine,” Nate replied, gathering the spare bag of fondant and frosting Kylie had packed “in case of emergencies” and climbing in the back. “I think I can maybe patch the mess with a fresh piece of fondant.”
“What about this?” Clementine asked, holding up a circus elephant that had somehow fallen out of the display and rolled under the seats. His trunk was broken off.
“Where’s the missing piece?” Nate asked, searching around frantically. “I can’t sculpt a whole new figure from scratch. We have to find the trunk, and I can maybe reattach it.”
Roxy, Whitney, and Clementine all began poking around under their seats. It was nowhere to be found.
“Let’s do the repair on the tent first, then figure out what to do for Elinore,” Nathaniel finally suggested.
“Who’s Elinore?” Whitney asked.
“My elephant,” Nathaniel replied.
“You named your chocolate elephant?” Roxy giggled. “Okay, that’s not weird.”
Nathaniel bit his lip. “Well, at least I didn’t drool purple gum all over our display.”
“I didn’t drool,” Roxy fired back. “I spit.”
“Wait! I found Elinore’s nose!” Whitney said, picking something up off the floor of the van. A small, brown squiggly object rested in the palm of her hand.
Brynn examined it carefully. “That’s not chocolate. I think it’s a worm.”
“Eeeek!” Whitney screamed, dropping it.
Now Sadie and Kylie knew something was up.
“Guys, what’s going on back there?” Kylie asked.
“Nothing! Nothing!” Brynn insisted. “Nathaniel burped again, and Whitney thinks it’s gross.”
“Would you stop?” Nathaniel begged her. “Stop blaming me for burping when I’m not! It’s embarrassing!”
Clementine came to his rescue. “That wasn’t Nate. That was me,” she said, punctuating her sentence with a loud belch. “See?”
Sadie looked at Kylie. “Seriously? They’re having a burping contest?”
Kylie shrugged. “Kids. What can I say?”
“And why are you in the back?” Sadie asked, noticing Nathaniel had switched seats.
“He gets sick in the middle row of vans,” Whitney fibbed.
“But he’s all buckled up again, safe and sound,” Roxy assured them. “All good!”
Nathaniel smoothed the yellow fondant over the stained stripe and admired his handiwork. “I don’t think it’s very noticeable, do you?”
“It looks fine,” Brynn said. “But what about Elinore?”
“I have a Tootsie Roll in my bag,” Roxy volunteered. “I was saving it for later when I got hungry.”
“When are you not hungry?” Whitney muttered.
“It’ll have to do. Gimme,” Nathaniel said, holding out his hand. He broke off a tiny piece and warmed it in the palms of his hands till it was malleable. He shaped it into a tiny, narrow log.
“How do we make it stick?” Brynn asked.
“I don’t know. Fondant and frosting don’t seem to wanna hold it,” Nathaniel replied, frustrated.
“How about gum?” Roxy asked. “It’s super sticky, right?”
She popped a piece in her mouth and chewed it before depositing it in Nathaniel’s palm.
“Ew, you people are disgusting,” Whitney said, wrinkling her nose.
Nathaniel broke off a tiny piece and placed it on the end of the Tootsie Roll trunk. Like magic, it stuck to Elinore’s face.
And it was just in the nick of time. Mr. Harris was pulling the van into the venue parking lot.
“Quick!” Brynn whispered. “Put Elinore back inside the tent!”
Just then, Kylie opened the back of the truck and peered inside. “Did our big top survive the trip?”
“Don’t you mean did we survive the trip?” Whitney asked. “Barely.”
Brynn elbowed her in the ribs. “She means it’s good. All good!”
Kylie raised an eyebrow and inspected the display. Everything looked perfect.
“Good job, PLC Jr.,” she commended them. “See how easy that was?”
Brynn let out a huge sigh of relief. “Yeah, piece of cake.”
The Kidz Zone Play Gym was decorated like a real circus with colored lights, balloons, banners, and a costumed clown with a big, red nose greeting guests.
“You must be Peace, Love, and Cupcakes,” the clown said.
“And you must be a size fifteen!” Roxy said, noting his huge floppy shoes.
“I’m actually Dylan’s dad, Mr. Latner. Shh! Don’t tell.”
“Your secret’s safe with us,” Kylie said. “Where would you like us to put the cupcake display?”
“Yeah, it’s really heavy.” Nathaniel huffed and puffed.
“Right in the middle of the gym on the large, round table,” Mr. Latner instructed them.
“So where’s the birthday boy?” Sadie asked, looking around the space. She saw several kids swinging from mini trapezes and a few jumping on a trampoline.
Kylie zoned in on a small child dressed like a ringmaster in a red coat and black top hat. “I think I found him,” she said.
After they gently placed the cupcakes on the table, Kylie took Brynn with her to meet Dylan.
“Happy birthday!” Kylie said. “We hope you like your cupcakes.”
The boy’s face suddenly turned bright red, and he let out a wail. “Cupcakes? I said I wanted an ice cream cake! Cupcakes are for babies!” He collapsed on the gym floor, kicking and screaming.
“Wow,” Brynn said. “Does this happen a lot?”
“Um, not usually,” Kylie replied, trying to s
oothe the screaming child. “Usually our clients love what we deliver.”
Dylan’s mother raced over to see why her son was in hysterics.
“He said he doesn’t want cupcakes,” Brynn said. “Which is silly. Because I’m a first grader, and I know that cupcakes are way better than ice cream cake.”
Dylan stopped howling and sat up. “I’m going to kindergarten next year,” he announced proudly, wiping away his tears.
“You are? Well, then you’ll be able to tell everyone how much you love cupcakes.” Brynn smiled knowingly. “And they’ll think you’re a big kid.”
“They will?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Kylie chimed in. “With the coolest birthday party ever.”
His mother scooped him up and put the top hat back on his head. “Why don’t you go jump on the trampoline?” she suggested. With that, the birthday boy was off and in a great mood again.
“Thanks,” Mrs. Latner said. “If you hadn’t told him what first graders think, I’m afraid that would have been a major meltdown.”
Brynn smiled proudly. “Well, it’s true. I had an ice cream cake shaped like a whale for my fifth birthday, and it was so frozen my mom couldn’t even cut it. We all had to wait thirty minutes to have a piece, and then it tasted like freezer burn. Now, who wants that?”
“My thoughts precisely, which is why I hired you,” Mrs. Latner said, handing a check to Kylie. “And a little tip for the delivery…and defusing Dylan’s tantrum.” She gave Brynn two twenty-dollar bills.
“Wow! Thanks!” Brynn exclaimed.
Kylie plucked the money out of her fingers. “For dry-cleaning the curtains in the teachers’ lounge,” she reminded Brynn.
They turned to head for the door but stopped in their tracks, stunned by what was in front of them. There, surrounded by a crowd of applauding kids, was Clementine. She was juggling colorful beanbags and riding a unicycle!
“More! More!” the crowd chanted. So Roxy obliged and tossed her another…and another until she had six beanbags suspended in the air.
“She’s a circus act!” Brynn said, amazed.
“She’s a really great circus act,” Kylie added.
“You didn’t tell us the cupcakes came with entertainment,” Mr. Latner said appreciatively.
“We didn’t know,” Brynn said, but Kylie quickly covered the first grader’s mouth with her hand.
“She means we didn’t know that you didn’t know. Yes, Clementine is a wonderful performer… Well worth the extra fee, don’t you think?”
“Extra fee? Of course! How much?”
“How much do you suppose two new throw pillows will cost?” Brynn asked.
“Forty dollars will be just fine,” Kylie said, holding out her hand.
Mr. Latner looked over at Clementine who was now weaving in and out of the circle of children and juggling four large rubber balls in the air. Whitney was singing, “The wheel on the unicycle goes round and round,” while Roxy and Nathaniel were tooting along on party horns.
“I’ll make it sixty dollars—if they’ll stay for another fifteen minutes so I can change out of this clown suit,” Mr. Latner said. “It’s really itchy!”
Kylie, Sadie, and PLC Jr. stayed much longer than that—until the party was over, and Dylan had devoured not one but three of his rainbow-swirl cupcakes.
Kylie handed the one hundred dollars in cash to Brynn. “This is for you to give Principal Fontina Monday morning,” she said. “With a big apology and a promise that you will never set the lounge on fire again.”
Brynn nodded. “Got it.”
“Great job, juniors,” Sadie added. “You should be proud of the work. You each brought something really special to the party today. Even if you did get purple gum all over the big-top tent.”
Brynn’s face fell. “You knew? How?”
“Small van, loud kids,” Kylie said, laughing. “We wanted to see if you could figure it out for yourselves, and you did.”
Kylie turned the page on the calendar to the next month and pinned it to the bulletin board in the teachers’ lounge. It was already May 1, and graduation was only two weeks away!
“It snuck up on you, didn’t it?” Herbie asked, noting that she looked worried.
“Kind of. I just don’t know if they’re ready.”
“They’re ready?” Herbie asked.
“PLC Jr.,” she replied. “Filling an order for five hundred cupcakes is like running a marathon.”
“Oh, and you’re ready…to graduate, I mean.”
Kylie thought for a moment. “Well, yeah. At least I thought I was. But now I have the juniors to think about. We have so much left to teach them.”
“Well, you have two weeks to do it,” Herbie said. “Just make sure those lessons stick so they can carry on when you leave. PLC has to mean to them what it means to all of you.”
Kylie gulped. That was a huge responsibility! She could teach the club to mix and bake and pipe. But working together as a team and building an ironclad friendship that could weather any situation—good, bad, or messy—was a whole other story.
The door creaked open. Brynn was always the first to arrive for a cupcake club meeting. She liked to go over the binder with Kylie, noting every order—what was needed and when it was due—and carefully writing it down in her own composition notebook.
“Can we talk about the graduation cupcakes?” Brynn asked. She was already one step ahead of Kylie! “How long do you think it will take us to make them, and how much flour do you need for five hundred cupcakes? Oh, and how do you spell graduation?”
Kylie sat down and flipped to a recipe for chocolate–chocolate chip cupcakes. It was one of her favorites, one of the first that the club had perfected. “I think we’ll do one hundred of these,” she said. “But I’m open to suggestions for the other flavors.”
Brynn dug in her backpack. “I was hoping you’d say that. I have some ideas.” She pulled out several recipe books with bright-colored Post-its marking some of the pages. Before she could barrel ahead, Kylie stopped her. “So, everyone in the cupcake club has a say in what we do. Everyone gets a vote.”
“Oh,” Brynn said. “So we have to wait till everyone else gets here?”
“Exactly,” Herbie said. “Which is why punctuality is so important.”
“What’s punkuality?” Brynn asked. “And where do you get it?”
“It means being on time,” Kylie explained. “Which is something Herbie never is. Just be warned.”
“I am today,” he said, pointing to the clock. “I was bright and early because I know how important graduation is.”
The rest of the club trickled in between three thirty-five and three forty-five. “Punkuality is important,” Brynn told them. “The meeting is supposed to start at three thirty sharp.”
“Who put the peanut in charge?” Jenna asked, laughing.
“Peanuts? I’m allergic to peanuts,” Clementine said.
“We meant Brynn,” Jenna assured her. “The only nut here is Delaney.”
“Hey!” Delaney protested. “I prefer colorful or zany, thank you.”
“I prefer we start the meeting,” Herbie interrupted. “I have a robotics club waiting down the hall as well.”
“Okay, let’s brainstorm graduation cupcakes,” Kylie began. “Flavors, frosting, decorations.”
“Diplomas, caps,” Lexi suggested.
“What if we make a giant graduation cap out of minis?” Sadie jumped in.
“Or a real diploma…with cupcakes all around it?” Delaney offered.
“What about a graduation gown covered in cupcakes?” Whitney said. “I volunteer to model it.”
“Those are all good ideas,” Kylie said, mulling it over. “But I feel like we could come up with something more original. We’re PLC; we don’t do the expected.”
/> “Blakely,” Nathaniel said softly.
“Yeah, we know our school name,” Roxy said. “What about it?”
“What if we made Blakely out of mini cupcakes?”
The room fell silent, and everyone stared. Nathaniel’s cheeks flushed, and he buried his head in his hands.
“No! Nathaniel, it’s genius!” Kylie said. “Absolutely genius.”
He looked up. “It is?”
Lexi took out her notebook and began to sketch. “We could make the school and the yard and the big, red doors in front.”
“What will the cupcakes taste like?” Roxy asked.
Jenna high-fived her. “Good question. The flavors have to be just as original as the display.”
“Oh! I have an idea!” Brynn said, flipping to a page in her notebook where she’d drawn a picture of a cupcake and placed a small cupcake sticker in the middle of it. “What if we bake a mini cupcake inside a regular one? A cupcake in a cupcake.”
“So you take a bite and there’s a whole other cupcake inside?” Kylie asked.
“Uh-huh,” Brynn said. “Like chocolate inside vanilla, or vanilla inside chocolate.”
“Or caramel inside German chocolate.” Jenna continued Brynn’s thought. “Or lemon–poppy seed inside piña colada. The possibilities are endless.”
“It’s kind of poetic if you think about it,” Herbie said. “A junior cupcake and a regular cupcake combined…like you’re doing with PLC.”
Kylie closed her binder. “I say we have a game plan. All in favor, say ‘Sprinkles.’”
Clementine raised her hand. “What do you mean ‘in favor’? Like party favors?”
“Like you agree that this is a great idea,” Delaney explained. “We all vote, and if we like the idea, we say ‘Sprinkles.’”
“And what if we don’t like the idea?” Whitney asked.
“Well, you say nothing,” Sadie added. “And the majority wins, although we like it to be unanimous.”
Brynn sighed. “I’m not sure what a youn-animal is, but I say ‘Sprinkles’ and vote yes.”
“Anyone else?” Kylie asked.