Cupcakes Are Forever

by Sheryl Berk

The rest of the group shouted “Sprinkles!”—even Whitney.

  “Now comes the fun part,” Kylie said. “We get baking.”

  It took the cupcake club and its eager assistants three days to perfect their cupcake-in-a-cupcake recipe—with lots of mistakes in between.

  “There is a burned cupcake inside here,” Jenna said, taking a bite and spitting it out. “You can’t overbake the minis. They bake much faster than the regular ones. This French vanilla tastes like it was barbecued!”

  Lexi didn’t like how placing the mini inside made the batter spill over the top of the wrapper. “It’s just not pretty,” she said.

  Delaney giggled. “It looks like an overstuffed cupcake…a cupcake that ate too much!”

  Kylie finally found the solution in a baking supply store: a muffin pan that held forty-eight mini cupcakes. “See? Teeny, tiny ones. They won’t take up too much room inside the regular cupcakes.”

  “Do we frost them?” Sadie asked. “Or would that be weird to cover with raw batter when we bake?”

  “I think it’s fine to give them a tiny dot of icing.” Kylie contemplated the idea. “As long as we freeze them first for about an hour—so they’re hard and the icing doesn’t get lost right away in the batter.”

  “Even if it does melt in, that’s okay,” Jenna added. “The flavor will still be there.”

  They tried the recipe again and again until it was perfect. And the new trays allowed them to bake 192 minis at one time!

  Kylie sat down on a kitchen stool and began chewing on her pencil eraser.

  “That means she’s thinking really hard,” Delaney whispered to the juniors.

  “So how do we work these cupcakes into a Blakely school building display?” Kylie pondered out loud.

  Now it was Lexi’s turn to present some possible solutions. “I sketched it out. See the redbrick building with the gray roof and the green grass around it?”

  “We can ask my dad to help us build a strong wooden base and a rectangular structure with doors and windows cut out,” Sadie added. “Maybe we could even incorporate LED lights and a school bell.”

  “Fancy!” Clementine said. “I like it.”

  “Where do the cupcakes come into it?” Kylie asked.

  Nathaniel raised his hand shyly. “We use red-velvet minis to cover the walls and green ones frosted with a grass piping tip for the lawn.”

  Kylie closed her eyes and tried to picture it. “I like it, but a display with that many cupcakes would be…”

  “Ginormous?” Lexi interrupted her. “We’d have to actually build it on a rolling table.”

  “My dad can help us do that,” Sadie said. “And don’t forget the five hundred cupcakes to hand out. Where do those go?”

  Lexi took out her colored pencils and began drawing. “Around the building in a semicircle. So you can reach in and take one while you admire our Blakely cupcakely creation!”

  “How do we decorate the cupcakes?” Whitney asked. “How about edible glitter?”

  “Glitter is always good,” Kylie said. “But I think these cupcakes also need to say something.”

  “Congratulations? Happy graduation? We’re outta here? Adiós?” Jenna suggested.

  “How about ‘Blakely Forever?’” Brynn suddenly spoke up.

  “We could do the Blakely logo and write ‘4-ever’ across it,” Lexi said, trying to visualize it. “I think it’ll work.”

  “I think it will work really well,” said a voice, entering the teachers’ lounge. It was Juliette. “I had to get a sneak peek of what PLC was doing for its grand finale.”

  “You make it sound like we’ll never bake cupcakes again,” Kylie said. “This isn’t the end of the cupcake club.”

  “Yeah,” Brynn said. “PLC forever!”

  Juliette held up her hands. “Okay, okay. I can see you have things under control here.”

  Kylie looked around the kitchen. She was proud of the juniors and her original club. They had all bonded and were working together seamlessly. Juliette took her aside and asked gently, “Have you given your graduation speech some more thought?”

  With all the baking and planning, Kylie had almost forgotten about the speech. “I, um, I don’t even have it anymore. I threw it away.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Brynn said, eavesdropping on their conversation. “You put it in your pocket when I found it in the PLC binder.”

  “Good memory!” Juliette told the little girl.

  “Oh, that’s nothing!” Brynn said. “I remember everything Kylie wrote, word for word.”

  “You don’t say.” Juliette grinned. “Care to share it?”

  “No!” Kylie exclaimed. “It’s silly. I don’t want anyone to hear it.”

  Brynn ignored her and began reciting from memory: “Take one cup of courage. You’ll need it for the next few years to get through the moments when you doubt yourself. Add a pinch of creativity, a spoonful of stick-to-itiveness, and a heap of passion and purpose to guide you when there are no other directions to follow…”

  “Stop!” Kylie begged her. But it was too late. Everyone in the lounge had overheard and was now gathered around them.

  “What kind of recipe is that?” Whitney asked.

  “Kylie’s Recipe for Success,” Brynn reported.

  “In school and in life,” Juliette said, smiling broadly. “Those are very wise words, Kylie.”

  “It makes me cry,” Lexi said, tearing up. “Oh, Kylie. You have to read that at graduation.”

  “Is there more?” Jenna asked. “Es brillante, chica.”

  “Yes…no. I dunno,” Kylie said.

  “Oh, there is!” Brynn insisted. “A lot more.”

  Kylie put her hand over the child’s mouth. “I can take it from here, Brynn.” She pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of her jacket pocket and cleared her throat. She shot Jenna a look. “No laughing,” she warned her. Then she began to read:

  “Stir it up with a group of friends that love you for you—just being you, even if you’re different or weird or stand out. Pour in people who believe in your ability to change the world, one cupcake at a time. Then sprinkle it with fun—because that’s what makes everything sweeter. Even the mess and the mistakes and the burned batches. Oh, and the ones that taste lumpy or bitter! There are tons of those! You can get through all that if you remember the secret ingredient is fun. Fun fixes everything! Let your recipe cool, then share it. Spread the word like you spread frosting on a cupcake. And watch your cupcake rise and your business grow and your dreams take shape.”

  When she looked up, she saw Juliette was dabbing her eyes with a paper towel.

  “Oh my, Kylie. That is simply beautiful.”

  “It is?” Kylie said. “I was really just writing it for myself…kind of a recipe for how I got through the tough times in elementary school and found PLC.” But saying the words out loud, Kylie had to admit she felt something strange—a twinge of sadness that hadn’t been there before. Maybe she would miss Blakely more than she thought. Maybe it had meant much more than she was allowing herself to acknowledge.

  Jenna walked over and threw her arms around Kylie. “You’re reading it at graduation. Me escuchas? Do you hear me?”

  Sadie nodded. “Seriously, Kylie, I’m all choked up…and just look at Delaney and Lexi!” The pair was sobbing on each other’s shoulders.

  Nathaniel tugged on Kylie’s sleeve. “I know sometimes it’s hard to get up in front of a crowd and talk,” he said. “But you should do it. Trust me.”

  Kylie took a deep breath. “Well, I guess I’m outvoted. I’ll read my recipe at graduation.”

  “Hooray!” the entire group shouted.

  Kylie put her arm around Brynn. “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?” Brynn asked. “My photogenic memory?”

  “For being a
good friend and teaching your teacher a few things! And for being a great cupcake club leader.”

  Brynn looked surprised. “Leader?”

  Kylie picked up a wooden spoon and gently rested it on the little girl’s head. “I hereby appoint Brynn Jasen president of PLC Jr. All in favor say ‘Sprinkles!’”

  “Sprinkles!” everyone shouted.

  “I expect you to do great things with this club, and by the time you graduate in four years, you’ll have trained a whole new group of PLCers who know how to bake, frost, and fix cupcake catastrophes,” Kylie added.

  “That’s my specialty,” Brynn said, beaming.

  “Making them or fixing them?” Jenna teased.

  Brynn scratched her head. “Both!”

  When the day of graduation finally arrived, Kylie hadn’t expected to feel so emotional. But there she sat on the edge of her bed, struggling to keep the tears from streaming down her cheeks. Graduation had seemed so far away, and now here she was, preparing to put on her cap and gown and start a whole new chapter of her life. How had it snuck up on her so fast? And how was it possible that Blakely and all the people there would never be part of her life again?

  “You ready, Kylie?” her dad called upstairs. “We don’t want to be late for the big day.”

  “Coming!” she shouted down. She shook off the sadness and smoothed her hair and took one last look in the mirror. She loved how her white lace graduation dress hung delicately off her shoulders.

  “Your dad and I thought your outfit needed a little something,” Mrs. Carson said, appearing at Kylie’s door with a velvet box. “Open it.”

  Kylie opened the box to reveal a tiny diamond cupcake charm on a gold chain. It was dotted with ruby, sapphire, and emerald “sprinkles.” “Oh!” she gasped. “It’s beautiful!”

  Her mom helped her fasten the clasp, then took a step back to look at her daughter.

  “When did you get to be so grown up?” she asked with tears in her eyes. “Our little Smiley Kylie is graduating.”

  “Oh, Mom, not you too,” Kylie said, hugging her. “I’m trying to remember it’s a happy day, not a sad one.”

  “I know. I know,” her mom said. “But I have a pack of tissues in my purse, just in case.”

  Kylie’s phone rang, and she was grateful for the distraction. “Sadie!” she said, picking it up. “Did you and your dad deliver the cupcakes to the school?”

  “We have a problem,” Sadie said. Kylie could hear the panic in her friend’s voice. “How soon can you get here?”

  “We’re leaving now. Where will I find you?”

  “Oh, trust me. You can’t miss us.”

  • • •

  When her parents pulled up in front of the school, Kylie saw what Sadie had meant. There, standing in front of the school’s big, red doors, was their cupcake display under a tarp, going nowhere.

  “It won’t fit through the door,” Sadie told her. She was dressed in a pretty navy-blue sundress and small heels that made her look even taller. “We’ve tried every angle. It’s about an inch too big all around. What do we do?”

  “Can we take the doors off?” Kylie asked Mr. Harris. “Or shave down the sides of the platform?”

  “I don’t have the tools with me,” he said. “And there’s no time to go home and get them. Besides, everyone’s arriving.” He pointed to cars pouring into the parking lot. Families began pushing past them to enter the building.

  “I thought we measured it,” Kylie said to Sadie. “So we wouldn’t have this issue.”

  “We did. I sent the juniors to get the measurements. They were close…just off by an inch or two.”

  Kylie sent a group text: Major cupcake 911 at Blakely! All PLC members needed NOW!

  Jenna had just arrived with her entire family. She was dressed in one of her mom’s designs, a beautiful, billowy blue dress with puffy sleeves. Kylie thought she looked like Cinderella—right down to her clear plastic pumps that resembled glass slippers. “Vámanos!” she said, directing her parents and siblings into the school ahead of her. “Mami, get good seats so you can see me get my diploma.”

  She raced to Kylie’s side. “Qué pasa? Why are we outside instead of in?”

  “The cupcakes won’t fit through the door,” Sadie repeated.

  “This is not good,” Lexi said, spotting her friends gathered around the intricate cupcake structure. Her graduation dress was a delicate pink floral print with a high-low hemline. “It’s eighty degrees. All the frosting will melt if we don’t get it inside!”

  “Easier said than done,” Mr. Harris said. “The only solution is to take everything off and carry it in by hand.”

  “Carry five hundred cupcakes—and a giant Blakely made out of 1,500 minis—into the school before graduation starts?” Kylie felt like banging her head against the red double doors. This wasn’t happening…it couldn’t be.

  “We need to call in the troops,” Delaney said. She was excited to be in the audience and watch her friends graduate. She hadn’t thought she’d be assembling an army! “We need everyone—the juniors, Juliette, Herbie.”

  Kylie suddenly had an idea. “We need to call in more hands than that!” She bolted into the school and up the stairs to Principal Fontina’s office. She found her greeting parents in the rotunda.

  “I need to make an announcement over the loudspeaker,” Kylie shouted. “It’s an emergency.”

  “What kind of an emergency?” Principal Fontina asked.

  “I need the whole fifth grade to come help us carry cupcakes inside,” Kylie said. “Two thousand of them.”

  Her principal’s jaw dropped. “Now? On graduation morning?”

  “Please!” Kylie pleaded with her. “It will move fast if we all work together and form an assembly line.”

  “Fine. You wait outside. I’ll have the kids line up. But make it quick!”

  “Trust me,” Kylie assured her. “If our display is outside much longer, we’re going to be serving cupcake soup at the reception!”

  Juliette and Herbie held open the doors as the fifth graders lined up down the long Blakely hallway. “Everyone grab two cupcakes—carefully!” Herbie warned them. “Don’t drop them or squeeze them or bump into anything. Just put them down on a table in the cafeteria, and come back for more.”

  Juliette smiled. “You’ve become quite the cupcake coach,” she said. “I’m proud of you, little brother.”

  Brynn and the juniors had received the 911 and had finally arrived on the scene. “Oh, thank goodness!” Kylie said when she spotted them coming toward the front doors. “We need you to help us carry our Blakely inside Blakely.”

  “It weighs a ton!” Clementine pointed out. “Can’t we roll it in?”

  “The display we built won’t fit,” Sadie said. “We have to lift it off the base and slowly carry it up the stairs and down the hall to the cafeteria.”

  “It’ll get wrecked,” Nathaniel pointed out. “The green grass frosting is already wilting, and if we try to move it…”

  “You’ll go to the teachers’ lounge and get us some piping bags filled with green frosting,” Lexi instructed him. “You’ll have to mix it up from scratch. And some red frosting—and white piping, while you’re at it. Oh, and some gum glue and water in case you need to glue stuff back.”

  Brynn gulped. “You’re trusting us in the teachers’ lounge? By ourselves? Are you sure?”

  Kylie looked at her watch. “We don’t have a choice. The ceremony starts in ten minutes. PLC Jr. will have to handle the graduation cupcakes.”

  Together, they carried the cupcake structure inside, leaving frosting and minis in their path. “We’re losing part of the roof!” Roxy screamed, grabbing several silver-dusted minis as they toppled off. “This is crazy!”

  When they finally got the structure to the cafeteria, they saw that several of
the minis had slipped off the front of the building—and the fondant flagpole they’d created was bent in half.

  “Fix it!” Kylie said, grabbing Brynn by the shoulders. “You’re the president. I’m trusting you to make this work. The ceremony is two hours long. Budget your time accordingly.”

  “Two hours? We can’t fix this mess in two hours!” Nathaniel cried. “It took us two days to build it.”

  Brynn clapped her hands, summoning the group to attention. “Whitney and Clementine, you go mix up the new buttercream. Check my notebook. I wrote down how many drops of food coloring we used to make the frosting colors.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Lexi said. “It has to match perfectly.” She looked Nathaniel in the eyes. “Do not let me down.”

  “Reassemble the cupcakes in a semicircle around the mini Blakely building once they get it repaired,” Jenna instructed Roxy. “Every cupcake needs to look and taste perfecto.”

  Sadie pointed to the clock on the cafeteria wall. “Guys, the ceremony is starting. We have to go.”

  Kylie took one last look at their mini-me’s, already in action. “Break an egg!” she called after them. “That’s cupcake-speak for good luck, you guys!”

  The graduation ceremony was quite a production, thanks to Juliette. The fifth grade sang three songs: Kelly Clarkson’s “A Moment Like This,” the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” and Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb.” Lexi had a solo in the last one: “I can almost see it—that dream I’m dreamin’.”

  When the class returned to their seats, Kylie leaned over and hugged Lexi. “You are such a great singer,” she said. “I’m so glad you found your voice here at Blakely.”

  Lexi’s eyes welled up. “Thanks to you and PLC,” she said.

  Both Jenna and Sadie were called onstage to read orations that Juliette had selected. Jenna’s was a Spanish poem called “Hay un lugar especial en mi corazón.”

  “What does that mean?” Kylie asked when Jenna sat back down.

  “It means there’s a special place in my heart,” Jenna translated. “For Blakely and for all of you guys.”