by Coco Simon
“Okay! Okay! Fine. You can move in here. I’ll take . . . Jake’s room, and Jake can move in with Sam. But you can’t change anything. I want the opportunity to win it back within six months, okay? Deal?” I put out my hand, and Matt stared down at it for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, he reached out and shook it.
“Deal,” he said.
“But you have to also bring George Martinez and at least one other cute friend. Not some weirdo loser. Got it?”
“Fine,” he said, but he clearly wasn’t listening. He wandered off. “I’ve got to go get my tape measure. You’re welcome!” he called over his shoulder.
I looked around my room and shuddered. What had I just done?
I booted up my computer. Then I began pecking out an e-mail. It said:
Hey, Olivia—
In case you change your mind about helping with the cupcakes for the premiere, we are going to deliver them ourselves and stay to watch the celebs file in. We should have a good spot to watch them. You can help make the cupcakes with us after school on Friday, but the only catch is, we need you to come back and help with another huge order after the premiere. We’ll give you your share of the profits. In?
Emma
Then I winced and pushed send. Now it was time to e-mail the others.
Hey—
Matt, George Martinez, and one other hottie, plus maybe Olivia Allen (sorry, but she offered) are coming to help on Friday. Now can we say yes? Let me know, please, so Mona doesn’t have to wait. Thanks.
It was kind of a sharply worded e-mail, and I knew it was weak of me to play on Katie’s crush on George and Alexis’s crush on Matt, but I needed to use whatever I had to get this done. It was the only way. I went down to dinner before I’d heard back from anyone, and when I came back, there were two replies—one from Olivia and one from Alexis. Coincidentally, they both had written just one word: “Fine.”
“Woo-hoo!” I whooped, which was pathetic when you think about it. But oh well. At least we’d get this done.
I finished my homework and grimly set to the task of trimming dozens of popcorn wrappers for the premiere cupcakes. It was midnight before I went to sleep, and I’d only done sixteen.
At school the next day, Olivia was bragging it up about the premiere in front of her friends.
“Emma, where are you having your hair done for the event?” she asked dramatically.
“Oh . . . uh, in my bathroom?” I said. I refused to play her game.
“Someone’s coming to you? That is so chic! Who?”
I rolled my eyes. “Olivia, we are going to the premiere to work. Yes, it is true that I am friendly with Romaine Ford, but she will most likely not even be there when we’re there. We will make the cupcakes, deliver them, perhaps stay for a few minutes to see if we can spot some stars, and then we head back to work. The big stars don’t come until the very last minute, I’m sure.”
“Oh, Emma. Such a worker bee!”
I turned to find Alexis standing behind me with an unhappy look on her face. She disliked Olivia even more than I did, and tomorrow was not going to be pleasant for her.
“One thing I was wondering . . .,” said Alexis. “Do you have the ride organized to the premiere?”
“Oh, yes. My dad is taking us,” I said.
“In the minivan?” asked Alexis.
“Yeah,” I said. Is there something wrong with that? I wanted to ask.
But Alexis nodded. “Good. Just wanted to make sure we have enough room for . . . everyone,” she said, looking disdainfully at Olivia.
I grinned. “Or were you hoping we might not?” I asked.
Alexis—still my best friend even though I was aggravated with her—grinned back. “Mind reader,” she said, and we laughed.
After school we raced to my house to begin baking. Alexis’s mom had dropped off all the supplies late last night, and there were huge tubs of butter, sacks of sugar and flour, and dozens and dozens of eggs. It’s a good thing we have a backup fridge in our garage. It’s usually filled with gallons of milk for the boys, but my mom made room, so we were set.
Alexis had also bought a new kit of food coloring, yellow spray “mist” for the popcorn coloring, and an assortment of extracts to flavor the frosting for “Mona’s” cupcakes.
I pulled out my pride and joy—my pale pink KitchenAid standing mixer with the adorable quilted cozy cover—and said, “Let the games begin!”
When my mom got home from work, she took one look at the chaos in the kitchen and ordered pizza; there was no way she was getting to her oven tonight.
It actually turned out to be kind of fun, baking a hundred and twenty cupcakes. My brothers were in and out, entertaining my friends, and people just ate pizza kind of casually, standing around. It felt like an event. During the small pockets of downtime, we did homework and quizzed one another for the vocab test some of us would have on Friday, and we started to feel pretty psyched that we could pull off two big cupcake orders.
Then Jake decided to help.
I heard the crash before I even realized where he was. It came from the garage, and it was loud but not that deadly kind of noise where you wonder if someone got really hurt. I ran out to the garage to find the fridge door open, Jake standing with his hands in the air, and two dozen eggs all over the garage floor.
“Jake!” I wailed, and he began to cry.
Well, I guess it wasn’t the end of the world, of course, but it felt like it at first, despite my mom scolding me to lay off Jake. We ended up losing a crucial forty-five minutes while Sam (nicely) went to the store and bought more eggs. It shook us out of our rhythm and our good mood (do you know how hard it is to clean up gooey smashed eggs from concrete?), and it left us stressed and maybe not so psyched and confident about Friday. It also left us rushing through trimming many of the cupcake wrappers and making the lumps of “popcorn.” Surveying our handiwork, I had to admit to myself that it was pretty amateur looking for the Cupcake Club.
By nine o’clock, everyone’s parents were arriving to pick them up, and at the end of the night, I wound up on my own with everything to clean up.
The good news was that eight dozen cupcakes were arrayed on platters on the dining room table, with two dozen more cooling in the kitchen and a nice big bowl of white frosting sat in the (kitchen) fridge. Ten dozen popcorn lumps sat under foil next to a pile of ten dozen popcorn wrappers; those were the only weak links.
By the time I went to bed (again at nearly midnight), everything was in order, and I was looking forward to Friday’s assembly line, if for no other reason than to get it over with. They weren’t going to be the amazing professional cupcakes we liked to make, but they were something. And they were for Romaine Ford and her famous friends, after all.
Olivia brought a garment bag to school on Friday, along with a suitcase full of hair and makeup tools, jewelry and accessories, and three choices of shoes.
“Olivia, remember. This is work. You will be paid,” I said, but again she waved me away.
“Emma, this could be my big break. That’s where the real payday comes in. There will be tons of agents and Hollywood people there. Cupcake money looks like peanuts next to their paychecks. And, anyway, part of being successful, no matter what you do, is looking good!”
I rolled my eyes and hoped things would work out later.
After school, Olivia and the Cupcakers and I walked home to my house. I was surprised to see that Mia also had a garment bag, and even Katie and Alexis were toting small bags with outfits and supplies for the premiere.
“Guys, I just want to remind you, we are not a key part of this premiere. Romaine asked for the cupcakes kind of as a favor to, you know, include me. And there are going to be a lot of serious, real people there, working. It’s Romaine’s big day. Not the Cupcake Club’s!”
“Oh, Emma, don’t be such a stick in the mud! You never know who we’ll meet along the delivery route!” Olivia laughed. I winced.
“Speaking of big days, when
is Romaine getting married, Emma?” asked Katie. No one had asked me that point-blank since I’d found out, so I hadn’t had to lie. Until now.
“Oh . . .” I searched for the right thing to say that wouldn’t be a lie. “Soon. It’s a secret, so . . . you know, they don’t want the press to get wind of anything and ruin it. Mum’s the word!” Phew. I hadn’t lied.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I could feel Olivia looking at me, and I could tell she thought I had no idea but was bluffing to make it look like I was involved. I took a deep breath. I’d have to let this one go, because I wasn’t about to blow Romaine’s whole cover just to make myself look good in front of Olivia Allen (no matter how tempted I was!).
Mia was thoughtful. “If I were Romaine, I’d just do it now. Like, here, while everyone’s in town. No one would ever suspect it.”
My stomach dropped. I didn’t say anything.
“Are you nuts? Why would a glamorous celebrity like Romaine Ford get married in this little town when she could go anywhere on Earth?” asked Olivia, shaking her head in dismay of Mia’s lack of imagination.
“I guess,” said Mia, considering Olivia’s point. “It depends on what kind of girl she really is.”
Alexis looked at me. “Is she a hometown girl, Em, or a glamourpuss?”
“Oh, she’s . . . a little bit of both,” I conceded. Well, it was true! I changed the subject. “Like, I wonder what she’ll wear tonight?”
“She’s been wearing a lot of Ralph Lauren lately . . .,” said Mia knowledgably, and then they were off—Olivia and Mia, mainly—discussing some of the many fab outfits Romaine had recently sported.
Phew!
We reached my house, and the boys had beaten us home. Matt was there with George and his friend Charlie, and they were hungrily eyeing the cupcakes in the dining room.
“Not so fast!” I yelled. “Rejects only!” Silently, I hoped we wouldn’t have as many rejects as I suspected.
I set to work getting everyone organized. Naturally, I paired Katie with George to begin piping the frosting, and of course Matt and Alexis were a team to bake tomorrow’s cupcakes. I put Charlie with both Mia and Olivia (they could fight to the death to see who won him!) for the wrapping and taping of the popcorn papers; I kind of floated and tried to oversee everyone. Unfortunately, I got a little bogged down with Katie and George and the frosting, because when I went back to see how Mia and Olivia and Charlie were doing, it was not going well at all.
Olivia was mostly chatting, Charlie was all thumbs, with no standard of how to make the wrappers look good, and Mia was nearly in tears of frustration.
More than half of the cupcakes they’d wrapped looked terrible—the papers were crinkled, and some even a little ripped, like they’d been handled too roughly.
“Whoa, whoa, people! These look bad!” I exclaimed.
Charlie looked up at me in surprise. “What? I think they look great!”
Olivia was caught clearly not paying attention. “What do you mean?” she asked, only just looking down at what she was doing. With all her chatting, she’d probably only taped on three wrappers, but they weren’t aligned carefully, and they looked totally lame.
“Okay. We don’t have any extra wrappers to spare,” I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. “So we need to really focus here, okay?” I looked at my watch. “We have just two hours to finish and deliver the cupcakes.”
Olivia rolled her eyes a little at Charlie, and I saw her. I’d had enough. “Olivia, do you not like this job? ’Cause I can find something else for you to do, or you don’t even have to do it if you don’t want. You can just watch, and then we’ll tell you about the premiere when we get home.” I knew I was being nasty, but it worked. Olivia was not about to miss out on the event of a lifetime.
I tried another tack, then. “You know what? Charlie, maybe you should do some assembly, over by Katie and George, and let’s leave the wrappers to Olivia and Mia, okay?” If I got the boy out of the picture, maybe then Olivia would concentrate.
Charlie shrugged. He didn’t mind at all. It wasn’t like any of the guys wanted to be good at making cupcakes, because that would be embarrassing. I hadn’t thought of that when I signed on Matt and his friends, that it would be a badge of honor to do a bad job. Ugh. Boys are soooo weird!
Pretty soon, Mia and Olivia got into a groove and began to make progress. Olivia was so into it that her chatter died down, and she got faster and better. By the end of the process, the vast majority of the wrappers looked great, and I knew we could hide the lame ones behind the good ones on the stacked platters.
I turned back to Katie and George, the popcorn people, and got them a little back on track. They’d been chatting so much that the popcorn was sticking together and was extra lumpy, and they’d sprayed them unevenly. Boy, being a manager was hard work! I was wishing I’d had just a small focused task to do instead. I guess this is what being a movie producer feels like!
Pretty soon, I noticed everyone looking at the clock or their watches or phones. It was five fifteen, and we were due to leave for the premiere at six.
My dad arrived and complimented us on the cupcakes and said he was ready to drive at anytime. As it turned out, the boys wanted to come, too, and it would be a tight squeeze in our van, so my mom offered to drive her car too. We’d all go. A caravan. Oh goody! Not.
Finally, we packed the cupcakes—lumpy, kind of cute, definitely homemade looking—into the carriers and set them by the door. We put the final three dozen of “Mona’s” cupcakes into the oven, and then it was time to run up and change. I had to let it go about these cupcakes. They were a concession—a favor—to me and, even more so, to my friends, and I had to just look at them that way. They were our humble contribution. But it just made me resolve that tomorrow’s cupcakes, as simple as they were, would be our finest work.
Upstairs, Olivia and Mia took what felt like endless amounts of time getting dressed, trying different options and trading things back and forth. It was probably only ten minutes, but I was so antsy, I couldn’t stand it.
When we were all ready, we scurried out with the carriers to the two vehicles and loaded in the cupcakes. Just as we were about to pull out, Olivia yelled, “Wait! There are still cupcakes in the oven!” I hopped out of the car before my dad had even totally stopped moving. Inside, I raced to the oven and pulled out the trays of cupcakes. I had caught them just in the nick of time. One more minute, and they would have been too hard and completely ruined. I set them out to cool, turned off the oven, and raced back to the minivan, where my dad reprimanded me for jumping out of a moving vehicle. Whoops.
“Olivia. You saved the day,” I said, anyway, gasping.
Olivia smirked and said, “Now can we stay for the whole premiere?”
I groaned and re-buckled my seat belt.
Now underway, I was started to get jazzed. Half the cupcakes were behind us, and we were more than halfway done with the next round. Dropping them off at the premiere would be fun, and we might even get to see a star or maybe a big producer or something. Even if we didn’t, it was still cool to be inside before the star of the show. How many other kids would be able to say that?
Alexis, Matt, George, and Katie were in the car with my mom, and the rest of us, plus Jake, were with my dad in the minivan. Traffic was heavy heading into town, and at the last minute, my dad decided to take a sneaky shortcut and signaled to my mom to follow. We ended up on a random, quiet country lane I don’t remember ever seeing before.
“It used to be all farmland out here, not that long ago!” said my dad. “Some of these old access roads aren’t really marked, and they don’t turn up on the GPS, but they’re still handy. Wait . . .”
There was a car pulled over up ahead of us, its hazard lights flashing. As we drew closer, I could see it was an old blue SUV.
“Wonder if these guys need help?” my dad asked, slowing down to look.
“Dad! We’re going to be late! We can’t stop!” I cried. B
ut just as I said it, something about that SUV looked familiar.
It was the sticker from Sam’s lacrosse team on the back window.
My dad pulled alongside and lowered down the passenger-side window in the front.
“Dad!” I yelled. “It’s—”
CHAPTER 9
Clipboards
Romaine Ford popped her head out of the driver’s-side window. “Oh, thank goodness! We’ve had a breakdown, and we’re late. . . .”
There was a collective gasp in our car as everyone realized who it was. Liam Carey leaned his head forward from the passenger seat of the Suburban, and as he came into view someone in my vehicle (I will kill him or her if I ever figure out who it was) shrieked.
I rolled down my window. “Romaine! It’s Emma! We have the cupcakes!”
“Emma?” Romaine blinked at me in confusion.
“That’s my dad driving. Do you want a ride?”
“Oh my goodness, Emma! Oh, this is so lucky. Yes, please! We’d love a ride! Let me just lock up.”
I rolled up my window, and we scrambled to make room in the second row for Liam and Romaine. Everyone was speechless. I felt bad for the others in the car behind us for missing out, but I was psyched for Mia and Olivia. Romaine turned off her Suburban, locked it, and came around the car. Seconds later, Liam jumped into the front next to my dad and shook his hand, and Romaine clambered into the second row with Olivia and me. Olivia’s eyes were wide, and her jaw had dropped in shock. Romaine gave me a hard, grateful hug and said, “Hi, guys!”
Liam turned around from the front seat and gave us all a megawatt grin and a wave. “Hi! I’m Liam!”
Like, duh!
“To the premiere!” cried my dad. “The public awaits!” And he took off.
OMG, why does my dad have to be so embarrassing?
As we drove, Romaine explained that she’d driven because the car was old and glitchy, and she wanted to take back roads to avoid the traffic and crowds on the other end. And then the engine flooded or something, and they got stuck.