by Coco Simon
“Ooooh! I love that idea!” squealed Katie. “But how do I get George to be a pilot?” She propped her chin on her hand and frowned.
“Wait!” interrupted Emma. “Why would you pick George Martinez to be the pilot?”
Mia looked at her like she was crazy. “Because you have to ask a boy to be your partner for the parade. You know that!”
Emma flushed a deep red. “No, I did not know that. Who told you that?”
I felt a pit growing in my stomach. Even though I was mad and trying to stay out of this annoying conversation, the news stunned me too, and I couldn’t remain silent. “Yeah, who told you that?” I added.
Mia and Katie shrugged and looked at each other, then back at us.
“Um, I don’t know,” said Katie. “It’s just common knowledge?”
I found this incredibly annoying since it was our first real homecoming and this is major news. “No, it is not common knowledge.” I glared at Mia.
“Sorry,” said Mia sheepishly.
I pressed my lips together. Then I said, “Well? Who are you going with?”
Mia looked away. “I haven’t really made up my mind,” she said.
“Do you have lots of choices?” I asked. I was half annoyed and half jealous. Mia is really pretty and stylish and not that nervous around boys.
She laughed a little. “Not exactly. But Katie does!”
Emma and I looked at each other, like, How could we have been so clueless?
“Stop!” Katie laughed, turning beet red.
“Well ’fess up! Who are they?” I asked.
Katie rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said.
Mia began ticking off names on her fingers. “George Martinez always tortures her in PE, which we all know means he likes her. He even mentioned something about the parade and asked Katie what she was going to be for her costume, right?”
Katie nodded.
Mia continued, “And then there’s Joe Fraser. Another possibility.”
“Stop!” protested Katie. “That’s all. This is too mortifying! Let’s change the subject to something boring, like cupcake revenue!”
“Thanks a lot!” I said. I was hurt that she said it because I don’t find cupcake revenue boring. I find it fascinating. I love to think of new ways to make money. How could my best friends and I have such different interests? I wondered.
“Sorry, but you know what I mean,” said Katie. “It stresses me out to talk about who likes who.”
Still.
“Well, no one likes me!” said Emma.
“That’s not true. I’m sure people like you,” said Mia. But I noticed she didn’t try to list anyone.
“What do we do if we don’t have a boy to go with?” I asked.
“Well, girls could go with their girl friends, but no one really does that. I think it’s just kind of dorky. …”
I felt a flash of annoyance. Since when was Mia such a know-it-all about homecoming and what was done and what wasn’t and what was dorky and what wasn’t?
“I guess I could go with Matt …,” said Emma, kind of thinking out loud.
“What?!” I couldn’t contain my surprise. Emma knows I have a crush on her older brother, and in the back of my mind, throughout this whole conversation, I’d been trying to think if I’d have the nerve to ask him. Not that I’d ever ask if he’d do matchy-matchy costumes with me, but just to walk in the parade together. After all, he had asked me to dance at my sister’s sweet sixteen party.
Emma looked at me. “What?”
I didn’t want to admit I’d been thinking that I’d ask him, so I said the next thing I could think of. “You’d go with your brother? Isn’t that kind of dorky?” I felt mean saying it, but I was annoyed.
Emma winced, and I felt a little bad.
But Mia shook her head. “No, not if your brother is older and is cool, like Matt, it’s not dorky.”
Oh great. Now she’d just given Emma free rein to ask Matt and I had no one! “You know what? I’m going to check with Dylan on all this,” I said. My older sister would certainly know all the details of how this should be done. And she was definitely not dorky.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Finally, I said, “Look, we have a few more weeks to worry about all this, so let’s just get back to business, okay?” And at last people were eager to discuss my favorite subject, if only because the other topics had turned out to be so stressful for us.
I cleared my throat and read from my notebook. “We have Jake’s best friend Max’s party, and Max’s mom wants something like what we did for Jake. …” We’d made Jake Cakes—dirt with worms cupcakes made out of crushed Oreos and gummy worms for Emma’s little brother’s party, and they were a huge hit.
“Right,” said Emma, nodding. “I was thinking maybe we could do Mud Pies?”
“Excellent. Let’s think about what we need for the ingredients. There’s—”
“Sorry to interrupt, but …”
We all looked at Katie.
“Just one more tiny question? Do you think Joe Fraser is a little bit cooler than George Martinez?”
I stared at her coldly. “What does that have to do with Mud Pies?”
“Sorry,” said Katie with a shrug. “I was just wondering.”
“Anyway, Mud Pie ingredients are …”
We brainstormed uninterrupted for another five minutes and got a list of things kind of organized for a Mud Pie proposal and sample baking session. Then we turned to our next big job, baking cupcakes for a regional swim meet fund-raiser.
Mia had been absentmindedly sketching in her notebook, and now she looked up. “I have a great idea for what we could do for the cupcakes for the swim meet!”
“Oh, let’s see!” I said, assuming she’d sketched it out. I peeked over her shoulder, expecting to see a cupcake drawing, and instead there was a drawing of a glamorous witch costume, like something out of Wicked.
“Oh,” I said. Here I’d been thinking we were all engaged in the cupcake topic, and it turned out Mia had been still thinking about the homecoming parade all along.
“Sorry,” she said. “But I was thinking about cupcakes.”
“Whatever,” I said. I tossed my pen down on the table and closed my notebook. “This meeting is adjourned.”
“Come on, Alexis,” said Mia. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“Yeah, all work and no play makes for a bad day, boss lady!” added Katie.
“I am not the boss lady!” I said. I was mad and hurt. “I don’t want to be the boss lady. In fact, I am not any kind of boss. Not anymore! You guys can figure this all out on your own.”
I stood up and gathered my things into my bag.
“Hey, Alexis, please! We aren’t trying to be mean, we’re just distracted!” said Mia.
“You guys think this is all a joke! If I didn’t hustle everything along and keep track, nothing would get done!” I said, swinging my bag up over my shoulder. “I feel like I do all the work and then you guys don’t even care!”
“Look, it’s true you do all the work,” agreed Emma. “But we thought you enjoyed it. If you’re tired of it, we can divvy it up, right, girls?” she said, looking at Mia and Katie.
“Sure! Why not?” said Mia, flinging her hair behind her shoulders in the way she does when she’s getting down to work.
“Fine,” I said.
“Look, I’ll take on the swim team project, okay?” said Mia.
“And I’ll do the Mud Pies,” said Emma.
“And I’ll do whatever the next big project is,” said Katie.
I looked at them all. “What about invoicing, purchasing, and inventory?”
The girls each claimed one of the areas, and even though I was torn about giving up my responsibilities, I was glad to see them shouldering some of the work for a change. We agreed that they would e-mail or call me with questions when they needed my help.
“Great,” I said. “Now I’m leaving.” And I walked home from Mia’s qui
ckly, so fast I was almost jogging. My pace was fueled by anger about the Cupcake Club and the desire to get home to my sister, Dylan, as quickly as possible, so I could start asking questions about homecoming and all that it would entail.
A Little Sweet Talk!
There are 22 words in this puzzle, and they all have something to do with your four favorite Cupcake girls! Can you find them all?
(If you don’t want to write in your book, make a copy of this page.)
WORD LIST: AGENT, BROTHER, CAMP, CHARM, CONFIDENCE, CUPCAKE, DRESS, FRIENDSHIP, FLUTE, HIKE, JAKE, MODEL, PERFORM, POISE, POOL, SING, SISTER, STAR, STYLE, SWIM, TALENT, WEDDING
All Mixed Up!
Mia gave Emma a shopping list, but Jake scrambled all the words. Can you figure out what the words are supposed to be? Write each word correctly on the lines. Then write the circled letters in order, on the lines on the bottom of the page. You’ll have the answer to a cupcake riddle!
(If you don’t want to write in your book, make a copy of this page.)
RIDDLE: Why did the cupcake laugh at the egg?
RIDDLE ANSWER:
Because the egg __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __!
Coco Simon always dreamed of opening a cupcake bakery but was afraid she would eat all of the profits. When she’s not daydreaming about cupcakes, Coco edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes she’s eaten. Cupcake Diaries is the first time Coco has mixed her love of cupcakes with writing.