Wicked Sweet

by Merrell, Mar'ce

  I sink half my beer. “So what do you get out of it?”

  “I want to be vice president. In charge of fund-raising and special projects. You’ll be class pres. And Annelise wants to date the guy at the top. We all get what we want.”

  Uh … problem. “The vice president doesn’t do fund-raising and special projects.”

  “Yet.” Parker reaches in for his third beer. “What we’re talking about is the making of a legacy.” He stares up at the stars and makes me wait while he composes and delivers a soliloquy. “Only once in every few generations comes a thinker who changes a system so dramatically that his innovation is remembered for decades afterward. My contribution to the bureaucracy of class office will be to forever alter the mandate to serve not only the senior class, but the community. And not just through bikini car washes, bake sales, and cheesy Halloween haunted houses. From now on, students will seek to give to greater causes than themselves. I’ll be like Bill Gates. Warren Buffett.”

  “Parker …” Like a stray dog staring at a bologna sandwich, I want to put an end to my misery. “Parker …” But he continues. And I drink my beer in silence. Really, I guess I get to be class president. And get the hot girl. That’s all I ever wanted, isn’t it? It’s another two beers down before Parker winds up his plans to show his mother who he really is, save Jillian and her brothers from a life of certain poverty, and build a school in Africa with bricks we’ll make by hand from the abundant red clay.

  “We’ll be revolutionaries, man.” He fist-punches me and fixes his glassy-eyed stare, finally, at something other than his imagination. “You and me.”

  Revolutionaries. Frick. What a guy. “Che Guevara.” I hold out my hand. I remember why I love hanging out with Parker. He can be just as stupid as me and no one else knows but us. I hope he remembers all this in the morning.

  “Mahatma Gandhi.”

  “The greatest man challenge yet.”

  “Man.”

  “Dude.”

  We shake our secret handshake. “Stealth.”

  Chantal

  Fraud.

  Alone with my yellow mixer and pink spatulas, I rest my head on the table in the fan’s cool breeze. I daydream about a bike ride that weaves through wildflowers. In my bike basket, a few cupcakes, carefully wrapped to protect their delicate buttercream swirls. In Mitch’s, a picnic blanket, an iPod of oldies, and a thermos of lemonade. “Sugar, Sugar,” the song Mitch has played again tonight in honor of Cake Girl plays first. (I really have to do something about that name, it sounds like Cat Girl who dressed like a cat. I’m not a walking cake.) His smiling face comes closer and closer to mine.

  The phone rings. I race to pick it up without even looking at the call display; I am that sure that Mitch is on the other end.

  “Chantal?” It’s a girl’s voice.

  At least it’s not my mother. “Annelise?”

  “We have a problem.”

  “A problem?” How could Annelise and I have a problem? We’ve had fewer than five conversations.

  “We’ve got a copycat baker. Someone just left a cake on my doorstep. And it’s definitely not from the Cake Girl.”

  “Annelise.” I slip to the floor, lean against the wall. I don’t need this complication. “I don’t mean to … like … not support you in this crisis, but why are you calling me? I don’t know anything about cake.” Oh please, please believe that I am not lying.

  “You do! Remember when you sat in my car? I told you that Will thought that I was the one who left him that chocolate cake. And then you told me that if I flirted with Will, then Parker would get jealous. So I just let Will think the cake might have been baked by me. The next thing I know, there’s a cake on my doorstep. For Will. From a secret admirer. Ta da. Parker is getting more jealous with every bite!”

  “The details are a bit hazy.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The point is that someone has left a cake. Again. For Will. But … it’s not the same baker girl. This cake is disgusting. It tastes like sugar and cardboard.”

  “What? Wait a minute. What are you saying?” As Annelise repeats herself, the pounding begins at the back of my head. I only had to get through one more cake delivery and I was set to watch Will’s misery in motion. If someone else sends him cakes his plunge from fame will not happen.

  “Chantal. Are you there? I don’t think you understand how serious this is. Parker is not going to be jealous of Will if the cakes taste like caca!”

  “Right. You’re absolutely right.” There’s this: in Annelise’s mind this whole cake-baking thing is about getting Parker back. And this: some silly girl could be making substandard cakes for Will to get attention for herself. “Um … um … I’ve got an idea.”

  I tell Annelise that if this copycat baker wants Will, maybe we could scare her off. Maybe we throw the copycat cake away. Maybe someone starts a rumor that Will has figured out who the secret admirer is, and that she is totally hot and that no girl in her right mind would try to compete with her.

  “Oh … I get it. So … we don’t tell anyone about the copycat cake, we just make it clear that the real Cake Girl …”

  Here’s my chance. “Annelise. Don’t you think Cake Girl is an unremarkable moniker?”

  “A what?”

  “A dumb name. How about … uh …” I try to sound spontaneous. “The Cake Princess.”

  “Oh … nice … the Cake Princess. Okay, tiara and lots of pink. That works. So she’s hot and no one can compete. Hey, can you hold on a second? I got another call.”

  “Sure.” I think it’s a solid plan. I think it is. I crawl on my knees to the living room window. What if the copycat baker is out to get me? What if she or he is watching me? On my hands and knees, I stop at every window on the main floor. When I reach the back of the house, I telescope my neck around the edge of the patio door. No spies with floured hands. Finally, I can return to my princess quarters, the kitchen, and lean against a cupboard door. I breathe deep.

  “Okay, I’m back.” Annelise is breathless again. “I got the rumor started on Facebook.”

  “On Facebook?”

  “Yeah, on the Cake Girl, correction, the Cake Princess fanpage. It has two hundred and twenty-seven members. No … wait, two thirty-one.”

  “A fanpage?”

  “Du-uh. The Cake Princess is the most popular girl at the lake. Okay, the rumor is: Will knows who the Cake Princess is and he said that she is totally hot and in charge and a girl going up against her would be a fool.”

  “It’s only been two days.” Two hundred and thirty-one people are following my cake exploits? My mouth goes dry. Annelise reminds me that two days is all you need to make a trend happen. As proof she points out that last March she wore pink leg warmers to school and the next day seventeen other girls wore leg warmers, too. Like, OMG. I was not one of those seventeen girls.

  “I’m famous for being a trendsetter,” she adds. “Chantal. You need to friend me on Facebook. And join the fanpage, too. Okay?”

  “Sure.” I don’t tell her I’m not on Facebook, because, honestly, when she said friend, I sort of liked it. I think I want to know what everyone else is doing. Especially if it involves my secret identity.

  “And Chantal, thanks. People say you’re stuck up, but I don’t think so. You’re actually easy to talk to. Well, you are very smart. But like, you’re nice.”

  “Oh. Um … you’re welcome.” Maybe it would be nicer for me to tell her what I know—Parker dumped her to compete in a man challenge. Doing that might compromise my secret identity.

  “Okay, one cake in the garbage. Friend, I’ve got to go. Wait—”

  “You gotta hear this. Danielle says she just saw Parker and Will walking away from the high school. Without Jillian. And she thinks they’re drunk. Chantal, this Cake Princess is so getting to Parker. By the end of the summer he’ll be mine again.”

  Not if Parker turns out to be Jillian’s real Prince Charming.

  Jillian

  Waiting fo
r Parker.

  I saved our two allotted pieces of the Epitome of Refinement Chocolate Cake for my after-hours date with Parker. We were supposed to meet in the backyard. I lit candles and draped blankets over our plastic lawn chairs. In the dark, it whispers romance. The two cake slices hug each other on the one unchipped plate we own, to make the sharing obvious, intimate. It’s after after-hours, though, and I haven’t heard from Parker. I’m not going to call him because that’s something my mother would do. Me? I take a fork from the drawer, poise it over the top of the deep chocolate cake that everyone said was “to die for,” then pause at the last second.

  If I take a bite, I know I won’t stop at one. Should Parker show up, we wouldn’t have cake to share. Worse, he’d either think I was a pig or he’d know that I gave up on him and ate it solo. But I’m pretty sure if he was going to knock on my door he would have been here by 12:02 A.M. I stare at my fork.

  I could call Chantal.

  Are you sure he said he was going to come over? She’d ask.

  I’d answer, Well, he either said he might come over or he would come over.

  Hmm … she’d say … do you think he’s been in a car accident?

  Unlikely, I’d say. He was going to walk over to Will’s house and then walk here.

  He probably doesn’t intend to disappoint you, she’d say.

  And I’d say, Yeah, you’re right. He’s such a good guy. With the boys, especially. Thanks. See you tomorrow.

  I wouldn’t tell her that I’m thinking my mother has put a curse against men in this house. I wouldn’t ask her to come over here and watch the boys while I go out looking for Parker and proof that he’s ditched me.

  She probably wouldn’t tell me that she’s sort of suspicious of him, but I can tell that she watches him and she wonders the same things I wonder. Why is he so interested in hanging out with my brothers? Why doesn’t he seem to notice when I’m wearing certain clothes that make me look really good? Why does each conversation he initiates start with a story about hanging out with the boys? Why are Parker and my brothers the lead actors and I’m the supporting cast?

  I pick up my fork. One bite. My lips drag along the fork tines, making sure to pull every chocolate molecule onto my tongue. It’s fireworks in my mouth, a continuous burst of chocolate, spice, and sugar dancing with butter. This is not my only bite. My fork dives.

  Sometimes I get tired of being vigilant. I want to stop looking at each situation in my life as a complex puzzle that I can rework, solve, and erase. Sometimes I get this sharp pain in my brain that makes me say, Hello. It’s like the knock at the front door that I don’t expect. I hear it no matter where I am in the house and I run to answer it. Always. I run to the door and then I stop, right as I’m reaching for the handle, and I wish, the same silent wish that hovers over my birthday candles, that my dad was on the other side. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.

  My fork slides effortlessly through the chocolate cake. Each bite takes me deeper.

  Sometimes I don’t want to wake up in the morning, reminding myself that my most important job is being a good sister, that doing the right thing will make me feel right inside. Sometimes, I just feel taken advantage of, used.

  I scrape the last bit of cake from our one unchipped plate.

  Sometimes I want to ask for help. Salvation. I slide my index finger over the remains of the chocolate frosting, lick the sweetness from my finger.

  But I know the only thing that will make me truly happy is to save myself.

  I open the dishwasher. Slide the plate in the bottom rack.

  Will

  Disappointment.

  “So … me and you in Africa building schools, brick by frickin’ brick.” Parker sways as he stands, misses the first time he reaches for his camp chair. It’s been another hour and I’ve lost count of how many beers. I’m doing a little better than him, more practice and good genes, I guess.

  “What about Jillian?” I lock our camp chairs in the shed. We start walking toward my house.

  “Jillian? Jillian will probably be, I don’t know, teaching kids how to read under the shade of a boaboa tree. They have boaboa trees there, don’t they? Or maybe it’s Joshua trees. Or maybe, like, both. Making bricks is man work.”

  “Dude. I was talking about tonight. You said you were going to her house.”

  “Tonight?” Parker stops. He stares at the bottle in his hand. “I can’t go over there tonight. I’m drunk. Bad role modeling.”

  “You’re not gonna call her, are you? She’ll know you’re drunk and you know what that means …”

  “In the doghouse.” He has to stop to whiz in the bushes. “Man. What am I gonna tell her?”

  “You fell asleep.”

  “That’s pretty good.”

  “You’re the one who told me every guy gets one get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “Yeah.” He nods. “I’ll play the sleep card. So let’s go to your house and play Halo.”

  “My house? Nah …”

  “We can’t show up at mine. Relatives in town.”

  As we walk Parker starts in on his new favorite topic, his legacy, and by the time we get to my garage, I’m thinking I’ve listened long enough. We shake hands and I watch him weave down the sidewalk like a squirrel following a nut on a string.

  I don’t know that my mother is in the living room when I open the door or when I close it as quietly as I can or when I slip off my shoes to carry them in my hands. It’s the Ogre that’s got me acting all burglar in my own house; still, I freeze when I hear her voice from the dark corner.

  “Will,” she says. “I’ve been waiting up for you.”

  “Mom. Why are you in the dark?”

  “I have a headache.”

  “Oh.” I set my shoes down and move to the living room, shuffle to the couch. I can make out her outline in the chair opposite me. The orange light from the heating pad she puts at the base of her neck glows. “Is he gone?”

  “To work.”

  “Oh.” We’ve been waiting for him to leave for seven years. I was ten when I walked in on them fighting. I’d been at Parker’s house for dinner and I heard the Ogre yelling at her as I walked up the front steps. He didn’t stop when I slammed the door or when I stood in the kitchen doorway. We don’t need a goddamn new couch or a new color on the walls. My mother wiped her eyes with the kitchen towel. I’d heard him yelling at her before and I’d decided weeks before that the next time I would do something. Bullying is wrong, I told him, I learned about it in school. And you have to stop. I remember that pounding feeling in my chest. It felt great. Warriors must have felt just like this, I thought. The Ogre moved a step closer to me. My mother told me to go to my room, but I stood my ground in the kitchen. I pulled the biggest knife we had from the wooden block on the countertop. For five seconds or so I was in power, the kid with the weapon, and then, the Ogre changed his battle strategy. He turned on my mother. You trapped me. You got yourself pregnant. Now you’ve turned my own son against me. Put that knife down (my mother’s voice had never been so angry), and go to your room. Hours later, in the middle of the night, she told me that I needed to be good, that if I was bad and acted up again my father would leave us. I was never sure why that would be such a problem.

  “Tuesday,” she says. “Your dad’s party is on Tuesday. You need to bring that nice girl, Chantal. And you need to wear a tie.”

  “I might be coming down with the flu.”

  “You’re going.”

  I play over in my head what I think about whenever my mother wants me to do something to make the Ogre happy: the Ogre missed my hockey games so I quit the team. He never went to a parent-teacher conference so I slipped up and got C’s in the ninth grade. Sometimes when I’m drunk, I just don’t care. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

  “To make a point.”

  “And that is?”

  “You complain about your dad and the ways he’s failed you.” Her words are scripted, but her voice is
weak and wavering. I want to tell her I know she’s trying to make me respect him but it’s way too late. “Your dad points out everything that’s wrong with you, not to mention the shortcomings he sees in me. Not once do you stop to consider that you are just like your dad. Both of you are letting me down.”

  I open my mouth. I’m going to say, he’s the adult, but I stop. It’s one night. In a year, I’ll be graduating and move away. The Ogre is worth less to me than a lightbulb is to a bat. When I get elected class president my mother will realize she’s chosen the wrong side. That I am the smart one, the one with charisma. I’m the star to hang onto.

  “Okay. I’ll be there.” I put my shoes back on. Make a big show of walking to the front door, opening it up, and slamming it behind me. She doesn’t try to stop me from leaving.

  Chantal

  Surprise Visit.

  I am finishing the final secret admirer note for the I Like Him, I Like Him A Lot, Cake—a splendid white meringue frosting decorated with thin-piped daisy petals and a center of highlighter yellow nonpareils—when the doorbell rings.

  I look at the oven clock. It’s well after midnight. No one rings our doorbell at midnight unless it’s an emergency, or my mother. The pile of evidence still sits in the corner. I open the linen drawer in the buffet and pull out our Thanksgiving tablecloth, drape it over the KitchenAid and ingredients. I’ll tell my mother there’s a surprise under there if she asks. And … the cake … well … I’ll tell her that someone dropped it off for me, but I refused to eat it.

  Now she’s knocking at the door. She must have her keys in her luggage or she wants to surprise me. But she’ll think I’ve been asleep. I tangle up my hair, yawn to get that sleep look going, and shuffle to the front door. I don’t look through the window at the top, I want to avoid that first look where she’ll figure out I’m pretending. Head down, I open the door.

  “Were you asleep?”