Cupcake Club

by Sheryl Berk

  “What is it?” Kylie asked.

  “We made you brownies filled with gummy worms,” joked Jenna. “Kidding!”

  “Go ahead and open it,” said Lexi, anxiously.

  Kylie tore away the ribbon and wrapping paper and opened the box. Inside was a T-shirt with the Peace, Love, and Cupcakes logo on it. “It’s awesome,” she said. “I love it.”

  “I had them made as Christmas gifts for all of us,” Lexi explained. “But I thought maybe you could use it a few weeks early.”

  “I’m not sure we’ll be needing shirts if we don’t have a club or a business anymore,” Kylie sighed.

  Sadie pulled a piece of paper out of her jacket pocket. “Oh, trust me—we have a business! We have two new orders for holiday parties and three more for New Year’s Eve!”

  “Really?” said Kylie. “You mean Meredith’s buggy cupcakes didn’t ruin it?”

  “We should actually thank her,” said Jenna. “After you left, Jack started daring all the boys to eat them. There wasn’t a single one left.”

  “But what about Peace, Love, and Brownies?” asked Kylie.

  “I heard Meredith tell Emily she was way too busy with her other activities,” said Sadie. “She’s competing in some big gymnastics tournament in January and practicing every day. She just said it to make you mad.”

  “Forget about that. We can’t bake without our cupcake club president,” added Lexi.

  “Yeah,” Sadie chimed in. “We had to make a dozen Blueberry Cobbler Cupcakes today, and Jenna thought it was blackberry.”

  “You got your berries mixed up?” Kylie couldn’t believe it. Jenna never messed up an ingredient.

  Jenna dug her hands in her pockets and tried to pretend it was no biggie. “Well, it happens,” she said quietly. “I read the order wrong. You have terrible handwriting, Sadie!”

  Sadie chuckled. “Anyway, enough moping. We need you. Especially if Meredith goes all Godzilla on us again. We can’t fight her without you.”

  “I guess if you put it that way…how could I turn down a good monster battle?” Kylie said, slipping the T-shirt over her head.

  “Hey, I just thought of something,” Jenna said, getting that glint in her eye. “We’re like Dracula. We take a staking…but keep on baking!”

  The girls all groaned and laughed—and went into the kitchen to start planning their next order schedule.

  The girls were hard at work at Kylie’s house, whipping up one hundred cupcakes for a rock ’n’ roll–themed Sweet Sixteen party when the phone rang. No one had a spare hand to get it.

  “Mom, can you grab that?” called Kylie from the kitchen. “My hands are full of mocha caramel batter!”

  Her mom could barely say “Hello” before a woman interrupted.

  “Is this Peace, Love, and Cupcakes?” the woman demanded.

  “Uh, sort of, yes…that’s my daughter’s business,” said her mom.

  “I need to place an order. A big order. An important order,” the woman bellowed. “Right away!”

  “Kylie,” her mom called. “There is a lady who would like to place an order—and she’s a little impatient.”

  “Put it on speaker!” Kylie replied. Her mom walked into the kitchen with the phone, and the woman’s voice suddenly boomed through the house: “This is Eloise Mitchell. I am throwing a tenth birthday party for my daughter, Meredith, two weeks from Sunday. I tried one of your cupcakes at the Golden Spoon and it was delicious. Mr. Ludwig says you’re the best—and nothing but the best will do for my daughter.”

  Kylie’s face went pale. “No way!” she mouthed to her fellow club members. Meredith! Of all people!

  “Is anyone there?” Mrs. Mitchell huffed.

  “Yes, we’re here,” said Jenna. “Can you hang on a sec?” She placed the phone call on mute so they could discuss the situation.

  “I am no-way, no-how going to bake cupcakes for Meredith Mitchell!” Kylie screamed. “N-O!” She made a gagging face.

  Her mom raised an eyebrow. “Kylie, why would you say that?”

  “Because Meredith Mitchell is evil. She’s the meanest girl in school!” Kylie insisted. It had been two months since the winter dance, but Kylie had not forgotten what Meredith had done. She would never forget.

  “That may be so, but business is business,” her mother explained. “You shouldn’t let your personal opinions cloud your decisions. Sometimes I don’t love all the freelance stories my editor gives me to write for Nature Magazine—some are very hard, and some are very boring. I had to write one about the flat-tailed horned lizard yesterday.”

  “Your mom is right,” Jenna said. “I think we should at least hear what Mrs. Mitchell wants PLC to do. At least it won’t involve lizards. Yuck!”

  “I don’t care,” Kylie replied. “I refuse to take this order. Besides, we have a million Valentine’s Day cupcakes to make and deliver.”

  “You’re not the only member of the club, remember?” said Sadie. “We all get a vote, Kylie. That’s what you always tell us.”

  Ugh. Sadie was right. That was exactly what Kylie told her friends when they disagreed on a cupcake flavor or decoration—or when she asked them to do another two dozen cupcakes for a last-minute birthday party. Everyone’s vote counted when it came to the club. So Kylie pressed the mute button again. “Go ahead, Mrs. Mitchell,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “The birthday party will have an Italian theme, because that is Meredith’s tenth birthday present. We are taking her to Rome this summer,” she continued. “Doesn’t that sound simply mah-voo-lous?”

  “Mah-voo-lous!” Jenna giggled, imitating Mrs. Mitchell. “She’s one lucky girl.” Kylie shot her a look.

  “I want you to make a Leaning Tower of Pisa out of five hundred cupcakes. And I want the cupcakes to be filled with cannoli cream.”

  “That’s a really tall order—literally,” said Jenna. “This would have to be a huge cupcake tower!”

  “Yes, I want it five feet tall with an Italian flag on top,” said Mrs. Mitchell.

  Kylie gasped. This order was getting crazier by the minute! “We’ve never done anything like that.”

  “I will pay you $1,500 if you do an outstanding job,” Meredith’s mother promised. Now it was Jenna, Sadie, and Lexi’s turn to gasp. Sadie hit the mute button so they could confer one more time.

  “You know, $1,500 is a ton of money!” Sadie said. “Kylie, I really want to get a new bike this summer. This would definitely pay for it!”

  “I don’t think you could pay me a million dollars to bake for Meredith,” Kylie protested. “Let her go somewhere else for her cupcakes.”

  “But it’s such a great project for us,” Lexi pushed. She had already begun to sketch a tower of cupcakes with Roman columns in between the tiers. “It would be amazing.”

  “I say we should do it,” Sadie piped up.

  “Me too,” said Jenna.

  Kylie sighed. She was outvoted. But it simply burned her to do anything nice for Meredith. After all the horrible, evil, demonic things she had done to ruin Kylie’s life. She made Dracula look like an amateur! And now Kylie was supposed to create a gorgeous cupcake tower for Meredith’s birthday party so everyone would ooh and ahh? The idea made her so mad that her head pounded.

  “Please!” the girls pleaded. “Please, Kylie?”

  She went back to Mrs. Mitchell on the phone. “I guess you have yourself a cupcake Tower of Pisa,” she sighed as the girls high-fived in the background.

  “Splendid,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “Just one condition: you cannot use any cinnamon in the cupcakes. Meredith is allergic to cinnamon.”

  Lexi wrote down all the details of the order: the date, the time, the number of cupcakes, and in big, red letters: No Cinnamon!

  Kylie looked at the order form
and shook her head. How had she gotten herself into this? She should have stood her ground. She should have refused. Yes, the club might have been angry with her at first, but the girls knew how much she hated Meredith. They would have forgiven her eventually. But her mom did have a point: this was business, and that meant being professional and putting her feelings aside. And everyone was so excited for the money…it was a lot of money.

  “Boy, Mrs. Mitchell was really serious about that no-cinnamon part,” Sadie said. “Like Meredith’s head would explode or something if there was any cinnamon in these cupcakes.”

  Just then Kylie had an idea. A deliciously dastardly idea. But no one, not even the members of Peace, Love, and Cupcakes, could know about it.

  The two weeks before Meredith’s tenth birthday party flew by. The girls had needed several days to perfect the cannoli-cream recipe and figure out how to make the Tower of Pisa lean. Lexi had the idea of making large cardboard circles covered with an Italian map to hold the cupcakes and Styrofoam cylinders in between the layers to look like columns. But when they got to the very top…

  “It’s too straight. The Tower of Pisa is supposed to be crooked,” sighed Sadie.

  “Well, maybe if I stack the three top layers a little off center,” Lexi said. The structure tumbled down around her. “Hmm…well, that didn’t work.”

  It was Sadie’s dad, a contractor, who finally came up with a solution. He suggested that the base be slightly wider at the bottom and that they put one long wooden dowel through the cardboard tiers from top to bottom to keep the structure from toppling.

  “That should do it,” he said. “Just make sure nobody bangs into it while dancing and you’ll be fine.”

  He also pointed out that the Styrofoam columns should be hot-glued into place. Kylie thought that would work well but then shuddered when she remembered how Meredith had hot-glued her turnip green hat at the Wellness Day play.

  “You okay?” asked Jenna.

  “Yeah, fine.” Kylie quickly recovered. “It’s just a lot of hard work.”

  “For someone who doesn’t deserve it? I know. I get it, Kylie. There are a lot of people who pick on me in school too. Meredith is not exactly my favorite person either.”

  Kylie nodded. “Do you ever wish you could get even with those people who call you names, Jenna?” she asked.

  “Get even? Sure. But then my mom always tells me, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.’ Or ‘Why waste all your time and energy on people who just don’t matter?’” Jenna took a lick of cannoli-cream filling. “This is the best flavor we have ever made. Seriously, you have to try this!”

  Kylie took a taste. “You’re right.” She meant about the filling, but she also wondered if Jenna wasn’t right about getting even. What would it accomplish? Would it stop Meredith from bullying her? Not likely. Yet for once, just once, she wished Meredith could understand what it felt like to be in her shoes, to be humiliated in front of the whole class or even the entire school. She pictured Meredith’s cheeks flushing red and her throwing a wild tantrum while everyone laughed and pointed at her. She would burst into tears and probably throw things. Kylie smiled. Revenge would be so sweet! She could almost taste it.

  “Kylie, did you hear what I said?” Sadie tapped her on the shoulder. “You’re like on another planet today!”

  “Sorry,” Kylie replied. “I was just thinking about the party.”

  “I said we’ll have to bring all the cupcakes with us and put the whole thing together at the country club,” Sadie said. “Otherwise we’ll never fit this all in the back of Sadie’s dad’s truck.”

  “Right, we’ll assemble it all there and put the finishing touches on the cupcakes,” Kylie nodded. Lexi had had the idea of putting a dusting of cocoa powder and crushed ice-cream cones and a sprinkling of mini chocolate chips on top of each cupcake—so it really looked like a cannoli. They would give Meredith a giant-sized version of the cupcake with red, green, and white candles (the colors of the Italian flag) on it to blow out.

  “Do you think these candles will be too big?” Lexi asked, holding up the six-inch tapers. “They look so nice!”

  “Nah, Meredith has plenty of hot air,” Jenna chuckled. “She’ll be able to blow them out, no problema!”

  The morning of the party, Kylie meticulously checked every box of cupcakes before her friends arrived for the delivery. Juliette also came to help them load and set up.

  “These are beautiful,” she told Kylie. “You guys should be really proud. You’ve outdone yourselves.”

  Kylie packed up extra frosting, cocoa powder, and chocolate chips—just in case they needed to do some emergency repairs. “I think we’re all set,” she said, just as Sadie and her dad were pulling up in front of her house with their truck.

  “I’ll start taking these out,” said Juliette. The giant cupcake for Meredith was sitting in its own box to present to the birthday girl. Kylie opened it and peeked inside. It was a masterpiece. Lexi had created a dramatic flourish of frosting around the edges. She had dotted the top of the cupcake with cocoa powder and chocolate chips and written “Happy 10th Birthday, Meredith” in gold piping gel in the center. Kylie made sure everyone was busy outside loading the truck. Then she reached for a small jar on the spice rack and placed it in her jacket pocket.

  “Got the jumbo cupcake?” Sadie called through the front door.

  “Coming!” said Kylie, carrying the box outside. “Let’s go!”

  The country club was decorated to look exactly like a street in Rome. The ballroom was filled with Roman statues and columns with vines climbing to the ceiling. The buffet table was set with every kind of Italian food imaginable: lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, pepperoni pizza. And in the center of the room was a replica of the Trevi Fountain. As the banquet manager flipped a switch, the fountain suddenly lit up and began to flow.

  “Wow!” gushed Jenna. “This is some party!”

  “I’ll say,” said Juliette. “I haven’t seen this much Roman scenery since I did Julius Caesar on stage!”

  “This table in the corner behind the curtain is for you to set up your tower,” the manager instructed. “You’d better get to it. Guests arrive in two hours.”

  The girls worked up to the last minute stacking the cupcakes on each tier. Lexi climbed on a ladder to reach the very top of the tower. She planted an Italian flag in a cupcake. Then they sat back and watched as Meredith’s friends and family all arrived.

  “I guess we can go now,” Lexi said to the group. “Mission accomplished.”

  “No!” Kylie piped up. “I mean, we want to make sure everything goes okay, right?”

  Sadie looked puzzled. “You want to stay and see Meredith? I thought you hated her.”

  “I just think she should know who is responsible for this amazing cupcake tower,” said Kylie. She just couldn’t leave. Not yet.

  Juliette nodded. “You should make sure that Mrs. Mitchell is pleased before you guys dash out of here—no matter what you think of Meredith.”

  “And sample some of the appetizers!” Jenna chimed in. “Did you guys see those mozzarella sticks?”

  At exactly 2 o’clock, the lights dimmed and the guest of honor made a grand entrance. A hush fell over the room as Meredith—wearing a red satin party dress and with her hair in an elegant updo—appeared in the doorway with her mother.

  “Surprise!” the crowd cheered. Meredith waved royally and gushed, “Oh, I had no idea! I am so surprised! Thank you, thank you all!” Then she beamed at her mom, who was wearing a red satin dress as well—and looked like a grown-up version of Meredith.

  “So much for a surprise party—she totally knew,” said Sadie. “Can we leave now?”

  “A few more minutes,” Kylie said, hushing her. “I want to see her blow out the candles on her cupcake.”

  “Okay, now you are
acting really weird,” Jenna whispered. “What’s up, Kylie?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. “Shh! Her mom is making a speech!”

  “I would like to wish my beautiful, brilliant daughter Meredith a happy tenth birthday and many more,” Mrs. Mitchell began. “I do hope you like your party—and your Leaning Tower of Pisa!” The banquet manager pulled back a red curtain to reveal the cupcake display.

  There were murmurs of “Awesome!” “Wow!” and “Incredible!” from the crowd. A waiter came in with the giant cupcake on a silver platter with the candles all lit. “Make a wish, sweetheart!” Meredith’s dad told her.

  As Meredith took a deep breath to blow out the candles, her face suddenly looked strange. Her cheeks turned bright red, her eyes watered, her lips quivered, her nose twitched.

  Here it comes, Kylie thought to herself and crossed her fingers.

  Suddenly, Meredith let out a huge sneeze!

  “Gesundheit!” said the waiter, ducking under the platter. But he kept holding the cupcake in front of her.

  “I…achoo!…can’t…achoo!…stop…achoo!…sneezing!” cried Meredith. “Take that…achoo!…thing…achoo!…away from me…achoo!” She pushed the waiter away, and he stumbled against the tower, sending dozens of cupcakes flying in every direction.

  “Oh no!” screamed Mrs. Mitchell.

  Frosting sprayed everywhere, and as Meredith tried to run away, she slipped on a pile of cannoli cream and slid across the entire ballroom floor. Kylie looked around and saw no one was roaring with laughter. In fact, they looked shocked. Then she saw Meredith sprawled on her back on the floor. She wasn’t throwing a tantrum. She wasn’t bright red with embarrassment. She was just sneezing her head off! She looked pretty miserable…and scared.

  The guests huddled around her, and Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell rushed to her side. “Oh, my poor baby!” Mrs. Mitchell cried. “Let’s get you some fresh air!” They helped Meredith up and out the door of the ballroom. She was still sneezing, and her nose was as red as her party dress.