“New theory?” I wince as Mr. Blick circles in my lap, trying to get comfortable.
“Last night I was messing around online and it occurred to me that RPS is the perfect personality test.” She shifts the towel on her head with her spare hand. “Say you throw three papers in a row.” I nod and sigh as Mr. Blick finally lies down. “Right away you know you’re dealing with someone quiet, but with a lot of confidence.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, letting Pumpkin rub against my fingers. It’s still weird when Tally starts talking about RPS, like at any moment someone is going to pop out of the closet with a camera crew and yell “Gotcha!”
“Each one matches a certain personality type. You know: predictable, unstable, open, closed.” Her hand keeps doing the three moves as she talks. I briefly wonder which is a better indicator of personality type, RPS or Jolly Rancher flavors. “You’re a bit of a dreamer,” Tally says. I start to say something, but she shakes her head and continues. “You’re subtle, but with some surprises.” She tilts her head slightly, making the towel slip down over one ear. “Maybe a good move for your personality is Paper Dolls,” she says. She throws two papers and then a scissor. “Since you’re quiet, people might think you’ll go for Confetti.” She throws three papers in a row. “But that’s where you’ll fool them.”
“How about your personality?” I ask, not sure I like being called a dreamer.
“Looking at me, everyone expects that I’ll use a combination of scissors and rock.” I nod, as if I know what she’s talking about. “But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about chaos theory.” Tally looks past my shoulder to the wall clock, made out of an old frying pan. “Be right back,” she says. She disappears into the bathroom again, pulling the door shut behind her.
I’m tempted to peek in her closet to see if her belongings are in there, but I don’t have the energy. Or maybe I’m just afraid to find out. I lean back and rest my head against the chair. Tally’s probably right. Maybe I am just a dreamer. I pinch my arm with my fingers, feeling the sharp bite. Nope.
“Close your eyes,” Tally calls from the bathroom.
“Okay,” I say, not bothering to tell her they are already shut. I hear the door open, soft footsteps across the wood floor, and then the shush of Tally’s feet on the rug.
“Okay. Now,” Tally says. I open my eyes and Tally is standing in front of me, smiling. “Pretty good, huh?”
“Wow,” I say. “You look—”
“Normal?” she asks. She flips her hair slightly. Even though it is still wet, I can tell that it’s a deep brown, without a hint of primary color in sight. She’s also not wearing glasses anymore.
“Different,” I say. Tally walks over to the dresser and turns from side to side to look at her hair in the mirror.
She blinks and rubs at one of her eyes. “Contacts,” she says.
I want to tell her that it looks good, but something about seeing Tally suddenly changed makes me sad. It’s like each time I get my feet under me, the deck shifts. As much as I want to support Tally’s decision to look normal, I could go for a little weird. Somehow, Tally’s weird made me feel normal.
chapter seventeen
The bell for third period is about to ring, but Tally says she has to tell me something really important and pulls me into the restroom. She makes a big production of peeking under a couple of stalls. I start to mention that I can see a pair of feet under the stall door at the end, but she puts her finger to her lips.
“Okay,” she says. Her voice is all excited, but it’s false excited, like she’s trying out for a play. “I lost five pounds.”
“What?” I ask. Here we go, I think. Tally is the last person in the world who I expected would be the least bit interested in her weight. She doesn’t seem to have any issues with it. I mean, she eats Blake under the table most of the time and yet she’s thin. Not yucky model thin, but good thin. Healthy thin.
“I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure.”
“Sure of what?” I ask. The feet under the last door have stepped forward so far that the toes of the pink plaid ballet flats are sticking all the way out. Whoever is in there would make a terrible spy.
“It all started when I was driving with Poppy to Lancaster,” Tally says. She is making her voice go all breathless, and I wonder if this is part of the “new” Tally, the “normal” Tally. “They’re doing this story on NPR about alternative medicines. You know, like honey and lemon for sore throats and saline solutions for sinus headaches.”
I’m just nodding and watching her. She makes her eyes go big. Okay, now I get the message.
“Uh-huh,” I say in a way that I hope matches her false excitement.
“Anyway, they start talking about lard.”
“Lard?” I ask. Miss Pink Shoes must be pressed against the door. I can almost feel her holding her breath to listen. “As in pig fat?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Apparently, some doctors in Europe have been studying the effects of lard on weight loss.” I have to fight to keep a smile from my face. “So anyway,” Tally says, making big eyes at me again. Hold it together, I think. “All of these models in Europe have started eating lard to keep their weight down. Something about coating your stomach.”
“Coating your stomach?” I ask.
“I know,” she says. “I didn’t believe it either at first, but I went to their Web site. Newlard.com.” She says it slowly. “The Web site said that by eating straight animal fat, you overload your system, forcing it to go into emergency mode. It starts dumping all of your fat stores.” I can almost see the stall door bow out. “So anyway, I decided to follow the diet. You know, just for a few days, to see if it worked.”
“And it did?” I ask.
“Not at first,” she says. “I mean, it warns that right on the Web site. That initially, as your body adapts, you will have some bloating.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“And I didn’t even do the whole thing. It says for the best results you have to eat straight lard. As much as you can each day. I cheated some and ate those pemmican bars. I mean, that’s good—they have lard in them—but for the really good results, you have to do it straight all the way.”
“What was the Web site again?” I ask. I pull a pen out of my backpack and pretend to write it on the palm of my hand.
“Newlard.com,” Tally says. “I think this is going to be just the key for the pageant,” she says. She heads for the door and I follow.
The bell rings as we make it out into the hall. We have to hurry to class to avoid being late. We aren’t the only ones, though. I notice that Charlotte is running late, too. She almost trips in the art room as she hurries toward the back table. Someone should warn her that ballet flats can be a little slick on tile floors.
I have to avoid looking at Tally all through class. I’m afraid I’m going to blow it and start laughing. We each keep to ourselves. I work on my float design and Tally is drawing something that looks like a huge sunflower growing out of the planet Saturn. Miss Beans has to keep telling the back table to get to work. They don’t stop whispering to one another. I notice that the main person doing the talking is Charlotte, and I notice something else: Charity is listening.
chapter eighteen
Dot, dot, line. Line, dot, dot.” I have to say the pattern out loud to keep from messing up. I keep blinking, trying to keep my eyes from going out of focus from all of the close work. Forty dozen cupcakes. It’s the biggest order we’ve had yet. It’s funny how they always talk about cupcakes that way, in terms of dozens. No one comes in and orders thirty-six cupcakes; it’s always three dozen. For the less mathematically inclined, forty dozen = 480. Divide that by the five designs I have to make, and that leaves ninety-six of each kind. I finished the first batch, a Swiss dot pattern, in a couple of hours. The simple shell design and even the more complicated reverse shell took about the same amount of time, but these last two batches are awful. I keep resting my hand because it’s cramping so much. The real
ly pathetic part is that my mother isn’t even here to help. Normally she would at least help with the decorating. She had to go to some meeting in the City and won’t be back until late. Way too late to do much more than drop into bed and then get up early to deliver the cupcakes out to the beach for the dawn wedding. I keep hoping that all these meetings are maybe going to change things. It seems like as long as everything is still in the air, there’s still some hope.
“So you should come by the ARK one Saturday,” Tally says. “We open at nine for adoption.”
“I have to ask Gram,” I say for the hundredth time.
“She’ll say yes,” Tally says. She’s probably right. Gram probably will say yes, but I still have to ask. “I know,” Tally says, spinning to look at me, “bring her with you. Then she’ll be sure to say yes.”
I nod and start the next cupcake.
“Just say yes to Tally,” Blake says. “She won’t stop until you do.”
“Marcus will be there,” she says. “He’s always there on Saturdays.”
If I needed any more convincing, that was it. “Okay,” I say, pretending to be a little annoyed. “Yes.” Dot. Dot. Line. “Tell me again why you think Charity is going to go for it.” Line. Dot. Dot. “She’s not fat,” I say.
“She’s fourteen and she has to walk across a stage in a bathing suit,” Tally says.
“Maybe,” I say. “But why would she trust anything we say? I mean, she hates us.”
“I’m betting that Charlotte’s not going to share the source of her information. She is going to tell Charity that she heard it on the radio and she checked the Web site.”
I nod, agreeing. That much is pretty sure. Charlotte is always following Charity around like a lost puppy. Having the inside scoop on something would make her seem more important in Charity’s eyes.
“The Web site’s pretty lame,” I say. I smile over at Tally.
She shrugs and smiles back. “That’s what you get for seventy-five dollars,” she says.
“You have to admit that the success stories are pretty good, though,” Blake says. He and his brother, some sort of computer genius, put the whole thing together. The money was for buying server space.
“They’re totally over-the-top. Fifteen pounds in two weeks?” I ask.
“It has to be over-the-top,” Tally says. “It has to promise big results. Otherwise she might not go for it.”
“When will we know?” I ask.
“I predict that by Monday there’s going to be a rash of lard purchases at the Shop ’n Save.”
I shake my head and look back down at the cupcake in front of me. Lard. Yuck.
“Tell me the stuff in the can isn’t lard,” I say, thinking of the spoonfuls of goop she’s been eating every day.
“It’s vanilla frosting,” she says. “It’s not as bad as lard, but pretty gross anyway.” I nod. That’s one thing about working at the bakery, you get pretty sick of sweet stuff. I keep piping, trying to stay on track.
“Who gets married at dawn?” Blake asks, tucking more cupcakes into one of the big pink boxes.
“I think it’s romantic,” Tally says.
“Romantic is getting enough sleep.” Blake keeps putting cupcakes into the boxes, avoiding eye contact with Tally.
“Remind me to get you an I HEART SLEEP shirt for Valentine’s Day,” Tally says.
I put the pastry bag down and shake out my hand again. Tally looks over and frowns. “I wish we could help more with that.”
I shrug and smile. They helped with the first coat of frosting, but I have to do the fussy decorating work myself. “I’m going to need more buttercream soon,” I say, twisting the pastry bag a bit to make sure all of the icing is forced toward the tip. Blake and Tally both touch their noses at almost the same time.
Gram comes into the kitchen from the front, wiping her hands on the towel tucked into her apron string. “Why are we touching our noses?” she asks.
“Last one to touch has to make buttercream,” I say.
“Are we out?” Gram asks, pulling the refrigerator door open. She opens a big plastic storage tub and shakes her head. Blake is still standing with his index finger on his nose. Tally sighs. “I’ll make it,” she says. “Just tell me what to do.”
I start rattling off the recipe. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve made about three hundred batches of buttercream since I’ve been here. That’s in addition to the fudge and cream cheese icing, and the mountains of whipped cream I’ve made. I keep decorating, mumbling the pattern under my breath while Tally starts stirring the mixture of egg whites and sugar over the double boiler on the stove.
“I’m going for pizza,” Gram says, pulling her jacket on. “Any requests?” We each throw in some suggestions. Tomatoes and spinach for me. Mushrooms and extra cheese for Blake. Tally wants pineapple. She winks at Blake when she says it, and he smiles. Gram pulls the back door shut behind her and then I hear her Volvo wagon start up.
Tally keeps stirring the mixture on the stove, trying to get the sugar to dissolve completely. “Hey, Rip Van Winkle,” she says. “Can you get some butter out of the fridge for me?”
Blake walks over and rummages in the refrigerator for a few moments. “Where is it?” he asks. Tally sighs and walks over to where he’s standing. She starts pushing things aside.
“It’s in the big brown box on the bottom,” I say. Tally pulls the box out and upends it over the floor. Empty. I hold up the almost empty pastry bag. “This isn’t enough.”
“Call the dairy,” Blake says. We all look at the clock. Seven-thirty. “Probably not.”
Tally walks toward the desk in the back and picks up the phone book. In Manhattan there were four huge volumes of numbers. Here it’s barely the size of a magazine.
“What is she doing?” I ask Blake.
He shrugs. “You’ll learn not to ask,” he says.
She pokes some numbers into the phone and waits. She starts talking. All I hear is mumbling and then a laugh. She turns and looks at me while she talks. “Done and done,” she says, pushing the Off button on the phone. “Someone from the dairy will be here in about ten,” she says. She goes back over to the stove and scrapes the bottom of the bowl again, folding the sticky mixture. “You might want to go and freshen up a bit.”
“Why?” I ask. I look over at Blake, who is shaking his head and making a slicing gesture across his neck.
“Don’t ask,” he says in an exaggerated whisper.
“Trust me,” Tally says. She laughs right after she says it, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But I put down my pastry bag anyway and head for the bathroom.
For me, freshening up consists of washing off the blob of buttercream that somehow made its way onto my cheek and making my ponytail less chaotic. Against Blake’s advice I did ask Tally why I should care about what I look like, but she just shook her head at me and smiled. I feel foolish cleaning up for the dairy delivery. It’s usually either this old guy named Gus, who always always calls me Patti, or this woman who constantly pops her cinnamon gum while I check the order.
“Better?” I ask, walking back out into the kitchen. Blake is standing with Tally at the stove. He has his chin on her shoulder, and she is leaning into him. They spring apart at the sound of my voice. I notice that Blake even blushes on the top of his head. It’s weird sometimes how they are, all teasing and jokey when other people are around, but then so sweet to each other when they think no one can see.
“Let’s see,” Tally says, making a circle with her finger. I spin slowly. She nods and reaches into her pocket. “Here,” she says, tossing me a tin of Altoids.
“Tal, what is going on?” I ask. I hear the sound of a motor in the alley behind the bakery, but it’s not loud enough to be either the dairy truck or Gram’s wagon.
“Hold that thought,” Tally says. I look over at Blake, but he won’t meet my eyes. He just keeps smiling into the bakery box that he’s filling. I hear the back door open and then Tally’s voice saying, “
Come in, come in.” She rounds the corner, followed by someone carrying a huge box of butter. Marcus. “Put it anywhere,” she says, then laughs slightly. Every spare surface is covered with half-filled boxes of cupcakes. Tally clears a small corner of the desk.
“Hi,” Marcus says, smiling at me. He puts the box down. Tally immediately starts ripping into the box and hauling out several pounds of butter.
“Hi.” I’m probably blushing more than Blake did. “Thank you so much,” I say, gesturing toward the box of butter. I notice that Marcus is blushing a little, too. It seems that only Tally is immune to embarrassment. She just hums as she starts pouring the buttercream base into the huge Hobart mixer. I help her put the whisk on.
“What can I do?” Marcus asks.
“Oh, you don’t have to—” I begin.
“Maybe he wants to,” Tally whispers, elbowing me.
“Maybe I want to,” Marcus says, smiling.
“You can help box cupcakes,” I say, pointing to where Blake is trying to put the tops on some of the boxes before sliding them into the refrigerator.
“Yeah. I could use an assistant,” Blake says.
Tally rolls her eyes at him. “Okay, Blake, you’ve been working here for an hour. I’m pretty sure we’ll be starting Marcus off at the same level.”
Marcus washes his hands and pulls an apron off one of the hooks in the back so he is outfitted like the rest of us. “Just tell me what to do,” he says.
I have to study the cupcake in front of me to remind myself where I am in the pattern. Dot, dot, line. Marcus. Line, dot, dot. Like me as much as I like you.
Gram comes in carrying two large pizzas. The smell immediately makes my mouth water.
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