The Cupcake Queen

by Heather Hepler

  “Shaving cream.” That took me a while to clean up. “Maybe they think to get better at it, they have to do it every day.”

  This makes Tally laugh. “They’ll get tired of it eventually. I told you. Just act like you don’t care.”

  I nod and pull out my lunch and click the locker shut. I stopped requesting new lockers when I realized that somehow they were able to find out the combination within a day or so of me switching. Plus they told me in the office they’d run out of empty lockers.

  “Besides,” Tally says, “if you act disinterested, they won’t suspect our evil plans.” She rubs her hands together in an imitation of a movie villain.

  We head to the lunchroom and toward our table. I figure I’ll eat fast and then go see Madame Framboise. At least then if the news is really bad, I can take it on a full stomach. As we walk past where Charity and her friends are sitting, we notice that almost all of them have a cup of sticky-looking white stuff on the table in front of them. I have to hand it to Tally. She nailed it. For over two weeks now they’ve been at it, sucking down cup after cup of lard. Charity is the worst, though. She even got caught sneaking some in science class, earning herself a detention. Just to make sure no one bails on the diet, Tally and I’ve been holding our covert meetings in the bathroom, giving each other our diet reports, telling each other to hang in there. That the bloating is temporary. Charlotte must be living in the restroom, because every time we go in there, she’s holed up in the last stall. An added bonus is that we’ve noticed that there seems to be a weird pimple epidemic among Charity’s gang.

  “I didn’t even think about the zit factor, but I should have seen that one coming,” Tally says. “You can’t eat that much fat without your body starting to do weird things.” Tally and I sit at our table, where Blake is already halfway through his second sandwich. Peanut butter and grape jelly. No lard. He’s completely immersed in some thick paperback with a dragon on the cover. He nods at us when we sit down, then goes right back to reading. I look over to where Marcus is sitting with the rest of the soccer players. He’s laughing at the guy sitting across from him, who has a straw stuck up his nose.

  Tally sees them, too. “Boys are so stupid,” she says. She glances at Blake when she says it, but he doesn’t even look up from his book.

  I stare down at my sandwich. I wish I had the nerve to go over and talk to him, but I don’t. Right now he’s the other Marcus, the school Marcus. He doesn’t even look my way when I throw out my garbage in the can closest to him. I don’t get it. I thought last night would change things.

  Madame Framboise is sitting at her desk when I walk into the room. She’s eating a sandwich and reading a magazine. It’s always so weird when you see teachers doing normal things, like when you run into them at the grocery store. I just don’t want to know that my teacher likes Nutter Butters and Eezy Cheez.

  “Penny,” she says, flipping the magazine closed and putting it facedown on the desk. She dusts off her hands and lifts a file folder from her desk. “I’m glad you stopped by.” Teachers are always saying stuff like that. Like I had a choice. “I know you’ve been really struggling this semester. Before things head south, I think we should consider tutoring.” She flips through the file in front of her, pulls out a sheet, and hands it to me. I scan the names and phone numbers on the list. I recognize a few names—juniors and seniors mostly. She leans forward and taps the first name on the list. “This is who I would recommend. She’s quite fluent, and I think she could really help you grasp the subtleties of the language.” She sits back and looks at me.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I mean, merci.” I slide the list into the front of my notebook. “I really appreciate you suggesting this.”

  The bell signaling the end of lunch rings as I step into the hall. I do think tutoring is a good idea. I’m just not so sure about Madame’s choice of tutors. Even if she is fluent in French, I don’t think Charity would be a good match for me.

  Tired of being passive, I decide to walk up to Jupiter. Of course, I need a reason to go, so I enlisted Gram’s help. First I borrowed a book from the library with photographs of all the planets.

  “I can’t believe they decided Pluto wasn’t a planet after all,” Gram says. She’s been mixing icing colors for me for half an hour. There are a lot of different colors in our solar system. “So one day Pluto’s up there, floating around, minding his own business, and he gets the call that he’s been demoted.”

  I laugh at the image of Pluto with a phone to his ear, looking shocked. “I’d be mad,” I say.

  “That kind of news should be delivered in person,” she says, adding a few more drops of food coloring to the royal blue she’s been making. “Speaking of phone calls . . .”

  “Were we?” I ask. Gram isn’t the best at being subtle when she has something on her mind.

  “Have you spoken to your father recently?” she asks.

  That makes me stop smiling. “We’ve been e-mailing.”

  “That’s not the same as talking,” she says. “And I can’t say you’ve been communicating much with your mother, either.”

  I have to force myself not to shake my head at her. I don’t know which is worse, hearing what they have to tell me, or not hearing what they should be telling me.

  When I don’t say anything, Gram continues to push it. “You can’t avoid them forever, you know.” She walks around the table and rubs my back. “I know I sound like a nosy old lady, but I’m just worried about you. If you continue to keep it all bottled up, you might explode someday.”

  I can feel tears coming on, so I take a deep breath before saying, “Could I finish decorating these cupcakes before we talk? This one’s kind of tricky. . . .”

  It looks like Gram isn’t going to let me off the hook that easily, but just then the bells on the front door jingle. She goes to wait on the customer, leaving me to navigate the solar system alone.

  There are ten cupcakes in all. One sun, eight planets, and Pluto. I thought about making a couple of the moons to round out the dozen, but I ran out of time. Besides, I kind of like that I am the first person to take a box of just ten cupcakes and not some fraction or combination of a dozen. The walk up to Jupiter isn’t bad. It only takes me a little over half an hour from the bakery. I hear the crackle of the blowtorch even before I can see the top of the dome.

  Mr. Fish is perched on the top of the metal scaffolding. He looks down at me and raises a gloved hand. I smile, not wanting to try to balance the box of cupcakes in one hand.

  Marcus waves to me when he spots me at the edge of the clearing. “Hey, what are you doing here?” he asks when I walk up.

  “I was just in the neighborhood,” I say.

  “Uh-huh,” he says. He smiles at me, and I exhale a little. I was nervous during the whole walk from the bakery. I can’t seem to predict which Marcus is going to show up. The friendly flirty one who smiles a lot, or the distant one, who will barely meet my eyes. “Can you help me for a minute?” he asks. He drags a heavy piece of pipe across to where his father is working.

  “Just tell me what to do,” I say, smiling as I remember Marcus saying the same thing to me at the bakery. I put the cupcakes down on a cooler. I want to give them to him when he’s not so busy.

  Marcus hands me a pair of gloves. He lifts a huge, square piece of copper out of a pile and hands it to me. “Careful. The edges are sharp. Just take that over to my dad.” I start to walk over to where Mr. Fish is working. “Oh, and don’t look directly at the blowtorch. It’ll hurt your eyes.”

  I wait at the base of the scaffolding, feeling the heat from the sparks even though they’re falling several feet away from me. Mr. Fish douses the flame and lifts his visor.

  “Hey there, ghost girl,” he says. He climbs down a level, and I hand up the piece of copper. “Thanks,” he says, taking it from me. “Tell Marcus this is it for tonight.” He flips his visor down and relights his torch. I watch for a moment as he carefully connects the piece of copper to the
one below it, sealing the edges together until it almost looks like it grew that way. Now, like the pine trees and aspen all around us, Jupiter just belongs here.

  I walk back over to Marcus, who is peeking into the box. He looks up at me sheepishly. “Sorry,” he says. “I do the same thing at Christmas. It used to drive my mom nuts.” He smiles a little as he says it, but it’s the sad one that doesn’t quite make it up to his eyes. He sits on a log, still holding the box of cupcakes. “Can I have one?” he asks.

  “Have ’em all,” I say. “I made them specifically for you.”

  “Really?” he says, with little-boy happiness, as if it is Christmas.

  I sit down on the other end of the log. “Your dad says he’s almost done.”

  Marcus nods and looks up to where his dad is climbing down the ladder. Then he pulls at the tape on the box, opening it up all the way. “Wow,” he says. “These are amazing.”

  “They aren’t to scale,” I say. “One astronomical unit does not equal one sprinkle.”

  Marcus laughs. I like his laugh, and the way his eyes crinkle when he does. I make a note to try and make him laugh more often.

  “How did you make the rings?” he asks, lifting Saturn out of the box.

  “Pulled sugar,” I say. What I don’t tell him is that the rings took nearly as long to make as all the other cupcakes put together.

  “You must have spent hours on these,” Marcus says.

  I say softly, “It was worth it.” Just to see that crinkle again, I think.

  Mr. Fish walks over to where we are sitting. Marcus shows him the cupcakes. “Wow,” Mr. Fish says. “You’re a real artist, Penny.” He takes Jupiter out of the box, holds it up toward the big Jupiter above us, and smiles. I shrug. “No, really,” he says. “I’m beginning to think there’s something in the water around here. Seems like everyone’s an artist.”

  I’m not sure what to say. I’ve never thought of myself that way. I just like to make things that make people happy. I’ve never thought of it as art before.

  “They’re too pretty to eat,” he says.

  I hear a crunch beside me and look over to see Marcus with half of Saturn’s rings hanging from his mouth. He looks a little sheepish again, but I notice it doesn’t stop him from taking a bite out of the planet itself.

  Mr. Fish returns Jupiter to the box. “I think I’ll save mine until after dinner.” He raises an eyebrow at Marcus, who just smiles with sprinkles in his teeth. Mr. Fish smiles back, shaking his head. “I’m going to load up,” he says. He picks up the cooler and his visor and walks down the trail to where the truck is parked.

  Alone with Marcus, I suddenly feel nervous again. I want to ask him what’s going on, why he seems to be two people, but suddenly Blake’s voice is in my head: When I hang out with guys, I just chill. I try to just chill, but I’m not very good at it. Finally, I just ask him about soccer. I listen, nodding the whole time, still trying to figure out how to ask what I really want to know about—Charity.

  “Will you look at that,” Mr. Fish says, walking back up the hill. I look toward where he is pointing, out past the hills, in time to see the sun just dipping into the water. We all watch as the huge red ball slowly sinks into the ocean.

  “Now that’s what I’d call art,” I say.

  “I’ll eat to that,” Marcus says, and reaches in for his second cupcake. I watch as he does his own bit to extinguish the sun.

  chapter twenty-one

  The bakery is quiet because of the rain. It keeps seeping under the front door. Every ten minutes or so I have to use towels to try to sop up the water. Normally the awning might keep the rain from even hitting the sidewalk out front, but the wind is blowing so hard, the water is coming at us almost sideways.

  “First big storm of the year,” Gram says, coming out of the back to stock the display case with more fall-themed cupcakes. I made the expected: jack-o’-lanterns, colored leaves, scarecrows (stuffed with toasted coconut instead of straw). My favorites are the ones with a horn of plenty on top. They are fussy, with all of the tiny fruit coming out of the chocolate horns, but they are the best sellers. Someone from the City called and ordered three dozen for a party they’re having in a couple of weeks, so in between trying to stop the flood coming under the door, I’m rolling tiny squashes and apples and even tinier grapes out of colored marzipan.

  “Penny,” my mom calls from the back. I wipe the powdered sugar from my hands on the towel tucked into my apron. I take a deep breath and push through the door to the kitchen. Here we go. I’ve been working up the courage to talk to her all morning. I know what Gram said yesterday was right. We can’t avoid each other forever, especially after Dad’s latest e-mail. But each time I get up my nerve, the phone rings, or the puddle gets big again, or . . .

  My mother is bent over her calendar, which is laid out across the big worktable in the kitchen. She looks up when I come in.

  “Mom,” I say, “I think we need to talk.” I take a breath, then another. I’m not sure how to begin. Do I ask about the meetings in the City she keeps going to? She looks at me, waiting. “I’m just not sure about the Thanksgiving orders,” I say, wimping out.

  She nods slowly. I think she knows that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. She pauses for a moment before looking back down at the calendar. “I’m thinking we need to cut things off. It’s really starting to fill up. With all the traffic going past the shop because of the festival, this might be all I can handle. As it is, I know I’m really imposing on you.”

  I walk around and look at the two weeks going into Thanksgiving. “It is a lot,” I say.

  “Penny,” she says, “I want you to know that I really appreciate all of your help.” She looks up at me, and I take a deep breath, but as if on cue, the phone does ring. My mom picks it up and turns away from me to talk. I try giving myself a little pep talk. I can do this. It’s my own mother. What’s the big deal? “Of course. I’ll be here all afternoon. See you then.” My mom puts the phone down. “That was Tally. She’s stopping by.”

  “Didn’t she want to talk to me?” I ask.

  My mom’s cheeks go pink. “Actually, she wanted to talk to me.” I raise my eyebrows. “About the pageant.” Great. Tally can talk to my mom no problem. Me? I’m a mess. “She wanted to know if I could give her some advice.” Mom leans against the counter. “I don’t think I ever told you.” She shifts slightly and won’t meet my eyes. “I was Hog Queen.”

  “Really,” I say, a little frustrated. This isn’t the talk we are supposed to be having.

  She nods and looks up at me. These days, instead of just being distant, she seems sort of fragile. It’s weird seeing her like this. She’s no longer the unshakable Mom. The one who can juggle her own business and still make time for weekend picnics and staying up all night with me to make a volcano out of plaster and paint. But she’s not a totally broken one either. She’s both.

  “Tell me about it,” I say.

  She smiles. The first real smile I’ve seen in forever. “There was this one time I almost set my hair on fire, thinking I could twirl a flaming baton.” She sees the look on my face and laughs. “It was pretty exciting. They had to douse me with the fire extinguisher.”

  “But you still won,” I say.

  She nods and shrugs. “It did leave an impression on the judges.”

  She keeps talking. Gram walks back into the kitchen when she hears us laughing and starts adding her own memories. The talent stuff is the best. Trained pigs, and hula hoops, and even burping. Gram and Mom can barely stop laughing when they tell me that one.

  “She made it all the way to Q,” Gram says, wiping her eyes with the edge of her apron. I try to imagine a girl in a fancy dress belching the alphabet.

  Tally arrives with her arms full of dresses she picked up at the secondhand store in Lancaster. We all take turns going out front to mop up the water still coming in under the door while Tally starts her own mini fashion show, donning dress after dress to show my mothe
r. We keep the ovens going, baking cupcakes as we talk. The phone keeps ringing so much that finally my mom just lets it go to voice mail. The smells of pumpkin and chocolate waft from the ovens.

  “This is the best day,” Mom says, putting her arm around me. I lean into her and watch as Gram zips Tally into a long blue dress. The kitchen is so warm and bright that we barely notice the rain still pounding on the roof.

  Gram drops us off at Tally’s house on her way home. “Your mom is the coolest,” Tally says, twirling in her dress in front of the long mirror on the back of her bedroom door. She and my mother agreed upon a dark green velvet one with a long skirt.

  I shrug and pull open her closet door to hang up the other dresses. I stop, not sure what to do. The inside of her closet is worse than I had imagined. I look back at Tally, who has stopped twirling. It suddenly feels too close, too quiet. Then Tally comes and takes the dresses from me. She hangs them up on the empty rod and firmly pushes the door closed. “Anyway,” Tally says, but then she doesn’t say anything else. She just stares at her toenails, which she’s painted a bright shade of acid green—one last sign of the old Tally. “I guess I’d better change out of this.” She goes into the bathroom and shuts the door, leaving me still standing in the middle of her nearly empty room.

  Inside the closet were three suitcases, lying open and perfectly packed. Full of all the stuff that’s not in her room. For all of her talk about enjoying her time here and making the best of it, she’s still waiting, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

  I raise my hand to knock on the bathroom door, but I can hear Tally sniffling. To give myself—and Tally—a little time to think about what to say, I go to the kitchen and get something to drink. Poppy is sitting at the kitchen table, wrapping one of her witch balls in bubble wrap. She looks up and smiles when I walk in. I sit in one of the other chairs and watch her work.

  “That one came out really nice,” I say as she picks up one swirled in oranges and reds. She holds it up to the light. “It’s a tree,” I say, seeing the brown glass threaded from the bottom and opening up into a series of glass branches at the top.