Love À La Mode

by Stephanie Kate Strohm

  By the time Rosie made it down to the cafeteria, Bodie was already sitting at his usual table, next to Clara and across from Elodie. Maybe he had just meant get dinner like walk-to-the-cafeteria-since-we’re-both-going-to-the-same-place. Rosie had had a completely bizarre reaction to a totally innocuous phrase. But as she went through the line and grabbed a pan bagnat—basically a fancy French tuna fish sandwich—her neck still felt clammy.

  Rosie slid into her chair—the open chair next to Henry—and tried to avoid making eye contact with Priya. But Rosie could practically feel the weight of Priya staring at her from across the table.

  “Bodie. Tal,” Priya hissed, barely audible, as Yumi and Marquis had a very loud conversation about the relative merits of Sriracha. Rosie shook her head. “Rosie,” Priya hissed again. Rosie looked up, trying to give Priya a stern look. Priya didn’t look particularly cowed by it.

  “Hey.” Henry’s voice was full of excitement. Rosie turned to look at him and saw something shining in his eyes. Her heart lifted. Finally, he looked like Henry again. “Here.”

  He pushed a folded-up white linen napkin toward her, with something hidden inside. Curious, she lifted up the edge of the napkin.

  Inside, there were three carrot roses, and they were impeccable. Each petal was perfect, becoming smaller and smaller as they neared the heart of the rose. They looked too good to have been made by hand. Picking one up, turning it over in her palm, she couldn’t find a single flaw. Rosie remembered the story of Thumbelina, so small she lived in a flower. This was a flower fit for a fairy princess. How could this have come from a carrot?! She half expected the petals to be soft, like a real rose.

  Rosie couldn’t even cut a carrot into a stick, and Henry could do this. She felt unexpected tears pricking at her eyes. What was she even doing here? She was so far behind—maybe her admission had been a mistake. Maybe there was some other Rosie Radeke out there in the world who was great at knife cuts and couldn’t fathom how her application had been turned down. Right now, all Rosie wanted to do was go home—back to where she belonged. She couldn’t do that. But what she could do was get out of there before everyone saw her cry.

  She knew Henry hadn’t meant to upset her. And looking at his stricken face as she left the table, she wanted to tell him that. But Rosie didn’t trust herself to speak.

  So she left without saying anything.

  From the outside, Henry was pretty sure that it looked like he had everything under control. And he did have everything under control—mostly. He’d been in Ms. Whitman’s room Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, packet complete. In fact, he’d done his homework for all of his classes far more thoroughly than he’d ever done his homework back home. Henry was raising his hand in science, volunteering to read in English, speaking in French, and making timelines in history. He was, in short, busting his ass to make sure that Mom had absolutely nothing to complain about. No way was Ms. Whitman the only teacher she’d e-mailed. They were probably all reporting back to her. And he was going to give them only good stuff to report on.

  There was, however, one small problem: Henry was exhausted. And it wasn’t just his academic classes he was struggling to stay awake in. Even now, standing in the kitchen in front of Chef Martinet, Henry couldn’t stop yawning.

  And, of course, there was one big problem: Rosie. He knew he’d been kind of a grumpy jerk—thanks, Mom—and then when he’d tried to apologize with the carrot roses, that had failed spectacularly. He couldn’t believe he’d made her cry. Although what had he been thinking, showing off his fancy, useless knife cuts when he knew Rosie was struggling in class? Oh, that’s right—he hadn’t been thinking.

  “Happy Friday,” Chef Martinet said, pulling Henry out of his carrot-roses funk. The words sounded so incongruous coming out of her pinched lips that Henry wondered if maybe she’d translated some other phrase into English incorrectly. “Now that we have set up a solid foundation for cooking, we will begin to flex our creative muscles.” Wait, what was going on? Henry tried to wake himself up a little more. “Today, we will begin our Dish of the Day. Every Friday you will have a chance to create your own dish—anything you like—using the ingredients we have focused on that week. This is your chance to impress me. Every week, there will be one winning Dish of the Day.”

  All around Henry, his classmates buzzed excitedly. Hampus thumped him on the back, but even that wasn’t enough to clear the fuzz out of his brain.

  “What do we get if we win?” Yumi asked, her hand up in the air.

  “What do you get?” Chef Martinet repeated icily. “You get the satisfaction of a dish well done, Osaki-Weissman.” Even the normally indomitable Yumi looked chastened by Chef Martinet. “It is worth mentioning, perhaps, that no student who has won Dish of the Day has ever been asked to leave the École. Madame Besson, if you would.”

  As Madame Besson rolled the whiteboard to the front of the room, everyone was talking. She flipped it over to reveal DISH OF THE DAY written on the top of the whiteboard, with a numbered list of slots for, Henry assumed, the top Dishes of the Day for the rest of the semester. Adrenaline should have been kicking in right about now. Why wasn’t it kicking in?! Henry wanted, badly, to see his name in that number one slot—wanted to guarantee his spot in the spring semester—but right now, all he could think about was how good it would feel to lie down.

  “All week long,” Chef Martinet continued, “you have been practicing your knife cuts on vegetables. Today, please create a vegetarian entrée that showcases a vegetable of your choice. You have the rest of class to create your dish.”

  Everyone started moving around him, running here and there across the kitchen, grabbing things, loading up with produce. But Henry couldn’t move. Couldn’t even think. What did he want to make? Vegetables? His mind was totally blank.

  Well, he could start by dicing vegetables. That was a pretty safe foundation. Henry grabbed onions and carrots and celery and started chopping, hoping that something would come to him as he worked. And then the knife slipped.

  “Crap,” Henry muttered as bright red blood squirted out of his thumb. Quickly, he lifted up his hand, trying not to get blood anywhere near the cutting board.

  “Here.” Rosie was next to him, juggling canisters of what looked like different kinds of flours. She set them down on his station and started pulling him over to the sink. “Wash it first.”

  As Henry washed his hand with soap and water, she pulled a Band-Aid and a plastic glove out of the pockets of her apron.

  “I’ve got Neosporin, too, but you shouldn’t put that on until after you’re done cooking,” she said. “Just the Band-Aid and the glove for now.”

  “Why do you have all this stuff ?”

  “Habit. I come from a very accident-prone family,” she said wryly as she dried his thumb with a paper towel. “Did you know it was possible to slice your face open on a zipper?”

  “I did not.”

  “That’s why you don’t wrestle someone who’s wearing a partially-zipped-up hoodie.” Carefully, she wrapped the Band-Aid around his thumb. “Also, one time Ricky ate a whole bunch of quarters because Cole dared him to, but Band-Aids didn’t help that.”

  They laughed, and for a moment, Henry felt like things were finally back to normal. Rosie’s hands stayed wrapped around his, the slight pressure of her fingers on his thumb finally waking him up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said suddenly. “The other day—when I cried—it wasn’t—”

  “I’m sorry.” Henry was so eager to apologize, he interrupted her. “I don’t know what I was thinking—”

  “You were thinking it was nice. And it was.” She squeezed his hand. She still hadn’t let go. “I didn’t get upset because of the carrots, or because of you. I promise. It was a bad day, and I was homesick, I guess, and thinking about other stuff . . .”

  “What other stuff ?” Henry asked. “Do you want to—”

  “Radeke and Yi!” Chef Martinet trumpeted from the front of the ro
om. “The kitchen is a place for working. It is not a place for holding hands.”

  Almost instantly, Rosie turned the color of an overripe tomato. Henry found himself clearing his throat excessively as Rosie dropped his hand, gathered up her stuff, and raced back to her station like she was trying to set a new land-speed record. Henry picked up a carrot and tried to pretend he was busy working.

  Was Rosie embarrassed to be seen holding his hand? It certainly seemed like it, from the way she’d turned bright red and sprinted away from him. And what had Rosie been about to say? Stupid Chef Martinet. Why did she have to pick that exact moment to notice them?

  “Henry,” Hampus said gently. “You are okay?”

  Henry realized he was standing in front of his station, holding a carrot in a death grip, and doing absolutely nothing.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just . . . making . . . this . . . carrot.”

  And that’s what he’d do. Carrots. Something spectacular with carrots. Screw his bleeding thumb and Chef Martinet and all of it. Carrots three ways, he thought as he started peeling them. Roasted carrots on a bed of smoked carrot puree, with pickled carrot greens as a garnish. Three ways would be impressive, right?

  As Henry roasted and smoked and pickled, he was more awake than he’d been all day. He wished his mom could see him here—maybe she’d finally recognize how much better he was at cooking than pretending he cared about how many times the French had attempted revolutions.

  “Time is up!” Chef Martinet announced.

  After a quick check to make sure all the carrots were in place, Henry wiped his hands on his apron and looked around the room, his eyes wandering, as they always did, to Rosie. She was bright red and sweaty, her hair matted against her face, strands escaping from her braid every which way. It looked like she’d run a marathon instead of created a vegetarian dish. But she was smiling. This was it. Henry could feel it. After a week of Chef Martinet telling Rosie everything she did was wrong, it looked like Rosie had finally gotten it right. And Henry couldn’t wait for her to finally have that moment of validation from Chef Martinet. And maybe later tonight they could really talk—with no interruptions.

  “This dish is very safe, no?”

  Henry’s attention snapped back to his own plate. He stared at Chef Martinet in disbelief. Safe?! Seriously? There was nothing safe about attempting three different preparations.

  “Every element is technically perfect, but it is not . . . exciting.” Not exciting?! Henry struggled to keep his emotions from playing across his face. “These carrots could have been made by any competent chef. I have learned nothing about you from this dish, Yi.”

  Henry felt like Chef Martinet had just dumped a bucket of cold water over his head. What did she even mean?! How was a dish supposed to be more him?! What was he supposed to do, carve his initials into the carrots?

  “The nest is made of butter-poached foraged mushrooms,” Hampus was saying. Henry had been so busy fuming he’d missed Chef Martinet’s first bite of Hampus’s dish: creamy scrambled eggs spilling out of eggshells inside a nest that was, apparently, made of butter-poached foraged mushrooms. It looked so much like a real bird’s nest Henry could hardly believe it was mushrooms. “In Sweden, we like our scrambled eggs very, very creamy,” Hampus continued. “I have added a simple salad of foraged dandelion greens to offset the richness of the dish.”

  “This is inspired,” Chef Martinet said. “You have made the mushroom the star.”

  Hampus was beaming so brightly they probably could have turned off all the lights in the kitchen. Henry held out his knuckles for a discreet fist bump under the table as soon as Chef Martinet left. Now, if only things could go this well for Rosie.

  He had never seen someone look so hopeful before. Rosie’s face made him remember how it felt to be a little kid playing that claw game at the arcade, trying desperately to grab a stuffed animal, sure that this would be the time he’d win. Finally, Chef Martinet made her way to Rosie’s station, dipped her spoon into Rosie’s dish, and took a bite.

  “The vegetables are cooked unevenly because they were prepared unevenly. Again.” As Chef Martinet put her spoon down, Rosie’s face fell, and Henry’s stomach plummeted. “This dish seems very . . . simple.”

  “It’s a play on chicken-and-biscuits,” Rosie said in a small voice that barely even sounded like her. “Except it’s a vegetarian stew topped with herbed biscuits.”

  Chef Martinet didn’t even respond, just swept off to the next station. And she tasted her way around the room until she announced that Hampus had won Dish of the Day. And of course that was totally deserved and Henry was glad Hampus had earned a spot in the spring semester, but as Henry looked at Rosie’s disappointed face, he couldn’t feel happy about anything.

  Hours later, after dinner, Henry was still bummed about his dish not being him enough, whatever that meant. Rosie didn’t look any happier, either. She sat across from him in a big, overstuffed chair in the common room. Frowning, she scribbled on a worksheet propped up on her notebook. It was Friday night, and Henry was pretty sure he and Rosie were the only people doing their homework on the weekend. But if Henry didn’t get a head start on all of his work today, he’d be swamped. Better to suffer now and get through it.

  The numbers in front of Henry went fuzzy. He blinked, trying to clear his head, and looked around the common room. There were a couple people on their laptops, and Cecilia and Anna, from his pre-calc class, were sitting with Seydou and playing some kind of card game. Everyone else was probably out doing something awesome. Hampus had gone foraging, and Priya and Yumi and Marquis had been talking at dinner about trying to find a movie theater playing something in English. Either of those things were infinitely preferable to homework. But Rosie had chosen to stay behind with him, and spending Friday night with her was better than foraging. Even if it involved math.

  “You know what bothers me the most?” Rosie said suddenly. “She didn’t even taste the biscuits. She pushed them aside to get to the vegetables.”

  “That’s messed up,” Henry agreed.

  “I know! They were a huge component of the dish. And they were good—I tasted them after she left. Priya did, too.”

  “I’m sure they were awesome.”

  “She’s gonna send me home, Henry.” Fear. Henry could see it in her eyes. Raw, animal fear, like he saw in the eyes of the rabbits that hopped around Wicker Park if he got too close to them. “This time, I thought, I really thought that I’d done an even dice. But apparently not. I don’t even know enough to know when I’ve messed up! She’s kicking me out. For sure.”

  “She’s not gonna kick you out,” Henry argued. “She’s not gonna kick anyone out. She hasn’t kicked anyone out yet, right?”

  “That’s because she’s biding her time.” Rosie pushed her notebook aside, dropping it on the floor. “Doesn’t make sense to kick us out now. She’ll wait until we already have our plane tickets home for the holidays, right? Chef Martinet is waiting to trim the fat at the end of the semester when it makes more logistical sense.”

  “You are not ‘the fat.’” Henry air-quoted. “And anyway, fat is delicious.”

  Rosie wrinkled her nose at him.

  “Come on! Think about it . . . a perfectly seared piece of pork belly? That dripping, golden, buttery, crispy, melty fat?” Henry’s mouth was practically watering. “Mmm. Who wouldn’t want to be the fat?”

  “You’re a Nutter Butter,” she said, but the fear was gone from her eyes when she rolled them at him. “We’re breaking down a chicken next week, you know.”

  “Now there’s some good fat. Render it down. Cook some potatoes up in that fat. Get ’em all golden and crispy.”

  “Stop, Henry, you’re making me hungry!” Rosie laughed. “Now let me guess—you can break down a chicken in twelve seconds flat.” She pointed a pair of finger guns at him, like he was the fastest butcher in the west.

  “I’m not that fast.”

  “But you have broken
down a chicken before.”

  “Yeah.” Henry stopped himself, just in time, from adding, “of course.”

  “I’m in so much trouble.” She dropped her head into her hands, hiding her face.

  “It’s really not that bad.” Henry swung his legs around and moved down to the end of the couch, closer to her. “It’s easier than it looks.”

  “Henry, I can’t even cut a carrot. What am I going to do with a chicken? Every time I’ve cooked with chicken before, I just bought it in the shape it needed to be. Breast? Buy the breast. Thigh? Buy the thigh. Whole roast chicken? Buy a whole chicken. Done.”

  “Maybe you just have a mental block about vegetables. Like an anti-vegetarian. Maybe poultry is your thing.”

  “Poultry is not my thing,” Rosie said decisively. “Well, butchering it is not my thing. Eating it? Especially when it’s fried and served with mashed potatoes? Then it is very much my thing.”

  “Ooo, yeah, mashed potatoes. Now that’s a great potato. Perfectly smooth, whipped to perfection, a big pat of melting butter on top—”

  “No more potatoes!” Rosie picked up the small throw pillow on the chair behind her and hit him with it. “I’m serious! Now I’m starving!”

  She hit him again, and this time, Henry caught the pillow, and they both tugged at it, the pillow suspended between them. Something else was suspended between them, too, a moment when their shared laughter changed to something else. And then Rosie dropped the pillow and it hung limply in his hands. But whatever had just happened, Henry wanted to keep it going.