Truth Game

by Anna Staniszewski

  “Cool,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. Then she blinks, as if realizing what I said. “Wait, what? Sorry! I’m trying to find Ms. Emerald.”

  “Er, is that a fortune-telling cat or something?” I ask.

  Marisol laughs. “No, it’s a person. She’s the teacher you go to if you want to start a new club. I’ve heard that if you can get in good with her, she’ll agree to be the adviser for just about anything.”

  “Is that why you’re so decked out?” I ask, scanning Marisol’s outfit. She’s practically blinding in her bright-yellow skirt, shimmery red shirt, and blue cowboy boots. On anyone else, the outfit would look ridiculous, but Marisol manages to pull it off. It probably helps that she’s one of the most confident people I know.

  “I have to make a good impression,” she says. “If I’m going to start a fashion club, I have to look like I know what I’m talking about. Are you going to the Cooking Club meeting tomorrow?”

  “Any chance I could convince you to come with me?”

  Marisol lets out a honking laugh. “Only if you want me to accidentally burn the entire school down. How about you stick to baking and I’ll stick to sewing, okay? The world will be a much safer place that way.”

  I guess I’ll have to brave the Cooking Club meeting on my own. But hey, if I’m really trying to get on TV, then I guess I better get used to meeting tons of strangers. Besides, the Cooking Club will be a great chance for me to push myself to try new recipes. Between that and my job at the bakery, I’ll be a pro in no time.

  Andrew Ivanoff shuffles over to our table and plops down next to Marisol, giving me an awkward wave hello. Considering that Andrew’s the shyest guy I know, it’s kind of a miracle that he and Marisol managed to find each other. In a weird way, I actually helped them since the complete mess I made at the end of eighth grade brought them together.

  Andrew looks down at his lunch tray and frowns, poking at what could be a brick of Play-Doh with his fork.

  “Doesn’t look too appetizing, does it?” I ask, suddenly glad my dad brought me lunch this morning. Since I didn’t know what was socially acceptable in high school, I figured buying lunch was the safer bet. But it looks like most kids bring theirs anyway, even though they put them in bags and not dorky lunch boxes.

  “Actually,” Andrew says, “I was wondering if it would be interesting to do a documentary on cafeteria food.”

  Marisol and I exchange a look. Ever since Andrew went to film camp over the summer, he’s started taking the whole filmmaking thing a lot more seriously. Instead of making hilarious zombie flicks using decapitated Barbies, now he keeps looking for “real life” things to film. So far he’s considered doing documentaries on life in the suburbs, an in-depth look at lawn care, and an exposé on dental floss. Marisol and I have managed to gently steer him away from all of those snooze-worthy topics, but I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to keep it up.

  “You’ll never guess who I saw this morning,” I say, trying to change the topic. Then I tell them about my dad surprising me on the school steps.

  “You mean he’s back for good this time?” Marisol says. “That’s great! But it must be kind of weird too, right?”

  “Kind of,” I admit. Of course I’m glad Dad is back. It’s what I’ve been dreaming of for months. But seeing him at school this morning, so totally out of context, made me realize how much has changed since he left. In a way, it feels like we’re starting all over. My first instinct is to freak out about how different things are going to be, but I remind myself that I’m not the same Rachel who went a little crazy last spring and stole money from my college fund to try to go down to Florida and talk Dad into coming home. I’m new and improved Rachel now, and that means I can handle anything.

  • • •

  I never thought I’d look forward to gym class, but it means I’ll finally have a chance to see Evan. Since it’s the first day, the teacher makes us watch an ancient safety video starring an old guy who looks like a horse. Evan manages to sit next to me on the bleachers as we get ready to watch, and when he puts his hand by his side, I realize it’s only an inch away from mine.

  I glance around, sure everyone is staring at us. I mean, look at us. We’re almost holding hands! In gym class! But the other kids are all busy snickering as Horse Guy starts talking about “avoiding charley horses” and “the dangers of horseplay.” Do the gym teachers actually expect us to take this video seriously?

  When class is over, Evan turns to me with a bright smile. “How’s your day going so far, Booger Crap?”

  I should be mortified that he’d call me that goofy nickname in public, especially since it’s based on one of my dad’s silly fake swears, but I can’t help feeling giddy that my boyfriend—my boyfriend!—is sitting right next to me in school. I wish Briana and Caitlin and all the other kids who made my life miserable last year were here to see this, so I could prove to them once and for all that I am not a loser.

  “Good,” I say. “Good. Are you good? Because I’m good.” Okay. Maybe I’m still a tiny bit of a loser.

  Luckily, Evan seems to find my total awkwardness endearing. “Good,” he says with his trademark crooked grin. “Where’s your next class?”

  After comparing schedules, we realize that our next classes are on opposite sides of the school. We might as well be freshmen on totally different continents. So much for walking each other to class.

  “Well,” Evan says as we lurk outside the gym, “I guess I’ll see you later.”

  “Um, yeah. I’m working at the bakery after school, but I’ll call you when I get home?”

  “Sounds good.”

  We stand for a long, awkward moment, and I wonder if he’s going to kiss me right here in front of the gym. So far our relationship has been mostly hand-holding and a few sweet pecks on the cheek, but I know the First Real Kiss is coming soon. I totally messed it up when Evan saw me off at the airport a few weeks ago, and we haven’t had a chance to recreate the perfect moment since I’ve been back. Maybe I need to signal to Evan that I’m ready to try the kiss again.

  So even though we’re surrounded by the smell of floor wax and smelly sneakers, I flash him an encouraging smile. Then, just in case, I gaze deeply into his eyes and try to give him an “I’m ready to kiss you” look.

  “Are you okay?” Evan asks after a second. “Your eye is twitching.”

  “What? Oh, I’m fine.” So much for that idea.

  The warning bell rings, and Evan flashes me another crooked grin. “Well, see ya,” he says. Then he hurries off to catch up with a couple of guy friends, and I turn to walk the confusing hallways by myself.

  Chapter 3

  After school, I show up at Ryan’s Bakery exactly on time. When I took a pastry class here over the summer, Chef Ryan pretty much hated my guts. It took me weeks to prove myself to him, and I’m determined to stay on his good side. I take a deep breath and paste a smile on my face, one that I hope screams, “Look at me! I’m the perfect employee!”

  But when I go into the bakery, my smile fades as I spot the embodiment of pure evil, Briana Riley—Evan’s twin sister—lurking by the counter. Except she’s not by the counter, she’s behind it, and she’s wearing an apron with a Ryan’s Bakery logo on it. As if she works here. What the Shrek? That’s impossible. Briana Riley would never stoop so low.

  The minute she spots me, her cheeks turn pink. Clearly, she’s mortified that I’ve seen her.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “None of your business,” she spits out. “Are you going to buy something, or what?”

  “No. I mean, no. I mean, I work here now. Too. Like you do.” Yeah, I’ve never been at my most articulate around Briana. She has the power to bring me to tears with one of her snide remarks. But I know she’s not nearly as strong as she pretends to be. I saw the cracks in her armor last year when her best frie
nd, Caitlin Schubert, and her boyfriend, Steve Mueller, both dumped her (even though the three of them have patched things up since then). Briana doesn’t scare me anymore, I remind myself.

  “You’re the other cashier?” she says in disbelief. “Chef Ryan said it was someone who knew what they were doing.”

  “I do know what I’m doing. I worked at a café over the summer.” I don’t mention that it was only for a week and that I practically got fired from the job because I was falsely accused of swiping cash from the register. “How come Evan didn’t tell me you were working here?”

  She rolls her eyes. “As if I tell my brother anything. Besides, it’s not a big deal. Once my dad finds a new job, I’m totally going to quit.”

  But I can tell it is a big deal, at least to her. She’s always been a spoiled princess. Last time I checked, princesses didn’t work, and they definitely didn’t wear aprons.

  “Why are you here?” she adds. “I thought you were doing that whole cleaning lady thing.”

  “I am but only on Saturdays.” Now that Mom has merged her cleaning business with the more established Ladybug Cleaners, she doesn’t need me to help out as much, and she even encouraged me to take this bakery job. But maybe this was a huge mistake. How am I supposed to work side by side with Briana Riley?

  Briana takes out her phone and slumps against the counter. A second later she gasps. “No way!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just found out I got a super-high score on yesterday’s Truth Game questions. Like my highest yet,” she says.

  “What’s the Truth Game?” I’m surprised the word “truth” is even in Briana’s vocabulary. She’s willing to say pretty much anything to make people feel like pond scum. She’s certainly done it to me.

  “You’ve seriously never heard of it?” she asks. “Everyone’s playing it. It’s like Truth or Dare meets Have You Ever. You own up to stuff you’ve done and see how your answers compare to other people’s. Plus, you get bonus points for doing dares.”

  “Wow,” I say. That sounds terrible. As if I don’t already feel like people are judging me all the time.

  “I got a bunch of points because I admitted that I cheated on a final exam,” Briana says proudly.

  “Why would you post that on the Internet? What if a teacher sees it and you get in trouble?”

  “Duh,” she says. “It’s anonymous. No one would admit to anything if everyone knew who you were.”

  At that moment Chef Ryan storms in, looking annoyed as usual. “Cherie will be here in a minute to train you two. You”—he points to Briana—“package up the day-old cookies while you’re waiting. Rachel, show her what to do and then come with me. I have a cake for you to work on.” Then he disappears in the back again.

  My heart leaps. Chef Ryan is trusting me with a cake already!

  “Who’s Cherie?” Briana says.

  “Chef Ryan’s wife. She runs the catering part of the bakery.” Cherie isn’t as skilled in the kitchen as her husband, but she more than makes up for it with her people skills. “The day-old cookies are over here,” I say, pointing. “The bakery puts them into bags and sells them at a discount.” It’s a good thing I’ve been here a bunch of times or I’d have no idea what Chef Ryan wanted us to do.

  “Wait,” Briana says as I head toward the back room. “What about—?”

  “Sorry,” I say as Chef Ryan calls my name. “I’ll be back.” I’m not going to babysit Briana when I have real work to do.

  When I get in the back room, Chef Ryan’s waiting there with a cake that’s already been half decorated with buttercream roses.

  “How are your icing skills?” he asks.

  “Um…” I make a lot of desserts, but I usually sprinkle them with chocolate chips or drizzle them with glaze. “I haven’t had a lot of experience decorating cakes,” I admit.

  “That’s why you’re here, to learn. Okay, while I work on this, you practice on some wax paper.”

  “Wait, I don’t actually get to ice the cake?”

  “It’s your first day on the job,” he says. “Be glad I’m even letting you in the kitchen.”

  I sigh and pick up the icing bag. Then I squeeze out a rose onto some wax paper.

  “Not bad,” Chef Ryan says. “But try it this way.” He barely flicks his wrist, and a perfect rose appears next to the one I made.

  I do another flower, and it comes out a little better. By the third one, I’m actually feeling pretty good. “Are you sure I can’t do any real ones?” I ask.

  Chef Ryan goes back over to the cake. “After you do about a hundred of those, I’ll think about it.”

  A hundred? Is he serious? But he just focuses on decorating the cake with one perfect flower after another, so I guess he means it.

  I work on rose after rose, trying to do them as fast as possible. The more I do though, the worse they look.

  “Slow down,” Chef Ryan says, not even looking up from his work. He must have eyes in his ears or something.

  “You know what would look really great?” I say after a minute. “Some leaves and vines around the flowers.”

  He studies the cake he’s working on and then shakes his head. “Sometimes less is more.”

  But I don’t have time to think like that. If I’m really going to be on Pastry Wars, then the bigger, the better. The girl who won the Fourth of July–themed teen show last season made a red, white, and blue velvet cake that crackled when you bit into it. She even put sparklers on top!

  As I get back to making endless rows of roses, I start imagining what life will be like after I make it onto Pastry Wars. I’ll get to meet Chip Ackerson and the judges who are usually super-important pastry chefs, and who knows, maybe one of them will like my stuff so much that he or she will offer me a job at some fancy bakery when I’m older. And if I win the show, I’ll get a scholarship that I’ll be able to use to help pay for culinary school one day (which is a big reason Mom was excited about me applying, besides the fact that she wants to meet Chip in person). But mostly I imagine what it’s going to be like to come home a TV star, even if I don’t win. No one will make fun of me for keeping a baking journal or for doing or saying the wrong thing. Once people see what I can really do, I know they’ll finally take me seriously.

  When my lesson is over, Chef Ryan sends me out front to help Briana. I find Cherie standing at the counter, studying a pile of empty plastic bags.

  “Oh, Rachel,” Cherie says. She’s usually ridiculously perky, but for once she’s frowning. “Briana said you told her to do the cookie bags like this?”

  I realize the bags only looked empty from a distance. They actually each have a single cookie in them. “Um, no,” I say. There’s no way Briana is blaming her mistakes on me.

  “You said to package them up,” Briana says.

  “Not one in each bag,” I say. But when I think back, I realize I didn’t actually tell her how many to put inside. I was so busy rushing off to help Chef Ryan that I guess I didn’t finish explaining the directions. Oops.

  Cherie sighs. “No problem. We’ll simply have to redo them.” And I can tell that by “we” she means me. Then her face brightens. “Anyhoo, I have to go make some phone calls. I don’t want to say anything yet, but if all goes well, I’ll have some great news to share soon!”

  “Oh joy,” Briana says, rolling her eyes. Clearly, baking news doesn’t excite her, but I’m dying to know what Cherie is talking about. Before I can bombard her with questions though, she flashes us a smile and disappears into the back office.

  “Okay, I guess we should open all these up and redo them,” I say, grabbing a couple of the nearly empty cookie bags.

  “How about you do that and I’ll supervise?” Briana says. “You don’t want me to do them wrong and then blame it on you again, do you?” Then she flashes me a fake smile and goes back to tapping awa
y on her phone.

  Ugh. Once a princess, always a princess. I have no choice but to get to work.

  Chapter 4

  When I get home from work, Mom is waiting for me with an episode of Pastry Wars already queued up on the TV. After I was in a bake-off this summer, Mom got really into watching food competitions. She even recorded a bunch of episodes of Pastry Wars while I was in Florida so that we could watch them together. It’s funny that before my dad left, Mom and I seemed so different from each other that we could barely have a conversation. Now, I feel closer to her than I do to pretty much anyone else.

  “Any news yet?” she asks, and I know she means about the show.

  I shake my head. “I’ve been checking my email all day, but nothing yet.”

  Mom sighs. “Okay then, talk to me,” she says as we settle in on the couch and start nibbling on dinner, some leftover spinach and shallot quiche that I made the other day. “How was the first day?”

  I tell her about how I spent most of it wandering around totally lost and how I barely saw Evan or Marisol or anyone else I know.

  Mom pats my hand. “You’ll adjust to it all soon enough. Don’t worry.” She picks up the TV remote. “I can’t wait to watch this episode! They’re supposed to make cookies that you can stack like Legos. Isn’t that wild? And Chip is wearing dark blue in this one. You know how much I love him in blue!”

  I swallow a bite of quiche. “And, um, Dad was there today.”

  She looks at me. “At your school?”

  “He brought me lunch this morning, said he didn’t want to miss my first day.” Her reaction means she had no idea he was back in town. I shouldn’t be too surprised. Knowing Dad, he probably decided to move and had his bags packed and his plane ticket booked all in the span of a day. He’s always been kind of impulsive that way.

  “Well,” Mom says. “Well.” Clearly, she’s a little stunned. I guess she didn’t really believe that he would come back either. At least not so soon. Maybe Dad’s trying to reinvent himself like I am.