Celebrate the Season--Secret Snowflake

by Taylor Garland

  “You want to partner for this?” Riley asked. Did her voice sound weird? She couldn’t tell. Besides, why should it? Jacob was a friend, just like Sophia. “I think Sophia and Alice are going to come over this weekend. We could all figure out something to do together. If you want.”

  A slow smile spread across Jacob’s face. “Sure. Sounds cool,” he said.

  “Cool,” Riley repeated. “I’ll text you later.”

  After a flurry of group texts, Riley, Sophia, Alice, and Jacob decided to meet up at Riley’s house on Sunday afternoon for a Christmas cookie bake-off. Riley’s mom took her to the grocery store so she could buy everything they’d need: flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and lots of chocolate chips, of course. The Archer family had Christmas cookie recipes that had been passed down for generations.

  Shortly before her friends arrived, Riley was busy arranging everything in the kitchen when she realized that Theo was hanging out near the chocolate chips—too near the chocolate chips. “Shoo,” she said. “You know we need those for the cookies.”

  “Can’t I just have a few?” Theo pleaded. “Just one little handful? Please?”

  “No way,” Riley said firmly. “If I open that bag now, we both know what will happen. You’ll start eating them, and you won’t stop, and then we might not have enough! Besides, these cookies aren’t even for us; they’re for the people who live at Sunny Acres. We’re trying to make their Christmases better, not worse by delivering them sad cookies with barely any chocolate chips.”

  “But—” Theo protested.

  Ding-dong!

  Riley held up one finger. “Don’t even think about it,” she warned him. “If I come back and that bag is open, I will tell Mom.”

  Then Riley hurried to the door, trusting that Theo would remember to be on his best behavior this close to Christmas. She swung it open to find Jacob standing on the doorstep.

  “Merry Christmas cookies!” he said, holding up a bag from the grocery store. “I wasn’t sure what kind we were making, so I got the basics—sugar, butter, that sort of thing.”

  “Hey, thanks!” Riley said. “You didn’t have to do that. Come on in.”

  In the hallway, Jacob shrugged off his coat. “Where should I—” he began.

  “I’ll take it,” Riley replied. While she hung up Jacob’s coat, she kept talking. “I thought we could make a few different kinds of cookies. We have a ton of cookie cutters, like way more than any one family needs, but maybe that’s good since we’ll have cookie-baking teams today. I figured we could pick out some recipes once—”

  Ding-dong!

  “Everyone else gets here,” Riley finished. She opened the front door again—and found Alice and Sophia standing on the front step.

  “Perfect timing!” Riley exclaimed. “Jacob’s already here, and I don’t know how much longer I can protect the chocolate chips from Theo, so we’d better start baking immediately, if not sooner!”

  “On it!” Sophia announced. She pushed past Riley and Jacob and hollered, “Theo! Leave those chocolate chips alone or you won’t get any cookies, I mean it!”

  Jacob grimaced. “Is she, uh, always like that?” he asked.

  “It’s a big joke around here,” Riley assured him. “Since Sophia has three little brothers, it’s like she can’t turn off her big-sister voice. It just comes out automatically. Theo doesn’t even care—it cracks him up.”

  Then Riley turned to Alice. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked.

  “I have a big sister, but she left for college last August,” Alice said. “A couple weeks before we moved here.”

  “Oh,” Riley said. “That must have been a lot to deal with all at once, huh?”

  Alice nodded. “Yeah, it was. But Claire is almost done with her first semester—she’s coming home next week! She’s never even seen our new house before. I mean, in pictures, yeah, but not in person.”

  “That’s exciting!” Riley said. “I bet you can’t wait to see her.”

  “I can’t,” Alice said—and then she smiled at Riley.

  Theo poked his head out of the kitchen. “And I can’t wait to eat cookies,” he groaned as he flopped down to the floor. “Come on, Riley! Isn’t it time to start baking yet?”

  “Ignore him,” Riley told Jacob and Alice. “He’ll start acting like a civilized human being more quickly that way.”

  But Jacob had already walked over to Theo. “Theo, my man, you gotta get up,” he said, holding out his hand. “These cookies aren’t gonna bake themselves—and you can’t exactly help if you’re writhing around on the floor like a half-squashed caterpillar.”

  Theo clambered up at once. “Help? I can help?” he asked.

  Riley shrugged. “If you want,” she said. “But no snacking on raw cookie dough! You don’t want to get sick right before Christmas.”

  “But it’s so yummy,” Theo protested. “Cookie dough is my favorite.”

  “Mine too, but we’re not supposed to eat it raw,” Riley said. “Anyway, you can hold out until the cookies are fully baked. I know it.”

  In the kitchen, Riley pulled the special box of Christmas recipes off the shelf. “Take a look at these and let me know if anything sounds good,” she said as she passed the recipe cards around to her friends. “I definitely think we should make sugar cookies. Then we can use the cookie cutters and decorate them with frosting and sprinkles. That’s my favorite part!”

  Alice rummaged around in her backpack and pulled out a set of small vials with different decorations in them—silvery snowflakes, tiny gold balls, a rainbow of sprinkles. She even had sugar-coated holly berries with bright green candy leaves. “I brought these, if you want to use them.”

  “Those are perfect!” Riley said. “Look at the snowflakes—they’re so sparkly!”

  “That’s from the extra sugar on top,” Alice said. “Which makes them extra yummy!”

  “We’re going to make chocolate chip cookies, though, aren’t we?” Theo said anxiously. “I mean, that’s why you bought all those bags of chocolate chips, right?”

  “If everybody else wants to,” Riley told him. She tried to give him a look, the same one Mom used that clearly meant Watch it, but Theo didn’t seem to notice.

  “What about these?” Jacob asked, holding up a recipe card that said “Buckeyes” at the top. “They sound amazing—and they’re dipped in melted chocolate.”

  “Buckeyes?” Theo read. He glanced at Riley. “We’ve never made those before.”

  “Not for, like, six years, anyway,” she replied, reaching out to tousle Theo’s hair. “They’ve got peanut butter in them.”

  “Oh,” Theo said, sounding disappointed.

  “Theo’s allergic to peanuts,” Sophia explained to Alice and Jacob. “The Archer house is a peanut-free zone.”

  “Sorry,” Jacob said. “I didn’t realize.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Riley assured him. “I fill up on peanut butter when I hang out at Sophia’s.”

  “And luckily, I’m not allergic to chocolate!” Theo chimed in.

  “That is lucky,” Jacob replied.

  “It can be kind of tricky sometimes, especially when we eat out,” Riley said. “But some places don’t use any peanuts, like Creekside Cafe & Chocolates, so when we go there, Theo can order anything off the menu.”

  “These snowball cookies look good,” Alice spoke up.

  “They taste good, too,” Riley said. “I bet the people at Sunny Acres will love them.”

  “How about the candy-cane twists?” Sophia suggested. “You know those are my favorites!”

  “That’s why I bought peppermint extract at the grocery store!” Riley replied. “Okay, so we’ve got decorated sugar cookies, snowballs, candy-cane twists, and—”

  “Please?” Theo said, hopping from one foot to the other. “Please, please, please, please?”

  Riley’s and Jacob’s eyes met. “Chocolate chip cookies!” they announced at the same time.

  Theo cheere
d and did a silly victory dance across the linoleum floor, which made everyone laugh.

  “Okay, that’s enough messing around,” Riley finally said. “We’ve got four different kinds of cookies to make—and not a lot of time to get it all done. Let’s break into teams.”

  “Team Snowball Cookie–slash–Candy-Cane Twist, reporting for duty,” Sophia announced, linking arms with Alice.

  “Awesome. Jacob, Theo, and I will make the sugar cookies and the chocolate chip cookies,” Riley said. “On your mark, get set, bake!”

  As the Christmas cookie bake-off got under way, Riley couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard. Puffs of flour floated into the air, while spilled sugar crunched underfoot like frost. Riley had worried that Theo would be more of a hindrance than a helper, but it turned out he took the cookie baking really seriously. I bet he likes hanging out with the “big kids,” Riley thought, hiding her smile. And it didn’t hurt that Jacob treated Theo like a real person, not a pest. It was funny how Theo seemed to already look up to Jacob, even though they’d just met.

  The chocolate chip cookie dough was the easiest one to make, so they were ready to be baked before the others. “Mom!” Riley called. “A little help with the oven!”

  “Be right there!” Mom called back.

  Riley turned to her friends with an apologetic half shrug. “My mom still wants to supervise stuff like the oven,” she said.

  “Mine too!” Alice exclaimed. “I thought it was just me.”

  “Definitely not,” Sophia assured her.

  “Yeah, join the club,” Jacob added.

  “What club?” Mom asked as she entered the kitchen.

  “The… Christmas Cookie Baking Club,” Riley joked, exchanging a sly grin with her friends. Even Theo played along.

  “Well, your club looks like it’s thriving!” Mom said brightly. “What are you going to bake first?”

  “Chocolate chip!” Theo crowed. He grabbed a baking tray that was covered with twelve perfectly round scoops of cookie dough.

  “Hang on there—that’s my job,” Mom said as she swooped in to take the tray.

  “I already preheated the oven,” Riley told her.

  “Smart cookie,” Mom replied with a wink, making Riley groan. Then Mom slid the tray into the oven while Riley set the timer for twelve minutes.

  The delicious aroma of freshly baked cookies slowly filled the kitchen. Even Riley’s mouth was watering, so she could hardly blame Theo for camping out right in front of the oven, watching the cookies bake through the glass door. When the timer finally went ding! everyone was ready for a cookie break.

  By then, Theo was a little bored with baking. He took a plate with three cookies into the living room to watch a movie, while Riley and her friends worked on the trickier cookie recipes. Alice and Sophia rolled out ropes of red and white cookie dough, twisting them together into the shape of candy canes. Meanwhile, Riley tried to show Jacob all her techniques for rolling perfect sugar cookies. The fragile dough was likely to stick to the rolling pin or tear, making it more complicated than it looked.

  “The secret is to just pop the dough in the freezer for a few minutes,” Riley explained after the dough tore again. “It has to be nice and cold; otherwise it gets sticky and can tear more easily, and the cookies won’t hold their shape when you transfer them to the baking tray.”

  “Cool,” Jacob said.

  “It’s hard because having the oven on makes the room warmer,” Riley continued. “But after a few minutes in the freezer, the dough will be much easier to handle. You’ll see.”

  “How did you learn so much about baking?” asked Jacob.

  Riley laughed. “Are you kidding? Christmas cookies are my obsession,” she replied.

  “Hey, you’re not giving yourself enough credit,” Sophia spoke up. “Everything Christmas is your obsession!”

  For the next two hours, the friends baked trays of cookies in shifts—snowballs, then candy canes, then sugar cookies—until all the dough was gone. While the cookies cooled, Riley mixed together several colors of icing: red, pink, yellow, green, white, and blue. Decorating cookies was one of her favorite Christmas activities—and it was even more fun with friends!

  When all the cookies had been decorated, the friends packaged them in clear cellophane bags tied up with festive ribbons. Riley plucked her favorite cookie—a snowflake-shaped sugar cookie covered with pale blue icing and silver sprinkles—from the tray and slid it into a special bag.

  “Keeping that one for yourself?” Jacob teased her.

  “Actually, I’m going to give it to my Secret Snowflake tomorrow,” Riley told him. “If that’s okay with you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Jacob said quickly. “Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

  “Just checking,” Riley said with a shrug. “My Secret Snowflake is going to love it!” she said happily. She was already thinking about how Marcus would react when he found the extra-special, extra-delicious cookie she’d made. She was so excited thinking about Marcus enjoying her cookie that she didn’t notice the strange look that had come over Jacob’s face.

  It was funny how quickly Riley got in the habit of popping by homeroom at the end of the school day—just to check if there was a surprise waiting in her Secret Snowflake mailbox.

  And on Tuesday afternoon, there was!

  Riley pulled out a lumpy, soft package wrapped in red-and-green-striped paper. It was heavy in her hands, different from the other gifts she’d received so far—the glitter paper, the light-up Christmas tree pin, the nail polish. She turned the package over in her hands, trying to guess what might be inside. The truth was, though, that Riley didn’t have a clue.

  She used her blue-painted nail to tear open the back flap of the present and discovered a whole pound of chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-flavored fudge from Creekside Cafe & Chocolates, Hampton Creek’s best sweet shop! Riley couldn’t believe her Secret Snowflake had given her another perfect present—and the PEANUT FREE label meant she could even share it with her cookie-dough-loving brother.

  Riley shoved the fudge into her backpack; she had to hurry because the 3C bus to the Sunny Acres Retirement Community would be leaving soon. She was about to toss the striped wrapping paper into the trash can when she noticed something bright and colorful on the floor nearby. It caught her eye immediately—maybe because she recognized it.

  It was a corner of the brightly patterned origami paper she’d used to make Marcus’s latest Secret Snowflake gift, an origami skateboarder. The pattern was really tricky, but Riley had persevered—even though it had taken her a few hours and almost an entire package of origami paper to get it right. The best part was that the wheels of the skateboard moved when you pushed it down. She’d thought Marcus would appreciate it, especially since he loved to skateboard when the weather was nice.

  But why was the origami skateboarder forgotten on the floor, next to the trash can like someone had thrown it away—and not even cared enough to make sure it made it in the basket? She had only delivered it a few hours before.

  Marcus wouldn’t throw away a Secret Snowflake gift, Riley told herself. He would never do that!

  Or would he?

  She pushed the thought from her mind as she knelt down to pick up the origami skateboarder. What should she do with it? Keep it? Throw it away? Sneak it into Marcus’s desk? Put it back in his Secret Snowflake mailbox?

  None of the options seemed quite right. But Riley knew she had to make a decision quickly. The bus would be leaving soon—and she didn’t want to be left behind.

  It seemed too weird to put the origami skateboarder back in Marcus’s Secret Snowflake mailbox, like she was regifting a present he’d already received. And she definitely wasn’t going to throw it away. Riley had spent way too many hours on all those precise creases and tricky folds to toss it in the trash. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that Marcus had simply dropped it. Maybe it had fallen out of his pocket or his backpack. Maybe he and his bu
ddies were goofing around, shoving and pushing each other like they did sometimes, and it had slipped out, and he wouldn’t even notice that he’d lost it for hours. Then maybe Marcus would search his backpack like crazy, wondering what could have happened to it.

  Don’t worry, Marcus, Riley thought with a smile as she slipped the origami skateboarder into his desk. It will be right here, waiting for you.

  Now Riley really was in danger of missing the bus. She ran all the way to the school parking lot, where the regular buses were already on their way out. Behind the music room, she could see that the 3C bus was idling, puffs of exhaust floating through the frosty air. Riley started running even faster.

  “Riley! You made it!” Mr. Mac exclaimed as she clambered up the steps of the bus. “Sophia told us you were coming—”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Riley said breathlessly. “Sorry I’m late! Had to—get something—”

  “Grab a seat so we can get on the road,” Mr. Mac told her.

  Riley glanced down the aisle, searching for her friends. She grinned when she saw that Jacob, Sophia, and Alice had snagged the coveted seats at the rear of the bus. Not only were there more windows back there, the ride was bumpier—which made it way more fun.

  “Good job on the seats, guys,” she said. “Though you’ve probably made enemies for life with Squad Eight.”

  Sophia rolled her eyes. “Who cares? Aren’t they graduating in a few months?” she asked. “Where were you? We almost had to leave without you!”

  Riley didn’t want to tell her about Marcus’s Secret Snowflake gift, abandoned by the trash can. Instead, she said, “I stopped by my Secret Snowflake mailbox and—well, let’s just say you’re welcome!”

  Riley unzipped her backpack to show everyone the package of fudge.

  “You got a whole pound of cookie dough fudge?” Sophia gasped. “Seriously?”

  “I know, right?” Riley replied, grinning. “I feel like I hit the Secret Snowflake jackpot!”