Sprinkles and Secrets

by Lisa Schroeder

  My mom made pumpkin bread, which we slice up and take to my room, along with two mugs of steaming hot cocoa.

  “This bread is so good,” I say. I hand her the plate. “Try some!”

  Isabel takes a piece. “I love this time of year. Can you believe Thanksgiving is already next week?”

  “I know—so many fun things to look forward to. And everyone bakes the yummiest things. I can’t wait until Mom and I have our annual Christmas cookie baking day. Is your mom doing anything special with the cupcake shop for the holidays? Besides featuring your fabulous chocolate jam tarts?”

  “So far, gingerbread cupcakes and peppermint cupcakes are on the menu, to get everyone in the holiday mood. She’s really hoping we’ll do a lot of business next month.” She pauses. “I haven’t said anything to you, but things aren’t going very well. She’s not even making enough money to pay the loan bill every month.”

  “Oh, Is, I’m sorry. But hopefully things will pick up next month. So many people have holiday parties, you know?”

  While she takes a sip of cocoa, her eyes light up. “Hey, I totally forgot to ask you about Seattle. Can you go?”

  “Yes. Just let me know the dates, and I’ll get it on our calendar.”

  “Okay, I have to check with Mom and Dad and see what they’ve decided.”

  We hear the phone ring, and a minute later, Mom pokes her head in. “Sophie, it’s for you. It’s Mrs. Parks. Do you want to call her back?”

  Isabel looks at me. “Who’s Mrs. Parks?”

  “My agent,” I say, smiling. “It’s so weird saying that.”

  “Take it!” Isabel says, pointing toward the door. “Go on, you can’t keep your agent waiting. Don’t worry about me. I have Julius Caesar to keep me company.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right back.”

  I step into the hallway and Mom hands me the phone. I shut Hayden’s door as I walk by, so I won’t be interrupted by Mr. Alien Hunter.

  “Hi, Mrs. Parks,” I say as I walk into the kitchen. I sit at the kitchen table, and Mom sits across from me.

  “Please, Isabel, call me Candace. Mrs. Parks makes me feel old.”

  “Okay. Candace.”

  “Tell your parents thanks for overnighting the contract along with the photos. I’m going to ask your mom to take you to a professional photographer for some headshots, but for now, these will do. And I have good news.”

  I look at Mom and mouth the words “Good news!”

  Candace continues. “An ad agency in Portland has put out a call for commercial auditions. It’s a big client, and I think it’d be an excellent opportunity for you. The audition is the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. Are you interested?”

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  “Wonderful. I’m going to drop all of the details about the audition in the mail to you. Please confirm with me once you receive it, all right?”

  “Great, thanks, Mrs.—I mean Candace. Oh, wait, do you know what the commercial is for? I mean, what product I’d be selling?”

  Mom gives me a thumbs-up. I think it means this is a good question to ask. “Of course,” Candace says. “Sorry, I didn’t mention that, did I? It’s a wonderful company. I believe there’s even a store there in your little town of Willow. Beatrice’s Brownies?”

  Oh no. I swallow hard. It couldn’t be, could it? “Uh, what did you say?”

  “Beatrice’s Brownies. You’ve been there before, haven’t you? Or are you the one person in a million who doesn’t like brownies?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been there,” I say quietly.

  “Wonderful! All right, Sophie, I have to run, but we’ll talk again soon.”

  “Okay, bye.”

  “Sophie,” Mom asks. “What is it? You look disappointed or something. Who’s the commercial for?”

  I want to cry. Why, out of the thousands of companies in America, does it have to be that one? Isabel’s mom almost didn’t open her cupcake shop because of Beatrice’s Brownies. And now it may be one of the reasons It’s Raining Cupcakes isn’t doing very well.

  Before I can say anything to Mom, Isabel appears. “Hey, Sophie, what’d your agent have to say? Don’t you just love saying that? Your agent? Wait, let me guess. They want to give you your own TV show, right? A series?”

  I force a laugh. “Yeah, right. She’s working on a big deal for me. Huge! I can’t even tell you guys, that’s how big it is. She wants me to keep it to myself for now. Besides, I might jinx myself, you know?” I get up and pull on Isabel’s arm. “Come on. Let’s go study.”

  “But that’s so silly,” Isabel jokes. “You’re going to be famous! You don’t really need an education, do you?”

  Oh, I need an education, all right. I need an education on how to choose between the opportunity of a lifetime and ruining my best friend’s life.

  Chapter 9

  chocolate mole sauce

  TRY A HINT OF CHOCOLATE ON YOUR NEXT ENCHILADA

  Mom makes my favorite meal for dinner to celebrate the audition. The Wicked music plays softly in the background, “for ambiance,” Mom says. She’s trying to make it really special. All the music seems to be doing though is reminding me how much I want to be an actress, when I really want to forget that right now.

  I haven’t told her yet which company the audition is with. I said I’d wait and tell everyone at dinner. So now as we sit at the table in chicken enchilada heaven, I decide to break the horrible news. I can only hope my parents will forbid me from doing something that terrible to my best friend. Then all I have to do is call Candace back, cancel the audition, and sit back and wait for something else to come along. Please, oh please, let something else come along.

  “Delicious, as always,” my dad says, pausing after intense shoveling from plate to mouth to take a drink of water.

  “Yeah, Mom,” I say. “It’s really good.”

  “Soph, tell Dad and Hayden your good news.”

  My dad turns and gives me the pirate look. I know, that sounds strange, but it’s, like, this grin with one eye practically shut and he just looks like a pirate to me. Or he did when I was five, and the idea stuck. He’s got the wavy brown hair, the beard, and the tanned, rugged face. My dad is an electrician, so he’s nothing like some of my friends’ dads who wear a suit to work everyday. Maybe if he was, I wouldn’t be able to spot the hidden pirate in him.

  I swallow the bite in my mouth, then take a sip of milk. “Well, I got a call today for a commercial audition.”

  Hayden does a fist pump. “You are going to be famous. I knew it!”

  “Sophie, that’s amazing,” Dad says. He takes his napkin and wipes all around his beard and mustache. “So, what’s the commercial for? An interesting product, I hope.”

  “Yeah, not bran cereal or something yucky like that,” Hayden says.

  “Oh, it’s interesting all right,” I say. I take a deep breath. “It’s Beatrice’s Brownies.”

  For a second, everyone’s quiet. Then Mom blinks a couple of times and says, “Sophie, that’s wonderful. That’s right up your alley—you love desserts.”

  I set my fork down. “Mom, it’s not wonderful. It’s terrible.”

  “Why?” Dad asks. “I think it sounds fantastic.”

  Who are these people and what have they done with my family?

  “Won’t that make Isabel mad?” Hayden asks.

  “Yes,” I say, nodding. “Yes, Hayden, thank you. It’s going to make Isabel very mad. Which is exactly why I can’t do it.”

  Dad scoots his chair away from the table and leans back. “Sophie, this is about you and your dreams, not Isabel. She’s a good friend. I think she’ll understand.”

  I look back and forth between Mom and Dad. Mom. Then Dad. “No! You guys need to tell me I can’t do it!”

  Mom laughs. “Sophie, why would we do that? Don’t you want to do it?”

  “That’s not the point. The point is that I—”

  And then I stop. Because suddenly, I’m not sure what the point
of arguing with them is exactly.

  “Look, honey,” Dad says, “if you want to do the commercial, do the commercial. It’s not like you’re doing it to spite your best friend. You’re doing it because it’s a good opportunity. And no one would want to deny their best friend a good opportunity. If it was the other way around, I’m sure you’d encourage her to go for it. Right?”

  I stand up. “I don’t know. I guess I thought you guys would see it the way I see it.”

  Mom stands up and gives me a quick hug. “Sweetheart, I see where you’re coming from. But this is the kind of thing that could lead to bigger things—things that could help make your dream come true. At the very least, go to the audition and see what it’s like.”

  “I agree,” Dad says. “If nothing else, it’s good practice for the next time.”

  “Sophie,” Hayden says, “maybe they’d let you hold a cupcake in one hand and a brownie in the other.”

  If only it were that easy.

  “Do you want any dessert?” Mom asks.

  “I do!” Hayden says.

  “No, thanks,” I tell her. “Dessert is the last thing I want right now.”

  I go to my room.

  Dream #4 –

  I dream of the ability

  to do the right thing,

  even when it’s hard.

  The next day, I do my best to avoid Isabel. I hang out in the library before school and go straight to science first period without going to the locker first.

  Dennis catches me in the hallway outside of the classroom. “They’re called feet,” he tells me. “Not talons. At least on regular birds. You were wrong.”

  “Whatever,” I mumble.

  “Hey, I apologized to Isabel like I promised. I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to upset her. Or you. So, we’re good now, right?”

  I look over at him. He seems to mean it.

  “Anyway,” he continues, pushing his glasses up with his finger, “I thought you might want to know birds do have feet. Not that I wanted to prove you wrong or anything. I was just, you know, curious.”

  “It’s fine. I’m probably wrong about a lot of things.”

  And as soon as the words are out, I stop in my tracks.

  “What?” he asks. “What is it?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing.” I look at Dennis. “Okay, have you ever thought you were absolutely, positively right about something? But then everyone else tells you maybe you aren’t right after all, and you start to second-guess yourself, even though you know you’re right?”

  He gives me a blank stare. “No. Not really. Hey, do you think birds have ears?”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s so ridiculous, and I can’t believe I’m spilling my guts, in a roundabout sort of way, to Dennis Holt.

  “I have no idea,” I tell him.

  “Maybe we can research it,” he says. “We’re still doing homework at my house later, right?”

  Oh no. With all of the stuff going on about the audition, I totally forgot. Well, at least if I see Isabel after school, I have a reason to rush off. “Yeah. I rode my bike. You don’t live very far from here, right?”

  “You remember! My birthday party in first grade was pretty awesome, huh?”

  I shake my head. “You had a Power Rangers cake, Dennis. That was not awesome. At least, not to all the girls you invited.”

  He laughs. “Power Rangers, activate!”

  The warning bell rings, so we start walking toward our classroom.

  “I’ll meet you at the bike rack after school,” he says.

  “Okay. And hey, Dennis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not going to try and show me the dead bird’s foot at your house, are you?”

  “Don’t worry. I know it’s not everyone’s thing. But, Sophie, I’m curious. What is your thing?”

  And before I have time to think twice, the word comes out. “Acting.” I let out a big sigh, because the truth really does sort of hurt. “My thing, right now, is acting.”

  “Cool,” he says. “I bet you’re good at it.”

  And all I can think is, We’ll see, Dennis. We’ll see.

  Chapter 10

  milk and chocolate-chip cookies

  THEY MAKE HOMEWORK BEARABLE

  When we walk into Dennis’s house, it smells delicious, like we’ve just walked into a bakery.

  “Hello!” a woman’s voice calls out. “Dennis, I’m in the kitchen.”

  “Yeah, Mom, I can tell. Whatever you’re making, it smells really good!”

  We’re standing in the living room, where there are more knickknacks than I’ve ever seen in one place. She has hutches, bookshelves, and end tables full of music boxes, tea cups, ceramic and glass figurines, and all kinds of other stuff. It’s totally different from our house. My mom can’t stand having knickknacks or useless stuff just sitting around.

  Dennis must sense my amazement. “Something else, huh? My mom calls them her treasures.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “That’s not what I would call them.”

  “Where does she get it all?” I ask.

  “The thrift store. Man, she loves that place. There’s nothing here that cost more than three ninety-nine. Except maybe the sofa. I think she got that for nineteen ninety-nine.”

  I look at the old sofa with pink-and-green stripes. She paid $19.99 for that? I think she got robbed. “So, I guess you could call her a treasure hunter?”

  He smiles. “Something like that.” He picks up a glass penguin as we walk by one of the end tables. “Help!” he says in a high, squeaky voice. “Get me back to the South Pole. I’m dying here.”

  “Watch your feet, penguin,” I say. “They’re not safe around Dennis.”

  “Wait a second,” he says. “Do penguin have feet?”

  I give him a shove. “Stop it.”

  I follow him into the kitchen where his mom is standing at the counter with a spatula, taking cookies off a baking sheet and putting them on a cooling rack. She’s a short woman, and has her brown hair up in a bun. She’s wearing a bright red-and-yellow apron and a big smile.

  “I hope you like chocolate, Sophie.”

  “I love it,” I say.

  “Good. This chocolate-chip cookie recipe is our favorite. It’s very unique in that the oatmeal is blended before you add it in. Dennis, you want to pour some milk for you two?”

  She puts the spatula down and comes over to me, carrying a plate of cookies. “Don’t know if you remember me. I’m Margie.”

  “I remember. We were just talking about his first-grade birthday party.”

  “Let’s see, was that Power Rangers or Spiderman?”

  “Power Rangers,” Dennis and I say at the same time. Then he says, “I think I still have some action figures around here somewhere, Sophie. You want to play with them when we’re done? You could be the pink one.”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “I hope you’re joking.”

  Margie hands me the plate of cookies, then turns to Dennis. “You two can use the kitchen table for your homework. I have laundry to put away. Just holler if you need anything, okay?”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Thanks,” I echo.

  She leaves and we go to the kitchen table. We set the cookies and milk down and drop our backpacks onto the floor. “Let’s eat first,” Dennis says. “I’m starving.”

  I take a bite of a cookie. “These are really good.”

  “Whenever I have someone come over, which isn’t very often, Mom makes them. I think it’s because they were Michael’s favorite.”

  “Michael O’Reilly?” I ask.

  “Yeah. You know we used to be best friends in elementary school, right?”

  “You’re not friends anymore?” I ask as I reach for my glass of milk.

  “Nah. I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m not really the athletic type. I tried. I played soccer and baseball through fifth grade. But I just wasn’t good enough. It stops being fun when you feel horrible about how you pla
y all the time.”

  “What does that have to do with being Michael’s friend, though?”

  He shrugs. “Sports are his life. Things changed. I don’t know. Now he hangs out with his friends he sees all the time at games and practices.”

  He sounds kind of sad. I don’t know what to say. He keeps talking. “You and Isabel, you’ve been friends for a long time, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He reaches for another cookie. “That’s cool. Does she want to be an actress too?”

  “No. Flight attendant. Travel the world and all that stuff.”

  “It’s weird,” he says. “I always thought girls were the ones who had problems with friends. And here I am, the one with the problems.”

  I think of the audition and Isabel. I swallow hard. I don’t want to go there. “Well, Dennis, maybe if you wouldn’t do odd things, like ask people if they want to see a dead bird’s foot, you’d have more friends.”

  His face turns red. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I never really had a dead bird’s foot.”

  “You didn’t? Then why’d you say you did? Just to freak me out?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t know what to say. There was a dead bird on my porch that morning. It just popped into my brain and before I knew it, I was talking crazy-bird-feet talk.”

  “Well, I guess sometimes I don’t know what to say either.” I think of the conversation I need to have with Isabel someday about the audition. It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it. I’m not sure I’ll ever figure out what to say for that conversation.

  Dennis stands up and takes the empty plate and glasses to the counter. “We should come up with a saying we automatically go to when we’re having a hard time. So we don’t say something stupid. Like my dad, he always talks about the weather. And he’s always so excited about it. Doesn’t matter what it is; it can be forty-five degrees and raining, like it is almost every single day in Oregon, and he’ll still want to talk about the weather.”