by S. E. Babin
“Time’s up!” yelled the elf. “Bring your butter cookies up here immediately, or risk disqualification.”
The three sisters ran to the front with their cookies. Brandi stole a quick look to her left. The Betty Crocker’s Cousins’ cookies were piled in a sloppy heap with garish green frosting sliding down them and pooling on the platter. Red sprinkles were haphazardly poured on top. One of the team members was engaging in some sort of huffy-puffy breathing exercise. “Don’t mind Velma. She’s trying not to hyperventilate,” explained the jittery one who’d had five cups of coffee.
Brandi then stole a quick look to her right, and to her grave disappointment, saw a perfectly executed platter of butter cookies, topped off with creamy white frosting. They looked as elegant as could be, and made her suddenly doubt their decision to get creative.
“Alright! Here we go again,” said the elf, nodding to the crowds of spectators and TV crews. “It’s come down to these three teams. This round will be judged live, right in front of our contestants.” The spectators cheered. The elf then did a quick little spin, focusing right on Brandi, and said, “I hope you’re not intimidated by some cameras!”
She gulped. “Nope. I’m not. At all,” she croaked.
A cameraman did a quick zoom-thru, and three more cameras that were mounted above them were all lowered a little, panning in on the action. Bonnie jumped back nervously.
“Due to the fact that just you three teams remain,” said the elf, speaking into his nutcracker microphone, but looking directly at the finalists, “this will be our final round.”
One of the Betty Crocker ladies gasped. “Darn it all!” Brandi heard her say. “I’m going to be awake all night for nothing!”
“Let’s meet our esteemed panel of judges,” said the elf. Four important looking people walked into the gymnasium and all the spectators broke into applause. “Please, folks, hold your applause until I’ve announced them all. Our first judge is Donna Hayberry of Chicago’s famed Guten Muffin Haus. Next is Bernard Wells of Studio Favorites Productions. Third is Callie Dwight of Hannover Talent Industries. Our final judge is Brent Yapp of the Little Bake Shop Cookie Factory.” While the crowd clapped for the judges, Brandi turned to her sisters, more upset than ever.
“Bernard Wells and Callie Dwight are both connected to Jessica and her show! How is this fair?” she whispered.
“Are you sure?” asked Barbara.
“Positive! When I found out that Jessica has her own show, I checked it out online. It’s produced by Studio Favorites, in conjunction with Hannover Talent.”
“Just because there’s a connection, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s rigged,” said Bonnie. “Maybe they’d like to have two shows, and they included Jessica since she’s already well-known, and they thought it would raise awareness for this contest.”
“Well,” said Brandi, “I guess that’s a possibility.”
“Quiet, everyone!” yelled the elf. “Let the judging commence!”
For an excruciating twenty-five minutes the judges milled about, sampling bites from all three cookie platters, periodically wandering off to discuss their feelings in a small huddle.
“We’ve narrowed it down to our top two,” judge Bernard Wells then told the elf, passing him a sealed envelope.
The crowd fell silent as the elf tore open the envelope, drew in a long, deep breath, and announced, “Our two finalists are…”
“I can’t take it! I can’t take it!” Barbara muttered under her breath, squeezing Brandi and Bonnie’s hands.
“Team Spader,” said the elf, pausing and waiting for the burst of applause to die back down. “And…”
“Please, please, please let it be us,” whispered Bonnie.
“…Team Buefred!” yelled the elf.
Brandi and her sister cheered, along with the spectators, while Betty Crocker’s Cousins stepped away from their places with their heads hanging low.
The judges came back up to where the remaining two teams waited with their picked-over platters. They bore pensive expressions, now even more serious about their job of deciding between the two. They tasted the cookies and delicately smacked their lips. They broke them and squinted importantly at the flaky insides. They sniffed and licked the cookies, and rolled them around on their tongues like fine wine. Brent Yapp even went so far as to break a cookie into his own ear, while looking pensively off into the distance like an 80’s soap opera hero.
“I’m so nervous I could puke,” Brandi whispered to her sisters.
“Calm down,” said Barbara. “Give me your hand. You two, Bonnie.”
“No matter what happens, we’ve won as far as I’m concerned,” said Bonnie, through gritted teeth.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Barbara said.
“This has all been great, and I’m very happy to be reunited, but I still want to win!” said Brandi.
The judges went back to their huddle, heads together. Now and then one would stomp emphatically or laugh harshly in another’s face, but aside from that, the contestants were at a loss as to what they were thinking.
“Are you ready to cast your votes for the winning team?” asked the elf, after nearly forty more minutes had passed.
“We are,” Donna Hayberry said, with a somber nod of her stately head.
A kid from the high school band came out then, wearing a snare drum, doing a drumroll to add some extra excitement to the big moment. The judges lined up beside the elf, each passing him a sealed envelope.
“Thank you,” said the elf. “I will now reveal our judges’ votes. Let me remind you all, in the event of a tie, nine randomly selected audience members will taste the finalists’ cookies, and cast their votes to break the tie. Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that kind of chaos,” he added.
The crowd laughed and a few people booed, since, naturally, they all wanted to taste the cookies and be part of the decision making process.
“Quiet!” yelled the elf. “Vote one,” he announced, opening the top envelope and removing the vote card with deliberate slowness, “is for Team Buefred!”
Brandi, Barbara, and Bonnie all screamed in unison, and Barbara even did an old cheerleading kick that she thought she’d long since forgotten.
“Vote two,” said the elf, when things had quieted back down, “is for Team Spader!”
“Thank you!” yelled Jessica, while her mother and daughter each attempted to yodel.
“Vote three,” said the elf, “is also for Team Spader!”
“No,” Brandi whispered.
“And,” said the elf, ripping open the last envelope, “our fourth and final vote is for… Team Buefred!”
Brandi and her sisters screamed again. “We’re still in it!” shouted Bonnie.
“That’s right, folks,” said the elf. “We have a tie! That means our audience will make the final, all-important decision. Good people of New Glarus, when you arrived, you received a ticket. I’ll draw until nine of you come forward. Those nine will be our judges. Understand?”
“Yes!” cheered the crowd, who an hour earlier had looked exhausted, but now had all gotten their second wind.
The elf began calling numbers, and one by one the local townspeople stepped forward. When there were nine in a row, the elf collected the two unappealing platters of broken cookies, took them up front, and passed them down the line. The people didn’t seem to mind that the cookies had already been attacked by the judges. They happily gobbled up the remains.
“Do you see what I see?” Bonnie asked her sisters, her eyes wide.
“You mean how Kristina’s fake eyelashes are flapping around like little bats?” asked Brandi.
“Well, yeah, that, but also… take a look at our cookie platters.”
The Team Buefred platter had gone back and forth down the line twice, and was picked clean. Now the locals were discussing their reactions amongst themselves. The Team Spader platter was sitting on the floor, discarded, still holding a few whole cookies and many pieces
.
“Professional judges,” said the elf, “would any of you like to say anything to help our amateur judges make their decision?”
“I would,” said Callie Dwight of Hannover Talent Industries, stepping forward with an authoritative air and grabbing the microphone from the elf. “Hello, Wisconsin people,” she said, with a crooked, jittery smile that was more like a sneer. “Whatever you farmy, country people decide, I hope you won’t forget that the grand prize winners won’t need to just be great bakers. This is a very important prize, and the winning team will need to have a standout on-air presence.”
The nine local judges nodded, taking their responsibility seriously.
“We’ll be creating a whole new show, and we have every intention of it becoming a major success,” Callie continued, “so we need you to choose wisely. You can do that for us, right folks?”
The locals responded accordingly, with enthusiastic “Yesses!” and “We sure cans!” and “You betchas!”
“Well, then,” said Callie, before handing the microphone back to the elf, “I’m confident you’ll make the right choice.”
“Would any of the rest of you like to add anything?” asked the elf.
The other three professional judges shook their heads.
“Then we’re ready to vote,” said the elf. “These nine judges have each received two candies: A butterscotch candy and a peppermint candy. They’ll be using these to vote.”
“Are you kidding me?” asked one of the judges, preparing to spit his peppermint disk out into his hand.
“Take another,” said the elf, passing the bag of candy down the line. “If you’d like to vote for Team Spader you’ll drop a butterscotch candy into this black bag. If you’d like to vote for Team Buefred, you’ll drop a peppermint candy into the black bag. Any questions?”
The judges shook their heads.
“Good,” said the elf. “Please discreetly select your candy of choice. Here we go!” He then stepped forward, holding the open bag. The first judge’s hand shot out, opened quickly, hovering just a fraction of an inch over the voting bag, allowing a piece of candy to fall in. Eight more judges repeated the process. The snare drummer was back in action, filling the otherwise silent gym with his nerve-wracking, rapid trill. When the last candy dropped, the drumming faded, leaving a heavy, quivering cloud of expectant silence hanging over them all.
“Without further hesitation, let’s tally the votes!” yelled the elf, reaching in the bag. He slowly pulled out one piece of candy, shot his arm out theatrically towards the crowd, and opened his fist, revealing a peppermint. “One peppermint candy! That’s a vote for Team Buefred!” he announced. The crowd cheered. The Buefred ladies were too nervous to even get in on it. They were each wringing their hands in aggravated silence. Barbara had chewed the inside of her cheek nearly raw.
The two judges from Los Angeles shot each other worried glances.
The elf went for another one. “Two peppermint candies!” he cheered, showing the proof to the spectators. Kristina Spader slammed her fist against the table in front of her and shook her head in disgust.
“Annnnd, let’s draw another…. Three peppermint candies!” bellowed the elf. Cassie Dwight stepped forward, shaking her head, but the elf continued pulling candies from the bag. “Four peppermint candies! Folks, you know what this means. If this next candy is a peppermint, Team Buefred has won!”
“Stop!” cried Cassie Dwight.
The elf pretended not to hear her. He reached in the bag and pulled out a fifth peppermint candy.
“We have a winner!” he announced. “Team Buefred has won our First Annual Yodel-ay-hee-hoo Yuletide Cookie Bake Off!” The elf poured the remaining contents of the bag out onto the table in front of him, revealing all peppermints. “As you can see, it’s a unanimous decision!” he added, just as a net of balloons, tinsel, and confetti snowflakes opened on the ceiling, its celebratory contents pouring down onto the crowd.
“You can quit calling this the first annual contest,” Brandi heard Bernard Wells telling the elf, “because we’ll never be dumb enough to do anything like this again!”
Before the Buefred sisters could fully register what had just happened, they were swarmed with television cameras. Barbara and Bonnie stepped back, somewhat stunned by all the cameras in their faces, but Brandi stepped right up, taking over, answering the reporters’ questions with perfect assuredness.
“Are you ready to be famous?” one newscaster asked Team Buefred.
“Yes!” Brandi shouted confidently.
“Do you have more recipes up your sleeves?” another wanted to know.
“Thousands,” said Brandi.
“Who are you doing this for?” asked another.
“For each other,” Brandi told them, “and our families, and to honor our mom.”
“And to find our dad,” Barbara added, nervously staring into the wrong camera.
“In time for Christmas,” Bonnie added.
“To find your dad?” asked a newscaster. All the camera crews pushed in a little closer, intrigued.
“Yes,” said Barbara, with Bonnie and Brandi nodding excitedly beside her. “He’s gone missing. We’re hoping he’ll see us on TV and find his way back to us.”
Upon hearing this, the Team Spader ladies, who had been standing off to the side, licking their wounds, decided they’d had enough.
“This whole contest has been rigged,” Kristina snapped, passing by them and giving Brandi a discreet little kick in the ankle. “We never could have won against sad-sacks like you three.”
“What my mom said,” Jessica growled, fighting back tears as she brushed past them.
“What my grandma said,” Samantha said, tossing her red and green hair in their faces.
* * *
Two weeks later
* * *
The show’s producers had wanted to act fast, capitalizing on the success of the contest, so here were all three Buefred sisters, together in their shiny, white, made-for-TV kitchen, about to shoot their first episode of the show that was being called The Buefred Sisters’ Baking Hour. What they hadn’t realized when they won the prize was that the first three shows were going to be live, and if they didn’t go well, they’d be canceled before they could earn a permanent spot.
Bonnie and Barbara thought this was terrible, but Brandi was used to this sort of thing, from back in the day.
“Okay, I’ve got five of my seven kids hooked up with Twitter accounts,” Bonnie told them, “even though I don’t normally let them go on there. They’re all going to be hashtagging it up, or whatever it is Tweeters do, trying to make it look like people are talking about our show. They said they’d get their friends involved, too.”
“What hashtag are they using?” asked Brandi.
“You got me!” said Bonnie.
“That’s perfect!” said Barbara. “I’ve got all the old folks at the nursing home ready to Facebook about us. I think. I mean… Oh, shoot. I have no idea what I’m talking about,” she admitted, “but a couple of the bed pan gals said they’d help set things up, and put the settings on public. Whatever that means.”
“Good job,” said Bonnie. “What about you, Brandi? Have you got anyone willing to help us out?”
“My kids have lacrosse practice tonight,” Brandi said, shrugging pathetically, “and Chet’s morel mushroom aficionado club is meeting at the wine bar. Sorry. My family’s just not that into me.”
“Well, at least you have us again,” said Barbara.
“Okay, ladies! It’s time,” a cameraman interrupted. “Take your places… and… rolling!”
“Welcome to our show,” Brandi began, the teleprompter helping her along. “Today my sisters Barbara and Bonnie and I will prepare our award-winning lemon bars. These bars were one of our mom’s favorites, and we know you’ll love them too! But first, our phone lines are open so you can get to know us better!”
“Our first caller is on the line,” announced the show’s p
roducer.
“Hello?” the three women said together, with nervous anticipation.
“Hellllo?” croaked an old, familiar voice. “This is Dob Buefred calling. Can you hear me?”
“Dad? Is that really you?” asked Brandi.
“Yes. It’s me. I couldn’t believe my luck, seeing you three girls on the television. I get so confused, and it’s hard for me to remember how to find you. But then I saw this number, and luckily, I was holding a phone, so I dialed you up. Is this really you, Brandi?”
“Yes, Dad! It’s really me!” The producer gave Brandi a big thumbs-up. This couldn’t be going better if they’d scripted it.
“Where are you, Dad?” asked Barbara. “We’re going to come and get you!”
“I was out for a drive, but I stopped at a bar. That’s where I am now. But which one, I can’t say. I’m looking for your mother. Have you seen her?”
The gravity of their father’s situation hit the three sisters, a wave of sadness washing over them all.
“She’s gone, Dad,” Bonnie said quietly.
“She’s gone,” Dob Buefred repeated. “You say she’s gone?”
“Yes, Dad,” said Brandi. “She’s gone.”
There was a long moment of silence.
“But, Dad, we’re doing this show in her honor,” Bonnie said with conviction. “She’s still alive in all our hearts. And there’s room on here for you, too!”
The producer nodded and gave them a thumbs up.
“We just need to get you here with us,” Bonnie reminded him.
“Well,” said Dob. “Let me look out the window… I’m somewhere in Hollywood. I can see the sign from here.”
At that news, several members of the crew sprang to their feet. Within an hour, Dob and his daughters were reunited, the show was renamed The Buefred Family’s Baking Hour, and they’d secured a three year contract, after becoming the most tweeted about live show in the history of the network.