by Coco Simon
“Thanks,” I replied listlessly.
Katie was reading the directions aloud now. “We need to roll the dough out to a quarter-inch in thickness and then cut it into the shapes we need. I’ll cut four equal squares for walls, and we can put aside two to add windows and another to add a door, okay?”
I watched her work and noticed how easily it came to her. Her hands did what she wanted them to, and things turned out beautiful looking as well as delicious.
Katie slid the tray into the oven to bake and then continued poring over the instructions. It wasn’t that interesting to me, and I felt bad, like Katie was doing all the work for me. But she did seem to be enjoying it. And it had been her idea in the first place.
I went to check on Mia’s progress, and things were looking good. The cakes were baking and smelling great, and she was whipping up two kinds of frosting. The one for the apple-cinnamon cakes would be cream cheese, with caramelized apple chunks on top, and the other was a fluffy vanilla cream, for the cookie cakes. I sampled both and liked the cream-cheese one better.
“You could use this with any kind of fruit, you know,” said Mia, looking around the kitchen. “Caramelized bananas would be delicious. Pear. Even pineapple.”
“Yum,” I agreed. The word “pear” stuck in my mind for a minute, and then I realized why. My mom’s dress! Maybe we should do a pear cupcake for her! And we could cover a platter in yellow-and-white gingham fabric or paper and then arrange the cakes in a pear shape; maybe pipe little green pears on top of each one! That could be cute.
I checked on Emma and Mona’s minis. She was ready to frost, so I jumped in and helped. We finished quickly, and then it was time for my gingerbread to come out.
Everyone gathered around to watch Katie handle the bread. First, she lifted the walls off the tray and then set them to cool on a wire rack for just a minute. Then, one at a time, she trimmed them to make the edges perfect (gingerbread expands a lot in the oven), and then she popped the scored areas out with a knife. The finished product looked great.
While they cooled, she readied her supplies. She had made a bowl of icing, which would hold everything together. It was white, but we could dye it any color we wanted when we did our real project. She also had a cardboard base where she’d drawn the outline of the house, like a blueprint. In the middle of the outline she set two unopened soup cans. The cans would prop the walls up while the icing dried, so they wouldn’t fall over.
“Katie, you’ve thought of everything! Thanks!” I cried.
Katie smiled modestly. “I think this is really fun. Maybe if we get good at it, we could start a sideline in fancy gingerbread houses!”
“We could charge a lot of money for them,” remarked Mia.
“I’ll have to run the numbers on that, because they’re pretty labor intensive,” I added.
“What does that mean?” asked Emma.
“It means it takes a lot of hours to build them, and at a certain point, it’s not worth it. Time is money.”
“But you’re the one who always says, ‘If you’re going to hang out with your best friends, you might as well be making money while you’re doing it,’ ” Emma pointed out.
I grinned. “I’m glad someone’s listening!”
“Oh please,” said Mia, laughing. “We all know your mottoes by heart. ‘Failing to plan is planning to fail!’ ” she said in a chipper voice.
“ ‘Business first!’ ” cried Katie.
“ ‘Knowledge is power!’ ” added Emma, laughing.
“All right, stop! This is embarrassing!” I said. My face was red, but it was funny, and it felt good to have friends who knew me so well. I looked over my shoulder. I just didn’t want Matt to hear them!
“We have to make sure we get all those little Alexis quotes into the time capsule,” said Emma.
I rolled my eyes.
“You are a character, Alexis,” said Mia, shaking her head and still laughing.
“Thanks. I think,” I said.
Katie deemed the walls sufficiently cool, and we began assembling them. It wasn’t easy. The icing was slippery, and the walls were surprisingly heavy, and it took a little getting used to. Katie thickened up the icing with more confectioners’ sugar, so it was a little pastier (I wouldn’t have thought of that but was glad she did). That did the trick.
We very quickly had the four walls standing, and with the little door and windows cut out, it looked really cute.
“So once it’s built, how long do you wait to decorate it?” I asked.
“Overnight,” replied Katie.
I did some calculations. “We’d have to bake Tuesday, build Wednesday, decorate Thursday. Which means I need the plans ready by Tuesday morning.”
“Monday,” corrected Katie. “Because you’d need to print them out, then cut them out so they can be traced, and I bet that takes a while. Don’t forget, you’ll also need a good shopping trip to get all the supplies. We’ll probably need a trip to the baking store at the mall. Maybe this weekend.”
I smiled at her. That place was heaven for Katie, and she didn’t get to go too often. Again, I was grateful for her use of the word “we.”
“Okay. I guess we have our work cut out for me,” I joked.
“We sure do!” agreed Katie.
We finished and then packed Mona’s cupcakes for delivery the next morning. Then we called Matt down for a taste test of the two kinds of sample cupcakes (my idea). He was happy to oblige.
The cookies and milk was first, and he liked it, but didn’t rave.
The second he bit into the apple-cinnamon one, though, it was the clear winner.
“Wow. Oh! This one is off-the-chart good!” he said with his mouth full. “It’s insane! You’ve got to make these.” He crammed the rest of the cake into his mouth. “Can I have another?” he asked with his mouth full, gesturing toward the plate.
“Please?” prompted Emma, exasperated. Her brothers drive her crazy.
I gladly handed him another, “please” or no “please.” It was fun to see someone enjoy our cupcakes this much, and it was extra special that it was Matt, whom I secretly love, but also because he’s helped us out so many times. He’s a big supporter of the Cupcake Club, which I appreciate.
“How’s the house?” he asked, turning to look at it.
“Pretty good!” I said. “Katie’s a whiz!”
Katie blushed modestly.
“The hard part’s going to be making the blueprints or templates or whatever,” I said.
Matt nodded, swallowing his last bite. “I can help you with that,” he offered.
“Really?”
“Sure, no prob,” he said. “I have a CAD program we can run. It will be easy.”
“Okay! Thanks! What’s CAD?”
“Computer-aided design. It turns your ideas into blueprints.”
“Cool.”
“I’ll just need the design,” he said.
“Right,” I agreed.
“You do have the design, right?” he prompted.
“Well . . . not exactly,” I admitted.
“But she will very soon!” Katie said brightly. “Right?”
“Right,” I repeated miserably.
“Uh-oh!” said Matt.
Trudging home from Emma’s, I tried to think of how I could get some kind of plans or measurements together for the gingerbread house. I’d looked online for hours but couldn’t find anything close to what I was hoping. There had been a few kinds of houses that looked good, but they were so complicated—so professional—I couldn’t begin to even think about taking them on.
I’d have to ask my parents at dinner, to see if they had any ideas.
When my mom called me to come in for dinner at seven, I was lying on the sofa in the den (which is also my mom’s home office), watching my favorite show, Celebrity Ballroom, and sorting paper clips by color from a big bin into a small tackle box. It was very relaxing. I almost couldn’t pry myself away.
At the table,
I must’ve sighed one too many times, because my mom stopped eating and then looked at me carefully. “What’s up, sweetheart?” she asked.
Dylan was out, so my mom and dad and I could speak freely without worrying about Dylan butting in or ragging on me.
I knew my mom was assuming this had to do with Olivia, and I was glad to say it didn’t. “It’s my class project,” I said morosely. “We have to do a presentation with a visual component on Victorian times for English class.”
“Well, what are you doing?”
“A Victorian house made out of gingerbread,” I said.
My mom and dad both burst out laughing.
“Sorry, honey,” said my dad. “It’s just . . . Of all of a parent’s worst nightmares . . . The class project thing . . . And to have it be something so intense like that. It’s just funny to us.”
“Like when Dylly had to do that Alaska project!” My mom laughed.
“And she insisted on making an igloo out of sugar cubes!” added my dad, howling.
“A huge igloo!” My mom roared with laughter. “Two thousand sugar cubes!”
“And the glue!” They were gasping with laughter now.
“I’m glad you think this is funny,” I said, without even cracking a smile.
“Wait, is this something the teacher assigned or you picked?” asked my dad, mopping his eyes with his napkin.
“Well, I kind of picked it. It was Katie’s idea.”
“Can you change it?” asked my mom hopefully.
I shook my head, picturing Olivia’s face when I brought in my fantastic creation. No way would I change now.
“You couldn’t do a costume?” she asked.
I made an aggravated sound. I wished they would ban the word “costume” from the English language for a week!
“And how far have you gotten?” asked my dad.
I shrugged. “Nowhere.”
“And when’s it due?” asked my mom.
“Next Friday,” I said.
“At least it’s not due tomorrow!” remarked my dad, and the two of them got to hysterically laughing again.
I stood up. “Until you two can control yourselves, I will be leaving the table. Thank you for dinner,” I said.
“No, stay, stay. We’re sorry, sweetheart. We won’t laugh again,” my dad replied.
“We promise,” added my mom.
They could barely suppress their smiles, but I sat back down again, anyway. How could two individuals be so annoying? I wondered.
“So what’s the first step?” asked my dad.
I sighed heavily. I could barely describe it. “I need to find a Victorian house to use as a model for the gingerbread house, so we can put the measurements into a CAD program and create templates for the gingerbread.”
“Oookaay . . .,” said my dad, thinking.
My mom bit her lip, staring into space.
“There’s a Victorian out on Route 20,” said my dad to my mom. “You know the one?”
She nodded, but she was still distracted.
“Maybe we could go knock on their door, ask if we could measure?” He shrugged.
“No. I’ve got it!” My mom snapped her fingers, grinning. “I have got it!”
“What?” my dad and I asked in surprise.
“My old dollhouse! The one we’re going to see at Granny’s tomorrow! It’s a Victorian!” She folded her arms in triumph. “We’ll just measure that!”
“Oh, Mom!” I cried, and I threw my arms around her neck. “Yay!”
“Let the games begin!” said my dad.
CHAPTER 6
The Little House
The trip to my grandmother’s only takes about an hour. It’s too bad we don’t go more often, but with everything we have going on, it’s hard to find the time to get out there. Usually she just comes to us, which she says she loves, because she gets to see us “in our own environment.”
But my granny’s house is really neat. It’s old and it rambles. It’s not supertall; the second story has only two of the bedrooms in it, and both are kind of in the eaves, with little dormer windows bumped out, and window seats. But there have been so many additions to the back of the house over the last two hundred years that it twists and turns and teems with hidden nooks and crannies. It’s great for hide-and-seek.
As it turned out, Dylan had cheerleading practice and couldn’t come. (I think she never really had any interest in coming—she just wanted to be invited.) So it was just my mom and I who went, which was better, anyway. When we got there, my granny and granddad (who isn’t really my granddad, but I call him that because he’s the only one I’ve ever known) were eagerly waiting for us. He had already gone to the Milburn Deli and bought sandwiches, coleslaw, and hard-boiled eggs, plus Cokes and chips and peanut butter Kandy Kakes for dessert, which we always have when we visit. It’s junk food heaven (kind of my mom’s worst nightmare!) and delicious.
First, we ate at the kitchen table, and afterward, while Granddad cleaned up, Granny, Mom, and I headed into the dining room to look at all the photos they’d laid out for us. I was dying to see the dollhouse, but I didn’t want to seem pushy, so I kept my mouth shut for the moment.
“Lexi, look at this adorable picture of your mom,” said Granny, holding out a photo. I took it and carefully inspected it, surprised by what I saw. It was my mom in the now-famous pear dress, but what surprised me was how messy she looked. My mom is always as neat as a pin—not a hair out of place, her clothes perfect, everything under control. But here, in the pear dress, her hair was wild and her knees were dirty, and one sock was falling down, and on the other foot, her shoelace was untied. And she had a big red mustache, like she’d been drinking red juice.
“Mom!” I said. “I can’t believe it! Is this really you?” I held the photo toward her. She took it and looked, then she laughed.
“What a mess I was!” she said.
My granny peered over her shoulder. “You were adorable. I still have that dress somewhere. I just couldn’t put my hands on it for today. I’ll keep looking.”
I took back the photo and then studied it again: my mom’s wild looping curls (the same ones she carefully blow-dries straight every day), her dirty face (the one that now has always-perfect makeup on it), her messy outfit (ahem).
“What happened?” I asked. “When did you get so neat?”
My mom laughed a little, like she was embarrassed, but my granny said, “After your granddad died—your grandfather Jack, I mean—your mom grew up a lot, and quickly.”
“I had to!” she protested.
My granny chuckled. “Well, I don’t know about that. It wasn’t like you didn’t have anyone to look after you. You still had me!”
“I know, but I didn’t want to make any trouble or more work for you,” said my mom. “And you always had that motto. . . . ”
My granny waved her hand, laughing. “Oh please! I only said that a few times.”
“What? No! You said it every day!” protested my mom.
Now this was fascinating stuff. They sounded like me and my mom. Or maybe more like Dylan and my mom.
“What was the motto?” I asked.
“ ‘You can’t lay down and die just because he did,’ ” said my mom. “That’s what she always said.”
My granny gave an exasperated huff. “I only said it a few times. And I was saying it more for myself than for you.” She turned to me. “Your mother was a wild and carefree child, but when her dad died, she became very serious and hard on herself. She felt she had to be perfect and look perfect, so no one would feel sorry for her. It broke my heart. She already was perfect.” My granny reached over and gave my mom a hug.
Now my mom was kind of teary. Wow. This was heavy stuff. It would definitely not be going in the time capsule!
“Oookaay . . .,” I said. “Awk-ward!”
They laughed.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” said my mom, grabbing a Kleenex out of her bag and then blowing her nose.
�
�All right, who wants to see the dollhouse?!” my granddad boomed, coming into the room, clueless to all the girlie drama going on.
“Me!” I yelled, relieved to be getting out of there. I am so not one for crying or being all huggy or anything. Plus, I was dying to see if this little house would solve all my problems.
“Let’s go, champ!” said my granddad.
In the finished basement rec room, the dollhouse was set out on a waist-high table, with a sheet over it. My granddad said, “Close your eyes. I want you to get the full effect, just at first.”
So I closed my eyes, and I could hear him rustling, then I heard a click and another click, and when he told me to open my eyes, the overhead lights were out, but the dollhouse was lit up and glowing like a real little home!
“Oh!” I gasped, and rushed across the room to see it.
It was three stories tall, with a wraparound porch, a stained-glass window, a turret, wrought-iron balconies, and very beautifully decorated rooms—seven in all, not counting the porch, which had wicker furniture and fake plants and flowers on it.
There was a kitchen and a formal dining room on the lowest level. Then a master bedroom and living room on the second floor, and at the top, a children’s room, a bathroom, and a playroom with a little crib in it.
All the rooms were wallpapered in tiny patterns, there were beautiful needlepoint and knitted rugs on all the floors, and embroidered curtains at every window. The living room furniture was upholstered and actually looked comfy, and the master bedroom had a bed with an upholstered headboard and a high canopy.
I heard my mom and my granny enter the room.
“It still works!” cried my mom.
“Actually, Jim got it working again,” said my granny.
“It didn’t need much,” said my granddad modestly. “Just some wiring that had frayed, and a new battery system.”
Listening to him talk, I began to formulate a plan. “You’re pretty handy, right, Granddad?” I said.
“Uh-oh!” He laughed. “What am I in for now?”
But I explained my project and what we needed, and he was thrilled to help. He had run a big construction company for many years, so building was his thing. I don’t know why I didn’t think of enlisting him earlier.