by Coco Simon
“I’m sorry, but I’m sure I speak for all moms everywhere when I say, it’s time for dinner, and it’s time for people to be doing their own homework at their own desks. Though I very much appreciate your friends helping you,” she said with a smile. “I’m going to run up and change while you clear this up.”
“Aargh!” I made an annoyed noise. “We’re almost done!” I said, but she didn’t even turn around.
“Here, let me just trim this one, and you take that one . . .,” Katie said, switching the trays around, and then—crash! Just as I was taking it from her hands, a tray fell to the floor, and the large slab of gingerbread split into three pieces. It was totally my fault, although Katie began yelling “I’m so sorry!” at the top of her lungs.
“No!” I cried. “We don’t have time for error!” I dropped to my knees and lifted the tray back up. Biting my lip, I surveyed the damage. The others gathered around. “It’s totally not your fault, Katie,” I said.
“You can just make another one tomorrow, can’t you?” asked Emma.
“No! I need to be building tomorrow. Because Thursday is decorating, and it’s due Friday.”
“I bet we can glue it back together with frosting,” said Katie. She looked at her watch. “You know what, I do have to get home because I totally spaced that we have the math rally on Thursday, and unlike some people, it is not my best subject. I need to study.”
“Okay. I totally understand. Thanks, you guys. Thank you all so much for helping me.”
“It was fun!” said Katie, shrugging on her jacket.
Everyone cleaned up a little, but I shooed them out and did the rest myself. This way, I figured, if any more gingerbread broke, I’d only have myself to blame. I was so grateful to them for helping me, and I felt terrible that it was basically a three-night project. I knew I’d taken on too much—cheered along by Katie’s enthusiasm and willingness to help—but now I’d have to see it through. However, I didn’t foresee what would happen next.
Late that night, I was just about to shut down my computer when I spotted an IM from Katie. It said:
OMG Alexis I am so so so so sorry, but my mom quizzed me on my math, and I did so badly, she said I have to come straight home from school tomorrow and study. She’ll quiz me when she gets home, and if I do okay, I can come help you, but otherwise I have to stay home. I’m so sorry! Call me if you get this before 9:30.
I looked at my watch: 10:20.
I sat heavily on the edge of my bed. What was I going to do?
This was something that quacking would not help.
I was still sitting there ten minutes later, lost in thoughts of possibilities, when my mom came in to say good night.
“My goodness! You’re not even in bed yet and it’s ten thirty!”
I looked up, startled.
“What’s wrong?” she said, sitting down on my spare bed to face me.
“I have to build this gingerbread house all by myself tomorrow, and I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“What happened?” she asked, and I explained.
“Listen, sweetheart, do you absolutely have to do this immense and difficult project? Can’t we just quit while we’re ahead and help you with a pretty costume?”
“No!” I said forcefully. This presentation was going to kick butt. It had to.
“Okay, that’s pretty definite,” said my mom.
Then the two of us sat there for a minute, thinking.
Finally, my mom said, “What we need is someone who isn’t at work, doesn’t have homework, and knows how to build.”
And at the exact same minute our heads snapped up, and we looked at each other. “Granddad!”
She jumped up from the bed. “I’m going to call him now!” she said.
“At ten forty?” I cried as she fled out of my room.
“They always stay up for the eleven o’clock news. Anyway, this is an e-mer-gen-cy!” she trilled as she ran down the stairs.
I sat on my bed, too nervous to chase her and listen in. I just focused all my energy on hoping Granddad would be free and able to come. I crossed every finger and toe and squeezed my eyes tight. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I left my room and tiptoed to the top of the stairs, where I could just make out my mom’s end of the conversation.
“Yes, she gets out at three. That would be perfect. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh, we can’t tell you how much we appreciate this. Thank you!”
I pumped my fist in the air. Victory!
The next morning at school, I told my friends how my granddad was coming and that they could have the afternoon off. I was actually relieved, because it just didn’t feel right for them to spend so much time on my project. Katie insisted she’d come by after she was done, but I asked her to save the trip until Thursday, when I’d really need her.
I walked quickly to math, knowing who would be there and on my team for the math rally practice too. I just wanted to get it over with, though. I hated Mr. Donnelly for a minute right then, for putting Olivia and me together. It was such a total downer. But the sooner it was finished, the better.
In the classroom, he’d already moved the chairs around into little clusters. But there wasn’t anyone there yet. I sat in my seat, and guess who walked in next?
She and I looked at each other, caught and frozen, like deer in headlights. I opened my mouth to say something, but Mr. Donnelly came bustling in with a cheery hello. The moment had passed, and the room quickly filled.
Our group was good, and I hated to admit it, but Olivia was one of the best (along with yours truly, of course). She didn’t say one mean thing to me for almost the entire class, either. Actually, she didn’t say anything to me. She just acted like I wasn’t there. She did say one meanish thing to George Martinez when he missed a question, but that was all. I started to wonder if my friends were right. Maybe I had won. It was a weird, new feeling—kind of powerful—and I’m embarrassed to admit to myself that I kind of like it.
But then I got a really hard question I knew the answer to, and in my excitement, I jumped up, and my chair knocked back and tipped over. Everyone laughed, including Mr. Donnelly and finally, me. It was funny, I realized. When I’d successfully answered the question and sat back down, Olivia leaned over, so everyone could hear, and said, “Very exciting. Kind of like a bake-off, right, Alexis?”
So I turned to look her right in the eye and said, “Meet me after class.” Just like that!
OMG. After I said it, my whole body flooded with a cold feeling, then a hot feeling. My knees wobbled, and I didn’t look around to see who’d heard me. I just willed myself not to blush. What the heck was I going to say to Olivia Allen after class? I did not know. All I knew was that this had gone on long enough and it was totally distracting me.
The remaining fifteen minutes of class flew by, of course, and when the bell rang, I rose, packed my things, and waited for Olivia outside the door. It took her so long, I had to look back in to see if she slipped by without me seeing her (which really would have been impossible), but she was still there, slowly loading her bag.
Finally, finally, just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, she came through the door and into the hall.
She stopped and then looked at me with a challenging tilt to her chin. “So?” she asked. “What do you want?”
I took a deep breath and just plunged in.
“To apologize. I may have said something rude about you, and I’m sure you heard about it. I wanted to apologize and to say that it wasn’t nice and probably wasn’t true.”
Olivia just stared at me. A moment went by, and then she said, “It isn’t true. I happen to be a really good skier. We used to go all the time.”
So Maggie was right! Olivia had been holding this grudge all this time. Wow.
“Well, I am sorry for being mean. I regret hurting your feelings. And now I’d like you to apologize as well.” I can’t believe my nerve!
“For what?” Olivia asked, narrowing her eyes.
>
“For treating me terribly. For embarrassing me on purpose. For teasing me, mocking me, and humiliating me. What I said was wrong, but your punishment has been unbearable, and it needs to stop.”
Olivia blinked.
“Well . . .,” she started. “Thanks. Thanks for apologizing. I didn’t know why you said that, and I thought it was really mean.”
“It was,” I said. But I had to hold my ground. I wanted Olivia to apologize too. I took another deep breath. “But probably not mean enough that you had to torture me for the past few weeks. You were really mean back, and it’s a terrible way to treat another person. Also, I’m not sure why you are so fascinated by me that you are always watching me. I guess I’m flattered.”
Olivia looked around. None of her BFFs were around, and it was just Olivia and me. Was Olivia nervous? Embarrassed? I couldn’t tell. “I don’t watch you all the time,” she finally said.
“Well, you seem to pay attention to a lot of things I do. I guess I’m just really interesting to watch.”
Olivia tossed her hair. “It’s not personal, Alexis.”
“Oh, but it is,” I said. “Especially when you embarrass me. I mean, look how upset you got when I made fun of you for possibly not being a good skier. And that was only once!”
Olivia flinched. “I guess I’m sorry too, then.”
We stared at each other for a moment longer, then I put out my hand. She looked down at it kind of scornfully, but then she took it, and we shook hands.
And then she walked away.
Meanwhile, I was about to faint. I fell back against a locker and just rested there to regain my strength before moving on. Could this be the end of it? It felt like a dream. I hoped it wasn’t.
CHAPTER 10
The Finishing Touches
At lunch—I couldn’t believe it—but I didn’t run and find my friends to gloat. I grabbed a tray, loaded it up, and ate lunch alone in the math lab. I felt like a traitor and a chicken, but somehow, I couldn’t face them and then not tell them what happened, but I also didn’t want to sit at lunch and go through a huge I-said–she-said thing. Weirdly, it seemed disloyal to Olivia. What happened after math was private. I needed a little while to think of a way to sum it up to my friends that was truthful but vague.
After school I flew home on my bike to find my granddad’s pickup in the driveway. He had some big thing under a tarp in the bed of the truck, and I hoped it wasn’t a power tool we needed for the gingerbread house!
“Yahoo!” I yelled, and raced into the house.
“Hi, honey!” he called out upon seeing me.
I ran to him and gave him a huge squeeze, then I pulled away and beamed at him.
“Thank you!” I cried.
He hugged me again and said, “Glad to be of service, ma’am. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
So I walked him through the plans and showed him the gingerbread slabs, the outlines Matt had done, and explained what we needed to do. He seemed unruffled by all of it, but I guess when you’ve spent fifty years building big houses, a little gingerbread one doesn’t seem so hard.
“Okay, so first, I’ll lay out the board for the base, and then I’ll make the royal icing,” I said.
“Actually, first, I want you to help me to get your mom’s present out of the truck,” he said.
“Okay, what is it?”
“The dollhouse! Your dad called this morning and asked me to bring it.”
I clapped my hands. “Yay! Do you think we need to hide it?”
“I think so.”
I scurried to open the doors to the basement, and we carefully carried the dollhouse down there, setting it on my dad’s workbench.
“He’s going to make a stand for it and put it in the sunroom, from what I understand,” said my granddad, winking at me. My dad’s not that handy, but he always tries to make things, and Granddad always comes and fixes them. Kind of like me with the gingerbread house, I guess!
“We’re really keeping you busy, Granddad!” I giggled.
When we finished with the dollhouse, we went back upstairs, brought in my granddad’s overnight bag (he’d sleep over here tonight, because it would probably be late when we finished), and then we began.
I made the icing while he surveyed the pieces and got things lined up in the order in which we’d build them.
“We should build the three floors separately and then give them as long as possible to dry and set. Then we can construct the whole house,” he said after a minute. “Because you won’t have the time to let this dry in stages overnight. We might need to use some supports in the end—which is tricky—but we’ll see how it goes.”
Meanwhile, the icing was kind of runny. I lifted the spoon and poured some out. “This doesn’t look right,” I said with a frown.
He came over and looked into the bowl. “Add more sugar. Thicken it up,” he suggested.
“You think?”
He laughed. “That’s what you do with cement if it’s too runny. Just add more powder!”
“Okay!” Now I was laughing too. But it worked!
The first thing we did was repair the broken wall. We could assemble that section last, to give it time to stabilize. My granddad said if it didn’t work, we could add some stabilizers. He’d brought something called dowels, among other things, that we could set in with frosting to hold things in place. I hoped it didn’t come to that.
Dylan came home after a while, then my mom, and finally my dad. My dad and granddad exchanged a nod and a wink when my mom wasn’t looking, and my granddad gestured down, as if to say, It’s in the basement. Meaning the dollhouse, of course.
The gingerbread house didn’t look like much at that stage, and it was still pretty portable, so my mom had us move the assembly from the counter to the kitchen table; we’d eat in the dining room since my granddad was here.
As we picked up the various sections, a few walls began to wobble.
“Oh no!”
My mom jumped over to steady them, and we inched to the table.
“Phew!” I said, setting it down.
“You couldn’t have made a costume?” my mom teased.
My granddad and I looked at each other, and smiled.
“Nah. Too easy,” he said.
“Costumes are for wimps!” I added.
The timing worked out well. We ate dinner while the glued sections dried, then we went back to work. It was nearly nine o’clock when we set the sections on top of one another. However, things started to wobble almost immediately, and my granddad rushed to lift the second story off the first.
“Supports,” he said grimly. “We’re gonna need ’em after all.”
I’m a little ashamed to tell you the next part of this story, but here’s the truth of what happened: I went to bed, and my parents and my granddad stayed up till midnight finishing the gingerbread house. It’s horrible but true. In business, it’s called “outsourcing,” which means having someone else do the work when you can’t. Of course, you would usually pay those people, and I’m not about to pay my relatives, so the comparison ends there. The bottom line is, I bit off more than I could chew, and all to show off to an enemy. What a sorry reason for a project.
However, when I woke up the next morning, it felt like Christmas. I ran downstairs, and there it was, in the middle of the kitchen table: the finished gingerbread house, identical (in shape, anyway) to my mom’s dollhouse.
“Oh!” I said, clapping my hands.
I heard someone behind me, and turned.
“Turned out pretty great, didn’t it?” said my granddad, sipping his coffee.
“It’s awesome. Thank you so much!” I gave him a big hug.
“Only one problem,” he said.
“What?”
“How’re you going to fit this thing in your car?”
It wasn’t long before we realized that the only solution would be for my granddad to come back with his tarp and his truck and everything again tomorrow to transport th
e house to school. I don’t know how I’ll ever thank this man enough. All I know is, I’m glad I lined up Matt to help when we got there!
That afternoon, my house was a festival of sugar. Katie, Mia, Emma, and I were like whirling dervishes getting this house finished. We had four little workstations, and we were like elves—busy, busy!
Katie trimmed and set the wrought-iron railings along the porch and roof with frosting and black licorice whips. That was the hardest part, if you ask me.
I shingled the roof with black candy wafers.
Mia piped white decorative trim around the windows as shutters and window frames. And Emma created the windows (the second hardest thing).
After about an hour, it was really looking good. After two hours, it was incredible. Katie wanted to keep going, but I had to put on my CEO hat and say enough was enough. We could work on this thing forever, but after a certain point it wasn’t worth it. The result was already spectacular, and we didn’t need to go on; it just wouldn’t be an efficient use of our time.
Mia took out her phone and snapped dozens of photos for our website. We even e-mailed a couple to Matt, so he could see how well it turned out, and some to my grandparents, since they were in on it from the beginning. And, of course, we’d print out a photo for our time capsule.
We cleaned up, and then I sent my friends home with huge hugs and profuse thank-yous. We had a big day again tomorrow, so a break would do us all good. Plus, everyone had homework, and I had to put in the last finishing touches to my oral report.
After they left, I sat for a minute in the kitchen, admiring our work. It was really beautiful. It was funny how you felt like you could just keep working on something—adding this or that cute thing, improving what you’d already done, thinking up a clever new detail. It made me understand how my mom must’ve felt working on her real dollhouse. It could be an endless project if you wanted it to be.
When my family got home, they were totally wowed by the gingerbread house. Inside, I was bursting with pride, but I played it cool. The truth was, I still couldn’t wait to see Olivia’s face tomorrow when I brought it in. I knew I shouldn’t care, but I did.