Rocky Road Ahead

by Coco Simon

  Inside were articles like I’d seen on the website the day before, many of them featuring gourmet shops and restaurants from around the country. The magazine would do a little profile of the chef or owner of a store and then talk about the menu and the recipes. I kept flipping through the magazine and somehow ended up on the Letters to the Editors page. My eyes widened.

  Three of the six letters were from people who wanted corrections to the articles about their business. One mentioned a recipe that had been misquoted and had resulted in a disgusting dish. Another letter said that the magazine had misquoted her. And a third said the magazine had “willfully maligned” her business, which I took to mean criticized it too much. Eek.

  After each letter the magazine’s editors apologized. I supposed it was good that they admitted their mistakes and published them like this, but still. How many people had seen the original articles and been misled? How many of those would ever see the corrections?

  I sat back in my chair and stared into space. My mom would have to be very careful about what she said in her Yay Gourmet interview. So would my friends and I. I wouldn’t want Molly’s to be a victim of these sorts of reporting errors. I was still super-excited for Mom, but now I felt a little nervous about releasing Molly’s to the world on the internet and having no control over what was said about it. Maybe it was better to be small and not well known, if at least you could be sure you were in control of what was being said about you or your business.

  The bell rang, and I quickly returned the magazines to the display area and presented the food photography book to Mrs. K. to check out. After a wave and a promise to return the next day, I dashed to my math class, the book clutched under my arm.

  Math was fine, but I was distracted by the things I’d read in the library and was also eager to start flipping through the food photography book I now had. By the end of class I was counting the hours until I could go home.

  “Hey, Allie,” said a voice.

  I looked up from repacking my backpack. It was Patrick Ryan, a boy whose birthday party I’d been at the previous weekend. Sierra’s new band had been playing at the party because the drummer, Reagan, was Patrick’s cousin. Sierra had invited Tamiko and me and her twin, Isabel, so that we could see her play, and there’d turned out to be lots of kids there from Vista Green—including Colin! It had been really fun.

  “Hey, Patrick! I’ve been hoping to run into you to say thanks for the party the other night.”

  “Thanks for coming! Small world, right?”

  “Totally!” I agreed.

  Patrick and I strolled out of math class and realized we were headed in the same direction, so we chatted as we walked.

  “The Wildflowers are awesome, don’t you think?” I asked. That was the name of Sierra’s band.

  “Yeah. I really couldn’t believe it. I mean, Reagan’s always been musical, but to see them come together so well, it was impressive.” Then Patrick glanced at me. “Are you friends with Tessa, who writes the songs? The one who likes Colin?”

  Wait, what? My heart skipped a beat. Tessa was the guitarist in the Wildflowers, and Sierra had told me that she had a crush on Colin. But how did Patrick know about it?

  “Um . . . n-no?” I stuttered. Then I added awkwardly: “She seems nice?”

  “Uh-huh. I only talked with her a little bit, but she seems supercool, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yeah. I . . . barely met her.”

  “She and Colin would make a cute couple. I’ll have to dream up some other reason to have a party with a band so that we can get those two together again.” Patrick stopped outside the science lab. “Well, this is me! See you next time we have math!”

  My head was spinning. Did Colin know about Tessa’s feelings? Did he like her back?

  I sighed. Not that it mattered who Colin liked.

  Right?

  But if so, then why did my conversation with Patrick leave such a bitter taste in my mouth?

  Colin had chess after school that day, so he wasn’t on my bus home, thankfully. I was having trouble processing this new image of Colin and Tessa as a possible couple. It didn’t match with the Colin who’d made me feel so good about my headband that morning. I was feeling . . . weird, I guess. I flipped through the food photography book on the bus a little bit, but I couldn’t read it while we were in motion, or I’d get carsick.

  Once I was home, though, I curled up on the window seat in my room—a window seat never got old—and I read through the photo book with my cat, Diana. But what I learned made me even more nervous about the Yay Gourmet feature than I’d been before!

  It turned out that food photographers used lots of tricks of the trade to make food—or should I say “food”—look appealing. For example, droplets of milk were often actually white glue. Chicken breasts were often painted by hand to make grill marks. Stylists used red lipstick to brighten strawberries and mashed potatoes to thicken milkshakes. Worst of all, vanilla ice cream was usually just white lard—animal fat—scooped from a bucket with an ice cream scooper. Ugh. Talk about unappetizing!

  The book said that ice cream was the hardest thing of all to photograph because it melted under the lights. As soon as you got something that looked delicious and perfect, you had to light it with hot studio lights, and everything melted!

  At that, I closed the book in disgust.

  Scoops of lard at Molly’s?

  Never!

  CHAPTER THREE

  ANNE’S ADVICE

  At breakfast the next morning I remembered to ask my mom when I could tell people about the Yay Gourmet article.

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so glad you’re excited!” she said. “But let’s keep it between all of us at least until the reporter comes. That way we know for sure that they’re doing it, and we’ll have a feel for when it will run. I’d hate to tell people about it and then not have it come out.”

  “Hmm,” I said. I knew she was right, but keeping it a secret was going to be easier said than done!

  I felt awkward and nervous that morning on the bus with Colin, now that I was thinking of him and Tessa as a “cute couple.” I couldn’t help but take everything he said the wrong way.

  “Are you going away this summer?” he asked.

  And I heard: “Will you be around to see me start dating Tessa?”

  “What are you and your friends doing this weekend?” he asked.

  And I heard: “It’s nice that you have friends to do things with, since you don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Have you heard the new song by Beyoncé?” he asked.

  And I heard: “I’m really into bands and singer-songwriters right now . . . especially Tessa.”

  By the end of the bus ride, I was totally grumpy. Colin did seem a little perplexed when I huffed off the bus and down the hall to class with barely a good-bye, but what could I have said? I wasn’t even sure why I was so grumpy.

  Unfortunately, I had a newspaper meeting scheduled for lunchtime that day . . . and it was run by Colin. There was no escaping him! I considered skipping it, but I was still new enough that I was low on the newspaper totem pole, and I didn’t want to risk missing an assignment. Also, I liked the other kids on the paper, and hanging out and talking shop with them was fun. These meetings were one of the main ways I’d made some friends and fit in a little at Vista Green.

  Colin called the meeting to order.

  “Any feedback on last week’s articles?” he asked the assembled group.

  Tom, one of the oldest kids on the paper, groaned. “We had an error in the school lunch article,” he said.

  “Oh no! What was it?” asked Sara, the managing editor. She was in charge of all the proofreading, and she worked with our designer to make sure all the articles were laid out neatly and not cut off.

  “Actually, it was a factual error,” said Tom.

  “Even worse!” said Colin, smacking his forehead. “What was it?”

  “We said that the kitchen lady we profiled was new this
year, but she has actually worked here for six years!”

  “That’s not so bad,” I said, trying to ease his unhappiness. “I thought you were going to say something really awful.”

  Tom looked at me in surprise. “But don’t you see? It’s basically saying we never noticed her before!”

  I felt everyone staring at me. Why had I opened my mouth? “Oh” was all I could say. My cheeks were starting to burn, and I tried to will the blush to stop rising, but it didn’t work.

  “We’ll need to run a correction,” said Colin briskly.

  Sara nodded and made a note on her legal pad.

  Then Colin cleared his throat. “Does anyone have any good ideas for feature articles?”

  The room was silent. People looked around at one another expectantly, then down at their laps. Some people fiddled with the cuffs of their jeans or picked at their fingernails.

  “Has anyone read any good feature articles anywhere lately? Something that might inspire us? I’m not saying we’d copy the idea, but maybe it could spark something?” said Colin. He looked searchingly at us all; no one was willing to expose themselves by going first.

  Colin looked frustrated, and even though I was annoyed at him at that moment, I hated to see my friend suffer.

  “I . . . uh . . .” I gave a little cough. I knew Mom didn’t want me to talk about it yet, but I really wanted to give Colin an idea. “Molly’s Ice Cream is going to be featured on a famous website soon. Maybe we can reprint the website’s article in our newspaper?”

  Suddenly there was an excited buzz in the room.

  “Awesome!”

  “That place has the best ice cream.”

  “Which website is it?” asked Colin.

  “Or is it top secret until it’s published?” another staff writer added.

  I hesitated. “Um, I’m actually not allowed to say until they’ve scheduled it to run.”

  “Well,” Colin continued, “when will the article run, then?”

  “Umm . . . I’m not exactly sure,” I admitted.

  Colin let out a tiny sigh. “We’ll need more information before we can decide on anything. Also, I don’t think we can just reprint something that we didn’t write ourselves. It could be like plagiarism and become a whole big copyright mess.”

  I ducked my head, nodding. “Right. Sorry,” I said. Now my cheeks were blazing, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  However, my offering had broken the ice, and now ideas were whizzing around the room.

  “How about something on bake sales?”

  “Why are our dances so boring?”

  “We need new bike racks!”

  “What about the new crossing guard?”

  And so on.

  Meanwhile, I was annoyed at how Colin had immediately poked holes in the idea I had pitched. I mean, I’d been trying to bail him out! No one else had been suggesting anything, and I’d warmed up the crowd. He could have handled my idea a little better. I felt grumpy and embarrassed.

  “What about profiling some of the musicians in school?” asked Winnie, a seventh grader.

  There was some more buzz, and heads started nodding.

  “I know, like, four or five people who’d be really good. A cellist, a guitarist, a sixth grader who sings in an a cappella group,” continued Winnie.

  Colin was nodding. “I like it. Maybe a musician of the week?”

  Winnie’s cheeks turned pink with pride. “Sure! I’d love to do that!”

  “Great. Why don’t you pull together a list of people? Maybe check to see that they’re willing to be interviewed first. Then we’ll get that ball rolling. Okay?” Colin beamed at Winnie.

  Grr! Why was he being so nice to her? I was supposed to be his friend! He was supposed to like all my ideas!

  “Great. Thanks!” agreed Winnie. “I’m excited—so many musicians work so hard, and we have no idea that they even have these amazing talents.”

  Colin nodded. “I know what you mean. I have a friend who goes to a different school, and she’s really good at the guitar. She even writes her own songs. But she doesn’t perform very often, so most people have no idea about her hidden talent.”

  My stomach churned. Of course he was talking about Tessa.

  “Her own songs? That’s so cool!” said Winnie.

  “Anyway, I can’t wait to read your first article!” Colin continued, and Winnie blushed happily again. “What else have we got?”

  I was seething inside. I wasn’t about to offer up any more ideas for him to punch holes in, and then watch while he got all jazzed about someone else’s idea. Especially when that idea made him think of Tessa!

  I almost stood up and left, but I didn’t have a good enough excuse, and I didn’t want people to think I’d left just because I’d had to go to the bathroom really badly or something. So I stuck it out, and when the meeting wrapped up shortly after, I bolted. Normally I would have hung around and chatted with some of the other newspaper kids, but not that day. I went right to the bathroom and tried to video-chat Tamiko and Sierra for comfort.

  But they weren’t picking up. Maybe MLK had an assembly during lunch or something. Whatever it was, I suddenly felt very, very alone.

  Colin was my closest friend at Vista Green, and my two real besties were together somewhere without me.

  The day stank.

  I suffered through the rest of the day, waited until Colin had left on the early bus, and then rode home on the late bus with a bunch of sixth graders who were back from a science field trip to the wetlands. They were still all wound up and making birdcalls across the bus for the whole ride home. It was the ultimate punishment for the end of the day.

  I got off the bus and trudged home, where I found my mom making an early dinner before she popped back over to the test kitchen to work on two new flavors she was developing.

  “Hi, honey-bunny,” she said as I entered the kitchen.

  “Hey,” I said, dumping my backpack onto the floor near the door.

  She looked at me. “Everything okay?”

  I sighed and sat down at the kitchen table. I didn’t want to discuss Colin with my mom, so I started with my second-biggest concern. “I’m worried that the Yay Gourmet article will have mistakes.”

  She put her wooden spoon down on the spoon rest and turned to look at me. “Oh, sweetheart, don’t worry. I’m sure it will be fine.”

  “Yes, but what if they get things really, really wrong? Like, what if they misquote us or give the wrong address for the store, or have the wrong description for one of our flavors and it makes our ice cream sound gross?”

  My mom laughed, and wiping her hands on a dishtowel, she crossed the room to sit next to me at the table. “Allie! Remain calm! We just have to trust the reporter to get things right.” She tapped the table thoughtfully. “Maybe we can ask them to check our quotes with us once the article is ready? But . . . at a certain point we just have to let go and trust that it will all come out okay. It usually does.”

  But I was shaking my head. “No. It seems that it usually doesn’t come out all right. We just don’t see the corrections when, or if, they run later. We must read things all the time that are wrong! And we don’t even know it! It’s like . . . how each person supposedly eats a pound of dirt in their life, or hundreds of bugs each year! The mistakes are just hidden, and they sneak by and we don’t even realize it.”

  My mom took my hand and smoothed it, the way she did when I was sick. It always calmed me down. “What is it that Anne of Green Gables always says about enjoying things?” asked my mom. She knew that my favorite childhood books were the Anne of Green Gables series. That was why I’d named my cat Diana—after Anne’s best friend.

  I sighed. I knew what Mom was trying to do. Cheer me up by making me think of my favorite book.

  My mom jiggled my hand and teased, “Come on! I know you know the quote! What is it?”

  “ ‘It’s been my experience . . . ,’ ” I muttered.

  �
�Louder!” said my mom, laughing.

  “ ‘It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if . . .’ ” I trailed off.

  “If what?” demanded my mom, shaking my hand from side to side.

  “ ‘It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will!’ ” I blurted in exasperation, but I was laughing now too. “Okay? Satisfied?”

  My mom smiled. “Yes! Now come on, Allie. Stop borrowing trouble. Don’t worry about things you can’t control. Just prepare for the worst but plan for the best. Look on the bright side. It might be fun! And the article might turn out better than we even expect or hope!”

  “How can you be such an optimist?” I grumbled.

  “You have to be an optimist to be an entrepreneur, my dear. Otherwise, who would ever dare to start a business?”

  “Okay, fine. But what about the photos? How are we going to make things look delicious? The ice cream will all melt!”

  My mom pursed her lips. I’d stumped her with that one. “Well, they’re the professionals. I’m sure they’ll have some ideas,” she said.

  “Yeah, yeah!” I wanted to say, but I didn’t.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TO DO

  That night at dinner my mom announced that she’d just received an e-mail setting the date for the Yay Gourmet interview.

  “A week from this Sunday,” she said happily.

  “So twelve days,” I added.

  “Yup! And I’m going to need my best ice cream helpers there that day. Will you please check that Sierra and Tamiko will be there for sure?”

  “Uh-huh,” I agreed, twirling the spaghetti Bolognese on my fork.

  “Great. You’re my best employees, after all,” said my mom.

  I laughed. “You don’t have that many to choose from!”

  “Well, you’re also my most photogenic,” she added.

  “Wait, we’re going to be in the pictures?” I hadn’t even considered that before.