The Doughnut King

by Jessie Janowitz

  So cooking shows are what you get at my house, and before you knock them, you should know that you can learn some pretty handy tricks from watching those shows. Did you know if you smash a garlic clove with a can, the peel basically pops off?

  The thing is, in most cooking shows, there’s no story: no aliens take over the planet, no twins switch places, no kids hack the school computer—people just cook. Unless you’re dying to learn how to make a chocolate soufflé, it gets boring fast. That’s why we started watching Can You Cut It?. It’s a kids’ cooking contest, but unlike regular cooking shows, there are bad guys and heroes, winners and losers. If you’re lucky, you even get to see blood or tears or both.

  I dropped my backpack and sat down on the couch next to Zoe. She had on her Chef JJ bald cap. She must have put it on by herself because her orange hair puffed out all around the bottom like a clown collar. “Does this mean bald people don’t scare you anymore?”

  “Chef JJ’s not bald. She didn’t lose her hair. She shaved it. It’s different.”

  “Nice tattoo,” I said.

  “Mom did it for me,” she said, admiring the NEVER GIVE UP on her bicep. “When I get mine for real, it’s going to be purple bubble letters.”

  “You’re getting a tattoo?”

  “Mommy said, ‘We’ll see.’”

  “Do you know how you get a tattoo? It’s like, really, really painful. They put the ink into your skin with needles.”

  “Nah-unh.”

  “Yuh-huh. How do think they get it on so it doesn’t come off?”

  “I don’t care.” She stood up on the couch and began to jump. “We’re tough.”

  “We?”

  “Me.” Bounce. “And Larissa. She’s getting one too.”

  “If you say so.” Last time Zoe got blood taken, both my parents had to hold her down while she screamed, “Child abuse!”

  “Shhhhh!” Zoe landed on her butt on the couch, her eyes glued to the TV. A boy’s face, bottom lip trembling, filled the screen. “Bet you a dollar Jackson cries.”

  “Zo, you scare me sometimes.”

  “It’s just TV.”

  “You know these are real kids, right?”

  Zoe shrugged.

  “I thought we were rooting for Jackson.” I’d watched Jackson win One Ingredient Masterpiece with this amazing chickpea popcorn creation, but I’d missed the last two episodes.

  “We’re for Lily now. She can chop three onions in seventy-two seconds. She won Knife Skills Showdown and Blind Cooking Challenge. Plus she’s a ridmick gymnast.”

  “A what?”

  She waved her arms around. “With the ribbons, remember?”

  “Oh, right.”

  The Olympics is an exception to the nothing-but-cooking-shows rule—don’t ask, it doesn’t make sense—and somehow whenever we turned it on last summer, rhythmic gymnastics was all we could find.

  Did you know there are individual and team events in rhythmic gymnastics?

  Zoe and I watched as Jackson mashed his lips together to stop them quivering. I should have taken Zoe’s bet. Jackson looked like he was going to hold it together, which couldn’t be easy with Chef JJ lasering him with her neon-blue eyes. Chef JJ must wear colored contacts. That, or she’s an alien.

  Next to her, Dieter, co-host of Can You Cut It? bent over to study the steak Jackson had made.

  Dieter Koons, food critic and restaurant owner, wears three-piece suits in different shades of green and glasses that look like the ones they give out free at 3D movies. I’m pretty sure he’s only on the show because they need someone to talk while Chef JJ tastes, chews, and thinks, which would be an okay amount of quiet time in real life but not on national television.

  Chef JJ scratched the stubble of her shaved head so hard, her microphone picked up the scritch scritch. She looked as disappointed as Zoe that Jackson wasn’t bawling.

  Mom actually worked with JJ Jordan right out of cooking school—that’s why we started watching the show in the first place—and she says Chef JJ was making people cry even back then.

  “What. Color. Is. That?” Chef JJ stabbed a slice of meat with a gleaming steak knife.

  “Pink?” Jackson’s voice caught, breaking the word in two.

  “And is that rare, Jackson?”

  “But I had to keep—”

  Chef JJ put her bony hand up like a stop sign, and Jackson’s face went the color his beef should have been.

  “Oh, Jackson,” Dieter said. “You did a mistake. Do you know what was it?”

  Zoe’s hand shot in the air. “Ooo, I know! I know!”

  “‘Made a mistake.’ ‘Made a mistake,’” Chef JJ snapped. “Not ‘did a mistake.’ How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “What was Jackson’s mistake?” I asked Zoe when the show broke for ads.

  “He thought rare was here.” She pressed her middle finger and the tip of her thumb together.

  In case you get to watch something other than cooking shows, Zoe was talking about the finger test. The finger test is how you tell meat doneness just by feeling it. Rare meat should feel like the gushy part of your palm when you’re making the okay sign. You could just cut into the meat or use a meat thermometer, but that’s rookie and would never fly on Can You Cut It?

  At the end of the commercial break, there was a clip of Chef JJ in front of the Food Connection building in Manhattan talking directly to the camera. “Want to know if you can cut it? Come find out. We’re looking for chefs ages eight to fourteen for next season. Go to canyoucutit.com for details on sending an audition video.”

  “I could cut it,” Zoe said.

  “You so could, but you’re going to have to wait a couple years.” Zoe versus Chef JJ would be like the World Cup of Can You Cut It?

  “And I’d wear a shirt for The Doughnut Stop just like Gus did for The Empanada Factory.” Gus won last season and he plugged his parents’ empanada chain every chance he got.

  I kicked off my shoes and settled back to watch the rest of the show.

  “Uch!” I jerked my hand back from the seat cushion. There was a brown smear across it and a matching one on the sofa.

  “Zoe!” I showed her my hand.

  “Sorry, Henry’s potty training. Don’t worry. I put him in time out.”

  “But you left his poop on the couch?”

  “I’ll clean it later.”

  “Clean it now.” I shoved her off the couch with my clean hand.

  “But—”

  “Go! Or I’ll tell Mom Henry was on the couch.”

  “Like you never had an accident,” she yelled as she ran out of the room.

  When I came back from washing my hands, Lily was on the screen talking about what she’d do with the $100,000 prize money if she won. She had a fancy houseboat picked out already, and she was telling Chef JJ all about it, but I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I was thinking, if I had all that money, could I solve our doughnut supply problem?

  I’d still have to go to school. There’s a lot you can do with $100,000, but you can’t add hours to the day or change the law requiring kids to go to school.

  And even if we could afford to hire people and teach them to make doughnuts, where would we put them? It’s not as if my parents were going to give up our kitchen entirely to doughnut-making, and there wasn’t enough room in Josh’s kitchen. In New York City, Mom would rent a commercial kitchen when she had a big catering job, but that wasn’t an option in Petersville.

  Even with $100,000, I had no clue how to solve our supply problem.

  The Doughnut Stop was in serious trouble.

  Jackson was on the screen now, explaining about how he’d use the prize money to start a pho place, one of those Vietnamese restaurants where you choose the ingredients and they cook them into a soup right in front of you. Fast-food pho.
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  I stood up. I had to get out of there, away from Jackson, because even though he didn’t know the rules for testing meat doneness, he was full of ideas, which made me feel even worse for not having any of my own.

  • • •

  Mom was flipping through a cookbook when I walked into the kitchen.

  “Where’s Jim?” I asked.

  She waved in the direction of the basement door.

  “The noise back?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  For the past few weeks, every couple of days, it sounded like a motorcycle was revving its engine in the basement, but as soon as someone got to the bottom of the stairs, it would stop. The Purple Demon likes to change things up.

  “Oh, hey!” Mom looked up. “I saw the magazine. The cover! So amazing.”

  “Yeah.”

  She studied my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” My parents already thought I took The Doughnut Stop too seriously. It didn’t help that during the failed more-doughnuts-less-sleep experiment, I’d passed out in history, sliced my chin open, and ended up needing stitches and a tetanus shot. It wasn’t the doughnuts’ fault that a screw was sticking out of my desk, but they blamed them anyway.

  The basement door swung open, and Jim appeared, his brown hair and beard gray with soot.

  Mom jumped up. “So?”

  “It’s not the boiler. Turned it off. Took it apart. Put it back together. There’s nothing in there that would cause that kind of noise.”

  “What about the generator?”

  Just then, we heard Zoe shout, “You can’t cut it!”

  “Okay, Zo Zo!” Mom called. “Turn it off now!”

  “I didn’t check the generator, but I can’t now.” Jim untied a sweatshirt from around his waist. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  Mom grabbed a sweatshirt sleeve. “Please, I’m begging you. Check the generator before you go. I’ll whip up those hazelnut scones you love so much.”

  “Well, now you’re not playing fair, but I can’t, not even for hazelnut scones. I’ve got to get ready for the meeting.”

  “Oh, fine.” Mom let go of the sweatshirt.

  “Almost forgot. Can you sell coffee and tea tonight?”

  “I could…if you tell us what the surprise is. Tell me it’s a farmers’ market.” Mom crossed her fingers on both hands.

  “It’s not a farmer’s market,” Zoe said, skipping into the kitchen with Jeanine trailing behind her. “It’s a big kid playground with a swirly slide.”

  “No way,” Jeanine said. “Swirly slides are responsible for more injuries than any other piece of playground equipment.”

  “But I love swirly slides,” Zoe said.

  “I do too,” Jim said.

  “See!” Zoe stuck her tongue out at Jeanine. “We’re getting a swirly slide. We’re getting a swirly slide,” she sang.

  “Sorry. No farmers’ markets or swirly slides,” Jim said.

  “You’re…you’re mean,” Zoe said and ran out of the room before Mom could get her to take it back.

  “Don’t expect Mom to make coffee now that she’s not getting a farmers’ market,” I said.

  “No, there’ll be coffee,” Mom said. “Walter’s up there already making some. We’re even doing snacks. But I want to know what’s wrong with a farmers’ market.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s a good idea. And I’m not saying we’re not going to do it, but that’s not what the meeting’s about.”

  “Is it better than a farmers’ market and maybe colder?” Josh and I, and just about everybody else in Petersville, were wishing the town surprise was a place to skate that we didn’t have to shovel when it snowed. We didn’t even need an indoor rink since there’s one in Crellin, just something covered. Ice hockey is huge in Petersville, probably because winters here go on forever.

  “It’s not better than a farmers’ market or an ice rink or a swirly slide. It’s not better than anything.” Jim lowered himself into a chair as if he suddenly remembered he was too tired to stand.

  “Jim?” Mom said.

  He tugged on his beard. “See, it’s not better than anything because it’s not something good.”

  “Then you really shouldn’t have called it a surprise,” Jeanine said.

  Mom narrowed her eyes at Jeanine, and Jeanine gave her a “What?” look.

  “I needed people to be there, and I didn’t want to worry anybody,” Jim said.

  “So it’s a bad surprise?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said slowly as he rocked back and forth in a full-body nod. “Town’s disappearing.”

  Just then my father called from upstairs, “Guys! We should go.”

  Jim looked at his watch and stood up. “Shoot. I’m going to be late to my own meeting. Now that’s just not professional.”

  And then he was out the door before we could ask him how a town could disappear.

  Chapter 5

  “Places don’t disappear,” Jeanine said as we drove to the meeting. “It’s impossible.”

  “What’s a duck’s favorite time of day?” Zoe asked.

  Jeanine groaned.

  “Somebody say ‘what,’” Zoe said.

  “What?” I said.

  “The quack of dawn! Get it?”

  “I’m just saying, a place is a place forever,” Jeanine said to her own reflection in the car window. “It doesn’t go away.” She sounded just as sure as she always does, but if she’d been trying to convince someone besides herself, I’m pretty sure she would have been facing the other way.

  “Oh, I just thought of one,” I said. “What’s a duck’s favorite candy?”

  “What?” Zoe said.

  “Quacker Jacks.”

  “What are Quacker Jacks?” Zoe said.

  “Come on, you’ve never had Cracker Jacks? The popcorn with the—”

  “You know”—Zoe patted my arm—“the Laugh Doctor says if you have to explain a joke, it’s not funny.” The Laugh Doctor is a kid’s guide to writing and telling jokes, and Zoe’s had it read to her so many times, she knows it by heart.

  “Of course places don’t disappear.” Mom was staring out her window too, even though there was nothing to see but black mountains and black fields and black sky that all just blended together in the dark.

  “He didn’t mean like poof disappear,” I said.

  “So what did he mean?” Jeanine asked.

  “Let’s just wait and hear Jim say what he meant,” Mom said.

  “Maybe it’s a trick. Like when Uncle Philippe makes the penny disappear and then it comes out your ear,” Zoe said.

  “You think Jim’s going to pull Petersville out of your ear?” I tugged on Zoe’s earlobe.

  Sometimes making Zoe laugh makes me feel better, like that time we got stuck in an elevator, and I pretended I thought it was really funny even though I was scared nobody would figure out we were in there, and I’d have to climb out the top and up the cables like they do in movies. Just a tip: if you ever get stuck in an elevator, look for an emergency phone before you think about pulling a Mission Impossible. We’d been in there for an hour before I saw the button.

  “Uncle Philippe doesn’t make the penny disappear, nuddy,” Jeanine said. “He’s hiding it between his fingers.”

  Mom spun around in her seat. “Jeanine, what did I say about calling her ‘nuddy’?”

  Nuddy’s short for nudnik, which means stupid in a language my great-grandparents spoke and pretty much nobody speaks anymore. Mom uses it sometimes, but we’re not allowed. Don’t ask how come she can use it and we can’t. It’s another one of those rules that doesn’t make any sense, and we basically ignore it.

  “Is that true, Mommy?”

  “I think we just need to wait and see what happens at t
he meeting,” Mom said.

  “No, about Uncle Philippe and the penny?”

  “Oh, um, I don’t know.”

  “She knows,” Jeanine whispered.

  “Jeanine!” Dad gave her his squinty “Watch it” look in the rearview mirror.

  Jeanine shot a “What?” look back. “If I ever have kids, I’m going to tell them the truth about everything from the beginning.”

  “Good luck with that,” Mom said.

  “Maybe you guys misheard Jim,” Dad said, taking a hand off the steering wheel and putting it over Mom’s.

  “I don’t think so, honey.” She was still staring at her window.

  “I’m just saying, it’s possible,” he said. “Like remember when I thought the school nurse said Zo Zo had a bee up her nose, and it turned out it was a bead.”

  “But weren’t you on your cell?” I said. “We were right there in the room with Jim. Besides, what else could he have been saying?”

  It was quiet for a bit, then Dad said, “‘The town’s in a clearing’ kind of sounds like, ‘The town’s disappearing.’”

  “Uh, maybe, but it makes no sense,” I said.

  Dad thumped the steering wheel. “Wait! I’ve got it. ‘I’m losing my hearing!’ That’s it! Jim’s losing his hearing so he’s stepping down as mayor. See, that does make sense. And that would be a bad surprise.” He grinned at me in the rearview mirror.

  Just so you know, Dad’s not a nuddy. He knew we’d heard what we’d heard. He was just trying to do with all of us what I’d tried with Zoe, but I’m not five. I know what I heard, and whatever it meant, I knew it was bad.

  • • •

  Wham! The smell of toasting corn and frying pork hit me the second I opened The Station House door.

  “Pupusas!” Zoe shouted and took off to the back of the restaurant where people were packed around the counter.

  “Surprise!” Mom said. “Walter and Azalia made them as a ‘thank-you’ to everyone for helping them get settled.”

  In case you’ve never had them, pupusas are like silver dollar pancakes, but they’re made out of corn flour and stuffed with pork or beans or cheese. They’re like breakfast, lunch, and dinner all rolled into one, and Walter has been making them for us since we had teeth.