As Josh and I painted the side of the building a blue-green color Dr. C called “teal,” Josh told me all the new stuff he’d learned about the Tea King. He’d become a walking, talking Alhaadi Okello Wikipedia page.
“Listen to this quote I found.” He put down his brush and took out his phone. “‘I love to compete. I hate my competitors. You really have to love to compete to be successful in business.’”
For my sake, I hoped that wasn’t true. “He sounds like Jeanine. Just remove ‘business’ and insert ‘Geo Bee.’”
“Think about it. This guy came here with only two hundred dollars and a suitcase full of tea leaves, and look at what he’s done. And this… I don’t know, I feel like he’s saying, to succeed, he had to be tough, to want to fight, you know, like he was prepared to do whatever it took.”
“He’s like a business action hero. I can see the movie trailer now.”
Josh laughed. “But he is, kind of, you know? I mean, he’s a total hero to the people who live in that town.”
I’d been joking, but I was with Josh. Even though nobody would ever make a movie about Alhaadi Okello, the Tea King was a hero.
“Hey, did you read that stuff I sent you?”
“I read some of it.” I’d still be reading if I’d read everything Josh had found on Okello.
“Did you read that interview he did with the Albany Times?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You need to read that one. Okay?”
“Okay,” I promised.
• • •
At dinner that night, I could barely keep my eyes open. Between getting up at 5:30 that morning to make doughnuts before school, a full day of classes, working at The Doughnut Stop, and then painting in the heat, I couldn’t wait to crawl into bed. The problem was when I got up from the table, I didn’t have the energy to drag myself up there.
My room isn’t just upstairs, it’s in the attic, and I couldn’t face the stairs and the rope ladder that lay between me and my bed. I’d need a pit stop.
I went into the living room and flopped onto the couch.
The laptop was sitting open on the coffee table, and I pulled it onto my chest.
Typing lying down like that was slow, but eventually, I found the article Josh had wanted me to read. In the interview, the Tea King was talking about how Majani was Krakow, and that it was the people there who had made the company such a success: Start a business in a place like Krakow, a struggling town in upstate New York, and you don’t just get employees—you get partners who work around the clock with you, who make your dream their own, and will not rest until they make it come true. This is the reason to start a business in these towns or to give money to someone who wants to. All they need is a good idea…
I was suddenly wide awake.
I clicked open Google and put four words in the search box: Alhaadi Okello contact information.
You probably aren’t surprised that I couldn’t find the Tea King’s direct email address, but I did find one for someone in the Majani Press Office, Wally Siglinder.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Urgent Investment Opportunity
Dear Mr. Siglinder,
It would be great if you could forward this email to Mr. Okello.
Dear Mr. Okello,
I really hope this email gets to you and that you actually read it. I don’t mean that in a rude way at all, like you think you’re too good to read random emails from 12-year-old kids. I just know that you’re busy trying to get Majani into every store in America.
I don’t want to freak you out, but we actually have a lot in common:
1. We both come from food families (you=tea business, me=restaurant business)
2. We both came to upstate NY from other places (you=Kenya, me=NYC)
3. We both own businesses in upstate NY (you=Majani, me=The Doughnut Stop).
4. We both want to use our businesses to keep upstate NY towns from going extinct.
So Majani is a lot further along than The Doughnut Stop in meeting its goals. I’m not making excuses, but you should know that me and my cofounder are in seventh grade, which makes some things difficult.
Right now, our biggest problem is keeping up with demand. I read that Majani has also struggled with this. The only way to really increase our supply is to buy the Belshaw Donut Robot, which can make over 1,000 doughnuts in an hour. The problem is it costs $50,000.
I know you’re focused on expanding Majani, so I completely understand if you can’t help us out, but I read something you said that made me think maybe you’d be interested in investing in The Doughnut Stop. It was about funding businesses in places like Krakow. Maybe you don’t remember because it seems like you give a lot of interviews, and my friend Josh has read all of them. Anyway, I was wondering whether you would fund us, The Doughnut Stop, because Petersville, my town, really needs this business and may not be a town for much longer unless we can change things.
Don’t think I’m asking for a handout. I’ve read Starting Your Own Business for Dummies, and I know how these things work. We got investors when we opened The Doughnut Stop, and we paid them all back and they even made some money.
I know this is a lot to ask, but I just thought if you really believed what you said, you might want a chance to help us out. We have a great product. I’m attaching an article Destination Eating did on us, and our latest profit-and-loss report. We may be in the seventh grade, but we run The Doughnut Stop like a real business.
I hope I’ll hear from you but, don’t worry, it’s not as if I’m expecting anything to come from this email. Do you ever just feel like you have to try something even when it seems impossible?
Thanks for reading this.
Sincerely,
Tris Levin
Co-Owner of The Doughnut Stop
Petersville, NY
I read it through once more, then hit Send.
I was just about to close the laptop when I noticed I had a new email. It was from an address I didn’t recognize. The subject line read: Congratulations!
Finally, some good news. I clicked it open.
To: [email protected], [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Congratulations!
Tristan,
Congratulations! The Can You Cut It? team loved your audition video, and we’d like you to come in for a callback on May 14 at 10:00 a.m.
In the attachment, you’ll find detailed information about the callback, filming schedule (should you be selected), and consent forms for parental signature.
Please reply to this email as soon as possible to confirm that you will be attending the callback.
We look forward to meeting you!
All the best,
Randy Merriman
Producer
Can You Cut It?™
Was this a joke?
I opened the attachment. It was ten pages in tiny print with very long words. Definitely not a joke.
I read the email again.
That’s when I saw it, the other email address in the To box: [email protected].
“Jeanine!”
“What?” She came out of the kitchen sucking a Popsicle.
“You sent an audition tape to Can You Cut It?”
“Did we get a callback?” She crossed her fingers.
“Uh, yeah?” I was in shock. This was too much even for Jeanine.
“Yes!” She spun around spraying the room with Popsicle juice. “Tris has a callback for Can You Cut It?!” she yelled into the kitchen.
A second later, Mom and Dad were reading the email over my shoulder.
“This is so exciting!” Mom said super loud right in my ear.
“It’s not exciting because I’m not doing it.”
“I’ll do it,” Zoe said. She was sitting on the carpet with Henry in her lap trying to force-feed him a Popsicle.
“I don’t understand. Why don’t you want to do it now?” Dad said.
“Now? I never wanted to do it. Ms. NerdyandProud made the video and sent it in without asking me.”
“You should see it,” Jeanine said. “Kevin taught me how to use iMovie, and I edited together all these clips of Tris cooking, even from when he was really little. You know the one where he’s like three and naked with the apron and—”
“You didn’t!” This was not happening.
“Oh, I love that video. You were so cute,” Mom said, cupping my chin in her palm.
I swiped her hand away. “Mom! Focus! Jeanine went behind my back when she knew I didn’t want this. It’s just…wrong and…messed up!” I was so angry I could barely speak.
“The only reason you didn’t want to try is because you were afraid they wouldn’t want you, but they do,” Jeanine said between licks of Popsicle.
“Look, we get it,” Dad said. “She shouldn’t have done this without your permission.”
“You think?” I said.
“But—” Dad added.
“But what?”
“But regardless of how it happened, it’s a great opportunity as long as you don’t take it too seriously.”
“And you’re so perfect for it!” Mom said, still way too loud.
“And.…” Jeanine raised her Popsicle to make her point. “It’s great publicity for Petersville and The Doughnut St—”
“No!” I stood up. “Why aren’t any of you listening? It’s my choice, and I’m not doing it.”
Then I got out of there before they could say anything else.
• • •
I had just flopped onto my bed when Jeanine climbed out of the hole in the floor where the ladder leads up to my room.
“Go. Away.” I put a pillow over my head.
“Have you even thought about the prize money? You could use it for your doughnut machine.”
I threw the pillow at her. “Doughnut robot, not doughnut machine.”
“Whatever. If you win, you could buy it.”
“The chances I’d win—”
“But you could. You know you’re as good as those kids, better even.”
I definitely never would have messed up the finger test like Jackson, but cooking skills weren’t my problem.
I sat up. “Look, I just can’t do it.”
Jeanine dropped onto the bed next to me. “Is this like prime buzz?”
I pulled my knees up to my chest. “No.”
It totally was.
“You know, nobody believed you were sick all those times.”
“What’s prime buzz?” Zoe asked, her head popping up through the hole in the floor.
“It’s a math game you play in school,” Jeanine said. “You go around the room counting. The first person is one, then the next is two, like that, but if your number is prime, you say, ‘buzz,’ instead of the number.”
Zoe ran across the room and jumped onto the bed. “What’s prime?”
“A number divisible only by itself and one,” Jeanine said.
“What’s ‘divisible’?”
Jeanine rolled her eyes. “I’ll show you tomorrow. The point is, Tris doesn’t like to play.”
“No, the point is, nobody likes to play except Jeanine,” I said.
“Whatever, nobody but Tris pretends to get sick just so they don’t have to play.”
“I wasn’t pretending.”
Playing that stupid game actually made me sick. There was something about having to figure something out with everyone watching that made my brain feel like it was churning through chewing gum. And Jeanine was right. Can You Cut It? was exactly the same. No matter how much prep you did, you’d have to come up with recipes on the spot in front of everybody, and when you failed, you’d do it in front of Chef JJ, the other kids, and millions of TV viewers. “Why don’t you do it? It’s just like your Solve-a-Thons and Geography Bees, and you rock those.”
“Cooking’s your thing, not mine,” Jeanine said.
“Yeah, Jeanine would never cut it,” Zoe said.
Jeanine scooted around so she was facing me. “Look, so you don’t like to compete. Get over it. Do you really want to give up this chance to go on television and tell millions of people to come visit Petersville, plus the chance to buy your doughnut robot? You want to throw all that away without even trying?”
No, I didn’t.
What I wanted was to be the Doughnut King of Petersville. And now there was a way. Was I really too scared to give it a shot?
I wrote the Tea King we had all this stuff in common, but he did whatever it took. Was I going to give up without a fight? I’d never become the Doughnut King like that. I’d be plain old Tris forever.
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
Chapter 9
The callback guidelines said I had to bring a dish of my own creation. I could make anything so, big surprise, I was making doughnuts—butterscotch cream-filled ones because I thought they’d score highest in the categories that counted:
1. Creativity: I’d made up the recipe for butterscotch cream myself, and the doughnut had my secret ingredient: mashed potatoes. Also, I’d never seen butterscotch doughnuts anywhere else, and Chef JJ gives extra points for originality.
2. Yumminess: They always sold out first. Clearly, yummy.
3. Presentation: This was the one weakness. I planned to roll it in a sugar-vanilla mixture, but there really wasn’t much wow. It was all just kind of tan. Pretty blah, but there’s only so much you can do to change the look of a cream-filled doughnut, and using food coloring is considered a cheap trick.
Besides telling us we had to bring something we’d made, the show didn’t give us much information about the callback. I didn’t even know how many kids got callbacks. They did tell us a bit about the season format though. It would cover four different regional competitions—I was competing to be in the East Coast one—and the winners of each of those would go on to compete against each other in the finale for the prize money.
On the day of the callback, I got up early, put on my PETERSVILLE, THE PLACE TO EAT T-shirt, and went downstairs to make the doughnuts fresh before we drove to the city.
Making the doughnuts gave me something to focus on, but as soon as I finished and sat down for breakfast, I started to get that “prime buzz” feeling.
My insides were spinning, so I just sat there staring at my charred French toast. Mom had been weirdly off her game since the town meeting.
Dad could smile all he wanted. Mom was not fine.
“Eat!” Jeanine tapped my plate with her knife.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Nervous?” Mom asked.
I shrugged.
Jeanine tapped the plate again. “Not eating is a rookie mistake. Eating a good breakfast before competition is key. Solve-a-Thon. Spelling Bee. Cooking reality show. It’s all the same. You need to feed the brain.”
I cut a piece of toast and ate it. All I tasted was ash. No amount of maple syrup would cover it up, but sweet, sticky ash had to be better than flaky, dry ash. I reached for the bottle and poured.
“Oh, and don’t forget to visualize success,” Jeanine added. “That’s key. You have to picture yourself attaining your goal. Believe and achieve.”
“Did you get that from Yoda? ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try,’” I said in my best Yoda voice.
Jeanine rolled her eyes. “Think about it. How can you do something if don’t believe you can do it?”
I looked at my plate and tried to see Chef JJ handing me my Can You Cut It? apron in the pool of syrup.
“Don’t j
ust look at it. Eat it! We gotta go.” Jeanine was coming to the city because she’d arranged for her friend, Kevin, to meet us for dinner after the callback.
Zoe had wanted to come too, but the last time we’d driven to Manhattan, she’d filled three vomit buckets, and nobody wanted to relive that, not even for dinner at China Palace.
Dad seemed perfectly happy to stay home with his face glued to his laptop. People had really flipped for his newspaper, especially people whose names showed up in it. I thought the newspaper was okay, but I didn’t see why he couldn’t do something else too, something more useful for the town. I didn’t care how amazing a newspaper might be, it couldn’t keep a place from disappearing. Besides, how much time could he spend reporting news in Petersville anyway? It wasn’t as if chickens lay eggs with four yolks every day.
• • •
By 8:15 a.m., we were already crossing the bridge from the Bronx into Manhattan. Jeanine hadn’t stopped talking the whole way. She had some idea about making Petersville into a colonial living history museum with costumes and theme food and games.
“I don’t care, Jeanine. I’m not putting mutton on the menu,” Mom shouted over the air whooshing through the station wagon. The air-conditioning was broken, so we’d rolled down all the windows, which meant we’d been yelling at each other for the last two hours.
“But mutton was what they would have served in 1627,” Jeanine shot back.
“Jeanine, I told you,” my mother shouted at the rearview mirror, “The Station House could do some Colonial-themed dishes, but we’re not serving mutton.”
“And I’m not changing The Doughnut Stop to The Olycakes Stop.” According to Jeanine, that’s what the Dutch colonists called doughnuts. “Hey, Mom, isn’t mutton just lamb?” I was hoping if I could get Mom to do what Jeanine wanted, she’d stop hassling me.
“It’s old lamb,” Mom said. “Old and chewy and has a flavor that kind of screams, ‘flesh.’”
“Yum.” We came around a bend and stopped in a line of cars that stretched as far down the West Side Highway as I could see. “Do you think maybe we should take the streets?”
“We’re getting off soon anyway.” She leaned out the open window, turned her face to the sun, and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe you’re going to meet JJ. I was trying to remember how long it’s been since I’ve seen her. It’s got to—”
The Doughnut King Page 6
