“Maybe you could call it mutton but use lamb,” Jeanine yelled from the back seat.
Mom opened her eyes. “Jeanine, I said no.”
Just then, my pocket buzzed. I pulled out my phone.
Josh: I’ve been thinking. Once we have the Donut Robot, we’ll need to hire drivers to get the donuts to stores
Me: I’m not even on the show yet!!!!!
Josh: U r going to get on and u r going to win
“Don’t count on it,” I typed, then suddenly remembered what Jeanine had said about how it was impossible to do something you didn’t believe you could do and I got worried I was jinxing myself, so I deleted it.
Me:
In the rearview mirror, I could see Jeanine flipping through A Cultural History of Pre-Revolutionary America. “What about…pease porridge?”
“Mmm. That sounds even tastier than chewy flesh,” I said. “What could be better that pea oatmeal?”
“It’s not cereal. It’s a savory—that means not sweet.”
“I know what savory means.”
“‘Pease porridge is a savory pudding dish made of boiled legumes,’” Jeanine read. “‘Usually split yellow or Carlin peas, with water, salt, and spices, and often cooked with a bacon or ham joint.’”
“I’m not making pease porridge either.” Mom honked at a car trying to cut in front of us.
Jeanine turned the page. “What about boiled meat?”
“Another winner,” I said.
Jeanine knocked me on the head with the book. “Whose side are you on?”
“Ow! The side without boiled meat.”
Mom put the car in Park and turned around. “No boiled meat, no pease porridge, no mutton. I will come up with some themed dishes if and when I have the time, and if Jim gives this whole idea a green light.”
Jeanine slammed the book shut. “What about changing the name? Like instead of The Station House, you could call it The Station House Tavern.”
Mom turned around and put the car back into Drive.
“Mom?”
Mom leaned her head back on her seat and closed her eyes again. “I think JJ will recognize me. I mean, I don’t look that different.”
“Mom!” Jeanine shouted.
“Oh, fine!” Mom scowled at the rearview mirror. “I’ll think about changing the name to The Station House Tavern.”
“Thank you.” Jeanine grinned and went back to reading her book. Mom closed her eyes again.
I opened the box on my lap to check the doughnuts, as if somehow they were going to escape when I wasn’t looking.
Yup, still there.
A short time later, we turned off the highway. Buildings, people, and cars flew by in a noisy, squirming swirl.
That first moment back in New York always feels like the city’s dials have been cranked up while I’ve been away. Everything’s too loud, too bright, too colorful.
When we hit Fifth Avenue, Mom headed downtown. “It’s Fifty-First, right?”
“Yeah.” I gripped my box a little tighter.
“Six-One-One. There it is.” Jeanine pointed to a building with a gleaming brass entrance and a big fountain out front.
I could already feel my heart thudding at the back of my throat, and we hadn’t even gone inside.
• • •
“Paperwork?” The woman behind the desk put out a hand. A huge blowup of Chef JJ’s face next to CAN YOU CUT IT? in shiny red letters covered the wall behind her.
“I keep this.” She put my paperwork on a pile. “And you take this.” She slipped a card with my name on it into a plastic holder on a string and handed it to me.
I held it up to Jeanine. “Tristan? Really? The least you could have done was put Tris.”
“What? It’s your name.”
“You have to put it on,” the woman said.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” I looped the string over my head. It reminded me of those tags they made us wear when we went on field trips in preschool (If found, please return this child to West Side Playgroup).
“Tristan?” A woman in a flowing gray dress was holding open a glass door opposite the receptionist’s desk “Would you follow me please? Your family can come too.” She smiled like she was on a toothpaste commercial.
As we followed her through a maze of hallways, Samara explained how the callbacks worked. “So I’m just leading you to a lounge where you can relax with the other kids and their families. Then we’ll bring you out two at a time for your interview with Marco—he’s one of the producers—and your meeting with Chef JJ. That’s where you’ll present your food.” She stopped at a glass-walled seating area.
“When does he find out if he made it?” Jeanine asked.
“Actually, this is our last set of callbacks for the East Coast competition, and we’re on a tight schedule, so we’ll decide this afternoon. You’ll hear by tomorrow at the latest.”
“Thanks.” At least the news, good or bad, would come quick.
• • •
I didn’t want to be too obvious checking out the competition, but from a quick scan of the room, I guessed there were about ten contestants. Since we all had family with us, it was pretty packed.
We circled a few times, trying to find three seats together. In the end, we let Mom take an armchair by the TV, which was playing the show’s greatest hits on a loop, and Jeanine and I squeezed onto a couch on the other side of the room.
“Hey, watch it!” somebody said as I scooted back on the sofa.
I turned and found myself face-to-face with a steaming Starbucks cup. The girl holding it had freckled brown skin, dangly earrings shaped like whisks, and a seriously annoyed look on her face.
“Sorry. Do you need a napkin or something?”
“Not unless you’re going to make another run at spilling it.” She blew into the cup and sipped. As she drank, my eyes drifted to the buttons covering her jean jacket: Come to the dark side—we have cookies; “BBQ may not be the road to world peace, but it’s a start.”—Anthony Bourdain…
“Whatcha got?” she asked.
“Huh?”
She pointed to the box.
“Oh, doughnuts.”
“You mean like at Dunkin’ Donuts.”
“No. Not like Dunkin’ Donuts.” This girl would laugh in my face if I told her these were life-changing doughnuts. “These are…different, and they’re filled with butterscotch cream.”
“Ooo, butterscotch cream,” she said in a voice that made clear she still wasn’t impressed. “Can I see?”
I opened the box.
“Not very pretty, are they?”
“Okay, that’s it!” Jeanine stood up. “Move!”
“What?” I said.
“Up! Now!”
Before I knew it, Jeanine had pulled me off the couch and was dragging me to the other side of the room.
“What’s your problem?”
“Don’t you know what trash talk is?” Jeanine said, searching the room for open seats.
“Did you hear what that girl said?”
“Uh, yeah, I heard what she said. She was trash-talking you. Classic trash talk. Newsflash: she wants you to think you don’t have a chance. She wants you to give up before you even start. Look at these kids—that’s what they all want. Duh. You’re the competition. Solve-a-Thon, cooking competition, it’s all the same. Never, ever listen to the competition about anything.”
We found a small sliver of space on a couch by the door. “I can sit on the armrest,” I said.
“Oh, no need for that, hon, we can scooch,” said a woman with bright yellow hair and sparkly lips. “Move over, Immy.” She shooed the girl next to her. “See, plenty of room. I’m Ingrid, and this is my daughter, Imogen.”
Imogen had the same hair and lips as her mom, but was also wearing a
pink toque.
In case your mom isn’t a chef, a toque is one of those tall hats that chefs wear. Because my mom is a chef, I can also tell you that there are one hundred folds in a toque for the hundred ways you can cook an egg. Just a fun fact.
“Thanks.” I sat. “I’m Tris. And this is my sister, Jeanine.”
Jeanine squeezed in next to me. “Imogen, are you aware of the bias against female chefs in professional kitchens? Do you really think girly toques help?”
“Jeanine, they were being nice,” I whispered. “They weren’t trash-talkers.”
Jeanine turned her back on Imogen and Ingrid. “No, they’re not trash-talkers. They’re krill. Do you want to be krill or do you want to be a shark?”
“Krill?”
“You know, krill, the fish that all the other fish eat. Do you want to be krill, or do you want to be a shark, the fish all the other fish fear?”
“Are those my only choices?”
“You think this is a joke? Nobody wins something like this by accident. You understand that, right?”
“It’s not like I’m not prepared.”
“I’m not talking cooking skills. I’m talking attitude.”
“Fine. I get it.” And I did. I had to channel the Tea King. I love to compete… I love to compete…
Every twenty minutes or so, Samara would come back to drop off two kids and take two more. After about an hour, Mom wandered over.
“I was just thinking,” she said as she sat between me and Jeanine. Imogen and her mom were gone by then, so there was space. “If you do meet JJ today, definitely tell her who you are. I think—no, I’m sure she’ll remember me, and Walter too.”
“Like that’s going to get him on the show?” Jeanine said.
“It can’t hurt. I mean, who knows how many kids they called back in total. It might help to have something to make him stand out.”
“Thanks, Mom. Great pep talk.” Did she think my doughnuts weren’t good enough to make me stand out?
“I didn’t mean… Those are spectacular doughnuts, and you know I love them. It’s just we don’t even know how many kids they’ve seen. I’m sure eventually you all just blend together in a blur, you know?”
“Can we please just drop it? You’re actually making me even more nervous.”
“Ah-ha!” Jeanine wagged a finger in my mother’s face. “See, it’s not just me. This is why I don’t let you take me to competitions anymore.”
“I don’t mean to.” Mom frowned. “Should I go back to where I was before?”
“No,” I said. “But let’s just not talk.”
And we didn’t for another whole half hour, not even Jeanine, which has to be some kind of record for her.
“Tristan Levin?” Samara called from the door.
“Here.” I grabbed my box.
“Harper Gonzalez?”
The trash-talker from earlier stood up on the other side of the room. Just my luck.
“Have fun,” Mom said. “And just, well, just remember what I told you.”
“Mom!” Jeanine shushed my mother and pulled me in close.
“Jeanine, I got to go.”
“Say it,” she ordered.
“Say what?”
“You know.” She looked around like she was about to divulge the secret formula for Coke, then leaned in and whispered, “Believe and achieve.”
“Oh, jeez.”
“Say it!” She stomped her foot.
“Inside. I’m saying it inside.”
“Not good enough.”
“Believe and achieve,” I said into the collar of my T-shirt.
“Amazing, right? It’s like magic, the way it makes you feel just saying it,” she said.
“Oh, yeah. Amazing.”
Chapter 10
Samara sent Harper to meet with Chef JJ while I met with a producer named Marco, a guy with small silver hoops in his ears and a T-shirt so tight you could see his muscles bulging through it.
We chatted for a while. He wanted to know about Petersville and The Doughnut Stop. Then he asked me a bunch of questions, none of which had anything to do with food. Mostly he’d say stuff, and then I was supposed to tell him whether what he said was true for me, like this:
Marco: I like everyone I meet.
Me: No.
Marco: I want to be famous.
Me: I don’t think so.
Marco: Yes or no.
Me: No. Yes—no. Sorry. It’s no.
Marco: I like horror movies.
Me: Yes.
Marco: Winning isn’t everything.
Me: Yes. Or I mean, it’s not everything.
If I did well or badly, Marco wasn’t telling. His face stayed blank the whole time. He reminded me of those guys in movies who give lie detector tests.
When I came out of the room, Harper and Samara were waiting. Then Harper went in with Marco, and Samara led me across the hall into a large room with a wall of windows.
Behind a glass table shaped like the letter C, Chef JJ sat alone looking out at the city massaging her shaved head. The sun was already melting behind the buildings, and above it, the sky was swirled like rainbow sherbet.
“This is Tristan Levin from Petersville, New York.” Samara put my paperwork on the table and left.
Chef JJ flipped through my packet. And flipped some more. And made a few notes. And flipped back to the beginning.
Was this a test? Was I supposed to just start talking or present my doughnut?
I opened the box and tipped it forward so she could see inside if she looked up. “This is a—”
She put up her white, bony hand like a stop sign. “I see here your mother owns a restaurant. She isn’t, by any chance, Kira Levin?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, she is.” It never crossed my mind that Chef JJ would just make the connection without my saying anything.
A slow smile spread from one side of her mouth to the other. “Kira Levin. How is she?”
“She’s good.”
“Does she ever see Walter?”
“Actually, they run a restaurant together. In Petersville.” This was good, right? We were making small talk. I could do this.
“They run it together? Aw.”
“Uh, yeah.” I really wasn’t sure what to say, but it seemed like a good idea to keep the back-and-forth going.
“I haven’t seen either of them for years. Did your mom tell you they both used to work for me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’re Kira’s son?”
“Uh-huh.” Didn’t we already cover that?
“And you want to be on Can You Cut It?”
“I’ve been cooking since I could walk, and I’ve watched every show. Plus, I have my own doughnut business.”
Another slow smile snaked across her face. “Right, so what do we have here?”
I slid the box across the table. “This is a butterscotch cream doughnut, my original recipe for both the doughnut and the cream.”
Chef JJ peered into the box and sniffed. “When did you make this?”
“This morning.”
She picked up the doughnut and took a small bite, so small she didn’t even hit cream.
I watched her face as she chewed. It didn’t read yuck or yum or even interesting. Just blank like Marco’s. Maybe they practiced together.
She put the doughnut back in the box and closed it.
“Oh, but you haven’t tasted the—”
She put up her hand. “We’re done.”
That was it?
At the very least she should take another bite to get to the butterscotch. You didn’t get the full effect without the cream. “Just, I don’t think—”
“Please tell your mother and Walter, I said, ‘hello.’” She pushed the box ba
ck across the table.
So this really was it. “Um, okay. Bye.” I picked up the box, turned around, and headed for the door.
“See you soon!” she said as I stepped out into the hallway.
Wait, did that mean what I think it meant?
• • •
“This is very exciting!” Mom’s smile was so big, her face looked like it was going to crack in half. “Isn’t it exciting, Ma?”
We’d gotten the official call from Can You Cut It? when we got to Grandma Esme’s apartment, and Mom hadn’t stopped talking about it since. By the end of our ride to Chinatown, everyone on our subway car had congratulated me.
“What’s the name of that tofu dish I love?” Grandma Esme asked, browsing the menu as we waited for a table at China Palace.
“I’m just so proud of you.” Mom gave me a squeeze.
I forced myself to smile back at her. I must have looked like one of those clowns with the painted-on grins.
“How awesome is it that Tris is going to be on Can You Cut It?” Jeanine said to her friend Kevin.
“So awesome,” Kevin said.
“It was my idea, you know?” she said.
“Such a great idea,” Kevin said.
“Right? It’s going to be fantastic publicity for Petersville,” she said.
My pocket buzzed for the fifth time since I’d left the studio, and just like the other times, I didn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t handle more people celebrating me for something I hadn’t done. Chef JJ hadn’t even eaten enough of my doughnut to judge it. Did I have the guts to go on the show when I knew there was no way I’d gotten on because of my cooking skills?
“So, did you tell Chef JJ who you were?” Mom asked.
“Um, yeah. She says…hi.”
“It’s going to be so much fun to catch up with her.” Mom looked happier than I’d seen her in weeks.
“Kira, the tofu dish? The crispy one?” Grandma Esme waved the menu in Mom’s face.
“Salt and pepper, Ma.”
“Right. Salt and pepper.” Grandma Esme’s eyes lit up. It’s no secret where my family’s food obsession comes from. “And what’s the name of the duck dish I hate?”
The Doughnut King Page 7
