The Doughnut King

by Jessie Janowitz

  The clock on our counter began counting off seconds in glowing red numbers.

  Dieter blew a kazoo. “Go and go and go!”

  I unraveled three paper towels from the roll next to the sink, ripped them off, wet them, and lay them under the cutting board—a trick Walter had taught me to keep the board stable.

  I might not be the fastest chopper, but I knew what I was doing.

  I sliced off the tip of an onion, and put it flat side down on the board so it wouldn’t roll. I cut it in half and pulled off the peel. Then I pressed my left hand flat on the top of one half and made two horizontal cuts.

  Kashish, kashish, kashish.

  Before I could stop them, my eyes jumped to Keya’s board. With every kashish of her blade, a mound of perfectly formed rectangular bits tumbled onto the cutting board. And just like that, she was done with her first onion.

  01:01…01:02…

  I had to get moving.

  I turned my onion and started vertical cuts across the surface.

  What was I doing? The cuts were ugly, uneven. Jeez, I hoped Walter wouldn’t get to see a close-up of this.

  I tried not to think about anybody else, but Keya’s kashish, kashish, kashish was impossible to shut out.

  “Look at her go!” It was Chef JJ. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her and Dieter at the end of our counter.

  01:52…01:53…

  I started on my second onion.

  “And would you look at those pieces, like a machine cut them.”

  They were definitely not talking about my chopped onion.

  Just then, there was a loud clatter.

  We all stopped and looked around.

  At the second counter, Gordy stood with his long arms up over his head like he was surrendering, and both he and Phoenix were staring at something on the floor between them.

  “How do you drop a knife?” Phoenix said. “You could have killed me.”

  “I’m really sorry.” Gordy’s hands were shaking.

  “Don’t just stand there. Pick it up!” Chef JJ shouted. “And why have the rest of you stopped?”

  “Tick-tock. Tick-tock,” Dieter said.

  02:28…02:29…

  This was it, my chance! All I had to do now was not drop the knife. It wouldn’t matter how messed up my cuts were. You drop the knife, you’re automatically last.

  Don’t drop the knife. Don’t drop the knife. Don’t drop the knife…

  I used the words to shut everyone else out and keep my rhythm.

  Don’t (chop)…drop (chop)…the (chop)…knife (chop).…

  As I made the last slice, I heard Dieter sing, “Don’t drop the knife” right along with me, then laughter.

  No, no, no. Had I been saying the words out loud?

  I looked up. Everyone’s eyes were on me.

  “Way to set the bar high,” Chef JJ sneered. “But so we’re clear, just because you can hold on to your knife, doesn’t mean you know how to use it. You got lucky.”

  “CUT!”

  Chapter 16

  Interview with Phoenix Carter, Age 12, Middlebury, Vermont:

  You want to know how I’m feeling? I don’t think it’s fair that girl—Keya, right?—brought her own knives. I mean, did you, like, inspect them? I seriously hope so, because they could have been…I don’t know, like, not regulation. They inspect footballs at the Super Bowl, right? Isn’t it, like, the same thing? I still came in second with the regular knives, so I probably would have won with her special ones. I mean, it’s not as if I care. As long as you don’t get eliminated, what difference does it make? You just need to be the last one standing.

  Still, it’s kind of bogus, you know, using your own knives. And they weren’t just normal knives from home. Her dad made them for her. Plus, she was telling us he’s an engineer. Her knives were, like, specifically designed for her hand. Anyway, I’m over it.

  Mom must have said how great I was five times before we even left the parents’ lounge, which was annoying both because I just wanted to get out of there and because she knew as well as I did, it wasn’t true. I’d gotten lucky, just like Chef JJ said.

  Mom was still pulling her stuff together when the lounge door swung open.

  “Kira!” Chef JJ called from clear across the room.

  All conversation immediately stopped.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Harper do a double-take. She and the other contestants and their families were still there.

  “JJ, what’s it been, like fifteen years?” Mom walked forward, arms open.

  “Way too long,” Chef JJ said, blocking Mom’s hug with a two-handed wave. “So, this handsome boy is yours, I hear.”

  Something about Chef JJ calling me “h-a-n-d-s-o-m-e” made me feel like there were spiders crawling all over me.

  “Guilty as charged.” Mom mussed my hair. “Handsome and talented.”

  Melt me, please melt me into a pool of water on the floor.

  “But needs some work on those knife skills, am I right? Like mother, like son, I guess. What was it Romero was always saying about the way you held a knife?”

  Mom’s face went tight.

  “Tris is a phenomenal cook. He’s going to knock your socks off.” Mom thumped me on the back, and I know it was supposed to be a you’ll-get-’em-next-time thump, but it was weirdly hard and stung.

  “Can’t. Wait,” Chef JJ said, and for a split second, I could have sworn I saw her ice-blue eyes lasering into my mother like she was a contestant on the show.

  • • •

  To celebrate my not getting cut on the very first day, Mom, Dad, Jim, Winnie, Josh, Zoe, Jeanine, and I all went out for dim sum.

  Good Chinese is hard to come by upstate, so when we’re back in the city, we eat as much of it as we can. I didn’t feel like celebrating, but I’m always up for Nom Wah.

  It was dark when we climbed out of the subway station in Chinatown, but even without the sun beating down, it was still hot. The air was heavy and wet, and smelled of the garbage rotting in the bags piled on the sidewalk.

  The streets were narrow and crowded so we walked single file with Dad leading the way.

  A block from the restaurant, we hit a crowd of shoppers filling plastic bags with fruits from crates stacked in front of a small market.

  Josh stopped and pointed at a cardboard box filled with spikey, pink balls the size of walnuts. “Wow, what are those?”

  “Rambutan.”

  “It looks like a kind of jellyfish.”

  “It’s a fruit.”

  “Is it good?”

  “Yeah. Sort of like lychee.”

  “Lychee?”

  “Think really juicy, really sweet cherries but white. We’ll get some for dessert. Come on. We’re almost there.”

  Nom Wah was already in full swing. The dining room was loud and busy, crammed with diners and waiters wheeling food carts trailing steam like skywriters.

  “So dim sum’s just like a buffet?” Jim asked.

  “Sort of,” I said. “A mobile buffet. The food comes to you.”

  “A lazy person’s buffet,” Dad said.

  “Perfect,” Winnie said. “I love dim sum already.”

  “How do you know what to take?” Josh asked peering into one of the carts as we followed the host to a large round table in the corner.

  “Just take what I take,” I said.

  “Mommy likes the chicken feet,” Zoe said.

  “Phoenix claws,” Mom said. “And don’t knock them until you try them.”

  “Calling them something fancy doesn’t change the fact that you’re sucking on chicken toe jam.” I snapped my chopsticks apart.

  Jim pointed to one of the metal pots on the table. “Are these…”

  “Tea.” Mom poured a cup for Jim an
d one for herself, then handed the pot to Dad. “You should have seen Tris today. He was so great.”

  I took the napkin folded like a fortune cookie off my plate and ripped it open. “I didn’t drop the knife on the floor. I don’t think that qualifies as great.” Did we have to talk about this?

  Mom set her cup on the table, and tapped whatever she was really thinking in code on her lips.

  Winnie eyed a cart piled high with bamboo steamers as it rolled by. “So how do you flag them down?”

  “Like this.” Zoe stood up and waved both arms like she was directing traffic on an aircraft carrier.

  The waiter nodded and wheeled the cart to our table. “Xiao long bao?”

  “Soup dumplings,” Zoe translated.

  “Do I want those?” Winnie asked.

  Zoe nodded. “For her too,” she said to the waiter.

  “And me too please.” Josh raised his hand like we were in school.

  “I might as well try some too,” Jim said.

  Josh tipped his chair back against the wall and studied the room. “This place is so cool. How many carts do they have going at once? And do they all carry different stuff?”

  “They usually have a few carts going around with the most popular stuff,” I said.

  Another cart stopped at the table. “Char siu bao. Pork buns?”

  “Do we like those?” Josh asked.

  “We do,” I said.

  I know. A meat baked good? But think about it: you eat meat and bread together in a sandwich all the time, right? This is just one step away from that, one step that will make you forget your blah roast beef on a roll forever, because shredded sweet-and-sour pork tucked inside a soft, doughy bun kicks that sandwich’s butt.

  Winnie pulled off the top of the bamboo steamer releasing a cloud. “Ooh, a meal and a facial all in one. Where’s the soup?”

  Zoe giggled.

  Winnie spun around, her braid whipping around her neck. “What’s so funny? The guy said, ‘Soup dumplings,’ didn’t he?”

  “Exactly.” Jeanine bit off the tiny dough knot at the top of the dumpling. “Soup dumplings, not dumpling soup. The soup’s inside the dumpling.”

  “I guess that’s kind of a fun change, right, Winnie?” Jim said as he popped a dumpling in his mouth. He grabbed his water and guzzled.

  “And that’s why you bite the top off first,” Jeanine said.

  “Hot, but good.” Jim nursed his tongue with an ice cube. “Almost worth losing that layer of skin from the roof of my mouth.”

  “I almost forgot.” Josh dropped the legs of his chair to the floor. “Zoe was on TV with Brynn!”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Yes way. Henry and I got to go in the bed.” Zoe slurped soup from her dumpling.

  “With her?”

  “Uh-huh. And I told her a duck-duck joke, the one about the quack of dawn.” She popped the drained dumpling into her mouth.

  “But how? I mean, why did you get to go? It’s not like you even watch her show.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes, then reached up and boinged one of her orange curls.

  You can’t blame Zoe for knowing she’s cute. Wherever we go, people say so right in front of her like she’s a puppy or something. And not just family and friends, strangers too. It’s weird. It’s even weirder when they try to touch her—I mean, usually just her hair, but still.

  “And I told Brynn everyone should come to Petersville so it doesn’t disappear.”

  “Go, Zoe,” I said.

  “It was awesome, and it was all on camera,” Josh said. “Mom saw it on TV. She said Brynn even showed us with the signs and the Petersmobile.”

  “Get this,” Jim said. “Cal called me after lunch to say traffic to the website went crazy after Breakfast with Brynn. So, put it here.” He held up his hand for Zoe to high-five.

  Zoe put down her scallion pancake and smacked Jim’s palm.

  “That’s great. But that’s just one day,” Jeanine said. “If we want to create serious buzz, we have to be out there every day with the signs. And Tris has to keep winning, which is not going to happen if he goes out there and chokes again.”

  “Jeanine!” Mom said.

  “What? He said the only reason he got through was because he didn’t drop his knife. He was total krill.”

  Zoe spit the dumpling she’d just put in her mouth back into her steamer. “What’s krill?”

  “They’re the little fish the shark eat. The girl with her own knives? Shark. The kid who choked?” Jeanine pointed her chopstick at me. “Krill.”

  “Jeanine, sa soo fee,” Dad snapped.

  “What? I was defining krill. How is that not helpful?”

  “You know.” Dad gave Jeanine the scary slow nod.

  “But I don’t.” I had that shaken-soda feeling again. “I was krill.”

  “Tris,” Mom said, but it sounded like, “Stop.”

  “What? I did. I choked. I trained and trained. Walter spent hours showing me what to do. And then when the time came, I couldn’t do it. It’s like textbook choking. So there! I said it!”

  “Okay, we get it,” Mom said. “Just maybe take it down a bit.”

  “Why?” My insides were getting fizzier every second.

  Dad leaned in close. “Because you’re yelling. In a restaurant.”

  “I am not!” I never yell. I go silent. I walk away. I disappear. I don’t yell.

  I looked around the table. Everyone was staring at me.

  “I just meant,” Dad said in his don’t-scare-the-wildlife voice, “you’re on the show for fun. You should have fun. Jeanine shouldn’t take it so seriously.”

  “Where have you been? You think I’ve been training, getting up at five in the morning, because it’s fun? I take it seriously, because it is serious!” I could hear myself now, how loud I was, but I couldn’t turn myself down. “And the truth is: I did choke today. And what I need is not to do it again. What I don’t need is for people to pretend I was great or that I deserve some kind of party!”

  Before I knew it, I was on my feet, running through the restaurant to the bathroom and straight into a stall.

  My whole body was vibrating. I had never yelled like that at my parents. Or anyone. Something inside me had broken, and everything had just rushed out.

  I reached into the pocket of my jeans, pulled out a wrinkled square of paper, and unfolded it. Was this the closest I was ever going to get to the Donut Robot?

  Even a little faded and torn, it still knocked me over. Ninety-six dozen doughnuts an hour! In my mind, I watched the hopper drop perfectly shaped doughnuts one after another into the oil, and the conveyor belt—

  “Tris?” Josh’s sneakers appeared under the stall door.

  “Hey.” This was embarrassing.

  “You okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, but I didn’t open the door.

  “You know, I get it. Why you… I get it.” He didn’t have to say more. Sometimes, I get it is all you need. Why did my parents not get that? My parents couldn’t even admit there was an it to get.

  I opened the bathroom door.

  “I tasted a lychee,” he said.

  “Good, right?”

  “Something about them kind of made me think of eyeballs, but once I got over that, yeah, I liked it.”

  Suddenly, I had an idea. “Hey, have you ever had a Cronut?”

  Chapter 17

  When the alarm on my phone beeped the next morning, I quickly turned it off and climbed down from my bed, trying not to rock the bunk too much.

  “Josh,” I whispered. “Get up.”

  He opened one eye. “What time is it?”

  “I thought you wanted to get Cronuts?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s six.”

&n
bsp; He turned away from me and put the pillow over his head.

  I ripped it away. “Come on. Get dressed.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we were zooming downtown on the 1 train.

  Josh dropped into a seat, leaned his head back against the window, and closed his eyes. “Tell me again why I’m awake.”

  “Okay, picture a mind-blowing doughnut.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now picture a mind-blowing croissant.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay, now imagine they had a baby. That is a Cronut.”

  Josh’s eyes flew open. “Wait—are your parents going to freak if they wake up and we’re not there?”

  “I told Mom last night. I’m going to meet her and Dad at the fountain in front of The Food Connection just before nine.”

  “And what time does this place open?”

  “Eight, but if you’re not on line by seven, you’ll never get one.”

  “And they only sell them in the morning?”

  “Yeah, D.A. sells other pastries you can get whenever, but the Cronuts are really their thing. Oh, and cookie shots, but you can only get those in the afternoon.”

  “What’s a cookie shot?”

  “They bake these chocolate chip cookies in the shape of a cup and fill them with milk.”

  “That’s awesome.”

  “Meh, it’s fun. But it’s kind of gimmicky. The Cronut is way better. You’ll see.”

  Josh dozed for the rest of the ride to Soho. I made sure to stay awake so we wouldn’t miss our stop.

  The streets were still quiet when we came out of the subway station on Spring Street. During the day, Soho is packed, mostly with tourists, but the only people around now were some joggers and restaurants workers scrubbing tables at outdoor cafes.

  As we walked to the bakery, I told Josh all about my first day on Can You Cut It?

  “You should have seen these onions. They were the size of grapefruits. Okay, maybe not that big.”

  “Maybe Chef JJ wants to make sure nobody thinks she’s favoring you, you know, because she knows your mom.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “And then yesterday, with Mom, she was…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Like super…intense, but she’s kind of always that way.”