Blaire Cooks Up a Plan (American Girl

by Jennifer Castle

  Eli stopped and looked at someone behind me. It was Thea.

  “Hi, guys. Can I join you?”

  “Um, I’m done,” Eli said. He stood up, shoving the last of his pizza in his mouth, then grabbed his tray and left without another word.

  “Sorry,” Thea said to me. “It looked like you guys were actually talking, so I came over to say hi.”

  “We were talking,” I said. “He likes to make videos with … well, that’s all I know.” I shrugged.

  Thea smiled. “Hey, you found out something about the mysterious Eli! Leave it to Blaire. Want to get a Popsicle?” she asked.

  “For sure.” Thea and I were both allowed to get desserts on Fridays. Mom and I had talked about the snacks I could buy, and fruit Popsicles were totally safe for me to eat.

  As we joined the others at the ice cream freezer, Thea and I both grabbed a strawberry Popsicle.

  “I declare,” Thea said dramatically, waving her Popsicle like a wand, “that ‘Pizza Friday’ is to be hereby known as ‘Popsicle Friday.’”

  “Deal,” I said, and we touched our Popsicles together.

  I looked back to see Eli heading out the door to recess. He’d seemed so excited when we were talking about videos. What was he going to say before Thea came over?

  6:01 a.m.

  Thea: Blaire? BLAIRE! Are you up? WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEAD!

  6:14 a.m.

  Thea: OMG, I can’t believe you’re not up yet. Call me!

  6:27 a.m.

  Amadi: I just saw it! Blaire, you were great! Sabrina, did you watch yet?

  Sabrina: Yeah! Blaire, can I get your autograph?

  HUH?

  I wiped the sleep from my eyes and replied to the messages by typing a “speak no evil” monkey-face emoji. Thea and I had decided a few weeks ago that we’d send the monkey whenever we didn’t understand what someone was trying to say in a text conversation. Now all our friends were using it.

  Blaire:

  Thea: YOU DON’T KNOW?????

  Sabrina: OMG she doesn’t know.

  Amadi: WATCH THIS!

  The next message to come through was a link to an online video. I clicked on it … and it opened up the Room Revolutions channel.

  No. Way.

  There was Marco, showing the audience the attic in the stone mansion. Next came a girl talking about how she would turn that space into an indoor playground. And that girl was me. Thea was in the video, too.

  Then Marco and Suzanne talked about how they could take “their friend Blaire’s” great ideas and make them a reality.

  There were a few scenes with Marco, Suzanne, and a construction crew building the play structure I’d talked about. It was all there. They sped up the tape so it looked like everyone was working really fast, and it was hilarious.

  Finally, it was my favorite part of all of Marco’s videos: the moment the home’s owners saw the “after” part of the room makeover. Marco brought the couple and their kids—a nine-year-old boy, a six-year-old girl, and twin toddlers—up the attic stairs and had them cover their eyes. When they opened them, they all gasped and laughed. The kids rushed toward the play structure, and the parents hugged Marco.

  When the video was over, I scrolled down the page to see that it already had thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. Whoa!

  I jumped out of bed and ran down the two flights of stairs to the front desk, where Dad was eating a breakfast wrap with one hand and trying to type with the other.

  “Did you see this?” I asked, waving my tablet at him.

  “What did Beckett do to your tablet now?” Dad said, sighing.

  “No! The video! Marco’s video!”

  Dad just blinked at me, blankly. “What video?”

  “Daaaad!”

  Dad dropped his act now, breaking into a wide smile. “Yes, of course I saw it. Marco showed it to me and Mom yesterday. He wanted us to see it before he posted it, to make sure the part with you in it looked okay.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  He shrugged. “We figured it would be more fun for you to find out from your friends. They must be excited.”

  “Uh … just a little,” I said, handing Dad my tablet and showing him the string of messages.

  “There she is!” said a voice above me. “Room Revolutions’ newest design consultant.”

  I looked up to see Marco coming down the stairs. “Tell me you watched it,” he added when he reached the first floor.

  “I watched it.”

  “Did you love, love, love it?”

  “It’s so cool, Marco! I wish I could have been there when you did the big reveal.”

  “Me too! We’ll have you there for the big moment next time.”

  Next time? “Uh … sure!”

  Cat came in the front door. “Hey, Sprout, you’re still in your pajamas? I’ve got the truck loaded up. We’ve got to go get set up for the festival.”

  I grabbed my tablet from Dad and handed it to Cat. “I’ll go get dressed, but first, you have to watch this!”

  Cat loved the video, and I watched it over and over as she drove into town. As Cat and I finished setting up our booth, Thea arrived.

  “Small fingers!” Thea shouted when she saw me. We watched the video together three more times. We would have kept going, but when Mom showed up, she said we had to shut off the tablet. “Go enjoy the festival,” she said, unpacking supplies for samples from the restaurant menu.

  Thea and I were leaving the booth when I felt something tugging at the back of my T-shirt. I turned to see Abby and her dad.

  “Abby insisted on coming to the Pleasant View Farm booth first,” Abby’s dad explained. “She wanted to see you.”

  Abby smiled and pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, then handed it to me. It was another drawing, this one of a heart with arms and legs and a face saying, THANK YOU FOR THE RECIPES, BLAIRE! in a speech bubble.

  “I love it,” I said, clutching the drawing to my chest. “Which recipe did you take?”

  “I took two of them: the one with the giant fingers, and the one with the soup.”

  “How did they turn out?” I asked.

  “The fingers came out good. They were yummy!”

  Abby’s dad smiled and flashed me a thumbs-up.

  “That’s Beckett’s favorite, too,” I told her. “What about the Hug-in-a-Bowl?”

  “We couldn’t make that one.” Abby scrunched up her face. “They didn’t have broccoli at Helping Hands this week.”

  “Hopefully next time,” her dad added.

  “Oh, right,” I said, puzzling out what Abby and her dad were saying. They couldn’t always get the ingredients they need for a recipe. At my house, all I have to do is walk outside to get fresh vegetables. My friends’ families can just buy what they need at the supermarket. But some people can’t do either, I realized.

  Abby shrugged it off, though. “Will you go with me into the bounce house?”

  “Yeah, of course!” I said. “This is my friend Thea. Can she come, too?”

  “Sure.”

  Ten minutes later, Abby, Thea, and I were having a contest to see how many times we could jump high enough to touch the roof of the bounce house. Thea tried to do some of her moves from her Greek dance troupe, and I showed Abby how to do a seat drop.

  After our time in the bounce house was up, we tumbled out, one after the other, our faces red from laughing so much. Abby’s dad was waiting for her.

  “Hey, we’re going to grab some kettle corn. Want to come?” I asked Abby.

  Abby looked hopefully at her dad, but he bit his lip and shook his head. “Maybe another time,” he said. “We’d better get going.”

  Thea and I said good-bye to them and headed for the kettle corn booth. I looked back as we walked, and noticed that Abby and her dad weren’t leaving. They were at the library book sale, looking through the bin marked ONE FREE BOOK FOR EVERY CHILD!

  Then I got it: Abby’s dad probably said no because they didn’t h
ave the money to buy kettle corn. It probably wasn’t easy for him to explain that. I thought about how difficult it was for me to explain why I couldn’t eat dairy. I guess I knew how Abby’s dad felt.

  I wanted to run after Abby and tell her I’d use all my saved-up allowance to buy her as much kettle corn as she wanted, but when I looked back again, she and her dad were gone.

  I spotted a booth with the Bluefield Helping Hands banner. Eileen was at the table, handing out fliers and free magnets with the center’s information on it.

  “Hi, Blaire!” Eileen said when Thea and I came up to the table. “Your recipe cards were a hit! Lots of kids took them. We could use more, if you’re up for making them.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “But I hope kids can actually make the recipes. I didn’t realize that some people couldn’t get all the ingredients.”

  “It’s true,” Eileen said. “I suppose we could offer only the recipes that match the produce we have that week, but I’m never sure what we’re going to get, and when.” Now she sighed. “There are so many families dealing with food insecurity right now, and they depend on us.”

  “What’s food insecurity?” Thea asked.

  “It’s when you don’t have regular access to nutritious food,” Eileen explained. “Some families don’t know, from day to day, what they’ll be able to feed their kids.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Thea said. “That’s awful. How does that even happen?”

  “People end up in that situation for so many different reasons,” Eileen explained. “Sometimes they lose a job, or sometimes they have health issues and can’t work. We try to help everyone who comes to the center, but we don’t always have the resources.”

  “You need more donations?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, definitely.”

  We said good-bye to Eileen and walked back to the Pleasant View Farm booth. Mom was handing out samples of the apple and pear compote she uses in a number of recipes at the restaurant. Cat was selling butternut squash, tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, and apples from our farm. Dad and Beckett had arrived. Dad brought a copy of the Empire State Weddings article, which he had framed. He set it up on an easel with a sign that read, CHECK OUT THE HUDSON VALLEY’S NEWEST EVENT SPACE.

  I watched Mom, Dad, and Cat talk to the people who stopped at our booth. Many of them were friends and neighbors and people I’d known forever. Others were faces from the community that I recognized. I couldn’t help wonder if some of these people were having trouble getting enough groceries each week. Were there other families I knew who were struggling like Abby and her dad? I was glad I could make recipe cards, but I wanted to do more to help.

  Where was an idea-spark when I needed one?

  In a small pen behind the booth, Beckett stood dressed in his silver sequined vest and black top hat. He and Dash ran through their tricks. It wasn’t long before a crowd gathered to watch.

  “Having Dash here was a genius idea,” Cat whispered to me. “Our booth is getting more visitors than we’ve ever had at this festival!”

  My brother got Dash to do his dance move, but in midstep, Dash dropped down to all fours and trotted over to the edge of the fence where a small boy was eating a hot dog. Dash started sniffing at the hot dog.

  “Dash!” Beckett called. “That’s not for you! These are for you!”

  He shook the container of licorice treats. Dash turned around, and Beckett held up a hoop and shook the treats again.

  Dash began running to the hoop. But instead of jumping through it, he ran around it and right back to where he’d come from: the boy with the hot dog.

  CHOMP.

  Before anyone could make a move, Dash had grabbed the rest of the hot dog and swallowed it down.

  The crowd started laughing, but Dad hurried over to the boy’s parents. “We’re really sorry about that,” Dad said, holding out some money. “Please get another hot dog, on us.” He turned to the boy. “You okay?”

  “Are you kidding?” the boy replied, his eyes wide. “That was the most awesome thing that’s ever happened to me!” The boy started clapping, and the rest of the crowd joined in.

  Beckett grinned and took a bow.

  What the heck?”

  “Oh my gosh, what happened?”

  I’d just rounded the corner of the school hallway and bumped into a crowd of kids gathered in the doorway of our classroom.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Thea turned around and pulled me into a spot next to her so I could see what they were looking at: our desks, rearranged into groups of four.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Ms. Lewis called, waving us in. “Please find your new spots.”

  Everyone started running through the room, searching for their desks. Amadi found hers and called, “Blaire! Over here! We’re in the same group.”

  “Who else are we with?” I asked, walking over.

  There was my desk, with the pencil holder I’d made by wrapping an old soup can in red metallic duct tape. Right across from me was a desk with a sticker on it. In teeny-tiny type it said, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, PLEASE GET ME A DOUGHNUT.

  I started laughing. “Whose desk is this?” I asked Amadi. She shrugged.

  “It’s mine,” Eli said, coming up behind me.

  “Oh. I like your sticker.”

  Eli flopped into his chair. He didn’t look at me, or Amadi, or the other boy at our table, Lucas.

  I slid into my own chair. “I didn’t see you at the Harvest Festival,” I said lightly. “Did you go?”

  “Nope,” Eli said.

  “Oh. Well, what did you do on the weekend?”

  Eli shrugged.

  “Okay, class,” Ms. Lewis called out to quiet us down. “Your desks will be in this setup for four weeks. I like to mix things up. And speaking of mixing, this morning’s science lab is going to explore what we’re learning about the density of liquids. You’ll work with your desk group.”

  Ms. Lewis handed each table a liquid dropper, a tall plastic cup, and a stack of smaller plastic cups. Then she went around and filled our small cups with water, rubbing alcohol, honey, dish soap, vegetable oil, blue food coloring, and corn syrup.

  “Add a drop of each liquid to the tall cup, starting with what you think is the most dense liquid. Talk amongst yourselves.”

  “I think that would be the honey,” Lucas said to me, Amadi, and Eli.

  “Maybe,” Amadi said. “Or the corn syrup.”

  “Uh, no,” Eli muttered. “It’s the vegetable oil.”

  He grabbed the dropper and filled it with some of the oil, then added that to the cup. Next, he filled the dropper with corn syrup.

  “Eli,” I said. “We should be working together.”

  Eli just held up his palm, telling us to wait, and finished filling the dropper. He squeezed the syrup into the tall cup. It settled on top of the oil but didn’t mix with it.

  “That’s so cool,” Amadi said. “How did they stay separate?”

  “The liquids are different densities,” Eli said.

  “Yeah,” Lucas added. “That’s why people say, ‘those two are like oil and water’ about people who don’t really get along.”

  “Good call, Eli,” I said. “You were right about vegetable oil.”

  “Uh-huh,” Eli grunted. He got up and went to the pencil sharpener.

  I looked at the jar where the liquids were settling on top of each other. Then I looked at Eli. He didn’t seem to want to mix with anyone.

  Well, I had four weeks to sit next to him. That gave me a lot of time to try to change that.

  At the end of the afternoon, we had a birthday circle for one of the girls in our class. Each of us had a turn telling Kristina what we admired about her. I said I liked how good she was at math and helped other people remember their facts when they needed. Then Kristina took out a big box filled with frosted sugar cookies. She started passing them around. When she got to me, she held the box out, but I didn’t take a cookie.

  “Don’t yo
u want one?” she asked.

  “Is this … uh … dairy-free, by any chance?”

  Kristina closed her eyes and bonked herself on the forehead. “Oh my gosh, Blaire. I totally forgot that you can’t have dairy! I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s okay,” I said quietly. “I have my own cookies I can eat.”

  I didn’t want Kristina to feel bad, especially on her birthday, but it felt awkward to get up and go to the storage cabinet for a different treat. I hoped no one was watching me.

  When I got back to the circle, the other kids were eating their cookies, talking and laughing. No one said anything to me about my cookie, but I still felt awkward. I watched my friends lick frosting off their fingers like it was no big deal. For them, it wasn’t. But it was for me.

  That hurt my feelings as much as someone teasing me about the foods I couldn’t eat.

  Cat and I were having our first “field date” since she’d gotten back from her honeymoon, and I was looking forward to our weekly time together. I waited for her by the greenhouse, eager to harvest some fall tomatoes and talk.

  “Hey, Sprout! I’ll be right out!” Cat called from inside, where she was washing off some tools in the sink.

  While I waited, I checked over the row of onions that had been pulled out of the ground weeks ago and were now “curing” in the sun. Their white-brown skins made them look like a string of pearls. Nearby, there was the tomato field, dotted with red. In the distance, the ground was covered with the green flecks of zucchini. I loved how the colors of growing food mixed together like confetti.

  BOOM.

  There it was. My idea-spark for Helping Hands!

  “Cat!” I called. “I have to go do something! Be right back!”

  “Hey,” Cat shouted from the shed back. “What about our field date?”

  “This. Can’t. Wait.”

  I raced down the path, headed for the house. When I came around the side of the barn, I saw a delivery truck parked outside the restaurant’s back door. Dad was helping the driver unload boxes as Mom made notes on a clipboard.

  I ran into the family kitchen, where I knew the Helping Hands brochure was stuck on the fridge. Then I grabbed my tablet and sat down to write an email: