Peppermint Cocoa Crushes

by Laney Nielson

  “No.” I took a step back. “Our ending is great.” Great was an overstatement, but Ryan was not going to be part of our routine.

  “It’s good, but what if we could make it even better? You’re the one who’s always pushing us to be better.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I looked at Kevin and what I saw then was not the boy I’d decided to have a crush on, but the Kevin I’d known since third grade—burping, messy, too loud Kevin. “We’re not changing our routine three days before the show.” Plus, I wanted to scream, Ryan isn’t even in our act!

  “I’m gonna go,” Ryan said.

  “But …” Kevin started to say something else, but he stopped.

  “Later, dude.” Ryan headed toward the stairs. “Bye, Sasha.”

  I dropped my dance bag on the basement floor and turned toward Kevin. “You know this is a competition, right? Only one act wins. Don’t you want it to be us? If we win, we’ll be dancing at the Summer Academy this summer. Just like we dreamed.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But what?”

  “Forget it.”

  Our rehearsal did not go well. Kevin bumped into me a couple of times and my singing sounded super pitchy. It was only three days before the show, and we were falling apart. And because of what Kevin had said, I felt totally insecure about the ending. He was right. It could be stronger. But how?

  “Wait,” Kevin called from the stairs when I was leaving. “You forgot your bag.” He swung it toward me.

  “Thanks,” I said, but it came out angry. I was angry.

  On the walk home, I started getting outraged again that Kevin wanted Ryan to do an acro move in our act. It was our act. Just the two of us. Ryan didn’t belong in it.

  Why was it that just when Karly and I were back on track, everything else that mattered (our routine, Kevasha) was falling apart?

  Inside the apartment, I kicked off my boots.

  “Are we even getting a tree this year?” I asked Mom as she poured boiling water from the kettle into her mug.

  “Of course we are.” She dipped her teabag into the water.

  “When?”

  “I thought we’d get it this weekend. Claire will be home, and we’ll both be done with school.”

  I glanced around the living room; there wasn’t a single Christmas decoration up, but there was an unopened moving box in the corner (still).

  “Do we even have our stockings?” I headed toward my room. “Or did you throw those away?”

  “Sasha!”

  “You didn’t even buy a chocolate advent calendar this year. You always used to do that.”

  I closed my bedroom door hard, not waiting for Mom to answer.

  Anyway, there was nothing she could say that would make me feel better. It wasn’t just the bad rehearsal and Mom’s lack of holiday spirit that was stressing me out. I had five days and a lot to do: end of the semester tests in almost every subject, wrapping up the hat and mitten drive, doing a final push on social media to promote the show, and organizing the refreshments for the reception, which I kept putting off. And the holiday gift exchange …

  My mind whirled with everything I needed to accomplish in the next one hundred and twenty hours. I needed some music.

  I unzipped my dance bag and dug around for my earbuds. But instead I found a wrapped gift with a note that said “From your Secret Snowman.” That was a surprise! Kevin must’ve slipped it in when I’d forgotten my bag in the Hall’s basement. My salty mood started to dissolve.

  I unwrapped it: It was a mug with a packet of hot chocolate and a candy cane inside. Peppermint cocoa! My Secret Snowman knew exactly what I needed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MISTAKES

  When I arrived at school on Monday, Pete was already there in the front hall, hanging the hats and mittens from the Senior Center on the tree.

  “Thank you!” I dropped my backpack and pulled a hat out of the box. “Wow!”

  “I know,” Pete said. “They made a lot.” He stepped back. “The tree’s almost full.”

  “This is great.” I hung a hat on a high branch. “And the Knitting Club said they’d be done with theirs tomorrow!” I felt good that the tree was coming together and we’d have a lot to donate.

  “Excellent job,” Ms. Medley said as she passed by us.

  When we were finished, Pete and I walked to math class together. We didn’t say much, but it wasn’t awkward either.

  Outside the classroom, he stopped. “Are you going to the art room at lunch today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too,” Pete said. As he smiled, I noticed he had a slight dimple on his right cheek. How had I not seen that before?

  All morning, I tried to figure out how to give Kevin his next present—the Orange Crush soda. I’d put it in a brown paper bag with his name on it (writing with my left hand to disguise my handwriting). It had been hidden in my backpack, going with me from class to class.

  At lunch, I arrived in the art room before anyone else. I put the brown bag on the long table where a bunch of the finished snowflakes were waiting to be strung with fishing line. Then I went to the bathroom. When I came back, Anna, Mira, and Karly were standing at another table, already working.

  Kevin and Ryan were the last two to arrive.

  “Typical,” Mira said. “They think the rest of us are going to do all the work while they goof off.”

  “Boys,” Anna muttered. But I just watched Kevin as he walked to the back table.

  “Look, Kev.” Ryan pointed to the brown paper bag. “For you.”

  “I’m going to wash my hands,” I said to my group as I headed toward the sink in the back of the room. I wanted to get a better view of Kevin’s reaction when he saw the bottle of Crush and got it—the double meaning of the gift.

  He picked up the bag and peeked inside. “Awesome.” He pulled out the orange soda. “It’s my favorite!” Grinning, he glanced over at Ryan.

  Then Kevin unscrewed the cap, and the orange soda exploded, spraying all over him and the table in front of him—including the finished snowflakes on it.

  “Oh no!” I lurched forward, but the damage was already done.

  “Whoa.” He wiped his face with his shirt.

  “Here,” Ryan said, grabbing a bunch of paper towels.

  “The snowflakes!” Kevin picked up a soggy one. “They’ve melted.”

  I started mopping up the floor with the cloth Ms. McMann handed me. I felt terrible. It would take hours to remake the ones coated in soda. And it was my fault. The bottle of soda had been bumping around in my backpack all morning. No wonder it exploded.

  “We can save them,” Ryan said as he blotted one with a paper towel—but all the glued-on glitter came off. “Okay, maybe not.” He held the snowflake up and orange soda dripped onto my neck. Yuck. I wiped it off and stood up.

  “Orange-tinted snowflakes!” Kevin joked. “I like them, they’re kinda sci-fi.”

  How could he be joking about this? It was a disaster.

  I didn’t get home until seven-thirty that night. A bunch of us had stayed after school remaking the snowflakes, and then Kevin and I practiced at the Hall’s house, which took an extra-long time because Kevin kept clutching his throat, saying it was sore. I told him it was his nerves, because there was no way Kevin was getting sick. The show was in three days!

  Then I got home, and Mom lectured me about how exhausted I must be (like I needed her to point that out).

  “I’ll be glad when this show is behind you.”

  “Thanks, Mom. That’s real supportive.”

  “I am supportive, Sasha, but this has taken up all your time—I want you to do other things too.”

  “Like robotics,” I muttered. “No thank you.”

  I studied in my room that night, staying up late to review for the two tests I had the next day. Right before I went to bed, I pulled out the to-do list pad my Secret Snowman had given me and picked up one of the cute pencils. I wrote down what I needed to g
et done the next day. I reread the list, feeling like I was forgetting something, but it was late, and I was tired, and …

  I lifted up the pencil and read the words printed along the side: YOU GOT THIS!

  I smiled. “You got this!” I said aloud.

  “Sash, you can’t do everything,” Karly said to me after school the next day.

  “I know.” I opened the door to the auditorium. “It’s just, I think they could use our help.”

  “Thirty minutes. That’s it. I need to rewrite my social studies essay.”

  An hour later, I stood on a ladder as Pete handed up a snowflake.

  “You got it?” he asked.

  “Yup.” Reaching up, I taped the fishing wire to the ceiling; my legs shook. The snowflake spun, sparkling under the light.

  “Looks good.” Pete handed me another one.

  I glanced over at Ryan and Kevin, who were goofing off on a ladder on the other side of the auditorium.

  “Focus,” Karly yelled at them. “You need to redo that one.” She pointed to a snowflake that was hanging too low.

  It took us almost two hours to decorate, and then I convinced Karly to wait while Kevin and I did a quick run-through of our routine (dancing only). I wanted Kevin to save his voice. Our ending looked sloppy—it still wasn’t right, but I didn’t know how to fix it.

  “Don’t worry,” Karly said from the second row. “A bad dress rehearsal usually means an excellent performance.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t the dress rehearsal. Tomorrow is.” I rubbed my face. “This is bad.” I looked over at Kevin. “I think we’re getting worse.”

  “It’s okay, Sasha.” He pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket and held it out for me to see. It was the dollar bill I’d given him, the one I’d marked “You’re the One.” “I think I know who my Secret Snowman is.” He smiled.

  “You do?” I smiled back at him.

  “Yeah,” he said softly, almost dreamily, as if his heart was melting.

  He knew it was me. I was sure of it.

  “Sasha.” Karly stood between us, putting on her coat. “Anna just texted me. She wants to know if you still need her to bake something for the reception?”

  My heart dropped. That’s what had I forgotten to do. The refreshments!

  “One hundred and twenty cookies?” Mom said as Karly and I lined up the ingredients on the kitchen counter. “You can’t make that many cookies tonight. We can buy them.”

  “No. We have to bake them.” I opened the lid on the canister of flour. “People are willing to pay more money for homemade.”

  “Well then, other kids should be making them, too. You girls shouldn’t be the only ones doing this.” Mom shook her head.

  “I know.” I started pouring the dry ingredients into the largest bowl we owned. Mom was right. And if I’d sent out the reminder email when I should have, we would’ve had more help. What a fail.

  “Stop.” Karly nudged my hand. “That’s enough flour.”

  I put down the measuring cup, realizing I’d forgotten to keep count. I picked up the salt. It poured quickly onto the tablespoon, overflowing and spilling into the bowl.

  “Let me know if you need anything else.” Mom grabbed a few books and headed to her room.

  “Sash, you seriously look like you’re going to fall asleep.” Karly lined a baking sheet with parchment paper. “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Yes,” I said, closing my eyes for just a second. “I think I forgot the salt. Did you add it?”

  “Nope.”

  An hour and a half later, with a spatula in one hand and an oven mitt in the other, Karly transferred the last batch of cookies onto the wire drying rack.

  “We should try one,” she said.

  “Go ahead.” I lifted my head up from the counter and yawned.

  As soon as she bit into it, her face scrunched up.

  “Yuck.” She dropped the cookie. “Did you add the sugar?”

  “What? No … I thought you did …”

  Both of us looked over at the full bag of sugar sitting on the counter. Oh no.

  I took a bite of the cookie too—or, should I say, the high-sodium dog biscuit. Blech. Even a dog wouldn’t eat that. I wanted to cry. We’d just spent two hours making one hundred and twenty inedible cookies.

  “What are we going to do? We’re out of flour.” I glanced over at the empty carton. “And eggs. I can’t believe this. We’ll have to go to the store.”

  On the way over to Sugarman’s Market, Karly said, “Sash, I think we should buy the cookies.”

  “No.” I was determined to raise the most amount of money possible for the meals program at the Senior Center. And store-bought cookies wouldn’t cut it.

  “But I have to go home and finish my essay. It’s due tomorrow.” We turned onto Main Street.

  “Okay.” We passed by Salvatore’s; the color lights on its fake Christmas tree in the window flashed. “I can make the cookies.”

  “But you can’t, not by yourself.”

  “It’ll be fine.” I opened the door to Sugarman’s and the bells jangled much too merrily for my mood.

  I grabbed the largest bag of flour they had. “What do you think?” I turned around to ask Karly, but she wasn’t there. It should be enough, I thought as I headed over to the refrigerator for eggs.

  “Karly?” Where was she? I couldn’t carry everything. “Karly!”

  “Here I am.” Karly stood at the end of the aisle; Pete was next to her.

  He smiled. “Hey, Sasha.”

  I hesitated. “Hey.” I looked at Karly with a what’s-going-on expression.

  She took a step toward me. “Before you say no, I’ve already talked to Mr. Sugarman, and he said yes.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “We’re going to make the cookies here.” Pete handed me an apron. “We’ve got a commercial mixer, multiple ovens—”

  “But …”

  “I insist,” Mr. Sugarman said as he appeared on the other side of me. “All you need is a hairnet and you can get started.” He nodded toward the prep area behind the counter.

  Karly gave me a hug. “I’m sorry I have to leave.” She looked over at Pete. “Have fun.”

  Within minutes, we were in the kitchen and my hands were washed, my apron was on, and my hair was in a net. (Pete had super short hair, but he put a hairnet on too.) We added all the ingredients, this time very carefully following the recipe. After we mixed in the eggs, Pete asked if I wanted to blend some crushed candy cane into half the batter.

  “That’s a good idea!” I said. He went to get the candy canes and I noticed his shoes had flour dusting the toes. There was something so sweet about his messy shoes.

  “Here you go.” Pete handed me a rolling pin and a plastic bag filled with candy canes, and we got to work crushing them. I started humming “Winter Dreams.”

  “That’s the song you guys are doing for your act, right?”

  “Yeah. ‘Winter Dreams.’”

  “You’re going to do great,” Pete said.

  “I hope so. I really want to win the scholarship.”

  I liked spending time with Pete. When I was with him, I could still hear myself think, which was so different from when I was with Kevin.

  As I pressed cookie cutters into the dough, my mind wandered to the ending of our routine, and then an idea started to form for the perfect finish.

  By the time Mom picked me up, the cookies were baked and stored. Thank you, Pete Sugarman! And I’d come up with a new ending for our routine. It was a little bit romantic, and the perfect way for Kevin and I to reveal our crushes on each other. Kevasha was back on track.

  Chapter Twenty

  STAGE FRIGHTS AND FIGHTS

  The next morning when I sat down in math, Kevin whispered in a raspy voice, “What’s up?” At first, I thought he was joking around, but then I saw the cough drop in his mouth.

  “I thought you were getting better!”

  “I actua
lly feel better, but I can’t really talk.”

  My heart sank. How was Kevin going to sing? “But the dress rehearsal’s tonight. The show is tomorrow!”

  “I know. And I’ve got these.” He tapped a jumbo box of generic cough drops on the desk. “Don’t worry.”

  But I was worried. I also wondered if I should explain the change I was going to make to the ending, but I decided I’d surprise him at the dress rehearsal. It was definitely the sort of thing he could improvise. I mean, considering he liked me, it wouldn’t be hard.

  By the time we met up for the dress rehearsal in the auditorium, Kevin sounded like a croaking frog.

  “I’ll be fine dancing.” He wore the red morph suit. “But I can’t . . ”

  “Sing.” Karly stood next to him. “I can,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I hugged her, crushing my tutu between us.

  The three of us waited backstage; we listened to the clarinet players and the lip-synchers. We couldn’t see the jugglers, but we did hear a couple of balls drop. We watched from the wings for Mira and then Anna; they both slayed it. Ryan was the act before us, so Kevin left to do his acro moves, but I didn’t watch Ryan’s performance on purpose. Ryan was probably our biggest competition and the fact that Kevin was helping him still annoyed me.

  We were the last act—the finale—and that made me feel good. The Holidaze Spectacular always ended with one of the strongest acts, and I wondered if Ms. Kumar thought we were going to win. At the very least, she must’ve thought we had a chance.

  With Karly at the keyboard, Kevin and I took our places on the stage. The music started: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight … Every step was synched up, every move was tight—we were on point.

  Kevin moved into our finishing pose—both of us were supposed to take a knee with our arms reaching up and back, but as Kevin kneeled, I stayed standing and then did two turns toward him.

  Startled, he caught my eye as if to say, What are you doing?

  I smiled wider, as I sat down on his knee. I leaned forward—my plan was to kiss his cheek, a tiny peck, but Kevin jerked his head back before I could reach him.

  “Whoa, Sash.” Kevin stood up, bumping me off his knee.