Mia Measures Up

by Coco Simon

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and then realized how silly it was for me so say that. I didn’t have anything to be sorry about. “I mean, thanks for telling the truth to Principal LaCosta.”

  “It was getting out of hand,” Callie repeated, and then she shrugged and walked away.

  When I got back to my table, Katie, Alexis, and Emma were practically jumping out of their seats.

  “What did she say?” Alexis asked.

  I paused dramatically. “Sarrah Sleepz is . . . Sydney Whitman!”

  Katie shrieked. Emma gasped.

  “I knew it!” Alexis cried.

  “You did not,” Emma said.

  “Well, she was my number one guess. I just didn’t say it out loud, but I had a feeling,” Alexis countered.

  Katie hugged me. “This means they can stop her, right?”

  I nodded. “I think so.” And then I repeated what Callie had told me.

  “Wow, you really must have made an impression on Sydney for her to bully you from three thousand miles away,” Alexis remarked. “It’s kind of a compliment.”

  I had to let that sink in. Alexis was right, in a way. Sydney lived in California. I’d always assumed she would have a glamorous life out there, going to the beach and meeting celebrities and hanging out with popular friends. But if she had nothing better to do than spy on me and make fun of me, maybe things weren’t going that well for her.

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “I’m just glad the whole thing is over!”

  CHAPTER 13

  When He Looks at Me

  Are you really wearing that shirt to the concert?” I asked Dan that night.

  We were getting ready to go to the La Vida Pasa concert. I was wearing an official band T-shirt, and skinny jeans. Dan was wearing a scary-looking T-shirt for one of his heavy metal bands. It had a flaming skull on it with snakes coming out of its mouth.

  “Why not? It’s a music T-shirt,” Dan replied.

  “We are going to see a Latin pop band, and you are wearing a flaming skull,” I told him.

  Dan shrugged. “Who cares? Maybe they like flaming skulls.”

  I thought of the boys in La Vida Pasa, with their button-downed shirts and slouchy jackets. “I don’t know about that. It’s not exactly the right look.”

  Sebastian burst through the door. “I’m here! Let’s get this party started!”

  “You can start the party when you get to the concert,” Eddie said, slipping on his jacket. “Everybody ready? Do you have your tickets?”

  We all nodded, and then we left the house and piled into Eddie’s car. Dan slipped a La Vida Pasa CD into the disc player. Their song, “Lloviendo en mi corazón” came on, which means “Raining in My Heart.”

  “Lluvia . . . lluvia . . . lluvia . . . ,” Sebastian sang along loudly when the chorus came on. “Rain . . . rain . . . rain.”

  Dan sat in the passenger seat, and he turned around to look at Sebastian.

  “Dude, if you sing like that during the concert, I will pretend I don’t know you,” Dan said.

  “Well, I think he sounds nice,” I said, partly because it was true and partly to bug Dan.

  “Thank you, Mia,” Sebastian said, grinning at me.

  The Rockwood Arts Center was only forty minutes away from our house in Maple Grove. Eddie dropped us off by the front entrance. We joined the throng of fans, mostly kids and teens, getting through the security checkpoint. I was so excited I could barely stand it.

  The guard checked my bag (hairbrush, cell phone, lip gloss). Then we handed in our tickets and entered the ballroom where the concert was being held. It was a big space, with a refreshment stand along one wall and a concert stage all the way along the other.

  “I thought there would be seats,” I said.

  “No seats! This is better. Now, we can dance!” Sebastian began to move to the warm-up music blaring over the speakers.

  Dan shook his head. “Dude.”

  “Hola!”

  The sound of three screaming voices behind me made me jump. I turned around and saw, to my amazement, Katie, Alexis, and Emma!

  “Oh my!” I cried. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We wanted to surprise you,” Katie replied. “I really got into the band after that night you slept over. I kept sharing their videos with Alexis and Emma, and they got into them too.”

  “We’ve been practicing our Spanish,” Emma said.

  “And it’s easy to find translations of the songs online,” Alexis added. “So now we at least know what the songs are about.”

  I stared at my friends, and a feeling of amazing happiness welled up inside me. I couldn’t believe they had gone to all that trouble to get to the concert! Then I remembered something.

  “So that’s why we couldn’t bake tonight,” I said. “You guys were planning on coming to the concert.”

  Katie nodded. “Did we surprise you?”

  “Yes!” I replied.

  “Come on!” Sebastian said, grabbing my hand. “We need to get closer to the front!”

  He hurried across the dance floor to the stage, and we followed him. The place was getting more and more packed with each minute. Finally, the recorded music stopped, and the lights dimmed.

  A young woman walked out onstage, carrying a guitar.

  “Where’s the band?” I asked.

  “That’s the warm-up act,” Sebastian explained. “There’s always an opening band.”

  The woman’s name was Estela, and she sang really pretty songs in Spanish while she accompanied herself on guitar. I thought she was really good, but I couldn’t wait to see La Vida Pasa!

  We were watching Estela, swaying to the music, when this guy bumped into me. Really hard.

  “Move it!” he said really rudely.

  “Um, sorry,” I said.

  “Yeah, you should be,” he retorted, and then I swear he purposely pushed into me again! I started to feel a little scared. What was a guy doing pushing around a middle school girl like me?

  Dan, who was standing a little to the side of me, had seen the whole thing and turned to the guy. “You got a problem?” he asked. Dan was about a foot taller than him.

  “No, dude, no,” the guy said. “Just trying to get to my friend.”

  I gave Dan a grateful smile. Then it hit me—maybe Mom knew what she was talking about when she made me go to the concert with Dan. Rats! I hate it when parents are right.

  By the time Estela finished, the dance floor was so packed that we could barely move. The recorded music came on again for a little while and then stopped when the lights went out. Everyone started to scream—including me!

  Then the lights came back on, and Mateo, David, Ian, and Gabriel ran out onto the stage. I started to scream even louder.

  They launched into their first song right away.

  “Cuando llueve en mi corazón . . .”

  I started singing along, and I noticed that Katie, Emma, and Alexis were singing too! Then Sebastian started to dance, and we all started dancing with him.

  Sebastian grabbed Emma’s hand and spun her around. I could see her blush. Then he leaned over and said something into her ear.

  I couldn’t help it—I was curious. I was pretty sure that Emma had a crush on him. Did Sebastian have a crush on her, too?

  “What did he say to you?” I shouted in her ear over the music.

  “He said, ‘Dance with me, my little blond sister,’ ” she replied.

  I looked at her face for a sign of disappointment.

  “It’s okay,” Emma said. “It’s good to have a friend.”

  She didn’t look sad at all—maybe because the group had launched into another song—and we started waving our arms and singing along.

  I glanced over at Dan. He wasn’t dancing, exactly, but he was bobbing his head up and down, and he looked pretty happy.

  This is the best night of my life! I thought. They played almost every song that I loved. And then . . . Mateo pointed out into the crowd.


  Katie gasped and nudged me. “He’s pointing at you!”

  “He is not!” I protested.

  But then Mateo spoke into the mic. “Para la niña con las trenzas!”

  “What did he say?” Katie asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Sebastian turned to us. “Las trenzas means ‘braids.’ That’s you, Mia!”

  I almost fainted. Mateo smiled, and then they launched into “Cuando ella me mira.”

  “Wando aya mermaid!” Katie sang along, and I laughed.

  “Katie, you know those aren’t the words!”

  “I know, but I like singing it this way,” she replied.

  I shook my head, and then I sang along too. And I also changed the words.

  “Cuando él me mira!” (“When he looks at me!”) Because I would never, ever forget when Mateo looked at me and dedicated the song to the girl with the braids.

  Never!

  CHAPTER 14

  Young and Old

  Are you filling the blueberry cupcakes?” Katie asked Emma.

  “No, I’m filling the strawberry cupcakes,” Emma replied.

  “I’m getting the cream soda cupcakes out of the oven!” Alexis called out.

  “I’ve got the icing the perfect shade of blue,” I reported.

  It was eleven a.m. in Katie’s kitchen, and things were absolutely crazy. We had all the cupcakes baked. The vanilla cupcakes needed their blue and red fillings. The cream soda cupcakes needed to cool. Then everything needed to be iced and decorated.

  Katie and Emma filled the vanilla cupcakes using cupcake plungers. You stick the plunger into the center of a cupcake’s top, push the plunger, and a little plug of cake pops out. Then you fill the hole in the cupcake with whatever you want and top it with the cake you just took out.

  When the cupcakes were filled, I frosted them all with blue frosting. Then we added the decorations I had prepared: little round red candy-covered chocolates, and little red stars I had cut out of fondant with a tiny cookie cutter.

  “Let’s do half candies, half stars,” I suggested.

  “How should we place the red candies?” Alexis asked.

  “Maybe place them evenly all over the top, like a checkerboard, almost,” I suggested. “And put three stars on each cupcake.”

  It didn’t take long for us to finish the red and blue cupcakes, and we packed them in the special cupcake carriers that we own. By then, the cream soda cupcakes were ready to frost.

  “These are going to be delicious,” Katie said as she carefully frosted a cupcake with our vanilla cream frosting.

  “So, I thought about doing New York City cupcakes,” I began to explain. “Taxi cabs, hot dogs, Empire State Building, stuff like that. But to make all that stuff you need a lot of fondant, which isn’t supertasty. So this is what I came up with.”

  I picked up a frosted cupcake, which I sprinkled with gold-colored edible glitter. Finally, I topped it with a cupcake pick with a little flag on top that had a “100” on it in glittery gold numbers.

  “I figured that Gladys is turning one hundred, so that’s a big deal,” I said.

  “I love it!” said Alexis. “Did you buy the cupcake picks?”

  I shook my head. “I made them myself. I found the glittery numbers in the scrapbook section of the craft store and used them to make the little flags.”

  “These look awesome,” said Katie. “We don’t do cupcake picks enough. They’re so much fun. I’ve been looking up some vintage ones online. They’re so cute! Little plastic flowers and animals and ballerinas.”

  “Focus, Katie,” Alexis said, looking at the clock. “I’m hoping we’ll have time to eat lunch before we head over to the Smiths.”

  “That’s the beauty of the cupcake picks,” I said. “It won’t take long.”

  And it didn’t. We finished packing the cupcakes and cleaning up by one o’clock, and Katie’s mom and her fiancé, Mr. Green (he’s a math teacher at our school—long story), surprised us with subs from the deli. I couldn’t believe how hungry I was.

  “I’m still starving from all that dancing we did last night,” Katie said, echoing my feelings.

  “Yeah, that was really fun,” agreed Emma.

  Katie looked for a La Vida Pasa video on her phone and played it, turning up the volume, and we started dancing around the kitchen. Mrs. Brown shook her head.

  “I wish I had your energy!” she said.

  Pretty soon it was time for us to deliver the cupcakes to the Smiths’ party. Alexis’s dad has a minivan big enough to hold us, plus eight dozen cupcakes, so he had offered to drive us to our parties.

  It was a beautiful fall day, and when we got to the Smiths’ house, there were already a bunch of kids running and playing outside. We walked around the house to the backyard, which was decorated with red and blue streamers and balloons.

  A woman with long blond hair came up carrying a little blond boy.

  “Hi, Alexis,” she said. “This must be the Cupcake Club. This is Evan. It’s his birthday today.”

  Evan smiled at us with the cutest smile in the whole world.

  “Happy birthday!” we all told Evan.

  Two little blond-haired girls ran up.

  “Mom! Mom! Daddy’s setting up the basketball pole!” said one of the girls.

  “I want him to set up the craft table now!” said the other.

  “Calm down, girls,” Mrs. Smith said. “Everything will get set up soon. Right now, I’ve got to set up these cupcakes.”

  “We’ll do that for you,” Emma said quickly. “You’ve got your hands full.”

  Mrs. Smith smiled gratefully. “Thanks! They go on that table over there.”

  She motioned to a small round table set up with a red tablecloth.

  “Oh, this is going to be perfect!” I said.

  We had brought red and blue cupcake stands, and I set those up on the table. Then we carefully set up four dozen blue and red cupcakes on the stands. I stood back to admire it when we were done.

  “Perfect!” I said. “Looks very superhero-y.”

  Evan came running toward the cupcake table, chased by his screaming sisters. Emma scooped him up before he could knock into the table. His mom came running up.

  “Thanks,” she said, then noticed the table. “Wow, these look fantastic! Thanks so much, girls. Let me get my checkbook.”

  Mrs. Smith paid us, and we headed back to the Becker minivan to our next destination. As I walked through the backyard, I noticed all the party activities. A short basketball pole with a foam basketball. A craft table with coloring books and sticker books. Lots of toy trucks and cars.

  I remembered my first birthday parties in New York City. We never had them in the apartment. Mom and Dad would rent out a room in a pizza place or an ice-cream shop. There were always silly games to play, and we would make jewelry or color pictures. It wasn’t that long ago, really, but it seemed like forever. Those parties were fun, I realized, but I’ve definitely outgrown them.

  “Next stop, Maple Grove Senior Home!” Mr. Becker announced as we climbed back into the minivan.

  The atmosphere at the Maple Grove home was very different from the Smith’s backyard. We walked through the entrance into a bright, wide lobby. There were some elderly people sitting in chairs, and some in wheelchairs, and it was very quiet.

  Alexis told the woman at the front desk that we were here with the cupcakes, and a minute later, another woman came to the desk to greet us.

  “Holly Greenberg,” she said, pumping Alexis’s hand up and down. “Thanks for bringing the cupcakes. Everyone is so excited for the party.”

  I looked around at the people in the lobby. Except for the two people playing checkers, everyone else looked like they were napping. I glanced at Katie.

  “Wait until you meet Gladys,” she said.

  Holly led us to the dining room, which had been decorated for the birthday party. A big banner reading HAPPY 100 was hanging across the wall
. Holly instructed us to set up the cupcakes on a table at the end of the room.

  “Let me go get Gladys,” Holly said. “She’ll want to thank you.”

  Holly left and returned a few minutes later with a tiny woman on her arm. Gladys had the prettiest snow-white hair I had ever seen, and bright blue eyes that peered through wire-rimmed glasses. She smiled when she saw us.

  “Katie, these must be the friends you were telling us about,” Gladys said.

  “Yes, this is Alexis, Emma, and Mia,” responded Katie, pointing to each of us.

  “Let me see those beautiful cupcakes,” Gladys said, and she walked toward the table. “Look at that glitter! I love it. What flavor are they?”

  “It’s a surprise flavor,” Katie told her. “We made you cream soda cupcakes.”

  Gladys’s eyes got wide. “Cream soda cupcakes? I have lived one hundred years, and I’ve never heard of such a thing. They sound delicious.” She reached for one.

  “Gladys, those are for dessert later,” Holly scolded her.

  “Oh, pooh! It’s my birthday,” Gladys said, and she unwrapped the cupcake and bit into it. Then she made what I call the “cupcake face.” That’s the face people make when they really love our cupcakes. Mainly, they close their eyes.

  Gladys’s eyes were closed for what felt like a long time. Then she opened them. “It tastes just like cream soda. Delicious!”

  Alexis approached her. “Mrs. Bailey, I have a question for you. What advice do you have for living to one hundred?”

  Katie and Gladys both laughed, and Alexis looked confused.

  “I told her you were going to ask that!” Katie said.

  “And I’ve been thinking about the answer,” Gladys replied. “I would have to say, take a walk every day. And a nap. But mostly, do what you love with people you love.”

  Emma started tearing up. “That’s beautiful.”

  Katie hugged Gladys. “Happy birthday,” she said. “Have a good party!”

  “Oh, I’m sure I will,” Gladys replied. “My grandchildren will be here. We’re going to play Scrabble.”

  “They’ll be here soon, so you should get ready,” Holly told her. Then she turned to us. “The cupcakes are beautiful. You girls are really professional.”