The Secret Cookie Club

by Martha Freeman

  Teacher Dustin pushed back his desk chair. “I’m coming with you. We can’t afford to lose anyone else. Uh, and just out of curiosity, what kind of cookies?”

  Teacher Dustin followed me down the west stairs and along the ground-floor hallway to a door marked FACULTY AND STAFF. It might as well have said KIDS KEEP OUT! and, being an obedient kind of fifth grader, I hesitated till Teacher Dustin turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  At first, I didn’t see anyone in the room, but the TV—big, fat, and ancient—was on and tuned to cartoons. Between it and us was a sofa. I peeked over the back and there was Kayden, immobile, goggle-eyed, and staring at the screen.

  Without looking away from the screen, he said, “Told you it worked.”

  Teacher Dustin sighed. “I’ll go to the office and tell them the fugitive’s been found. You take him upstairs.”

  Neither Kayden nor I spoke till we got back to the library. Then he asked me, “What’s a fugitive?”

  “Someone who escapes,” I said.

  “Am I in trouble?” he asked.

  “That’s not my department,” I said. “I just want to make sure we get something done. What does Teacher Beth want us to work on?”

  “Poetry, but I hate poetry,” he said.

  “You’re good at poetry,” I said, “but you need more confidence about reciting.”

  “I feel stupid when I say those words out loud,” said Kayden.

  “You know when I feel stupid?” I asked him. “When I dance in front of people—like you and your mom.”

  Kayden thought for a second. “Huh. But you do it anyway. I guess that makes you brave, right?”

  “I guess it does,” I said.

  Teacher Dustin came back. “Did you tell him about the cookies?”

  “He doesn’t deserve cookies!” I said.

  “More for us, then,” said Teacher Dustin.

  “Did you skip lunch or something?” I asked.

  “I have a sweet tooth,” Teacher Dustin said.

  “Cookies?” said Kayden.

  “Look, Kayden, if we eat the cookies I brought, do you promise not to be late to tutoring ever, ever, ever again?” I asked.

  “You brought me cookies?” Kayden said.

  “I did,” I said.

  Solemnly, Kayden put his hand on his heart. “I promise.”

  I pulled the cookies out of my backpack. Teacher Dustin brought napkins and cups of milk from the library office. I set two cookies on each napkin.

  Kayden frowned and poked his. “I never saw blue frosting before.”

  Teacher Dustin said, “They’re almost too pretty to eat . . . but not quite. Did you bake them, Emma?”

  “They came from my friend Grace.”

  Still suspicious, Kayden bit off a nibble, chewed it carefully, and announced, “Hey, they’re good.” After that, the only sounds were chewing, sipping, and swallowing until the cookies were gone. Then Kayden turned to me. “I have a question.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “I remembered what you told me on Friday,” I said, “about how you liked to watch TV and how you thought that teachers get to watch at school.”

  Kayden nodded. “That was smart of you.”

  I thought of the missing envelope. “I guess it was if you say so. Only usually when it comes to finding things, I’m not smart at all.”

  “I am,” Kayden said. “I have to be because I’m also good at losing things. A lot of the time, it turns up in the same place as stuff I lost before.”

  “You mean like one particular place?” I said.

  “A couple places,” Kayden said. “Either in a coat pocket, in the covers of my bed, or under my bed.”

  The missing envelope was too big for a coat pocket, and I had checked in the covers of my bed. “But how does stuff get under your bed?” I asked.

  “I finally figured that out,” Kayden said. “Sometimes when I throw junk on top, it slips down between the mattress and the wall. Under the bed is where it ends up.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Monday, April 4, Olivia

  The day of the first preseason game of the Saint Ignatius Crusaders’ baseball season was the worst day of my entire life.

  Home in my own room, I was still suffering from the trauma of what I’d been through, an hour and a half squished on cold, hard bleachers, drizzle falling on my head, goose bumps covering my body, forced to watch my star athlete brother stand around, throw the baseball, catch the baseball, hit the baseball, and stand around some more.

  It wasn’t one game that made my suffering so terrible; it was what I could see in my future: endless baseball torture.

  I bet there are some places—like Hawaii—where the bleachers don’t burn your butt or freeze it either . . . but those places are not Kansas City, Missouri, which is where my family lives. Here, the weather is usually too hot or too cold, and it is 100 percent guaranteed to be the worst possible any time a baseball game is scheduled.

  If baseball is so terrible, why do I, Olivia Baron, go to my brother’s games at all?

  Because my parents make me!

  They believe in putting family first, and if I complain, they remind me that my brother, whose name is Troy, always comes to my plays and piano recitals.

  This—obviously—is a totally different thing, because there are a million baseball games and hardly any plays and recitals. Also, plays and recitals happen in soft seats and indoor comfort.

  I have pointed this out many, many times. How do my parents respond? They cover their ears and say, “La-la-la.”

  I am not kidding. I am merely exaggerating.

  Like I said, we had been home from baseball for about half an hour, and I had escaped to my room to chill on the sofa, do homework, watch cartoons, text my friends, and play this really cute game with parakeets and pink ice cream on my phone.

  That’s when, all of a sudden, it happened. My iPad made the burble-burble-ding sound that meant I had an e-mail (seriously? An e-mail?), and then in its girl voice, it said, “Emma.”

  First I thought, Emma? Who’s Emma?

  And then I remembered.

  And then I knew my day was saved. Moonlight Ranch!

  I felt like doing backflips.

  But what I actually did was tuck the quilt in around me and open the message.

  Hi, O. How are you? How is Kansas City? How are your parents and your brother?

  Guess what? It is your turn for secret cookies.

  Do you even remember secret cookies?

  Mine arrived right on time from Grace (so of course they were on time). And you know what I learned? Flour power works!

  I had lost something important, and my mom was mad at me. Because of the cookies, my mom got over being mad, and you could even say the cookies helped me find the lost thing. It was an envelope full of photographs, and it turned out to be hiding under my bed all the time.

  (I would have looked under my bed sooner, but it’s dark and scary down there, and it used to be layered with the fur of dead dust bunnies. After I got the envelope out and dusted it off and finished coughing and sneezing—then I vacuumed. My mom is still in shock.)

  The photographs were for a book we made for my great-grandmother’s birthday. Our family had a party, and my GG loved the party and the book, too. Her smile was so big when she saw it that losing the pictures and fighting with my mom was all worth it.

  Write and tell me how your real life is going. Also, tell me what problem you need flour power to solve, and if you have any allergies or if there are any kinds of cookies you don’t like or if there are any cookies you especially do like.

  Love from your friend always, Emma

  P.S. You have to go back to camp this summer so we can all be together again. Write and tell me that you are going! Promise?

  CHAPTER 30

  Olivia

  I read Emma’s letter twice, LOL the second time. She was still as bossy as ever!

&
nbsp; I shoved aside the comforter, the iPad, the phone, and the remote, got up and crossed the room to my bookcase. On the bottom shelf was a photo album, and inside—found it!—was the Moonlight Ranch camp picture. Oh my gosh—it felt like time travel to see the four of us squinting in the bright sun. I swear, I could feel the heat and the sweat and the dust.

  I remembered how at first I hadn’t liked Emma. But then she gave me the nickname “O,” and that made me feel like finally I belonged in Flowerpot Cabin instead of being the rich kid—not to mention the black kid—the one everybody looked at funny. A little later, I realized Emma couldn’t help being bossy. It was just who she was, but she was other things, too, like she cared about everybody so, so, so much.

  “O-LIV-i-ahhh!” my mom called from downstairs. “Dinner!”

  “Coming!” I called back, still looking at the picture and thinking about Flowerpot Cabin and about Vivek. There he was in the photo, looking off in the distance. Maybe he was thinking about Grace! It was so, so obvious she had a crush on him. Did he have one on her, too?

  Then I wondered if I would go back this summer, and if it would be the same if I did.

  “O-LIV-i-ah!” my mom called again.

  “Almost there!” I stood up and went over to the mirror above my dressing table and arranged my braids a couple of different ways. Then I squirted green apple cologne on my neck and my wrists and started downstairs.

  My bedroom is on a hallway set like an indoor balcony over the foyer of our house. From it, the front staircase kind of sweeps down in a majestic curve. As I descended, I imagined there was a handsome movie star waiting at the bottom and that I was wearing diamonds and a long sparkly gown.

  “How do you do?” I said to my pretend movie star, and then I gave him my hand, and together we spun around the shiny stone tiles.

  “Olivia? What are you doing?” my mother called from the dining room.

  “Dancing!” I told her.

  “We’re starving in here!” my brother called.

  Oh, puh-leez. I spun out of the foyer, down the hallway, and into the dining room, where my parents and my brother were waiting for me. Tragically, my movie star got lost along the way.

  Our house is pretty big, and it has a formal dining room, which we eat in every night—even though the table is way bigger than four people need. My parents say why would we have it if we aren’t going to use it? There’s a white cloth on the table and white napkins to match. In the middle there are always fresh flowers, roses from the garden in summer, pink mums from the flower shop tonight.

  “What’s that smell?” Troy asked when I sat down. “Did you spill a juice box?”

  “At least it’s better than boy smell.”

  “Children,” said my father, “I love you both, and I have a request. Could we please get through a meal without acrimony?”

  “Yes, dear Papa. Of course,” I said. “Only, please could you tell me, what is this thing called acrimony?”

  “Contentiousness,” my mother said.

  “That doesn’t help,” I said.

  “Conflict,” my brother said. “Fighting.”

  “Who’s fighting?” I asked.

  “No one, and let’s keep it that way,” said my mother. “Now, who would like to give thanks?”

  “I will,” said my kiss-up brother. “Dear Lord, thank you for this family and thank you for this food. And please give Saint Ignatius the hitting and fielding we need to have a winning season. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said my parents, but not me. With all the bad things God had to worry about, he might be annoyed to be asked for something as stupid as a winning baseball season—and if he was, I did not want to be blamed.

  My family believes in table manners, so we all waited for my mother to raise her fork and take a bite of baked beans (made with Baron Barbecue Sauce, of course) before we ate.

  Between bites, my mother asked about my math homework. “Did you get it turned in?”

  I repeated, “Math homework?” as if the words were from an alien language.

  “You forgot again, didn’t you?”

  I cut a piece of chicken, chewed it, and swallowed. “Mr. Driscoll didn’t remind me,” I said at last.

  “Darling, Mr. Driscoll has two dozen other students to keep track of,” my mother said. “You just have yourself.”

  I nodded. “I hear what you’re saying, but look at it this way. It’s Mr. Driscoll who cares whether I turn in my homework; therefore it’s Mr. Driscoll who should remind me.”

  “Young lady,” said my father, “you will care, too, if you get a bad grade. Engineers, scientists, computer programmers, airline pilots—they all need to do math. So do regular people if they want to get along in the world. Where would we be in our business if we didn’t understand math?”

  “In the toilet?” I said.

  My mother made a face. “Olivia, we are at the dinner table.”

  “I will tell you where our business would be,” said my father. “The recipes wouldn’t work out, and neither would the spreadsheets. Nothing in the world of barbecue sauce works without math.”

  “But I’m not going to make barbecue sauce when I grow up,” I said, and when I saw my parents look at each other, I added, “Not that making barbecue sauce is bad.”

  My father put his fork down. “It cheers me to hear you say that, Olivia, considering that you owe the clothes on your back, the food on your plate, the roof over your head, the phone in—”

  My mother interrupted. “I think we get the idea, George.”

  “Do we?” My father looked at me.

  “We do,” I said. “But I am going to be . . . an actress.”

  “That’s fine, but you still have to do homework,” my mom said. “Does anyone want more cole slaw? I think Jenny said there’s plenty.”

  “I do,” said Troy.

  Mom keeps a silver bell next to her water glass. She picked it up and rang it, and Jenny, our housekeeper, came in from the kitchen. “Let me guess,” Jenny said. “Troy wants more cole slaw.”

  Troy grinned. “Got that right.”

  Jenny had the bowl in her hand and served a big spoonful.

  “Thanks,” Troy said. “It’s delicious like always.”

  “It’s the pineapple makes it special,” Jenny said. “That’s how my own mama made it.”

  Jenny went back to the kitchen and—unfortunately—my mom remembered what we’d been talking about. “Tonight before bed, Olivia, I will check to make sure your homework’s done.”

  “Well, okay,” I said. “I just hope I have time to finish it.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” my father asked.

  “Because I have a very important letter to write.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Troy.

  “I do!” I explained that I had heard from Emma.

  “Was she the one whose mother was wearing the shorts?” my dad asked.

  “That was Lucy,” I said.

  “Emma’s mother is a lawyer,” said my mom.

  “I only remember the shorts,” said my dad.

  My mother turned to me. “Darling, do you want to go back to Moonlight Ranch this summer? It’s time to make the reservation.”

  “I have to think about it,” I said.

  “Well, don’t think too long,” my mother said.

  After dinner, I went back up to my room. It’s pretty big, I guess—bigger than the apartment my parents lived in when they were first married and trying to get the business going. Anyway, that’s what they are always telling me. My colors used to be mostly pink, but after camp I decided that was too little girly, so we had it redecorated in mostly purple with red accents—like the pillows on the sofa are red, and the comforter on my bed has giant red roses. On the walls there are posters from some of my favorite movies, The Philadelphia Story, Frozen, Titanic, and Cinderella.

  I reorganized myself, my remote, my iPad, and my phone on top of my quilt on my sofa. I probably would have put off answering Emma’s e-mail—exc
ept I had told everyone I was going to. Anyway, it was more fun than fractions.

  Dear Wonderful, Sweet, and Kindest Emma!!!

  It was so TOTALLY AWESOME to get your e-mail!!!

  It made me think about Flowerpot Cabin and Vivek, too, and how fun camp was!!!

  Remember the last day when we all had lunch and said good-bye? I was so embarrassed about my dorky parents in their big car and how everybody looked at them because they have their pictures on bottles of barbecue sauce. Did I ever tell you how much I wish my parents made phones or computers instead of barbecue sauce?

  Except I guess they could make dog food, and that would be worse, right? What if your parents had their pictures on bags of dog food? That would be a TOTAL MATTER OF MORTIFICATION.

  Anyway, you asked what is going on in my life. Here is the good thing:

  My class at After-School Acting Studio is putting on “The Princess and the Pea,” and guess who got the part of the princess?

  OLIVIA BARON!!!

  (When I told my star athlete brother, he said, “I guess that’s better than playing the pea.”)

  The only bad part is that Esmee Snyder plays the princess’s archenemy the queen, which is a big part, and now I have to see her at every single rehearsal.

  But I can deal with that. I can. Truly. It’s not like the part of the queen is BIGGER than the part of the princess. The princess is the STAR!

  As for the rest of my life—WOE IS ME!!!—it is a disaster, and not even flour-power magic can fix it.

  At school, I keep forgetting to do my math homework (why do I need to understand fractions anyway?), and my teacher, Mr. Driscoll, sent a letter home saying my grade is currently a big fat F, and I am supposed to have the letter signed by my parents, but who is Mr. Driscoll even kidding? I can’t do that! My parents think I’m smart. If they find out I am getting an F, my life will go down the TOILET!!!

  Then there is baseball season. It is just the start, and my brother is the shortstop, and I have to go to all his games, which RUINS MY LIFE until May at least—longer if his team makes the playoffs.