Too Many Toppings!

by Coco Simon

  “I have some DIY projects up my sleeve. I might get a table at the weekly flea market in the town square and sell some of my crafts and creations. Then my dad’s talking about us all going to Japan in August to see my grandfather. I’d really be psyched to go,” she said as she artfully created a pyramid display of cups of all sizes.

  I clapped my hands. “Ooooh! That would be awesome! And maybe you could do some ice cream research there!”

  “I know,” said Tamiko, nodding. “Like the taiyaki!”

  Taiyaki are little fish-shaped cakes that get filled with ice cream and dipped in fudge and sprinkles for decoration. Tamiko introduced them to Molly’s, and now we run them as a special once a month.

  “I’m sure you could learn new ice cream ideas without having to go all the way to Japan,” offered Sierra as a new group of customers entered the store. “Welcome to Molly’s!” she greeted them cheerfully, and we were off and running again.

  After our shift was over, my mom told us each to help ourselves to a free treat since it had been such a busy day. I asked if we could borrow her laptop to look at the Yay Gourmet site while we relaxed, and she agreed, donning an apron and washing her hands to cover the pre-dinner lull before things heated up again later.

  Sitting at a table in the far corner, we each indulged in our current favorite Molly’s item. Tamiko was having a coconut cake sundae—coconut ice cream with yellow cake crumbles and real shredded coconut topping mixed in, all covered in a heavy pour of liquid marshmallow. Sierra had a simple dish of lemon sorbet in front of her. She felt tired and overheated and wanted to be refreshed, just like the Girl Scouts. I was hungry, so I went for something a little more satisfying: a Rocky Road cone that was crunchy, salty, and sweet.

  Tamiko pulled up the Yay Gourmet site and began scrolling around. Sierra and I scooted our chairs closer to her so we could all look at the site together. It was such a pretty website, with a cool, puffy logo (it looked like it was made by a balloon artist) and brightly colored feature articles, with mouthwatering close-up photos and lots of handwritten notes and callouts with arrows. It made food look like the most fun thing on earth, which it kind of was!

  “They have a cool take on food reporting,” said Tamiko admiringly, scrolling through.

  I nodded. “Yeah. It’s like an annotated cookbook that a chef has had for years. Look at ‘One Hundred Perfect Pasta Plates.’ ”

  “And ‘Crazy Potato Chip Flavors You Can Make at Home’!” said Sierra with a laugh, pointing at a sidebar.

  “What will they say about Molly’s, I wonder?” I said.

  “ ‘Artisanal Ice Cream Made by Geniuses’!” said Tamiko.

  “ ‘Made by Beautiful Geniuses’!” corrected Sierra.

  We laughed.

  “Or how about ‘Beautiful, Well-Read Geniuses’?”

  “ ‘Beautiful, Stylish Geniuses’?”

  “ ‘Beautiful, Talented Geniuses’!”

  As our laughter subsided, we took bites of our ice cream and ate thoughtfully while Tamiko clicked around the site. Suddenly, I felt a tiny bit of nervousness creep in.

  “I hope they say nice things about Molly’s,” I said.

  “Oh, please. How could they not?” said Tamiko with a shrug.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Well, you never know. I mean, it’s a free press. They could say anything about us. It’s a little scary, actually.”

  “It’s not really a review site, though,” said Sierra. “It’s not, like, the local paper, here to give us only one star or something.”

  “Hey! The local paper gave us five stars! The most we could get!” I pretended to look offended.

  “Down, girl!” said Tamiko through a mouthful of coconut. “It’s food news. And we’ve got plenty of new stuff going on here for them to write about. Get it? NEWS ?”

  “I guess,” I said.

  Sierra patted my back. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be great.”

  I smacked my forehead as I stood waiting for the school bus Monday morning. I’d forgotten to ask my mom if it would be okay for me to tell people about the Yay Gourmet article. I mean, I’d told my dad when he and Tanner came to pick me up for dinner after work at Molly’s last night, but he was family.

  The person I was most excited to tell was Colin, my school bus buddy and probably my closest friend at Vista Green, my new school (which wasn’t that new to me anymore). He was the assistant editor of the school paper—actually, he was the person who’d encouraged me to join in the first place—and I knew he’d be interested in the NEWS, as Tamiko had called it.

  The bus pulled up and I climbed aboard, scanning the crowd to find Colin sitting in one of our usual spots toward the back right. I passed the Mean Team—Blair, Palmer, and Maria—near the front and didn’t even flick my eyes toward them. One-on-one, Maria could be okay, but Blair and Palmer were awful, and as a threesome they were intolerable. Colin had helped me deal with them right from the start.

  Now Colin was smiling and waving me back. I smiled in return and beelined toward him, flopping into the seat and dropping my already-heavy backpack on the floor.

  “Good weekend?” he asked, by way of greeting.

  I tipped my head. “Weekends are always good. Better than weekdays, for sure.”

  He nodded, still smiling. “Totally. What did you do?”

  I filled him in on my weekend, which didn’t end up sounding that interesting because the one piece of information I was dying to share had to be carefully left out. Colin had had a decent weekend, but he’d had a lot to write and edit for the paper.

  “You should consider writing more articles in the newspaper,” Colin said. “My sister always says that you’re the strongest writer on the staff.”

  I blushed. “Your older sister? The one who goes to high school?”

  Colin laughed. “The one and only!”

  “How does she know my writing?”

  “I always bring home the school paper, and since she writes for the high school paper, she always checks it out. She loves your ice-cream-and-book pairings every week and says you’re a really strong writer.”

  “Huh!” I sat back in my seat and looked away, pleased.

  “She says most of my friends write well, but you stand out.”

  I turned to look back at him. “How does she know we’re friends?” I blurted, and then regretted it as Colin blushed and looked out the window.

  “Oh, I’ve just mentioned you at home. You know.”

  I knew. I’d mentioned Colin at home too. My family knew him first as “the boy who was nice on the bus my first day,” and then “the boy who got me involved with the school paper,” and finally “my friend Colin.”

  “My family knows you’re my friend too,” I offered.

  “Thanks!” he said, turning to look at me. Then he squinted at my head. “New headband?”

  I was wearing a new headband—brown with white polka dots—but I couldn’t believe he’d noticed.

  “Yes! What do you think?” I asked, jokingly making a fish face and turning my head at all angles like a model.

  He laughed. “Headband-y,” he said.

  I punched him in the arm, not hard. “That’s not even a word!”

  “No, no, it’s nice. You look good,” he said, meeting my eyes.

  I smiled and looked down as my cheeks grew pink. “Thanks.”

  When I went to the bathroom in between classes, I took an extralong look at myself in the new headband, turning my head back and forth and not caring who saw. Colin had liked the way it looked, and that gave me a new perspective. I’d never thought of him as someone who’d notice what I was wearing. Maybe being a newspaper editor made you more observant or something.

  Later, walking down to the library after lunch, I spied myself in the reflection of one of the library’s huge glass walls, and I caught myself smiling as I walked toward my own image. I had to laugh. I was acting like one of the Mean Team girls myself, smiling at my own reflection!


  I had twelve minutes before my next class, and I wanted to say hi to Mrs. K., my favorite staff member at school, and also take a minute to look at some food magazines, if they had any.

  “Hi, Mrs. K.!” I whispered as I entered the library.

  “Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. Hello, dear. I know I have something here for you. Let’s see.” Mrs. K. rummaged through some small, neat piles on her full but tidy desk. She was always a fashion plate. Today she was wearing a navy-and-white-striped cotton boatneck sweater with long sleeves, navy capri pants, and black ballet flats, with her long dark hair in a ponytail.

  “I like your outfit,” I whispered.

  “Thank you, dear. Feeling summery! Aha! Here we go. Yes.” She handed me a stack of cookbooks. “Could you please shelve these for me? They’re in one of your sections.”

  “Okay.” I helped Mrs. K. maintain the bookshelves in our library. I was a volunteer, but it never felt like work for me. The library had been my haven when I first started here at Vista Green, and I’d do anything to give back. “Do you have any cooking magazines?” I added.

  “Mm-hmm. Right over there at the far left of the periodical wall. Not a lot. Just some for the kitchen staff and our foodie teachers. Take a peek.”

  “Thanks.” I crossed the plush rug that helped hush the room as I headed first to unload the cookbooks. There were only seven of them, and it was a small section, so it wouldn’t take more than a minute. But midway through the stack, one of them caught my eye. It was called Professional Food Photography, and it had a photo of an ice cream sundae on the cover! I had to check this book out myself.

  Quickly I shelved the last two books, and then I went to look at the periodical wall. Unfortunately, periodicals can’t be checked out—they’re too vulnerable to ripping and have a short shelf life—so I grabbed three magazines and sat in an armchair to flip through them for my remaining time.

  The first one was for casual cooks looking for shortcuts: time-saving, money-saving, environment-saving recipes galore. It wasn’t really what I was looking for. The next one was a majorly gourmet magazine featuring complicated multipart recipes that called for people to make their own sub-ingredients first (like homemade mayonnaise and chicken stock). Bor-ing! But the third magazine was a little edgier, closer to Yay Gourmet’s style and interesting, too.

  Inside were articles like I’d seen on the website yesterday, many of them featuring gourmet shops and restaurants from around the country. They’d do a little profile of the chef or owner of a store, and then talk about the menu and the recipes. I kept flipping through the magazine and somehow ended up on the “Letters to the Editors” page. There, my eyes widened.

  Three of the six letters were from people who wanted corrections to their articles. One mentioned a recipe that had been miswritten and resulted in a disgusting dish. Another said the magazine had misquoted her. And a third said the magazine had “willfully maligned” her business, which I took to mean criticized it too much. Eek!

  For each letter, the magazine’s editors apologized. I supposed it was good they admitted their mistakes and published them like this, but still—how many people had seen the original articles and been misled? How many of those would ever see the corrections?

  I sat back in my chair and stared into space. My mom would have to be very careful about what she said in her Yay Gourmet interview. So would my friends and I. I wouldn’t want Molly’s to be a victim of these sorts of reporting errors. I was still super-excited for my mom, but now I felt a little nervous about releasing Molly’s to the world on the internet and having no control over what was said about it. Maybe it was better to be small and not well known, if at least you could be sure you were in control of what was being said about you or your business.

  The bell rang, and I quickly returned the magazines to their display area and presented the food photography book to Mrs. K. to check out. With a wave and a promise to return tomorrow, I dashed up the stairs to my math class on the first floor, the book clutched under my arm.

  Math was fine, but I was distracted by the things I’d read in the library and eager to start flipping through the food photography book I now had. By the end of class, I was counting the hours until I could go home.

  “Hey, Allie,” said a voice.

  I looked up from repacking my backpack. It was Patrick Ryan, a boy whose birthday party I’d attended recently. Sierra’s new band had been playing at the party because the drummer, Reagan, was Patrick’s cousin. She’d invited Tamiko and me and her twin, Isabel, so we could see her play, and there ended up being lots of kids there from Vista Green—including Colin! It was really fun.

  “Hey, Patrick! I’ve been meaning to catch you to say thanks for the party invite, but I keep missing you and I don’t have any of your contact info.”

  “Thanks for coming! Small world, right?”

  “Totally!” I agreed.

  Patrick and I strolled out of math class and realized we were headed in the same direction, so we chatted as we walked.

  “The Wildflowers are awesome, don’t you think?” I asked. That was the name of Sierra’s band.

  “Yeah, I really couldn’t believe it. I mean, Reagan’s always been musical, but to see them come together so well—it was impressive.” Then Patrick glanced at me. “Are you friends with Tessa, who writes the songs? The one who likes Colin?”

  Wait, what? My heart skipped a beat. Tessa was the guitarist in the Wildflowers, and Sierra had told me that she had a crush on Colin. But how did Patrick know about it?

  “Um . . . n-no?” I stuttered. Then I added awkwardly, “She seems nice?”

  “Uh-huh. I only talked with her a little bit, but she seems supercool, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yeah. I . . . barely met her.”

  “She and Colin would make a cute couple. I’ll have to dream up some other reason to have a party with a band so we can get those two together again.” Patrick stopped outside the science lab. “Well, this is me! See you next time we have math!”

  My head was spinning. I’d heard from Sierra that Tessa liked Colin, but I hadn’t thought Patrick would know about it. Did Colin know about Tessa’s feelings too? Did he like her back?

  I sighed. Not that it mattered who Colin liked.

  Right?

  But if so, then why did my conversation with Patrick leave such a bitter taste in my mouth?

  Colin had chess after school today, so he wasn’t on my bus home, thankfully. I was having trouble processing this new image of Colin and Tessa as a possible couple. It didn’t match with the Colin who’d made me feel so good about my headband this morning. I was feeling . . . weird, I guess. I flipped through the food photography book on the bus a little bit, but I couldn’t read it while we were in motion or I’d get carsick.

  Once I was home, though, I curled up on the window seat in my room—a window seat never gets old—and I read through the photo book with my cat, Diana. But what I learned made me even more nervous about the Yay Gourmet feature than before!

  It turns out that food photographers use lots of tricks of the trade to make food—or, I should say, “food”—look appealing. For example, droplets of milk are often actually Elmer’s glue. Chicken breasts are often painted by hand to make grill marks. Stylists use red lipstick to brighten strawberries and use mashed potatoes to thicken milkshakes. Worst of all: vanilla ice cream is usually just white lard—animal fat—scooped from a bucket with an ice cream scooper.

  The book said ice cream is the hardest thing of all to photograph because it melts under the lights. As soon as you get something that looks delicious and perfect, you have to light it with hot studio lights, and everything melts!

  At that, I closed the book in disgust.

  Scoops of lard at Molly’s?

  Never!

  Continue Reading…

  Rocky Road Ahead

  Coco Simon

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  From cupcakes to ice cream! Having written more than thirty books abo
ut middle-school girls and cupcakes, COCO SIMON decided it was time for a change, so she’s switched her focus from cupcakes to her second-favorite sweet treat—ice cream. When she’s not daydreaming about yummy snacks, Coco edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot fewer than the number of cupcakes and ice cream cones she’s eaten. Sprinkle Sundays is the first time Coco has mixed her love of ice cream with writing.

  SIMON SPOTLIGHT

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Coco-Simon

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON SPOTLIGHT

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  This Simon Spotlight edition February 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON SPOTLIGHT and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

  Text by Caroline Smith Hickey

  Series designed by Hannah Frece

  Cover designed by Alisa Coburn and Hannah Frece

  Cover illustrations by Alisa Coburn

  ISBN 978-1-5344-3651-0 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-5344-3650-3 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-5344-3652-7 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2018948331