President of the Whole Fifth Grade

by Sherri Winston

  Willow gave a deep, dramatic sigh and tossed her napkin onto her tray. “Maybe you could, like, get them to have decent lunches. This stuff is gross. I’m diabetic and there’s almost zero here I can eat.”

  Pansy rolled her eyes. “That’s right, Willow, it’s always about you. No one’s going to spend the fifth grade’s money that could go toward a rockin’ beach party on something dumb like lunch.”

  After that, there was a lot of laughing and falling all over each other like we were the best of friends. All the while I could tell the whole thing was really tripping out Sara and the others. One part of me felt like, that’s what you get. You’re totally ditching me when I didn’t do anything wrong. That part made me laugh hard and loud and act like I was having the biggest, best time of my life.

  But here’s the weird part:

  Instead of that making me feel good, all I felt was even lonelier. The Flowers, the dance team, all of the popular group were kids I knew. But I’d never really cared about them. I had never really cared what any of them thought. Now, here I was, sitting with them while they went on and on. I felt as if I’d taste-tested too much frosting and might have to puke.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about how my whole life was totally flipped out and freaky. I mean, me, Brianna Justice, part of the It Squad?

  Pansy pulled out a mirror and looked at herself, then held it to my face and said, “Your dimples are really super-cute. Be sure to show them a lot when you’re on television!”

  I looked at myself. It was my face. A kid version of my mom’s face. But wanna know something freaky?

  It was like the girl looking back at me was somebody I didn’t even know.

  23

  Baby Ruth: More Than a Candy Bar!

  Butter.

  The sweet, soft scent of butter was all around me. I inhaled and let my mind float away on a buttery cloud sprinkled with finely granulated sugar. Rectangles of cream cheese blocks softened to room temperature, their silver foil packaging glinting off bright overhead lights.

  I yawned. Through the skylight I saw navy blue sky and few stars. It was so early in the morning, I could barely see at all. Who knew that to make it as a world-famous cupcake chef you had to get up at 5:00 a.m. The only thing I was used to seeing at this time of morning was my dream of becoming a chef.

  Last night, after dinner, Mom and Dad came to my room. They told me they were happy that I’d be getting a chance to be a real chef at Mrs. Wetzel’s bakery. Then they laid down the law. “If your grades slip one bit, young lady, we’re pulling the plug.”

  They’d both given me the stern face and told me I’d still be expected to keep up with my schoolwork, homework, and chores.

  I should have been having the time of my life. I was baking cupcakes in a professional kitchen, preparing to sell them. It was my dream come true!

  Instead of jumping for joy, all I could think about was tomorrow’s big trivia competition.

  I HAD TO WIN!

  And I was thinking about something else, too. The cafeteria. Lunch with the It Squad. I kept thinking how most of the kids who were running were only interested in doing it because they were popular, not because they thought they’d make a good president.

  That wasn’t like me at all, was it?

  Blades whirred. Chunks of sweet Red Delicious apples and tart green Granny Smith apples churned and ground and blended in the food processor. Were Sara and Lauren right? Had I let the idea of beating Jasmine Moon become more important than anything?

  Was that the only reason I wanted to be president? I pushed the Stop button and silenced the grinding blades. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Aaaaargh!” I shrieked, spinning around.

  “My goodness, child. Why so jumpy?” It was Mrs. Wetzel. I took a deep breath, then blew out a sigh.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She looked at me, then gave me a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Don’t be nervous about displaying your product in the bakery. You’ll be fine. We’ll start out with two dozen and see how we do. I’ll pick you up after school today when I fetch my Raymond. Won’t that be exciting?”

  I gulped. The pit of my stomach boiled like I’d just swallowed a mouthful of Scope. I said, “I can’t wait.” Then she picked up an armload of large silver bowls and headed across the busy kitchen.

  When I reached across the island to open a package of cream cheese, I couldn’t help thinking about my girls—Becks, Lauren, and Sara. It would be so cool to have them in here. Becks would be all careful and a little shy, like always. Sara would measure each little ingredient as if we were in science lab doing some sort of experiment. And Lauren would have to get her finger slapped several times for tasting too much batter. And all the while, we’d be laughing our butts off.

  Instead of that, though, I was jittery from too much coffee and woozy from not sleeping and having too many nightmares.

  I shook my head and plopped the sweet-scented cream cheese into the food processor along with a stick of butter. I needed to prepare for the quiz, not worry about my friends. Between serving my in-school suspension, not to mention the many hours it took to concentrate on how mad I was at my so-called friends, I had hardly any time to study my presidential trivia sheets.

  And when I did study, I always seemed to drift off to sleep. Still, I was so nervous it was making it hard to get a decent night’s sleep. Last night at dinner, I actually used the word “fortnight.” When a kid starts talking like that, you know she’s spending too much time in the history workbook.

  I’d heard kids talking about how cool Jasmine Moon was for taking a group of “friends”—kids who were supposed to be my friends—to the Pistons game.

  I jammed my fingers into the Mash and Crush and Whip buttons on the food processor, again and again, until I couldn’t even hear myself think.

  For the next two hours I let my cupcakes cool, finished two batches of frosting, then topped the yellow cakes with rich, creamy frosting. Since I hadn’t been able to go to other bakeries and check out their cupcake displays, I’d used a book Grandma gave me last year. It was full of cupcake recipes and pictures.

  My recipe was inspired by our great nation. Everybody knows that the great American dessert is apple pie.

  So I’d come up with an apple pie cupcake.

  I separated the frosting into three bowls. In one bowl, I added red food coloring. In another, I added blue food coloring. I glanced at one of the facts on my study sheet:

  Many people believe the Baby Ruth candy bar was named after famous baseball player Babe Ruth. Not so. It was named after President Grover Cleveland’s oldest daughter, Ruth Cleveland.

  Just like Teddy Roosevelt and the teddy bear, President Cleveland’s daughter had had something named after her, too. Maybe I should add candy bar chunks to my next recipe.

  After I finished stirring the food coloring into the two bowls, I had red, white, and blue frosting. I added one stripe of colored cream cheese frosting to each cupcake, then another and another.

  This time, when I looked up, morning light had begun to sift down from the skylight. I’d finished two dozen cupcakes, including sparkling red and blue sprinkles.

  “They look great!”

  I jumped.

  “Hey! You’ve got to calm yourself,” said Mrs. Wetzel. She gave me a quick hug and then pulled back and looked at my face. I tried not to let her see how worried I still was.

  She said, “You have a fantastic business plan. You’ve made your investment. We will sell your first twenty cupcakes for a dollar-fifty a piece. If they all sell today, you’ll earn back all the money you spent on supplies.” We were selling only twenty because she made me take out four to test and share with the staff. Everybody said they were really good.

  Mrs. Wetzel loved business. I could tell. Whenever she talked about this stuff, her round, pink cheeks got pinker and her greenish eyes sparkled like glitter. One good thing had happened: getting to know her was letting me get a real inside look at
how a cooking business worked.

  I had to admit, it was harder than I’d thought. You never got to sit down and you had to get up really early to make sure you had fresh food to place in your case that day. The smell of baking bread, bagels, and muffins filled the room. I started cleaning my area. Mrs. Wetzel said, “Once you’re finished, I’ll take you to school.”

  I nodded. Now, instead of thinking about presidents, my mind was on my money.

  Supplies

  2 boxes cake mix = $2

  18 eggs = $1.89

  4 sticks butter = $3

  1 box powdered sugar = $1.50

  2 apples = $1.20

  1 box graham crackers = $2.28

  1 package cupcake cups = $1

  (food coloring and sprinkles from home)

  TOTAL = $12.87

  If I sell all 20 cupcakes for $1.50, I’ll make $30.

  $30 - $12.87 = $17.13

  That means I would more than double the money I spent. And since I had another box of mix and all the rest of my ingredients left except the apples, I could wind up doubling my double, which would be excellent.

  Mrs. Wetzel said how well they sell will determine how often I will come in and make cupcakes.

  If I want to start an empire, I’m gonna have to make a lot of cupcakes.

  I sighed, spun around, then went, “Aaaaaahh!”

  “M’lady, Mother says you’re extra jumpy today. I come with good tidings.”

  Weasel! Funny thing. For some reason, I thought spending more time around his mom and seeing him out of school would explain the weirdness. But no. No, it did not.

  “I didn’t even know you were here,” I said. My heart was doing hopscotch.

  “How are you doing with your trivia competition studies?” he asked.

  “Um, uh…” What could I say to sound more confident than I felt? Weasel was staring like I’d just jumped out of one of the bread loaves. I decided to just be honest. “No. I mean, I have been studying, but I’m getting worried. What if I haven’t studied enough to beat her? Well, not her. I mean… you know, everybody.”

  He stepped closer. “Shhh! Do not even say such things, m’lady. Losing is not an option.”

  I rolled my eyes, saying, “I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

  “Well, fear not. At lunchtime, meet me at the bleachers in the gymnasium. I may have just the right—answers!”

  That sick feeling was stronger than ever. Somehow I knew I wouldn’t like what he had in mind!

  Brianna’s Cookbook

  Apple Pie Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

  1 box yellow cake mix (see instructions on box for ingredients)

  1 sweet red apple

  1 tart green apple

  graham cracker crumbs

  ¼ cup melted butter

  cupcake pan liners

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  ½ teaspoon nutmeg

  Frosting:

  1 8-oz. package cream cheese

  1 stick salted butter

  1 cup confectioners’ sugar

  1 cup milk

  1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring

  If you like apple pie, you’ll love this. And it’s really easy!!!

  First, with your parents’ permission, use a food processor to mince the apples. First, peel each apple, then mince each separately and set aside.

  Second, combine the required ingredients and follow instructions for your box of cake mix. Take a half cup of sweet apple (minced) and a half cup of tart apple (minced) and gently fold into your cake batter. Now set batter aside.

  Next, spread 2 cups of graham cracker crumbs onto waxed paper. Add cinnamon and nutmeg. Use fingers to mix. Add melted butter and squish it together until all crumbs are moist. Fill each cupcake liner with a teaspoon of crumb mixture. Fill remainder of liner with cake mix. Once you’ve filled your cupcake pan, take any remaining crumbs and sprinkle them on top. Then sprinkle the leftover minced apples on top.

  Bake according to cake mix instructions. Remove; test with toothpick. They will probably need an additional 10 minutes to ensure individual cupcakes are done through.

  When done, remove from oven. Wait 5 to 10 minutes, then remove from pan onto cooling rack.

  To prepare frosting:

  Cream the butter and cream cheese together in a bowl (that means use a mixer and mash them up together until you can’t tell one from the other).

  Add the vanilla flavoring. Carefully add the confectioners’ sugar and milk. The cool thing about confectioners’ sugar and milk is that there’s really no wrong amount. If you want the frosting wetter or more loose, you add more milk; if you want it stiffer, you add more sugar. It’s my favorite.

  When cupcakes are cooled, spread some frosting on and your mouth’ll whistle “Yankee Doodle Dandy”!!!

  24

  Tricks and Traps!

  Everything was getting on my nerves. I just wanted to get this day over.

  Mrs. Nutmeg left for a teacher’s meeting the first few hours of class this morning. The teacher next door, Mr. Ketterman, would pop in on us every so often. We were supposed to be studying and going about our normal morning routines. I was studying my math and trying to ignore Toady Todd. He kept walking up and down the rows sniffing and saying, “I know I’m not the only one who smells it. Cake. Somebody in here’s got cake. I want some cake!” I smelled like a bakery, I knew it, but was too tired to say anything.

  Anyway, I was ignoring him—him and Sara and Lauren and Becks and the entire Moon Bot squad, including the Main Moon herself.

  Of course when Mrs. Nutmeg came back and the desks were all every which way and people were out of their seats, she went bananas. When she got through yelling, she said, “Brianna, you’re up first today.”

  I went to the front.

  “We’ll use the projector, Brianna, like I told you. Pull down the screen, please,” Mrs. Nutmeg said.

  I was supposed to talk about presidents and their pets as part of the presidential trivia competition. My eye twitched. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say, because I did. I’d given my information to Mrs. Nutmeg yesterday and she’d written it on one of those sheets made for the overhead projector.

  Anyway, I wasn’t nervous, just jittery. It didn’t feel right being up there and not wanting to make eye contact with my own friends. In fact, being up there just reminded me how jacked up my life was and I just wanted to squash the foolishness and make everything go back to the way it was. I was all ready to talk about how William McKinley had a parrot who could whistle “Yankee Doodle” and Herbert Hoover’s son had two pet alligators in the White House and John Quincy Adams had one pet alligator and Thomas Jefferson kept caged bears on the White House grounds that some explorer dudes named Lewis and Clark brought from someplace out west.

  And I already had so much on my mind. You know, worrying about the stupid trivia competition and whether or not I’d ever get my friends back or whether I’d even want them back and wondering if anybody would want to buy my cupcakes. Which is probably why I wasn’t even paying attention when I reached up and pulled down the string connected to the projector screen.

  So excuse me very much if I failed to see the slithering beast of doom otherwise known as Taurus the snake wriggle from beneath the screen and plop onto the top of my head!

  I screamed so loud that my throat burned.

  My hands slapped at it, and I started to run and turned around and around and finally flicked it off me. I leaped toward the door, but I didn’t get the door open in time and wound up knocking myself in the head.

  I had to go to the nurse’s office. As she bandaged the ugly bump, my cheeks burned with embarrassment as I thought of how everyone had laughed at me. It was horrible. As I was leaving the nurse’s office, I saw Weasel and told him what had happened. I didn’t think I could go back to Mrs. Nutmeg’s room. They’d told me I could spend the rest of the day in the media center.

  But I needed to study my trivia facts.

  At least, I th
ought I did. Until…

  Weasel said he’d talked with someone the night before who’d made an anonymous call offering the answers to the trivia competition.

  “I’d be cheating, Weasel. That’s not how I want to win. And what if I get caught?”

  “After what happened in your class today, do you think you can go back up there and concentrate? Do you think you can absorb enough facts about our great presidents to distinguish yourself as a victor in tomorrow’s contest? How about we take the answers now, and we can decide later how we will use them—or if we will use them.” Don’t you just love how some people throw the word “we” around when they’re getting your butt into trouble?

  So that was how I wound up with four pages of trivia competition answers the day BEFORE the quiz!

  25

  “I Am not a Crook!” Says Nixon

  (and “I am not a cheat,” says Brianna).

  My cupcakes were a hit at the bakery, but all I could think about was the answer sheet stuffed inside my book bag.

  Was I a cheater?

  Would I cheat to win?

  That afternoon at the bakery, I could barely keep my eyes off the book bag. Mrs. Wetzel told me the cupcakes sold out at lunchtime. We talked about my future schedule and how she wanted me to proceed. Then she told me she’d spoken with Mr. Tan and approved the school’s camera crew to come and “record” me doing my very first “cooking show” right here in her bakery.

  I should have been way beyond excited, right?

  But the answer sheet…

  “M’lady,” Weasel said. I rolled my eyes.

  “Weasel, please…”

  Weasel told me my mom’s car was outside and asked if we’d give him a ride. Mrs. Wetzel said she’d be there another hour or more, so I told Weasel “sure.”