The Charming Life of Izzy Malone

by Jenny Lundquist

  Generally speaking, I hate baking too, or any kind of cooking, which Grandma Bertie says is a straight-up tragedy. But I knew not telling Mom and Dad I was the Star Bandit was as good as lying straight to their faces. I didn’t want to be a liar. I wanted to tell Mom everything—but not before the Star Bandit did something nice to help the whole town and show everyone that he—that I—wasn’t a nuisance, or a vandal.

  “When is the auction?” Sophia asked.

  “Friday night,” Violet answered. “Ms. Harmer is on the planning committee, and I heard her tell Dad that since everyone’s getting ready for Pumpkin Palooza the next day they’re afraid they won’t get enough donations. They probably could use some extra baked goods.”

  “How are we supposed to bake a ton of cupcakes and say it’s from the Star Bandit without anyone knowing they actually came from us?” Daisy asked.

  We were silent while we all thought about it. No one seemed to have any ideas. Violet stared out the window, and Daisy picked up Mrs. Whippie’s envelope and tapped it against her knee.

  “My mom is closing the shop on Friday and taking my brothers on an all-day field trip with their class, so they won’t be back until after dinner,” Sophia said. “I could get everything ready in the morning, and then as soon as we get out of school, we could start baking. I have a pumpkin pie cupcake recipe I really like.”

  “I have allowance money saved up,” Violet said. “I could help buy the ingredients.”

  “Me too,” Daisy said.

  “Maybe we could meet at lunch tomorrow and you guys could give me the money so I can buy everything?” Sophia said.

  Daisy, Violet, and I glanced at each other. “You mean, like in the cafeteria?” I asked.

  “Yeah, why not?”

  I had to admit, it didn’t sound all that bad. It was getting pretty cold sitting out under my tree. “Okay,” I said. “But I don’t want to sit behind the Paddlers like last time.”

  “I’m in,” Daisy said.

  “I’m in too,” Violet said. She sniffed and added, “What’s that smell?”

  “Dinner,” I answered. “My mom’s working on her chili recipe again.”

  Something changed in Violet’s eyes, and I wondered what this time of day was like for her, when the sky turned lavender and smelled like dinners cooking and parents coming home. It seemed to me that with Mrs. Barnaby gone and no siblings, it could be a lonely time for Violet.

  “Do you want to stay for dinner?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said immediately. “If you don’t think it would be any trouble?”

  “I’ll stay,” Daisy said. “Grandma and Grandpa and Delia are so busy getting ready for Pumpkin Palooza, I haven’t had anything but microwave dinners for weeks.”

  “Can I stay too?” Sophia asked quietly.

  One thing I like about Grandma Bertie, Aunt Mildred, and even Mom is that they will never turn away a hungry soul.

  “Sure,” I said, and pretty soon Daisy, Violet, and Sophia had their phones out and were texting their families.

  As I watched them tap away, I thought about how I always ate lunch under my tree. Violet ate outside the music room, Daisy ate in the Grapevine office, and Sophia ate in the cafeteria. Four different places, but I was pretty sure we had one thing in common: We all ate alone. I guess I wasn’t the only one finding middle school life difficult.

  Daisy, Violet, and Sophia put their phones away, and one by one we climbed down the ladder and headed inside, just as the sky was darkening and Big D and Orion were coming out to play. I didn’t stop to chat, though. I was too busy leading us to the kitchen, where it was brimming with light, and with four empty bowls, just waiting to be filled.

  26

  CRUSH DIBS!

  The dessert auction was being held in Hollow Hall, a multipurpose room on Iris Street, which borders the east end of Dandelion Square. By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, we still hadn’t figured out how to slip the Star Bandit cupcakes into the auction without anyone noticing. Since Daisy and I didn’t like to bake, and Sophia and Violet did, Sophia told Daisy and I to figure out a plan while she and Violet worked on the cupcakes.

  Daisy and I had spent the last couple hours sitting on some folding chairs at the back of the hall while we brainstormed, but so far, we had nothing.

  “I am so disappointed in us,” Daisy said. “We were so great at the dance, creating that distraction.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I don’t see how we can come up with one this time.”

  All over the hall, people were scurrying around. Scooter McGee and a bunch of other men and women from the Rotary Club were setting up folding chairs in front of a raised stage where the auction would take place. Ms. Harmer and Mr. Barnaby were stringing orange twinkle lights across the ceiling. Mayor Franklin was directing a few high school boys and telling them where to set up tables to display the baked goods. Over at the check-in table, Stella and Lauren were receiving all incoming desserts in between the seemingly more important task of taking selfies with their cell phones.

  “Maybe we could bypass the Bobblehead Twins and drop our cupcakes on a display table when no one’s looking,” Daisy said.

  “Won’t work,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s too open. Someone will see us put them there, and as soon as they notice the star stickers . . .”

  Daisy sighed. “I hate to say it, but maybe we should pack it in and head over to Sophia’s. Maybe together the four of us can come up with something.”

  We stood up to leave. I turned around to start for the exit—and smacked right into Austin, who was walking the opposite way.

  “Ouch! Watch where you’re—Oh . . . Hi, Izzy.”

  “Hey, Austin,” I said, rubbing my shoulder. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine.” Austin didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t move out of my way, either. He just kept jiggling from one foot to another, looking everywhere but at me. Things were still weird between us. There had been a couple nights when I was working out on the rowing machine and I heard him shooting hoops in his driveway, but he didn’t invite me over.

  “So,” I said, pointing to the plastic container in his hand, “are you staying for the auction tonight?”

  “No. But my mom wanted to donate loaves of her banana bread, so she made me drop some off.”

  “Oh. Cool,” I said.

  Daisy looked back and forth between the two of us and rolled her eyes.

  “Anyways . . . I guess I should go,” Austin said.

  “Oh, okay. Bye,” I said.

  “Bye,” Austin said.

  “Weird,” Daisy said after he’d left. “What’s up with you and Captain Awkward?”

  “Nothing. I—”

  “Isabella?” came Mom’s voice.

  “Izzy,” I said, turning around. Behind us, Mom was in full-blown Candidate Malone mode: a navy suit, bright red lipstick, and hair so stiff it didn’t move, even though a breeze was blowing in from the open doors.

  I figured it was just a matter of time before she showed up. With a little less than two weeks to the election, I knew she wanted to volunteer for every community event she possibly could.

  “Grandma Bertie told me you were going over to a friend’s house this afternoon?” Her cell phone beeped then, and she took it out of her purse to check it.

  “I am. Daisy and I are headed there now.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Malone,” Daisy said.

  “That’s fine,” Mom said, looking up from her cell phone long enough to nod at Daisy, “but I’d like you back here in two hours. Grandma Bertie and the Knatterers have been baking all day, and they’ll be arriving with a ton of muffins.” She finished texting and dropped her phone back into her purse. “I’d like you to help them unload when they get here.”

  “That sounds great,” Daisy said, with a meaningful look at her charm bracelet. “I can help too.”

  “Right,” I said quickly. “We’d love to. In fact, I’ll have Violet and our friend Sophia help also.�
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  “Mission accomplished,” Daisy whispered after Mom turned away.

  We left Hollow Hall and turned from Iris onto Thistle Street, and continued walking until we came upon a sign that read CHARMING TRINKETS. Off the curlicue on the S hung a bracelet with colorful charms. A sign in the window said the shop was closed, but I rang the bell anyway. Sophia told me her family lived in the apartment upstairs.

  “How cool is it to live right above Dandelion Square?” Daisy said while we waited. “If that’s Sophia’s window directly up there, she could see the town Christmas tree in December.”

  The door unlocked. “Hi!” Sophia said. She was sweaty, and her cheeks were streaked with flour. She held the door wide. “Come in and check out the shop.”

  The walls were painted pale pink. White display cases zigzagged around the room, except for a corner where two gray couches were pushed in front of a brick fireplace. Every available surface was covered in jewelry. Jangly bracelets, dangly earrings, chunky necklaces in every color you could imagine, rhinestone-studded handbags. Along the entire back wall were gold- and silver-chained bracelets, and tons of accompanying charms. A lipstick charm, a hamburger charm, a sparkly orange pumpkin charm. Charms of every letter of the alphabet. I even saw a treasure box and a paint palette charm. They looked like exact matches to the charms on my own bracelet.

  “See what I mean?” Sophia said, following my gaze. “That’s why I thought Mrs. Whippie must be buying her charms here.” She motioned us over to a side room where her mom kept extra stock. At the back was a staircase, which led up to the apartment.

  In the living room, Daisy stopped to pick up a photograph of a man in a fireman’s uniform. “Is this your dad?” After Sophia nodded, Daisy asked, “Does he work at the Dandelion Hollow station?”

  “My dad doesn’t live with us,” Sophia murmured, taking the photograph from Daisy and putting it back on the shelf. “My parents are separated.”

  “Sorry,” Daisy said quickly. “My dad doesn’t live with me either.”

  We followed Sophia, and the scent of cloves and nutmeg, into the kitchen, where there was a small table, and a window seat that—like Daisy had said—looked out on Dandelion Square. The island in the middle was covered with pumpkin pie cupcakes. Steam was still rising in sweet spirals from one batch. Violet, who was frosting a cupcake with a plastic spoon, looked up and said, “Isn’t this great?”

  “Wow,” Daisy said. “How many did you guys make?”

  “Sophia is a baking master,” Violet said. “I’ve eaten six cupcakes, and they are spectacular!” She winced as her stomach made a weird sound. “Six may have been too many.”

  “It was nothing,” Sophia said, flushing. “I baked a couple dozen last night, and Violet has been helping me with the rest. Did you guys figure out how to get them into the auction?”

  “Yeah.” I joined Violet and started frosting a cupcake, and told them about running into my mom. “We’ll slip them in with the baked goods from the Knatterers.”

  “We also saw Austin Jackson,” Daisy spoke up. “He was being a total spaz to Izzy.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Violet said. “Austin has a crush on Izzy.”

  “What?” I said. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, he does,” Violet said. “He’s stuck up for you a few times when someone called you Toad Girl. And at the Harvest Dance, he asked me where you were. He wanted to ask you to dance.”

  “I know,” I said. “But he only did that because Ms. Harmer made him.”

  When I looked up from my cupcake, Daisy, Violet, and Sophia were staring at me. “What?”

  “Izzy,” Sophia began, “a boy usually doesn’t go out of his way to ask a girl to dance unless he likes her.”

  “Right.” Violet nodded. “You should have seen the look on his face when Stella grabbed his hand and marched him off to the dance floor.”

  “Yesterday at lunch, he kept glancing over at our table,” Daisy volunteered. She frowned. “At first I thought he just had a weird eye twitch, but now I think maybe he was looking at you.”

  “So the question is”—Sophia paused dramatically—“do you like him back?”

  All three of them stared at me, but I didn’t know what to say. Generally speaking, I didn’t know how it worked with having friends and liking boys. Yesterday in science class, Macy Turner and Hannah Warren, who have been best friends since first grade and are usually fairly normal as far as people go, were about to kill each other over Ethan Stone, which I thought was the most ridiculous thing ever, since up until this year Ethan had a serious nose-picking habit.

  See what I mean? Boy-crazy aliens, I’m telling you.

  “Well,” I said hesitantly. “If I did like him, and someone else liked him . . . I wouldn’t want it to be a problem.”

  “Please,” Daisy said, rolling her eyes, “no one in this room likes Austin Jackson.”

  Violet concentrated on frosting her cupcake, and Sophia said, “Yeah, and even if we did, you can always call crush dibs.”

  “What’s crush dibs?” I asked.

  “It’s something we did at my old school,” Sophia answered. “If a girl decided she had a crush on a boy, she called crush dibs—then none of her friends were allowed to like him.”

  “That seems unfair,” Violet said.

  “It seems gross,” Daisy said. She turned to me. “Do you really like Austin Jackson?”

  “Well,” I said, “if no one else does . . . then yes, I do. Crush dibs!” I yelled, and Sophia started laughing.

  Daisy and Sophia picked up spoons and joined Violet and me at the island. We talked about school and finished frosting the cupcakes. It was the best afternoon I’d ever had.

  27

  FOURTH TIME’S THE CHARM

  We bundled up the cupcakes in plastic wrap—smearing the frosting, unfortunately—stuck some star stickers on top, and placed them in Sophia’s mom’s old baking tins. That way no one would know they came from the Star Bandit until they lifted the lid—by which point the four of us planned to be safely in the audience, politely watching the auction.

  By the time Grandma Bertie’s minivan pulled up in front of Hollow Hall, the old-fashioned lampposts that dotted Dandelion Square had flickered on, and Daisy, Violet, Sophia, and I were waiting at the curb, each of us carrying a paper grocery bag with tins inside.

  “Hi, dear,” Grandma Bertie said as she got out of the car. “The muffins are in the back. It’s so nice of you girls to help out a couple old birds like us. You really didn’t need to.”

  “Speak for yourself, Bertha,” Aunt Mildred said as she slammed the passenger door shut. “I’ve about had it up to here with all this muffin nonsense. If Izzy and her friends want to take it from here, they’re welcome to it.”

  “No problem, Aunt Mildred, we’ve got this,” I said. “Step away from the vehicle. A major muffin operation is about to commence.”

  Violet, Daisy, and Sophia crowded around me, forming a shield, while I started emptying the grocery bags and placing the tins in the canvas bags full of the Knatterers’ muffins.

  “You’ll have to unpack the bags and put the tins at the bottom, or they’ll squash the muffins,” Violet whispered.

  “That’ll take too long,” I said, although I could see Violet was right.

  “We’ve got time,” Violet said.

  She was right again, because Grandma Bertie and Aunt Mildred were fighting.

  “I don’t see why you always have to be such a royal pain in the you-know-what,” Grandma Bertie was saying.

  “I’m a pain?” Aunt Mildred snorted. “You and your Knatterers spent the entire day gossiping and sipping your coffee while I baked those muffins.”

  “You’ve never baked a day in your life.”

  “Correction: I’ve baked exactly one day in my life, and today was it. No thanks to you and your lazy friends.”

  While they argued, I quickly unpacked the canvas bags, placed our tins at the bottom, and started repack
ing the bags. As I worked, I could feel my heart filling with hope. It was the fourth task, and with the four of us working together, I hoped that tonight would be fourth time’s the charm, and that I could show everyone the Star Bandit was actually a do-gooder. A sloppy one, maybe, but a do-gooder, nevertheless.

  “Hello, Milly!” came Scooter McGee’s voice behind us. “Fancy seeing you here tonight.”

  “Fancy nothing. I told you at the Kaleidoscope yesterday: Bertha roped me into helping out.”

  “It’s delightful all the same,” Scooter said as I repacked the last bag. “Janine’s here. She told me you’re helping out with her booth tomorrow at Pumpkin Palooza.”

  “It appears I’m becoming a regular upstanding citizen.” From the tone of Aunt Mildred’s voice, it didn’t sound like she thought much of upstanding citizens.

  “Finished,” I whispered to Daisy, Violet, and Sophia. The four of us started removing the bags from the minivan.

  “Janine is lucky to have you,” Scooter said. “As you may know, I’ll be there as well. I’m emceeing the regatta later in the afternoon, and I was wondering if you would care to join me for lunch.”

  “I can’t stand carnival food. It gives me indigestion.”

  “Dear,” Grandma Bertie said loudly to Aunt Mildred, “when a nice man asks to pay for your lunch, the polite thing to do is say yes.”

  “I know that!” Aunt Mildred glared at Grandma Bertie, who merely smiled and batted her eyelashes. She turned back to Scooter. “Fine—We may dine together. But if you think I consider hot dogs and cotton candy a proper meal, you’ve got another thing coming.” Aunt Mildred turned away from a smiling Scooter and began marching toward the hall, calling over her shoulder, “Girls! Are you planting roots over there? Get moving with those bags!”

  The auction was about to begin, and Hollow Hall was nearly filled. Grandpa and Grandma Caulfield were sitting in the back row. A dark-haired woman who I recognized from the pictures in Sophia’s house as her mom sat a few rows ahead of them. Two twin boys sat next to her, and they waved to Sophia when they saw her. Mr. Barnaby and Ms. Harmer were up on the stage, fiddling with the microphone. Mayor Franklin had joined Stella and Lauren at the check-in counter, and her eyes widened when she saw us all marching toward her.