Katie Starting from Scratch

by Coco Simon

  “Seriously, Alexis, why don’t you at least join chorus or something?” I asked her. “You have such a nice voice.”

  “I might,” Alexis admitted. “If I can fit it into my schedule.”

  Dylan was sitting across from us.

  “Dylan, you did a great job styling her,” Mia said. “If my mom ever needs an assistant, I will tell her she should hire you.”

  Dylan looked really flattered. “Wow, thanks. But Alexis is easy to style.”

  “Because I let you do whatever you want to me?” Alexis asked.

  “No, dork, because you’re beautiful,” Dylan said.

  “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Alexis said. “Including the dork part.”

  I knew Alexis wasn’t kidding. Dylan could be really mean to Alexis when she wanted to. Or she just acted like Alexis was the biggest pain in the world—kind of like I had been acting toward Emily.

  I turned to Emily. This wasn’t going to be easy, but I wanted to say it.

  “So . . . I’ve been meaning to apologize to you,” I told her. “I’m sorry if I was acting mean to you lately. It’s just . . . I don’t know. I guess I was jealous. My mom thinks you’re so perfect and, well, you kind of are.”

  Emily looked surprised. “Seriously? You think that?” she asked. “Because I am so not perfect.”

  “Yes, you are!” I argued. “Your hair is always shiny and perfect. Your room is superclean. And you don’t make a mess when you eat.”

  “Well, maybe that last part is true,” Emily admitted. “But the other stuff is hard. I mean, I have to wake up extra early to blow-dry my hair every day. And my room is so clean because my dad makes me clean it, like, every time I’m there. He’s like a drill sergeant.”

  I looked down the table at Jeff, who was talking and laughing with my mom. Everyone said he was such a laid-back teacher. I had a hard time thinking of him being so strict.

  But once I thought about it, it made sense. He was always telling Emily to retie her shoes and put her napkin on her lap when we went out to eat.

  “I never thought of it like that,” I said.

  Emily nodded. “I was always jealous of you,” she said. “Your mom doesn’t give you a hard time about your room. And you have awesome friends and they all love you. And you never stress out about your hair and stuff, but you always look really cute.”

  I couldn’t believe Emily was saying all this. “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, and then she looked down at her hot fudge sundae with extra cherries. “You know, I was nervous that you wouldn’t like me.”

  I honestly had never thought of that, either. “Well, I hope you’re not worried anymore, because I definitely like you.”

  Emily looked relieved, and then the two of us started laughing. “It’s funny how we were both feeling the same way,” I said. “I feel silly now.”

  “Well, you are silly,” said Mia, who had just joined our conversation.

  When we were done with our ice cream, there were lots of hugs all around.

  “Good-bye, superstar!” I called to Alexis as we left the ice-cream parlor.

  “I am not a superstar!” she protested, but then just at that moment, a boy walked past her and stopped.

  “Hey, you were in the talent show tonight. You were great,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Alexis replied, and I was laughing so hard.

  “See? You can’t even get ice cream without being recognized!” I yelled.

  I was still laughing when Emily and I got into the backseat of Mom’s car. The plan was to drop her and Jeff back at school, where Jeff’s car was parked.

  Mom turned on the radio, and the rock station I’d been listening to came on. Mom looked into the rearview mirror.

  “What’s that station you like again, Emily?” she asked.

  “Ninety-four point one, but you don’t have to change it,” she said, giving me a nervous look, but I gave her a look back to show that I was okay with it.

  “No, it’s my pleasure,” Mom said. “That’s the one I like too.” It was not the one I liked, but it was fine.

  I leaned back in my seat. I guess this is how life is going to be from now on, I thought. Filled with compromises.

  Alexis and Emma complained about this kind of thing all the time, and even Mia complained about Dan. I had never understood it before. I guess I was in kind of a bubble, being an only child. I’d never even had to share my mom with anyone.

  And it looked like Jeff and Emily weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. There was a good chance that this change was going to be permanent. So I was definitely starting from scratch.

  I remembered what Alexis said about baking from scratch—about how we do it because our cupcakes taste so much better that way. Whatever this new life held, I guessed we were starting from scratch too. And while I knew it wouldn’t be totally smooth, I had a feeling it might just be as sweet as the icing on one of our cupcakes.

  CHAPTER 16

  Cupcake Club Celebrities!

  I had worked things out with my friends. I had even worked things out with Emily. But there was one person left I needed to talk to: my mom. So I was glad when we dropped Jeff and Emily off and headed home. I didn’t even have to bring up the topic, because Mom gave me the perfect opening.

  “So, you and Emily are getting along really well,” Mom said.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “But, um, I was kind of jealous for a while. You act like she’s perfect all the time. I was starting to think that you wanted me to be more like her or something.”

  “Oh, Katie!” Mom said, and her eyes got sad. “Let me concentrate on driving, but I promise you we’ll finish this conversation.”

  I could tell that Mom was thinking hard on the whole ride home. When she pulled into our driveway, she shut the engine off and turned to look at me.

  “Katie, you are my daughter, the love of my life, and I love you exactly as you are,” Mom said. “Of course there are some habits that I would like you to improve, but that’s my job as a parent.”

  I nodded. “Just maybe don’t compare me to Emily when you do that.”

  Mom was shaking her head. “I never realized I was doing it, but now that you say it, you are so right. I’m sorry, Katie. I never wanted to make you feel bad about yourself.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Boy, was it a relief to talk about stuff! And there was still one thing that was really bugging me. “Mom, if you marry Jeff—”

  Mom interrupted me. “Katie, I am not sure if that will ever happen.”

  “I know, but I’m just saying, if you guys get married, I don’t want to be the only Brown in the family,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked.

  “Well, if you take his name, you’d be Dr. Green,” I pointed out. “And if you hyphenated your name, you’ll be Dr. Brown-Green. And Emily would still be Emily Green, but I’d be Katie Brown. That would be sad.”

  Mom smiled. “Katie, that is a promise I can make. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and I smiled back.

  On Monday, everybody at school was talking about the talent show. At lunch George was juggling apples at his table, impressing all his friends.

  “I heard that Olivia Allen is jealous of you,” Emma reported to Alexis, “because everyone says you’re a better singer.”

  Alexis shrugged. “I actually think she was really good. Anyway, people will stop talking about it soon.”

  “Well, Channel Eight aired their report last night,” Mia said. “Did you see it?”

  Alexis groaned. “My dad has played it, like, a million times. And they showed me for only two seconds.”

  “Two superstar seconds!” I teased.

  “That reminds me,” Alexis said. “Mary Chang e-mailed me and said they’re going to air the Cupcake Club story on tomorrow’s news. Mom said we could have pizza at our house and all watch it. I can’t believe we’re all going to be on TV!”

  “Emily’s in
it, so I’ll see if she can come too,” I suggested, and everyone nodded.

  The next day, we all got to Alexis’s house at five. The news started at five thirty, and we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss the Cupcake Club segment. Mrs. Becker had these little TV trays set up in the living room so we could eat our pizza without making a mess. We each had a huge stack of napkins, too.

  At five thirty, the news came on. There was a story about the school budget and a store that got robbed. Then we saw Mary Chang’s face on the screen.

  “Coming up, hear about a group of girls who turned a love of cupcakes into a thriving business!” she said.

  We all clapped and cheered. The commercials seemed to take forever. The show came back on, and the anchorman did a story about a new exhibit at the zoo. Then he turned things over to Mary Chang.

  Suddenly, there we were on the screen—me, Mia, Emma, and Emily, setting up the cupcake table.

  “Look at us!” Mia cried, and we all squealed. It was so weird seeing myself on TV. But I guess we looked pretty cool, since we all had our Cupcake shirts on.

  Mary Chang started doing a voiceover.

  “This might look like a typical school bake sale. But it’s anything but,” she was saying. “These girls have turned cupcakes into a booming business.”

  Emma’s face appeared on the screen. “It started on our first day of middle school, when Katie brought a cupcake to lunch,” she said.

  Then the camera was right on me. “Lunch. School. Cupcake,” I said.

  “Oh no!” the non-TV me wailed. “Emma, I thought you said they were going to cut that out!”

  “Shh!” Alexis said.

  The rest of it was pretty normal, just like I’d remembered, with Emma and Mia talking. Then the camera turned to Mary Chang.

  “One member, Alexis Becker, was too busy wowing the crowd in the talent show to be interviewed,” she said. “Alexis is the business brain of the club, and she wanted me to make sure I gave out the club’s website info. So check out the bottom of your screen if you want to give their cupcakes a try.”

  “Yes!” Alexis said, pumping her fist in the air.

  The last shot they showed was a cute little kid biting into one of our cupcakes, and then the story was over. Everyone started talking at once.

  “You guys looked so good!” Emily said.

  “Alexis, you should have been in it,” Emma said with a frown.

  “It’s okay,” Alexis said. “I’m already a superstar, remember?”

  “Excuse me, but did anybody hear what I dork I was?” I asked. “Why would she leave that in? It’s like I forgot how to use the English language.”

  “It went by really fast,” Mia assured me. “I’m sure nobody will notice.”

  Alexis’s phone starting buzzing, and she looked at it. “No way! I already have a message about a possible birthday party order. Awesome!”

  “Getting on the show was a brilliant idea,” Emma told her.

  Then my phone started to buzz. I looked at the screen. There was a text from George.

  Lunch. School. Cupcake.

  “Oh no!” I wailed.

  “What is it?” Mia asked.

  I handed her my phone, and she started cracking up. Then everyone gathered around to look.

  Emily started to giggle, and Mia and Emma were laughing really hard. Alexis had one of those “brilliant idea” looks that she gets.

  “This could be great,” she said. “We can isolate the clip and put it online. I bet we’d get a lot of hits. Then we could link to our Cupcake website.”

  “Absolutely not!” I shrieked. “If you do that, then I will post your singing clip on every website out there. You will be discovered and they’ll make you go on tour and you won’t be able to go to any more business club meetings.”

  Alexis frowned. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would!” I promised.

  She sighed. “But it would be really good for business.”

  “I think we’ll get enough business from the news report,” I said.

  “And if that doesn’t work, we can add singing cupcake telegrams to our flyer,” Emma said, looking at Alexis.

  We all started laughing again. I looked around the room, and then I knew for sure—I might be starting from scratch, but I’d always have my friends around me to help me make sure everything came out perfect.

  Want another sweet cupcake?

  Here’s a sneak peek of the next book in the

  Cupcake Diaries

  series:

  mia’s

  recipe for disaster

  My Big Break!

  All right, people! Hit the lockers!” yelled out Ms. Chen, our gym teacher.

  I jogged off the basketball court along with my friends Katie, Emma, and Alexis. We all have gym together, which is pretty nice. We all have pretty complicated feelings about gym, though.

  Emma is blonde, sweet, a little shy, and gorgeous—and, surprisingly, a competitive beast when she plays sports. I think it comes from having three brothers. She especially gets mad when the girls and boys play together and the boys don’t pass the ball to the girls.

  “What do they think? That we’re not as good as them?” she’d say.

  Alexis is competitive, too, but mostly about academic things. She likes gym—mostly because she’s really good at it—but she just loves to criticize it. “You need a healthy body to maintain a healthy mind,” she’d always say. “But gym class is just not an efficient way to get exercise. Half the time we’re standing around, waiting to play.”

  Then there’s my best friend, Katie. She used to hate gym more than I hate polyester, mostly because she used to get teased because she wasn’t good at sports. But she’s a lot more confident now.

  “Can you believe I made a basket today?” she was saying as we walked toward the locker room. She jumped up, pretending to make an imaginary layup. “An actual basket. In gym!”

  “You did great, Katie,” Emma said.

  “I almost wish gym wasn’t over yet,” Katie said, and I gave her a look.

  “Did you actually just say that?” I asked.

  “Well, I said ‘almost,’ ” Katie replied.

  “Well, I am definitely glad it’s over,” I said. “That means I can get out of this uniform.”

  I am at war with my Park Street Middle School gym uniform. For one thing, it’s half polyester, which is just itchy and gross. Polyester makes me sweat more, which is the exact opposite of what I need in a gym uniform. As Alexis would say, it’s not logical.

  Then there are the shorts, which balloon out on the sides like old-fashion bloomers. And it’s a totally boring blue color, not a deep navy or a pretty powder blue, but just this really dull blue, a dirty grayish blue, like the color of the sky on a drizzly day. Blah.

  “Mia, you look great in the uniform,” Katie said. “You look great in everything.”

  “Thanks, but nobody looks good in this,” I said. I pulled at the fabric of the shorts. “I took these to my last class at Parsons, and Millicent, a design student, showed me how to alter the seam, so they don’t look so baggy. But they’re still hideous!” Parsons is a pretty famous design school in the city. My mom signed me up for classes there, which are totally awesome.

  By now we had reached the locker room and quickly got changed for next period: lunch. We only get about three minutes to change, which is ridiculous. I never have time to redo my hair, which is always all over the place after gym.

  “How is that class going, anyway?” Alexis asked.

  “Really good,” I said. “I’m learning so much about sewing. Which I’m going to need to do if I’m serious about becoming a fashion designer.”

  “Oh, you’re definitely serious about it, all right,” Katie said. “It’s all you talk about.”

  “Not all,” I said, but then I remembered something. “Oh! I have something to show you guys at lunch. I found out about it yesterday, and I’m so excited!”

  “Yesterday? Why d
idn’t you tell me on the bus this morning?” Katie asked.

  “I wanted to save it and tell everybody at lunch,” I told her. “This could totally be my big break.”

  Katie raised her eyebrows. “Tell us now!”

  “Not in this smelly locker room,” I said, and then the bell rang. “Come on, let’s go to lunch!”

  The four of us pushed our way through a sea of middle schoolers as we headed to the cafeteria. Once we got there, Katie and I went to our usual table, and Alexis and Emma got on the food line.

  “Come on, just tell me now,” Katie said as she unwrapped her PB&J sandwich.

  I shook my head. “You are so impatient!” I told her, laughing.

  Katie put down her sandwich and closed her eyes. “Okay. I’ll just meditate until you’re ready, then.”

  That’s when Alexis and Emma walked up, carrying trays of salad.

  “What’s with Katie?” Emma asked.

  “I’m meditating,” Katie said.

  “Not if you’re talking,” I pointed out.

  “Meditation can be very beneficial,” Alexis said. “In business club we learned that many successful executives practice it. It keeps them focused.”

  Katie opened her eyes. “Okay, I’m focused. Now tell us, Mia!”

  I opened my backpack and took out a magazine, Teen Runway. I flipped through the pages and stopped at a photo of a model gliding down a runway in a gorgeous chiffon evening gown. The headline above her read, “Design Your Fantasy Dress—Enter Our Contest!”

  “Teen Runway is having a contest,” I told my friends. “It’s open to anyone between the ages of twelve and sixteen. You have to create a dress that you would wear to a fashion event with all the top designers. The top prize is a thousand bucks, but that’s not even the best part. The winner gets their dress photographed on a professional model for the magazine, plus a meeting with famous designers.”

  I put the magazine down on the table, so everyone could see. “I can totally do this,” I said. “Especially now that I’m taking those sewing classes. You have to sew your dress yourself and send in a picture of it for the contest.”