Mia the Way the Cupcake Crumbles

by Coco Simon

  Eddie nodded and darted downstairs. I opened the door to see Katie, Emma, and Alexis standing there.

  “Is somebody being murdered in your basement?” Katie yelled, and the music stopped right in the middle of her question. We all laughed.

  “That’s Dan’s band,” I explained. “But they’re done now, so we can have our meeting.”

  We went into the dining room, and Katie’s eyes lit up when she saw the cupcake boxes. She gave me a push.

  “The cupcake vending machine! No way!” she squealed.

  “My dad took me,” I explained.

  Emma held up one of the boxes. “Caramelized plum with cardamom?”

  “It’s a spice,” Katie said. “It kind of tastes like—”

  Before she could finish, the sound of stomping feet interrupted her. Two of Dan’s friends, wearing scary T-shirts, emerged from the basement and went out the front door without a word. We couldn’t help staring at them. Then Dan and Sebastian came up.

  “That was really good, dude,” Dan said.

  “Yeah,” Sebastian said, nodding. Then he looked over at us. “Hi, Mia! Are these your friends?”

  Dan walked up to his room without another word, but Sebastian strolled over to us and took a seat.

  “Cupcakes? Is this a cupcake party?” he asked.

  “It’s a business meeting,” I said. “We have a cupcake business.”

  Mom stuck her head into the dining room. “Sebastian, you’re staying for dinner. Your mom is working late.”

  Sebastian smiled. “Gracias.”

  “Oh, you’re Mia’s cousin!” Katie cried. “Mia told us about you. I’m Katie.”

  “And this is Emma and Alexis,” I said, feeling bad I had forgotten to introduce everyone.

  “I’ll get a knife from your mom so we can cut up the cupcakes and try them,” Katie said. “I’ll get plates, too. You want to try some, Sebastian?”

  He nodded. “Sí, thank you.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about my cousin being at my Cupcake Club meeting, but my friends didn’t seem to mind.

  “So, you’re in a band with Dan?” Emma asked him with a big smile.

  Sebastian nodded. “Sí, I play the drums.”

  “That was you? You sounded great,” Emma complimented.

  I wasn’t sure if I was hearing right. That music sounded more like a truck crashing into a wall.

  Katie came back in with a knife and five little plates. “You’re a drummer? How do you hear yourself drumming over Dan’s screaming? He sounds like he’s seeing a ghost or something. Aaaaah!”

  Everyone cracked up, including Sebastian, and I figured my friends were just being nice to my cousin and making him feel comfortable. Why else would Emma say she liked that music?

  So we tasted the cupcakes, and then Sebastian went upstairs and we had our meeting. (Cardamom, by the way tastes lemony and a little spicy and gingery at the same time.)

  It wasn’t a superexciting meeting, but we went over what supplies we had and which ones we needed. Alexis and Katie reported on a small job they had done yesterday—two dozen cupcakes for a birthday party, and Alexis mentioned that Mrs. Baudin called about making cupcakes for her next week.

  Then the doorbell rang, and Eddie answered it. A delicious smell filled the house.

  “Pizza!” Katie cried.

  Mom came into the dining room. “Are you girls just about done? I ordered some pizza for us.”

  “We’re finished, Mrs. Valdes,” Alexis announced, and if Alexis says we’re done meeting, that means we’re done meeting.

  A few minutes later we were all sitting around the table—the Cupcake Club, Mom, Eddie, Dan, and Sebastian—eating pizza and laughing and talking. I munched on my veggie slice and got lost in thought for a minute.

  Sunday had been full of surprises. New glasses, a cupcake machine, and now I had a screaming metal band practicing in my basement. Even with the band, it was still a pretty good day.

  I was certain, absolutely certain, that my streak of bad luck was over for good.

  CHAPTER 6

  Everything Is Falling into Place

  That Sunday night, I was getting my backpack ready for school the next day when I spotted my social studies book. I groaned. I had meant to catch up on my reading over the weekend, but Ava had slept over on Saturday. I could have done it on the train, but I’d totally forgotten.

  I looked at the clock: 9:30. Not too late, but I was supertired from the long weekend.

  Even if you read it now, you won’t remember any of it, said that little voice inside me. My Impractical Mia voice.

  But what if there’s a pop quiz tomorrow? asked Practical Mia.

  There won’t be a pop quiz, Impractical Mia assured me.

  How can we be sure? asked Practical Mia.

  “Because I have my lucky charm,” I said out loud. “I mean, charms.” Besides my azabache, I had my lucky penny. I had put it on my dresser the day I’d found it. But it would be better to carry it around with me, I decided. I completely forgot about my social studies reading and instead looked through my fabric scraps until I found a small piece of dark-blue satin. Then I took out my sewing kit and hand-sewed a tiny little pouch for the penny.

  I added a drawstring, which is pretty easy to do, and then I slipped the penny inside and pulled the string tightly. Then I put it in the front pocket of my backpack. Something about putting that penny in there, tucked away, made me feel safe.

  Safe? Why had I thought that? I wondered. It wasn’t like I ever felt unsafe. I hadn’t been born in some prehistoric time when I was worried about being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger or if I would have enough food to last the winter. My biggest worries involved whether Mrs. Kratzer had a pop quiz in store or if Olivia was going to make a mean comment about my hair or what I was wearing.

  Still, sometimes the halls of middle school felt like a jungle, and a comment from Olivia could sting as much as a bite from a deadly snake. (Not that I would ever show it.) So, yes, the penny made me feel safe, in a weird way.

  I yawned. I was definitely too tired to do any reading, whether I wanted to or not. I got ready for bed, feeling confident there would be no pop quiz the next day.

  But tomorrow is Monday, said another little voice inside my head: Worried Mia. Nothing ever goes right on Mondays.

  That was before my good luck charms, I told Worried Mia, and then I fell asleep.

  The next morning, I woke up an entire minute before the alarm went off. And I felt awake! Not wide-awake, but awake enough to turn off the alarm, get out of bed, and stretch.

  I kept a checklist in my head as I got ready for school. Perfect hair? Check. Perfect outfit? Check. Bracelet on? Check.

  Oh my gosh, I think I am becoming Alexis! Worried Mia joked. Alexis is the queen of checklists.

  I could see why she liked them. When I left the house, I felt more confident than usual.

  “You look extra nice today, Mia,” Katie told me when she got on the bus.

  “Thanks!” I said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be a good day, even though it’s a . . . you know.”

  “Monday,” Katie whispered. “The most dreaded of all the days of the week. Except that Chef Showdown is on every Monday night at eight.”

  “Is there any cooking show you don’t watch?” I asked.

  Katie thought about it. “Um, no. I don’t think so.”

  I shook my head. “You should totally be on one of those shows one day. You’d be great!”

  “Yeah, sometimes I imagine I’m on Chef Showdown, competing, and then I start to get nervous just thinking of all the pressure. And the cameras that are right in your face! I don’t think I could do it,” she said.

  “Well, if you did do it, you would win,” I told her. And I meant it. Katie is a great cook. She can make anything. She wants to go to cooking school after high school, and I want to study fashion design, so our plan is to both go to school in Manhattan. We could even be roommates!

  So,
I was thinking happy thoughts all morning. In my math class, I got every problem right on my worksheet. In English, we read a really interesting short story. And in gym, I made a basket when we played basketball. Finally!

  At lunch, I was happy to see a pita stuffed with lettuce, tomatoes, turkey, and Swiss cheese in my lunch bag, along with carrot sticks and hummus. Yum!

  “Thanks again for the pizza last night, Mia,” Emma said as she dug into her cafeteria lunch of mystery chili.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “That was Mom’s idea.”

  “It was nice meeting your cousin,” Emma said.

  “He’s technically my second or third cousin or something,” I said. “He seems nice. I don’t know him that well, but he sure likes Dan.”

  “That music they play is crazy,” Katie said. “It sounds like a dynamite factory exploding during a thunderstorm.”

  We all laughed—except for Emma. “I don’t know. I kind of like it,” she said. “It’s different.”

  “Yeah, well, snakes and sharks are different too, but that’s not a reason to like them,” Katie joked.

  “You know what I mean,” said Emma. “All the music on the radio is like ‘yeah, yeah, ooh, ooh, let’s party.’ It gets boring.”

  “Well, it’s not about the lyrics—it’s about the music,” Alexis said. “I like to dance, and you can’t dance to whatever Dan’s band is playing.”

  “Actually, you can,” I said. “Dan goes to concerts, and he dances in the mosh pit, where everybody just slams into one another. Once, he almost broke his nose!”

  “Mosh pit,” Katie repeated. “That sounds like an interesting cupcake flavor.”

  “Moshmallow,” Emma said, giggling.

  “Speaking of cupcakes, we never made any plans for that historical society job,” Alexis pointed out. “It’s coming up soon, and we don’t have any ideas for flavors or decorations. Can we meet on Wednesday after school?”

  We all checked the calendars on our phones.

  “I’m free, but Mom is working late, so we can’t do it at our house,” said Katie.

  “And our bathroom is being remodeled, so my house is out,” said Alexis.

  “I’m sure we could do it at my place again,” I offered. “Although I’m not sure if Dan’s band will be practicing. Although I think Eddie told me something about Tuesdays.”

  Alexis typed into her phone. “So Wednesday, at Mia’s, after school,” she said. “I’ll ask my dad if he can drive us.”

  “I’ll text Mom, but I’m sure it will be okay,” I said, typing as I talked.

  By the time I finished my last carrot, Mom had texted back.

  Sure, that’s fine. I think Dan’s band is practicing on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  I gave the report to my friends, and everyone seemed satisfied. Then Emma said, “You have Ms. Harmeyer for English too, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I was thinking, do you want to work on that English project together?” she asked. “We could help each other out. Maybe tomorrow? I could come over.”

  That sounded fine with me. We had read this book about World War II, and Ms. Harmeyer had assigned this big project with a timeline about the war and stuff. It felt more like history than English, but Ms. Harmeyer says it’s important to make “real-life connections” when we read.

  Then I remembered that Dan’s band was practicing. “It will be loud,” I reminded her. “Should we do it at your house?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Emma said. “Jake has a . . . a thing. I can be at your place at four.”

  I shrugged. “Sure.” Emma and I had worked on school stuff together before, so I didn’t think it was strange that she asked me to work on the report with her.

  When lunch was over, Katie and I headed to social studies. This would be the test to see if my bad luck was finally over. Would there be a pop quiz or not?

  But when we walked into class, a guy was sitting at Mrs. Kratzer’s desk. On the board he had written his name: Mr. Cohen.

  “Ms. Kratzer is getting a tooth pulled today, so I’ll be your teacher,” he announced. “She wants you to work on the timeline of Chinese dynasties.”

  I looked at Katie and raised my eyebrows. No Mrs. Kratzer meant no pop quiz! I felt bad about Mrs. Kratzer’s tooth, but I was happy about not having a pop quiz. My lucky charms had done it again! And just because I had good luck didn’t mean that Mrs. Kratzer had bad luck, right?

  Of course not, said Practical Mia.

  So I listened to Practical Mia and enjoyed my quizless class. Unfortunately, Practical Mia was nowhere around that night when I was about to open my social studies book and get my reading done.

  Then Katie texted me. Chef Showdown on in 2 minutes! Watch it with me!

  Homework 2 do, I texted back, but I was curious, so I turned on the TV.

  You can watch TV and do your reading at the same time! said Impractical Mia.

  And that was the plan, except I really got into the show—Katie was right; it was really good! And Katie kept texting me the whole time.

  That looks delicious!

  I wouldn’t feed that to a cat!

  Can you believe she said that?

  Watching the show and texting with Katie was very entertaining, and I stopped reading my social studies book, even during the commercials.

  When the show was over, Tired Mia took over, and I fell asleep without doing that reading. But my good luck charms would protect me, right?

  What if they don’t? asked Worried Mia, but I drifted off to sleep before I could answer.

  CHAPTER 7

  Emma’s New Look?!

  I shouldn’t have worried, because the next day, Tuesday, Mrs. Kratzer was out again. I felt bad for her, but at the same time I was relieved—no pop quiz!

  “I’ll see you around four,” Emma said to me as she passed me outside after the last bell rang.

  “Okay, see you!” I called back as I waited in line for the bus with Katie.

  This is a good time for me to talk about what Emma was wearing. I think Emma has a cute sense of style, although she likes pale pink a lot more than I do. She wears a skirt almost every day, even if it’s cold out. Today, she had on a short white skirt, and a cute pale-pink top with lace on the edges of the sleeves. She wore white flats, and a pale pink headband held her long blond hair in place. Matching pale-pink lip gloss shone on her lips.

  That’s the Emma I know. That’s the Emma everyone knows. She wears soft colors, I think, because she has a supersweet personality and a big heart. So it fits her.

  Anyway, before I would see Emma again at my house, it was time for another bus ride home. When I moved here from Manhattan, I was really worried that riding a school bus was going to be awful. In the city, I took a subway to school. Some people think riding on a crowded subway was awful, but that’s what I was used to. For the most part, everybody keeps to themselves on the subway, and once you get used to the smell, it’s not so bad.

  That’s what I was used to, so I was pretty nervous about having to take a bus to school when I moved to Maple Grove. Any time I had seen a school bus on TV or in the movies, kids were always yelling and screaming and throwing paper planes around and stuff. Luckily, my school bus turned out to be a lot calmer than that. And even when things got crazy, I always had Katie in the seat with me.

  George Martinez and Ken Watanabe sit behind us, and they’re pretty nice. Actually, Katie thinks George is really nice. If Katie’s mom would let Katie have a boyfriend, George would be him. Instead, they’re more like an unofficial couple.

  The members of the Cupcake Club all have had some history with boys. Alexis has a crush on Emma’s older brother Matt, and there is some evidence that he likes her back. They have danced together at parties and stuff. And I’m pretty sure Emma had a crush on a boy at her summer camp, but I don’t really know all the details of that. Frankly, we usually talk way more about cupcakes and teachers and stuff than we do about boys.

  George stuck his he
ad over the back of Katie’s seat.

  “Hey, Katie,” he said. “How do you make a tissue dance?”

  “I don’t know,” Katie replied. “How?”

  “You put a little boogie in it!” George said, and then he started cracking up.

  “Eww, gross!” Katie replied, punching the back of her seat, and George ducked back down. But Katie was cracking up too.

  A teeny, tiny part of me felt jealous, but just a teeny, tiny part. I used to have an unofficial boyfriend, too—Chris Howard. But then things got complicated when I got busy with a fashion design contest, and Chris asked Talia Robinson to George’s Halloween party. Now it looks like Talia and Chris are unofficial boyfriend and girlfriend.

  Katie noticed my face. “You’re still thinking about Chris, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” I replied. “I mean, the whole thing made me feel bad. But I don’t need a boy-whatever in my life right now. I’ve got way too much stuff going on. Like Ms. Harmeyer’s English project, for one thing.”

  “Yeah, thanks for asking me to come over and work on it with you,” Katie said sarcastically. “I have Ms. Harmeyer too, you know.”

  “Oh, Katie, I’m so sorry!” I cried. “It’s just—Emma asked me, and I totally forgot you had to do the same report. Do you want to come over?”

  Katie grinned. “Actually, I finished mine already. Just wanted to make you feel guilty.”

  I shook my head. “Nice, Katie, nice,” I said. “You and George are meant for each other!”

  “Don’t say that so loud!” she hissed, and then we both started laughing.

  Then came Katie’s stop, and it just was a short stretch to the next one—my stop. I could hear Dan’s band practicing when I walked in the door.

  Mom was walking out of the kitchen, holding a cup of coffee. She does a lot of her work at home.

  “How can you stand this?” I shouted over the noise.

  Mom took something out of her ear. “Earplugs,” she said. “They drown out most of it.”

  “Did you get me any?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. “Sorry. But don’t worry—they’ll be done soon.”