“Chess is like life, Natalya,” she said out loud, mimicking her father’s accent. Then she laughed to herself.
The computer emitted a tiny ping, and a window popped up on the lower left-hand corner of her screen.
cbprewitt@thompson: Of all the chess games in all the world, she walks into mine.
Natalya’s heart started to pound. He was there. He was writing to her. He wasn’t just a nameless, faceless player. He was Colin. He was Morgan’s dork brother.
Should she say something back? Should she say nothing back? Should she log off, pretending she hadn’t even seen his message?
npetrova@gainsford: I
“Hello? Anyone home? Natalya? Alex?” It was her mom.
npetrova@gainsford: I have to go.
Without waiting to see if he typed a response, she frantically exited and shut the computer down.
“Hi, Mom.” Even though she hadn’t been doing anything wrong, Natalya leaped out of her chair and headed to the front door to meet her mom, as though she’d been making out with Colin, not playing online chess with him.
“Hello, sweetheart.” Her mother pulled Natalya into a gentle hug and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her skin was soft and unwrinkled, which she said had more to do with good genetic luck than any of the expensive products sold at the spa. “How was your day?”
Natalya followed her mother into the kitchen. “It was okay. The Greek quiz was harder than I thought it would be.” So much of Natalya’s life at Gainsford was about nonacademic things, it was strange to find herself discussing class work and tests with her parents, as if that was what her school day was comprised of.
“Did you do well?” asked her mom, taking out a pot and filling it with water.
“I think so.” Her mother was still wearing her work whites, and Natalya realized she was trying to avoid looking at them, like if she focused really, really hard on her face and hair, she could pretend her mom wasn’t in a white polyester jacket/shirt and pants.
Unbuttoning the top button of her jacket, her mother said, “I should change before I start cooking. Will you take the broccoli out and wash it?”
“Sure.” Natalya crossed to the refrigerator and pulled out the vegetable drawer.
On her way to the bedroom, her mother patted Natalya lightly on the head. “And when I’m changed, we can have a real talk and you can catch me up on everything that’s happening in your life.”
“Okay.” Natalya thought about how she was pretending to Morgan that she was into George, how she’d lied to Victoria, but then Victoria had seemed happy to be at the party, so she’d never told her the truth. How Jane seemed angry about her new friends. Her secret online chess game with Colin.
Was she really going to tell her mother everything? Impossible. But equally impossible was the idea of trying to tell her mom one thing without explaining how it tied into everything else.
Washing the stalks of broccoli, Natalya decided that when her mom came back, she’d talk about her classes. To her mother, school meant schoolwork. For tonight, Natalya would pretend that was also what it meant to her.
AT 2:59 ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Victoria placed the last mixing spoon next to the last mixing bowl, for a total of five cooking stations. There was a bowl for her and one for Maeve. Yesterday a girl named Sheniqua had come up to her after math and asked if there was any room left in the baking club for her and her friend. Victoria had almost laughed at the idea that the club would be full. “Totally,” she’d promised. So she’d put out a bowl for Sheniqua and one for her unnamed friend. If twenty people came, it was going to be a problem, but if only Maeve showed, having a few extra bowls out (as opposed to a few dozen) wouldn’t be completely humiliating.
For just a second, she let herself imagine what it would be like if Jack walked through the swinging doors and into the kitchen, then felt embarrassed for even having had the thought. Why would Jack come? He’d never expressed even the slightest interest in baking.
Ever since their team condom moment (she blushed even redder thinking about that), they’d gone back to saying hey to each other in the hallway or if they arrived simultaneously at the door to the bio lab. But they hadn’t had a conversation. Still, sometimes lately when Ms. Kalman stood behind Victoria and Jack was facing the back of the room, Victoria was pretty sure he really was looking at her. But she was never totally sure. And it wasn’t as if he’d ever spoken to her. It wasn’t as if he’d come up to her after class and said, So, about that extra ticket I mentioned…
Three o’clock. She could hear the building quieting now that classes were over, and she started to get worried. What if nobody came? What if everyone was talking about the lame club Victoria Harrison had tried to start? What if…
The door to the kitchen opened, and Maeve peeked cautiously into the kitchen. She hesitated a few feet away from the table, as though she wasn’t sure if it was okay to approach.
Victoria gestured her over just as Sheniqua and another girl barreled through the door.
“Sorry we’re late,” Sheniqua said. “Julia here only took ten years to get her stuff out of her locker.”
“That’s okay,” Victoria assured them. “We haven’t started yet.”
A second later the door opened again, and two girls, one of whom was Grace, Chloe’s friend who Victoria had had lunch with that first day of school, stepped into the kitchen. Before the door could swing closed, another girl came racing in, slightly out of breath. “Am I late?” she asked. Her cheeks were bright red. “My practice just got canceled and I thought I’d try to make it.”
“You made it,” Sheniqua assured her.
By ten after three, there were nine people in the room. Victoria was so busy rustling up extra bowls, measuring cups, and spoons, she forgot to be nervous. When she’d finally found enough equipment for five pairs of bakers, she took a deep breath and surveyed the room. Every eye was on her.
“Hi.” Her voice was shaky and she could feel her cheeks growing warm. She felt the same panic she’d felt that morning when she’d entered the dining room and her father’s entire campaign staff had stared up at her. Realizing her hands were clutched together in front of her, almost as if she were praying, she yanked them apart so hard, her right hand slapped against a whisk, nearly sending it flying off the table. Automatically, her fingers wrapped around the handle, and the familiar feeling of the cool metal against her palm gave her confidence.
“Welcome to the first meeting of the Morningside Baking Club.” She sounded better. Still nervous but better. She took a deep breath. “I was going to teach you how to make an angel food cake, but that needs a long time to cool, and I didn’t know how late everyone could stay.”
“Can we make it next time?” asked one of the two girls who had come in at the very last minute and whose names Victoria had forgotten to ask. One had straight brown hair, the other had hair the exact same color but crazy curly, as if they were a before and after picture of someone who’d stuck her finger into an electric socket.
Next time? They were already planning on a next time? Their enthusiasm gave Victoria confidence. “Sure, if you want. So, today, let’s make lemon meringue tarts. They’re a little bit tricky, but anyone you make them for will be totally impressed.”
“Hear that? Justin’s going to be impressed,” Sheniqua whispered to the girl whose practice had been canceled. Both girls laughed, and Victoria realized that everyone in the room was happy, giggly. None of them thought she was lame for baking, or wished she’d joined the debate team or model UN. If she were a member of one of those clubs, there’d be no one to teach them how to bake.
“Okay. The first thing we have to do is separate eggs. So, take an egg and gently crack it against one of the small glass bowls you each have.”
An hour and a half later, she stood in an empty kitchen.
She felt triumphant.
Okay, Sheniqua’s meringue had never really gotten stiff, and Julia’s lemon filling had been kind of bitter. But ultim
ately all the tarts had come out edible.
As she carried a dirty mixing bowl over to the sink, she remembered Maeve beating her egg whites. “Is this what you mean by ‘stiff peak’?”
Victoria had been helping the curly-haired girl, and she walked over to get a look at Maeve’s bowl. She shook her head. “Keep beating it. They’ll get stiffer.”
Julia looked over at Maeve’s bowl, too, as Maeve began mixing again. “Really? How do you know?”
Victoria thought for a second, then laughed briefly, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I mean, I don’t know how I know.”
“Oh!” Maeve’s voice was excited. “You were right. Look.” They all peered into Maeve’s bowl, studying the mountains of fluffy egg whites in it.
“Perfect,” Victoria announced.
“I can’t believe you know all this stuff,” said Georgia, the girl with the straight hair. “I want to start my own business, you know?”
“Doing what?” asked Victoria. Then she said to the group, “If you’re happy with your egg whites, you can measure out your dry ingredients. Start with the flour. Sorry,” she turned back to Georgia. “Tell me about your business idea.”
“Okay.” Georgia pushed her long brown hair out of her eyes and turned to Victoria, her face animated. “You remember how when you were little, your mom would bake cupcakes and cookies or whatever for your birthday at school?”
Victoria’s mother had never baked in her life; every birthday cake her family had eaten, either her father or Victoria had baked or her mother had purchased. Still, she knew what Georgia meant. “Yeah?” she asked. Julia turned her bowl so Victoria could see her egg whites, and Victoria gave her a thumbs-up.
Georgia continued. “Well, a few years ago my mom was all, ‘This is it. You’re going into middle school and you’re old enough to use the stove. If you want cupcakes at school for your birthday, you make them yourself.’” Georgia rolled her eyes. “Nice, right?”
“My mom would never in a million years make me cupcakes for my birthday,” Sheniqua said. “She’s obsessed with childhood obesity.”
“Hmm…okay, that could be a problem.” Georgia paused to consider what Sheniqua had said. “Well, I can always make sugar-free ones.”
“Sugar-free what?” asked Julia.
Beating her egg whites, Georgia explained. “I’m starting a business making stuff for peoples’ birthdays at school. It’s going to be called Happy Birthday to You, and I’ll make cupcakes, cookies, or regular cakes.” Her beater ran up the side of the bowl and spattered her with raw egg and sugar. She wiped the mixture off her cheek. “I just have to learn to bake first.” Then she nodded meaningfully at Victoria. “Which is where you come in.”
As Georgia described her business and Sheniqua complained about her mother’s new rule to combat juvenile diabetes (No sweets in the house unless you make them), Victoria started to get an idea. She thought about all the times her dad had critiqued how little money there was for preventative health care in the United States. Just a little education, just a little monitoring, and half the people who end up in the hospital wouldn’t be there.
By the time she shut the oven door, Victoria’s thoughts had started to coalesce into a plan. And while they waited for the tarts to bake, Victoria broached the subject.
“How much of a profit do you need to make from your business, Georgia?”
Georgia looked up from the text she was reading and shrugged. “I don’t know. My friend Olivia’s going to be my business partner. She’s the one who has to deal with all the finances.”
“Because I was thinking…what if we combined your idea and Sheniqua’s idea and did some kind of outreach, teaching people how to bake healthy desserts?”
“Healthy desserts?” Georgia sounded suspicious.
Sheniqua clapped her phone shut. “Like sugar-free stuff?”
“Sure.” Victoria considered their options. “Or just…I mean, a homemade cake is automatically healthier than a store-bought cake. It has fewer preservatives. You can include fresh fruit, nuts, all kinds of healthy stuff.”
Sheniqua thought for a second, then snapped her fingers. “We could do it at the community center where my mom volunteers. She’s always trying to get me to go over there with her.”
Maeve had been listening to their conversation. Now she said in her whispery voice, “There’s a community service requirement to graduate, did you guys know that?”
Victoria, Sheniqua, and Georgia shook their heads. “No wonder my sister did all that volunteer work,” Victoria mused.
Maeve seemed to know just what Victoria meant. “Yours too?” she asked. They gave each other knowing looks.
“It’s not like it’s bad because we’d get credit for it,” Sheniqua pointed out. “Teaching people how to make their kids a healthy birthday cake is automatically a good deed.”
Georgia grinned. “It’s definitely a good transcript deed.”
They all laughed; as if on cue, the timer dinged.
“To be continued,” said Victoria, and she made her way over to the stove to check the tarts.
• • •
Now, alone in the kitchen, Victoria felt like doing a victory dance. She’d done it. She’d been really, really scared to do it, and she’d done it anyway. Nana would be so proud of her. And her parents—she imagined their response when she told them she and some girls from school were going to volunteer at a community center. See, Emily? Baking can be an act of civic good.
Before leaving, everyone had asked if they could help wash the few dirty dishes that were left, but Victoria said she didn’t mind doing them herself, which was true. There weren’t that many, and she liked washing dishes, the sense of accomplishment that came from seeing a pile of dirty stuff become a pile of clean stuff.
Outside the kitchen window she heard a group of girls laughing, and when she looked, she saw the soccer team making their way back to the locker room. For a split second she was jealous of the girls walking with their arms around each other, giggling together. It made her think of Jane and Natalya and how they were never again going to be able to just take it for granted that they’d see each other every day, hang out at lunch, between classes, after school. Not have to make plans, like they did now. Over the past few weeks it seemed as though she was always talking to Jane or Natalya, not both of them. She knew Jane was mad about Natalya’s new friends, but she wished Jane would get over it. It was so exciting that Morgan had invited them to the big party at the Met tomorrow night. Why couldn’t Jane be happy that Natalya had new friends and that her new friends were kind of becoming Victoria’s and Jane’s new friends, too?
Jane. Natalya. She had to call them and tell them how the baking club had gone. Flipping open her phone, she saw that she’d been so absorbed in the class she’d missed three texts from them. She started to write back. U will not believe how awe—
“Hey,” said a male voice from behind her.
She spun around. Standing in the kitchen, the door swinging quietly behind him, was Jack Hastings.
The text evaporated from her mind.
“Hello,” he said. There was something serious about his voice, as if he’d come on business or a mission.
“Hey,” she said, her heart racing. He was here. He was really here. She wasn’t imagining it.
“I didn’t just come to snag sweets,” he assured her. He lifted his camera away from his neck, where it hung like Victoria’s pearl. “I was hoping to get some shots of the club for The Scoop.”
Oh. The Scoop. Her heart sank. “It’s over,” she said. “They’re all gone.”
He pointed to the single lemon meringue tart that sat on an aluminum table in the middle of the room. “That’s yours.”
She nodded and forced herself to smile. Her new club was going to be featured in the school paper. That was a good thing. She should be psyched Jack had come to photograph her baking.
So why wasn’t she?
Jack
squinted at the tart, then at her, then back at the tart. “It’s beautiful,” he said finally. “Any objection to my taking a picture of it?”
“No. I mean, yes. I mean…” They both laughed, and she shook her head and gestured at the tart. “Go for it.”
Jack squatted down, getting his eye to counter level, and started shooting pictures. Victoria watched him. He seemed to have completely forgotten she was in the room, and as he slid the pastry around on the counter to get a better angle, then made his way over to the sink to get a shot of the dirty dishes, it was as if he’d entered another dimension. She wondered if that was what she was like when she was baking.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she automatically answered it. “Hello?”
It was Natalya. “Hey, sorry to interrupt your cooking thing. Are we meeting at Jane’s when you’re done? It’s Operation Desperation for costume ideas.”
Right. The costume gala. Two minutes in Jack’s presence and she’d completely spaced on a party she’d been looking forward to for weeks.
“I have to go to that dinner with my parents tonight.” Victoria glanced over at Jack; he had his back to her, one hand in the back pocket of his jeans. She realized she was literally staring at his butt and shifted her gaze to the wall beyond him. “But we could get together tomorrow morning. Early.”
“We’re cutting it really close,” Natalya said.
Jack turned around. He was looking at her.
No way could Victoria focus on this conversation with Jack’s eyes on her like that.
“Let me…I’ll call you after, okay?”
“Yeah, sorry,” Natalya apologized. “I totally didn’t mean to interrupt. How’s it going?”
“It’s…I’ll call you. Okay? As soon as it’s done.”
“Yeah, sure. Bye.”
Jack was still watching her. Nervous, she walked over to the sink.
“That’s a lot of dishes,” Jack observed.
“Not that many, really. We did most of them while the tarts were baking.”
The Darlings Are Forever Page 17
