The Last Super Chef

by Chris Negron

  Dedication

  For the single moms, for all the moms . . . but especially for my mom

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  I know the exact amount of flour for the perfect cake batter. I’m able to tell if a steak is rare just by touching it. I can make a perfect piecrust without looking at a recipe. But I never quite recognize the ingredients that are going to get me into trouble until it’s way too late. Tonight they’re cupcakes, a culinary torch, and an undefeated high school basketball team.

  We’ve arrived at the high school way early, but there are still plenty of pregame fans on hand, all of them staring at our foil trays and cooler. Staring at us—two fifth graders and a fourth grader—marching up the hallway, looking more than a little out of place.

  This crowd is small potatoes, though. I’m talking red skin or fingerlings, even. It won’t be long before the gym and hallways are completely packed with tons of basketball fans. Which is perfect, because I’m actually counting on a russet-size crowd.

  Tonight’s idea started out small, with one simple fact that my best friend, Tre, dropped on me at lunch the other day: his brother Josh’s varsity team, the North Sloan Eagles, have been straight-up crushing every opponent so far this season. High school basketball is especially huge in North Sloan. They even start the season early to squeeze more games into the schedule.

  “Curtis, the gym’s gonna be packed!” Tre told me days ago. “The whole town’ll be there.”

  “Who are they playing again?” I asked him. I was kneading my tiny, doughy idea into some kind of shape in my brain. A baguette, maybe. Possibly a boule.

  “Waxford. The Wolves. The Eagles’ve been away for almost two weeks. This is only their second home game of the season.”

  And just like that, my little idea got way huge, as if I’d put too much yeast into my dough and the carbon dioxide was releasing crazy fast. “Everybody, huh?”

  On game night, Josh seemed almost nervous. He was so focused on beating the Wolves, he didn’t ask us a single question. Not when we begged for a ride to his school, not when he picked up Paige and me alone in front of our apartment, not when Tre had to swing Josh’s duffel bag into the front seat to make room for our cooler in the back.

  We pass the kids at what must be the normal concessions table, two lanky teenagers. They’ve got some fresh coffee brewing behind them, and by the black and orange carafes I’m guessing one is regular and the other decaf. That’s actually not a bad plan. But on their main table all they have are bottled waters and canned sodas arranged in color-coded rows. In front of those, a few cellophane-wrapped chocolate chip cookies looking as hard as rocks are piled beside a pyramid display of over-marshmallowed Rice Krispies Treats.

  Amateurs.

  “I still don’t get why you need a lawyer for this,” Tre complains.

  I stop rolling the cooler. “What do you mean, lawyer?” My best friend falls silent. The distant squeak of sneakers in the gym tells me the Eagles are starting to warm up.

  “I don’t know,” Tre finally says, shrugging. “You said you needed me to sue somebody.”

  “Not S-U-E sue, S-O-U-S sous!” I yell. He gives me a blank look. “I don’t need a lawyer, I need a sous chef.”

  Tre smacks both frustrated fists against his hips. “You lost me, dude.”

  “You’re Curtis’s assistant, Tre,” Paige says. “You do all the little jobs. Whatever Chef needs. At home, I usually do it.”

  “So you don’t need me, then?” Tre’s shoulders droop a little.

  “We definitely need you. Paige has to take care of the cash box.” My little sister dips her shoulders so her backpack will slide off them. She unzips it, revealing a vintage aluminum Wonder Woman lunch box. It rattles with loose change, most of which we found in the couch cushions. Unaccounted-for money isn’t actually a thing in the Pith household.

  “I can do that,” Tre says, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of handling actual cash money.

  “Oh, yeah?” I point out a nearby table. It’s the perfect size, the one thing we couldn’t bring that I was hoping to stumble upon. We each grab an end. “Tell me this, then.” I grunt. This table’s heavier than I thought. “If we’re selling cupcakes for $2.25 each, three for $5.75, how much is it if someone asks for five?”

  Tre’s lips move silently as he tries to work it out, but Paige is way too fast. She shouts, “$10.25! $5.75 for the first three, then $4.50 for the other two—$2.25 apiece—for a total of $10.25. But!” She lifts a finger into the air. “You can get a sixth one for only $1.25 more . . .”

  She’s only in fourth grade, a year younger than Tre and me (actually, eleven months, she always corrects me), but Paige Pith is hands down the whizziest math whiz in all of Sloan Elementary.

  “Fine.” Tre looks around. “What’s my job, then?”

  Paige grins. “You shout, ‘Yes, Chef!’ Like, a lot.”

  His jaw unhinges. “Seriously?”

  We ease the table to the floor and extend the legs. “Any smooth-running kitchen needs a clear hierarchy,” I preach, echoing one of my favorite TV chef’s mantras. “Paige is on orders and money. I’m the chef. That means you get sugar and delivery. I’ll show you what to do in a minute.”

  Once our trays are on the table and I’ve walked them through the plan a couple times, I carefully remove the foil to expose the first batch of cupcakes Paige and I prepped last night. The tops are all coned out, leaving an indent that’s waiting for the star of the dish, not so much a frosting as a topping. I grab two chilled bowls from the cooler, one holding my signature pastry cream, the other a light meringue. A faint scent of vanilla wafts into the air when I peel back the plastic.

  I fold the meringue into the cream—gently, don’t want bubbles—and stand up a piping bag in a sundae glass. Before pouring my topping in, I need the coup de grace—that’s, like, the ultimate last step that makes everything awesome—one of my go-to ingredients. I reach into the cooler a final time, my hand coming back with a single lemon and a microplane. Slowly, I grate just the right amount of lemon zest over the waiting bowl.

  Paige starts organizing our coins into stacks of quarters and dimes and nickels. I have to say, my sister is an awesome sport, up for just about any of my wild ideas. She knows how much
I love cooking, so at night when Mom heads out to her second-shift job at the post office, Paige helps me with whatever dish I try to master next. Because if I’m serious about becoming a great chef, I have to be sure to leave no culinary stone unturned.

  And when I ask Paige for a few hours of her time at the high school, assure her that she’ll be able to catch up on her precious homework in the morning before we chase the bus, she doesn’t even stop stirring the risotto.

  The only thing that seems to surprise my sister is my culinary talent. Whenever I drop some new technique out of the blue, Paige always says the same thing. “You know, I can’t cook without burning everything, and Mom can’t even boil water, so it’s sort of amazing you can do all this.”

  Of course she doesn’t understand, because Paige doesn’t know my secret. She doesn’t know who our father is. Mom never talks about that anymore. But years ago our mother let it slip to me. Ever since then, I’ve known who my dad is. Ever since then, I’ve understood exactly where my cooking talent comes from.

  By the way, yes, of course I hate my last name. If you don’t know, the “pith” is that white section between the zest and citrus fruit—lemons, oranges, limes. It’s the stuff you’re supposed to stay away from if you don’t want a bitter dish. Yep, the pith is the most useless “food” ever, the absolute worst name for a chef.

  The crowd in the hallways has probably tripled when the first curious customer approaches our table. She’s a teenager with long, straight red hair. She smirks as she waits for Paige to finish taping our sign to the front of the table.

  CRÈME BRÛLÉE CUPCAKES

  BY CHEF CURTIS PITH

  $2.25 EACH OR 3 FOR $5.75

  “Kinda steep, isn’t it?” the girl asks. She points at the fuming teenagers at the regular table, no customers in sight. “Over there I can get three cookies for two bucks.”

  “Two bucks is a lot to spend for a chipped tooth,” I say.

  “Do your sales go to some kind of charity?”

  “Definitely.” I don’t add any details. Our “charity” is the Pith family rent, a nip-and-tuck situation every month, but she doesn’t need to know that.

  The teenager narrows her eyes, and I can tell she’s about to ask for more information, but Paige steps in and saves the day.

  “I’m telling you, these cupcakes will make you rethink all your life choices.” My sister’s also my best sales rep.

  “Really.” The teenager peers more closely at our coned-out cupcakes. “To me they don’t look finished. There’s no frosting.”

  “Everything’s made to order here.” I nod at the other table. “As opposed to made last week. Or in some factory in China.”

  “First customer gets a free cupcake!” Tre shouts.

  “Well, in that case, I guess I’ll have to be your guinea pig,” the girl replies.

  I start to glower at Tre, but Paige catches my eye first. She shrugs. She and Tre are both right; we have to start somewhere. I grab my culinary torch and some gloves. After tossing one pair in Tre’s direction, I wriggle my fingers into another.

  I slide the small bowl of sugar toward Tre and ignite my torch, flipping the “continuous” button to on. With my other hand I take hold of the piping bag.

  Tre’s eyes get huge as he watches the torch’s blue flame hiss. “Wicked,” he whispers.

  “Foil,” I say, nodding at the table to refocus his attention.

  “Yes, Chef!” Tre lays out a square of precut foil. Actual plates were going to cut way too deeply into our profit margin.

  “Cupcake.”

  “Yes, Chef!” He removes the first cake from the nearest tray and plops it down in the center of the foil.

  I pipe frosting—call it that if you have to, but this topping is so much more—into the indented cone, starting in the center and swirling it in the circular pattern I’d worked out would look best when I practiced with Paige last night.

  “Sugar.”

  Tre dips his glove into the sugar bowl and throws clumps of crystals on top of my cream.

  “Gently,” I scold. “Evenly.”

  “Dude,” Tre says. I send him my most chef-like frown, and it must work, because he fidgets and fixes his reply. “Yes, Chef.” My new sous chef obediently pinches and sprinkles more sugar, slower this time.

  I hit it with the torch, caramelizing the sugar like you’d do on a real crème brûlée, which I totally would’ve done if I wasn’t worried about them holding up under the stress of travel and refrigeration. Cupcakes were definitely the safer choice.

  The sugar works its way to the right color, a perfect caramel brown—not burnt, never burnt. I pull the torch back and look up at the teenager. “Please enjoy.”

  She inspects my creation—because that’s what this cupcake is, a creation, the purest of culinary arts—from every angle before taking a huge bite, at least a third of the cupcake gone. Her hand flies up to her lips.

  “OH-EM-GEE,” she says. Her eyes grow wider with each chew. “This is . . . I want to marry this.”

  Her attention shifts to two more girls her age. They’re pushing through the crowd toward us. Our first customer waves at them. “Madison! Soph! Get over here! And bring all your money!”

  2

  By halftime, our line has grown so long it stretches all the way to the school’s front door. The people at the end are actually blocking the bathrooms now, leaving the diehards who waited until intermission fidgeting out in the hallway. The two long lines commingle, and before long some pushing and shoving starts.

  I’m too busy to worry about it. I’ve had to stop to mix additional bowls of topping twice already, and we’re on our last tray of cupcakes. Paige’s lunch box has overflowed with bills at least three times, and my normally precise sister has had to resort to urgently stuffing the extra money into the front pocket of her backpack.

  “What’s going on out here? What’s this line for?” I hear someone who sounds extra angry shout, but I can’t afford to look up. I’ve got caramelizing to finish. Not burnt, never burnt. When I’m done, though, when Tre delivers my most recent creation to our latest buyer, I sense a shadow looming over me. I peek up at the first person in a suit and tie I’ve seen all night. I feel all the blood drain from my face.

  Mr. Ramirez. The high school principal.

  “Is that a blowtorch?” he demands. “On school grounds?” He turns around, checking who’s in line behind him, using his finger to point certain students out. “I see one, two . . . seven honor students in this line. Not one of you is thinking about fire safety?”

  Several of the teenagers avert their eyes, examining the handmade “Go Eagles!” signs on the walls. What a waste of good butcher paper. “How old are you kids?” the principal demands of the three of us. “Where are your parents?”

  A massive security guard appears behind him, folding his arms over his chest. His attempt at a disapproving stance isn’t working, though, not with all that frosting on his mustache. See, Security Dude has budged his way to the front of our line twice in the past hour. He’s $4.50 lighter and two crème brûlée cupcakes heavier since we opened up shop.

  Tre thrusts a napkin toward the officer, then gestures at his own upper lip. “You’ve got a little—” he says.

  The security guard snatches the napkin and wipes his face. He cuts his eyes toward the principal.

  “Oh, that’s just terrific. My ‘security,’” Principal Ramirez says, making air quotes.

  A new commotion erupts at the far end of the line, just out of view. Teenagers frown and grumble as someone else pushes their way through. “Coming through, coming through. You kids make a path, now. Coming through!”

  I recognize the stern voice right away, then try to convince myself it can’t be him. Not here.

  The principal must be familiar with the demanding tone, too, because he quickly spins to us and starts waving his hands. “Put all this stuff away,” he urges in a harsh whisper, gesturing frantically.

  But there’
s nowhere to hide our mess, our ingredients and equipment. I stand still instead, watching the crowd parting, realizing how dumb I’ve been. Of course Mr. Arthur Pettynose, our landlord, the man who owns half of North Sloan, would be at the biggest game our school’s seen in years. Where the rest of the town goes, Pettynose can’t be far behind, shaking hands and kissing babies. I’ve heard rumors he’s planning a run for mayor next election.

  Pettynose uses his stocky girth to jostle the taller teenagers to the side as he surges ahead. He stops at our table. Looks down from behind that bulbous schnoz.

  “Mr. Pettynose!” Principal Ramirez says in a tone that’s somehow already apologizing. “I assure you I had no idea this was—”

  Pettynose cuts Ramirez off. “Curtis Pith. And with an open flame, no less. Fantastic. Just wonderful. And here your mother promised me your cooking days were behind you.”

  I can’t speak. In fact, all three of us freeze for a few seconds. Tre’s the first one to move. He reaches out and slides the “continuous” switch on my torch. The hissing flame cuts off abruptly, and the hallway turns even more awkwardly quiet.

  Then my best friend whispers in my ear, as if somehow everyone else isn’t going to hear his question amid the complete silence. “Uh, Curtis, you sure you don’t need that lawyer?”

  Here’s everything you need to know about our landlord: Arthur Pettynose is super rich. So rich, in fact, our whole apartment could probably fit into his massive kitchen alone. I know, because I’ve seen it. He invited us into his mansion, across the street from our fading apartment building, the day Mom signed the lease a couple years ago. It had everything—convection oven, butler’s pantry, stocked wine refrigerator, sparkling red KitchenAid. I remember having this desperate desire to cook just one meal in that kitchen.

  Mr. Pettynose was a lot friendlier back then, before the . . . well, let’s call it an accident. Seriously it was just a little kitchen fire. I mean, the firemen had the flames out in the blink of an eye. Ever since then, though, our landlord’s gotten meaner by the day, constantly on Mom’s case about my being in the kitchen. “He’s too young, he’ll burn my building down . . . blah, blah, BLAH.”

  As if Mom has any chance of slowing me down. Cooking—becoming a chef—is my dream. It gives me life, pumps blood through my veins. Not even principals or important townspeople can stop my march toward culinary relevance, though it seems they do have the power to put an end to unauthorized bake sales.