by Chris Negron
Joey’s in the lead, the others flanked behind him. “Hey, man,” he says, locking eyes with me and taking a quick breath in. “You wanna talk about it?”
“So all this time,” Kiko says. “You have thought Chef Taylor was your father?”
We’re sitting in a circle on the floor of the back room. The door is closed and locked again. Everyone is cross-legged except for Kiko, who sits on her knees with her feet tucked under her. They’ve already explained that they convinced the adults to let them come talk to me. Apparently Paige was so distraught it took both Mom and the Super Chef to calm her down. I didn’t think I could feel worse, but the idea of making my sister that upset does the trick.
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Pepper asks.
I shrug and stare down at my hands. “It never seemed like the right time. I thought I could do it during the one-on-one—”
“That is when I would have done it,” Bo says.
“But the camera, all those people watching. My mom, Paige. I couldn’t.”
“That is seriously messed up,” Joey says, and Pepper smacks him in the arm. The surprised expression he sends her clearly asks, What did I say?
“The worst part is, I thought I was a chef. Can you believe that? I actually thought I had Lucas Taylor’s talent, that it would me give a fighting chance against all of you.”
“Curtis,” Kiko says. “You are one hundred percent a chef.”
I look around. Everyone’s nodding with her. My eyes land on Bo last. He raises both eyebrows. “Muy bueno. After all, you taught yourself, isn’t that correct?”
Pepper scooches closer into the circle. “Your mom didn’t . . . ?”
I shake my head.
“A grandfather? An uncle?” Joey asks.
“Nobody.”
Bo gives me a thumbs-up. “Definitely amazing.”
Is it? Guess I never realized. Besides, does it matter?
“Thanks. But I still managed to ruin this for all of you. I know how important this contest is for you guys. It’s just, I think I came here with a lot more pressure on me than you did.”
Pepper starts to chuckle. Before long she’s laughing so hard she falls backward. It’s kind of scary, like it’s the Joker or something across from me rather than a ten-year-old.
“What’s funny?” Kiko asks her. She leans away, frightened by Pepper’s sudden, wild cackling.
Pepper straightens up again. “Just . . . sorry, Pith, but I’m not sure you know what pressure is. You know how good my parents are at everything? You know how hard it is to try to live up to that? I’m running a business!” She throws her hands out. “Why am I running a business? I’m ten. You don’t think I’d rather spend time doing normal kid stuff?”
“Yeah. Like hanging with friends,” Joey agrees, nodding. “I kinda wondered.”
“I wish,” Pepper says softly. “I . . . The thing is, I don’t really have any. I’m too busy for friends.” Her eyes glisten, and her hand shoots up to one as she sniffs. “I know way more about balance sheets and marketing plans than video games.”
“Well, I pretend everybody in school is my friend. Most people can’t even stand me,” Joey says, looking away from her.
“That cannot be true,” Kiko says.
He shrugs. “It’s mostly true. A few dudes hang around me because my family has a lot of money. I can get tickets to stuff. Take them on trips. My uncle and dad go on a lot of trips together.” He glances toward the big window. “You know, it’s weird. All I really want is for my dad to pay attention to me, but instead he spends all his time with his brother. They’re inseparable. He admires him so much for all the restaurants and everything . . . that’s actually why I started cooking.”
“What do you mean?” Pepper, still wiping at her eyes, asks him.
“I just thought, maybe if I got good at it, as good as my uncle Frank is, my dad might pay as much attention to me as he pays to him. Spend as much time at home as he does at all my uncle’s restaurants.”
“But your dad is perfect,” I say. “When you got your certificate, he was so happy for you. He lifted you into the air, hugged you.”
“I guess,” Joey says. “That’s what I mean, though. I did something he could admire, finally. And that made him happy.” After a momentary pause, he sniffs, too, but just once. “It’s not perfect, trust me. I don’t even like squid.”
“That is seriously messed up,” I say.
Joey laughs with me, wipes his sleeve across his eyes. “You know what’s even weirder, though? Even with all that, I still just want to go home. I don’t even want to win stupid Super Chef anymore.”
“There is no other location like the house,” Bo agrees, nodding seriously.
“No place like home,” Kiko corrects him. “You mean there’s no place like home. I miss mine, too.”
“Can I make a confession?” Bo asks. The rest of us wait quietly. “I thought this was my big dream. To be on Super Chef. To win it, maybe. But since the day I got here, going back home is the only thing I have wanted to do.”
The rest of us shout, “No kidding, Bo!” at the same time. Pepper reaches up and grabs a pillow, wings it at Bo’s head. It hits him square in the face. He somersaults backward.
When he untangles himself from the pillow, he looks around at all of us in shock. “It has been so obvious?”
“Dude, you’ve only said it like a hundred times,” Joey tells him.
“Maybe a thousand,” I agree. We laugh some more. I start to feel a little better. Everything isn’t so . . . heavy.
“But it’s why we love you,” Pepper adds, crawling over and side-hugging Bo, then reaching around him to snatch the pillow she threw. “Sorry,” she says, gesturing at it. “Couldn’t help it.” She shimmies back to her spot.
“I have six parents,” Kiko says. “You are talking about pressure from your families,” she explains. “I have it, too. My family works so hard to give me the best opportunities. Not just my parents, my grandparents, too. Everyone is living for me, to make sure I make it further than they did. It is very hard to be as perfect as they want me to be. To always win first place.”
“Bet you still want to go home, though,” Joey says. “Even with all that waiting.”
Kiko nods slowly. “I guess I do.”
“Weird, isn’t it?” he says.
They’re not so different from me. Their families aren’t as perfect as I assumed. And maybe . . . maybe I didn’t get a father out of this whole thing, but I do think I found a squad after all. At least, I think I made some new friends. Kids my age, who love the same things I do.
“Doesn’t seem to matter if we have six parents,” I indicate Kiko. “Or one.” I tap my own chest. “Everyone has a ton of pressure at home, but we all still want to go back there.” It isn’t really a question, but all four of them nod with me.
“So, does anyone even care anymore? About winning, I mean?”
The nodding stops. All four heads shake instead, a lot of mumbling joining the motion. Several not reallys and a few not sures. A bunch of I don’t think sos. I’m the only quiet one.
“What about you?” Pepper asks me.
I think about the original reason I came to New York, all that money, how much it would’ve helped Mom, Paige, us. But then I also think about why the Super Chef is quitting, about Wormwood. How I came into this room to make sure no cameras caught me falling to pieces, and yet Lucas Taylor has felt like he’s been doing it in front of a live audience for weeks now. Months, even. In the past hour, I’d gone from forgiving him to not forgiving him to realizing there had never been anything to forgive him for in the first place.
“I guess I . . . I’m not sure it would be right to win anymore.”
“What do you mean?” she asks. “You’ve stopped wanting to be a chef? You don’t want to represent the future of cooking?”
For the first time in years, I wonder. For the first time in years, I consider that maybe I could grow up to be something
else besides a chef. Maybe.
“It’s not that,” I say.
“So what, then?” Joey asks. They all lean forward, waiting for me, gazes intense.
I take a deep breath. Then, leaning in to match their posture, tightening our circle, I start speaking in hushed tones.
First I tell the Five about my conversation with the Super Chef last night in the kitchen. I tell them about his secret, why he’s even holding this contest. His Parkinson’s.
Then I tell them what I know about Wormwood, what she thinks about what Chef Taylor is doing. How wrong she believes it is.
Then I tell them my plan, because all of a sudden I have one.
45
I head over to the bedside table and pick up the red Bat-phone. There are two buttons—line one and line two. My finger hovers over one, then the other. I can’t decide.
“Line one would be the security one, I think,” Kiko says over my shoulder.
“Are you sure?”
She chews on her thumbnail. “No.”
I trusted her okonomiyaki idea. I trust her again now, pressing down on line two. It rings once, twice, three times before a confused voice answers. “Hello?”
I think I recognize it. I hope I’m right. “Mel?”
“Curtis?”
I sigh out relief. I picked the handlers’ hangout room, and not security, like I wanted to. “Yeah, it’s me. It’s us. We . . . um, we need your help,” I say, then quickly add, “but you can’t tell anybody.”
I explain some of our plan, then hold my breath. This is an internship for him, it’s super important to his culinary career. He’s old enough to have decided it’s what he definitely wants in life. We’d argued about whether he—or any of the assistants—would take such a huge risk to help us, but it’s our only shot. What we want to do, we can’t do on our own. I hear Mel covering the phone with one hand, then whispering. I can only hope it’s to the other handlers and not the Super Chef or Mom.
He returns to the line. “We’re in.”
“You’re . . . you are?”
“You kidding?” Mel laughs. “This whole farce has been a house of cards from the very beginning. Half of us have taken bets on when it would topple over. Waited to the last possible second, didn’t you?”
“I guess.”
“Well, as far as we’re concerned, you little dudes are the bravest kids we’ve ever seen. And you’re the ones who’ve had to go through all this these past few weeks. I figure it should end however you want it to end.
“Besides, if what you just described happens, pretty sure Craig owes me fifty bucks.”
I return downstairs with the rest of the Super Five. Taylor and Wormwood and Mom and all the other parents and families are waiting near the bottom of the steps. They look at me expectantly.
Kari is the first one to approach. “Okay,” she says, kneeling in front of me and taking one of my hands in hers. “Everything’s arranged. You and your family can head straight to the airport. There’s a plane ready to take you home—”
I pull away from her. “No.”
Her eyes widen.
“No,” I repeat. “I came here for The Last Super Chef.”
“Of course. Of course you did. We all understand that, Curtis. But under the circumstances we would never force you to finish the competition.”
“You’re not forcing me. I’m okay. I’m staying.”
She locks eyes with me. “You’re sure?”
I nod.
Kari stands up and paces over to where the Super Chef and Mom are talking. They hold a low conversation, during which Mom starts shaking her head almost immediately.
She looks around Kari at me. “Curtis, I’m sorry, but no. We’re going home.”
“Not yet, Mom. This isn’t over yet.”
The Super Chef puts a hand on Mom’s shoulder and whispers to her. She nods. He separates from the others and comes forward.
“How are you doing?” Lucas Taylor asks, crouching in front of me.
I try to keep the emotions out of my expression. It’s hard to shake the idea I’m not looking into my father’s eyes. That I’m just talking to a famous chef whose show I watch a lot. Chef Taylor could be Chef Graca or Chef Wormwood. Any of the other celebrities. Not my father.
“I’m fine.”
The Super Chef inhales once, quick and sharp. “Well . . . okay. If you say so.” His voice lowers even more, to something below a whisper. “Listen, I’m sorry I dumped all that on you last night. That wasn’t fair. I don’t know what I was thinking. It obviously wasn’t the right—”
“That’s not . . . That had nothing to do with it,” I interrupt him to say. “I’m okay. I’m the one who should be sorry. For messing everything up.”
“Oh, no, you didn’t—” The Super Chef sighs.
He stares into my eyes, as if he has some power to detect the truth. “So I guess we know why you had such a hard time talking with me at Colbeh’s.” For the first time, he smiles a little.
“Guess so.”
“I want you to know, I’ve never met your mother before today. If we . . . if I ever . . . I would never . . .”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding a little. “I get that now.”
“Listen, why don’t you give yourself a break? And your family—your mom and sister are worried to death about you. They love you so much. Kari’s got it all worked out. You can go home. And you don’t have to worry.” Now he’s downright whispering. “They’ll be taken care of. You all will. Promise.”
The thing is, it’s not about the money anymore. It’s not even about my family. Me and Paige, Mom . . . we’re gonna be fine. We’ve always been fine. But if I just go home, I’ll be stranding the rest of the Super Five here. That’s not what he taught us. The very first challenge, Lucas Taylor taught us teamwork. Sure, some of them can be kind of annoying—cough, Joey—but they all love cooking as much as I do. They’re as good at it as I am, too. I could never leave them here on their own.
So, no, it’s not about me. It’s about the Super Five. And it’s about the man in front of me, too. The Super Chef. I can’t leave until everybody gets what they want. Or at least what they need. Even if I’m not sure he knows what he really, truly needs yet.
“I’m a chef,” I tell him, raising my voice so the rest of the people in the room hear me, including Mom. “I came here to cook. I came here to win. I read the fine print. You can’t kick me off unless I request it. I’m not asking.”
Taylor hangs his head in defeat.
“I’m not leaving until this is over.”
The Super Chef meets my eyes with his. He tries to keeps his expression unreadable, but I quickly recognize the hint of a smile behind those definitely-not-hazel peepers.
“Yes, Chef.”
Chefs Wormwood and Graca pace around the arena, supervising the finale. The audience is strangely quiet. I could probably hear a pin drop. Maybe the same pin I used at brunch, the one that seemed to deflate the excitement from this whole competition, as if I’d popped one of those Macy’s balloons we saw yesterday.
For the first half of the cooking time, I have to wait. My penalty for finishing last in the challenge round, and it’s agonizing. Not just because I want to be out there cooking with the rest of the Super Five. It’s also because I have too much time to gaze around the arena. A watched pot never boils? Well, a watched plan, especially when it’s pretty much all your idea, is the opposite. It makes your insides bubble over way faster than you expect.
Twice I see Mel whisper into the ears of one of the shadowy black-shirts. Too many times I catch sight of the rest of the Five exchanging glances that are a bit too meaningful.
There’s no turning back now. Not that I ever thought about it before this lonely half-hour wait started. Even so, the butterflies in my stomach double. Just before they triple.
Finally, with precisely thirty-two minutes left on the clock, I’m allowed to rush to my station and join the cooking. The pantry had been restocked with
the best produce and meats we’ve ever had access to, and we all responded by challenging ourselves with complex, unique dishes that even a lot of adult, professional chefs might be afraid to attempt on live TV.
I work hard, but even as my hands move as fast as I can make them go, my mind is consumed by our scheme. The hours between the end of the morning brunch and this eight p.m. final had passed slowly, but we used them to finalize the details. Hushed whispers the microphones in the dorm couldn’t possibly pick up, manufactured reasons to sneak into the back room and have longer conversations that weren’t being recorded at all.
Mel had been useful for that part, coming upstairs a few times to fake-ask for help that required me to join him in the handler’s room. There he would ask a question about some aspect of the plan he didn’t understand completely. Once or twice, he whispered an idea for improvement from one of the other handlers. “What if we . . . ?”
For the first time, our families are in the balcony, watching us work the challenge like any regular member of the audience. Every once in a while I peek up at them. More often than not I catch Mom and Paige looking concerned rather than cheering me on. It makes sense, they’re worried I’ll snap again, that the pressure of this contest has been too much for me. It’s not like my behavior since they arrived has given them much cause for optimism, after all.
I try not to think about any of that. I just cook the best meal I can.
Even if I know what I’m making will never be judged at all. At least not by the Super Chef.
46
Lucas Taylor never appears during our cooking time, which ends with another ear-piercing shriek from Chef Graca’s whistle. There are probably a hundred possible reasons why, but of course I assume it’s because of what happened at brunch. I figure he doesn’t even want to be in the same room with me anymore.
For my plan to work, he has to show up eventually, but I try not to worry about that. In the meantime, I just cook. I can’t waste a second of this precious half hour if I want to finish a presentable dish in time.
