I nodded, and then climbed the stairs to Cleo’s pad. She and Gabe were busy baking fresh bread for tomorrow’s sandwiches, singing at the top of their lungs to the Beatles’ “Across the Universe.”
Cleo threw me a ball of dough and waved me over to the counter.
“How did the petitions go?” I asked Gabe.
“Fifty signatures and counting,” he said proudly. “All of the food-truck owners are up in arms over getting booted from the Taste of San Fran festival.”
“That’s great!” I high-fived him.
“Great, yes,” Cleo said. “Enough? No. But we’ll keep on trying. A bunch of us are going in front of the city council next Monday night. We’ll see if we can make some progress then, but Mr. Morgan isn’t happy about the meeting. I was renewing one of the truck’s permits at the Department of Health and Sanitation today and saw him there. He was talking to a clerk about recent complaints filed on food trucks. So I’m sure he’ll show up on Monday fully armed with stories that make food trucks look bad.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why does he have to try to make food trucks look bad to make his restaurants look good?”
Cleo shrugged. “If food trucks have a bad rap, then nobody will think he’s a jerk for canceling Flavorfest. It’s a dirty game he’s playing, but we can’t let him mess with our heads when we have a business to run. So” — she gave me a playful hip bump — “get cooking.”
I grinned. “You don’t have to ask me twice.” Within minutes, I was belting out the Beatles right along with them. After we’d finished making the bread and I’d diced and sliced veggies to my heart’s content, I went back downstairs for bed.
When I passed Mom’s office, she’d fallen asleep in her chair. I bent to wake her, and I saw that, instead of her stock-market numbers, the screen glowed with a different Internet page: cookingfordummies.com.
I studied Mom’s face, more relaxed in sleep than I ever saw it when she was in work-mode. Was she trying to learn to cook? Why, when she’d always said she hated cooking?
Mei, Asher, Mom — everyone around me was changing. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of it.
I checked my watch for the third time. 9:15 A.M.
Mom had dropped me off at the main entrance to the de Young Museum, but she was waiting in the parking lot until I went inside. Right now, she was probably sitting in the car wondering the same thing I was. Where is Mei?
My best friend was supposed to have met me there at nine o’clock, and she was never late. I was just dialing Mei’s cell when I glanced up to see her walking toward me, arm in arm with Ben. I sagged inwardly.
The de Young Museum is part of the sprawling grounds of Golden Gate Park. I’d thought that after the museum, Mei and I could grab some ice cream and hang out in the park. But none of that seemed as much fun with Ben in tow.
Still, though, I wanted to be a good sport about it. So I tried to smile cheerfully at both of them.
“Sorry we’re late,” Mei said. “Mom made us take the twins to the carousel and then we walked from there.”
Ben nodded. “Mei took me through the Shakespeare Garden on the way. She recited about twenty lines from Love’s Labour’s Lost by heart! I couldn’t believe it.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.” Mei blushed. Then she glanced at me with mild surprise, like she’d just remembered I was there. “Were you waiting long?”
“Not really,” I said breezily, struggling not to show my annoyance. “But we should probably go inside and get started.”
“Sure,” Mei said.
Once we walked inside and headed in the direction of the Ansel Adams exhibit, though, Mei threw me for another loop.
“Ben’s doing his report on Mary Cassatt and that’s in a different hall,” she said, checking out her museum map. Then she looked at me. “Maybe you could get started with the Ansel Adams, and we’ll meet you there in a little while?”
My insides twisted uncomfortably. So she was going to help Ben with his art project while I worked on ours?
“But, we’re supposed to work on it together,” I argued.
“We will,” Mei said. “I’ll only be about fifteen minutes, okay?”
“Okay,” my mouth said while my mind hollered, No way!
As they walked away, I sighed, then took out my notebook and pen. This day was rapidly going from disappointing to dismal.
Mei’s fifteen minutes soon turned into forty-five. I walked around the exhibit hall again … and again. At first, it felt peaceful to wander through the expansive white rooms with their soft lighting and shiny wooden floors. Ansel Adams’s black-and-white photographs of the waterfalls and mountains of Yosemite National Park were beautiful. And his photographs of San Francisco took my breath away.
I read about how he had worked to protect the environment, not just in national parks but in San Francisco, too. When he learned that there were plans to build high-rise apartments in the hills surrounding the Golden Gate Bridge, Ansel pasted pictures of apartment buildings onto one of his Golden Gate photos and then hung the photo in a storefront. His protest helped prevent the apartments from being built. As I read that, I couldn’t help wondering if Ansel would’ve thought that Flavorfest was something about San Francisco that was worth saving, too.
A tap on my shoulder interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to see Mei and Ben.
“Are you ready to get started?” Mei asked.
She had to be kidding. I knew so much about Ansel Adams by this point I probably could’ve given the report right then and there. “I already went through the exhibit three times,” I snapped. “I took a ton of notes.”
“Great!” Mei said, oblivious to my irritation. “I’ll just take a quick look around.”
My cell phone vibrated. “That’s my mom,” I said. Mei and Ben had disappeared for so long, I’d called Mom. My mood was shot, and so were any hopes I’d had of hanging out with Mei alone. All I wanted to do was leave. “She’s outside to pick me up.”
“Oh.” Mei’s face fell. “Do you have to leave already? Ben and I were going to check out the arboretum.”
“They have a corpse flower on exhibit,” Ben said. “I heard it smells so bad some people faint when they get near it. Cool, huh?”
“Wow, Mei, I can’t believe you want to smell it,” I said. “You couldn’t even handle the worm dissection in Mrs. Cheever’s class, remember? She had to send you to the nurse’s office.”
“Oh, that was because I was coming down with the flu,” Mei said, laughing and waving her hand dismissively. “I’ll be fine.”
Her voice had taken on a high-pitched cheeriness, and I stared at her. Either Mei had suddenly learned to love grossness, or her enthusiasm was all for Ben’s benefit.
“Sorry I have to miss it,” I said, to be polite, though after how the morning had gone, I wasn’t sorry at all. “I have to meet Cleo at the Tasty Truck for the baseball game, though. I’ll e-mail you my notes, Mei.”
“Okay,” Mei said. “Have fun at the game. I’ll call you later.”
I knew she probably wouldn’t. When I got into Mom’s car, I leaned my head against the window, imagining Mei fainting at the smell of the corpse flower and Ben catching her swiftly in his arms. That would be perfect for Mei, just like some romantic scene in one of her plays. Up until now, I’d always had a front-row seat in our friendship, watching and cheering her on. But for the first time ever, I found myself wondering whether she noticed. Maybe Mei didn’t care if I was in the audience at all.
When Cleo parked the Tasty Truck next to the bleachers at the Bayview baseball field, I breathed a sigh of relief. I needed a distraction to take my mind off Mei and Ben. The day was cool but sunny — perfect weather for baseball — and the bleachers were packed. Within minutes of us firing up the grill, we had our first few customers.
“Sports work up an appetite,” Cleo said to me after we’d made our tenth BLT. “Even if you’re just watching.”
I laughed, but in between custome
rs, I’d been watching the game, too. Actually, I’d mostly been watching Asher.
I’d never paid much attention to his jock status at school, because my world revolves around sandwiches, not sports. But on the field, Asher was something to see. His pitch was smooth and lightning fast, and it made me smile to see the rival coach’s face get progressively redder with each player Asher struck out. By the top of the ninth, it was obvious that Bayview was going to win, mostly because of the game Asher had pitched.
And by then, I had to admit that Asher looked pretty adorable in his baseball uniform.
The second the game was over, there was a mad rush to the Tasty Truck. I was so busy making sandwiches as Cleo called out the orders that I didn’t even notice Asher and Tristan in the line.
“Can you make mine with double bacon and extra sauce?” Asher asked with a grin, startling me.
My breath quickened, but I recovered in time. “Anything for the star player,” I said teasingly.
Tristan frowned dramatically. “And what about me? Don’t I get any credit for that home run I hit at the top of the seventh?”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, excuse me. I meant star players, plural.”
Tristan bowed. “Thank you.”
“Hey!” a man suddenly yelled from the back of the very long line. “Can you hurry it up? It’s a famine back here.”
“Oops, I better get back to it before they eat the truck,” I told Tristan and Asher. Then I glanced at Cleo, who was piling bacon on the grill with one hand and trying to wrap a finished sandwich with the other. I could see we were starting to get behind with our orders. “Hey, Asher,” I called to him as he walked toward Karrie and his other waiting friends, “do you think you could help out for a little bit? We’re seriously swamped.”
“Um …” Asher glanced at Tristan, Karrie, and the other Beautiful People.
“Go for it,” a boy named Cole snickered. “I’m dying to see you flipping some bacon.”
Karrie glanced at Asher, an unspoken challenge in her eyes. Then, in a voice loud enough for everyone in the line to hear, she said, “Asher would never be caught dead working in that grease pit on his day off.”
All the kids in Asher’s group laughed, except Tristan and Asher. Asher glanced down. It was only a millisecond, but I saw it on his face — a flash of shame.
“Actually,” Asher mumbled to me, “I should go. We’re heading to get frozen yogurt and everyone’s waiting….”
I nodded, my cheeks flaming. Just when I had started to hope Asher was a better guy than I’d first thought, he had to pull something like this. And why? To show off for Karrie?
“Right.” I swallowed down my disappointment. “Have fun.”
I glanced at Karrie’s triumphant smirk. And then, before I knew what I was doing, I leaned out of the window of the truck. “Karrie, I meant to tell you earlier how much I love the color of your lip gloss.” I smiled sweetly. “Did you know that there’s lard in a lot of lip glosses? There are just so many great uses for pork grease, don’t you think?”
Karrie’s face morphed from shock to rage, and she stomped away through the crowd. My momentary glee was replaced with panic. Omigod. Had I just tried to put the Bayview Queen Bee in her place? It was like signing a social death warrant. Asher looked back at me once, but then he was gone with the rest. Tristan was the only one who hesitated, grinning at me.
“What you said to Karrie just then?” He gave me a thumbs-up. “Awesome. No one ever stands up to her.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. “Especially not Asher, huh?”
Tristan shrugged. “Asher’s parents used to fight a lot before their divorce, so I guess he doesn’t like to stir things up.”
I felt a pang of sudden understanding, remembering how Asher had opened up to me on the roof.
“Gotta go,” Tristan said, backing up a few paces. “I’ll be back at the truck after school on Monday for another BLT. You can count on it.”
“Somebody sure likes BLTs,” Cleo said, watching Tristan as he walked away. “Or maybe there’s another reason he wants to come back for more?” She gave me a sly grin.
“What?” I said, drawing a blank. But then I caught her meaning and blushed. “N-no,” I stammered. Then, more adamantly, “No! Tristan? There’s no way that …”
“That what? He might like you?” Cleo said. “And why wouldn’t he? You’re quite likeable, Tessa, whether you realize it or not.”
I let Cleo’s words sink in. I’d never thought of myself as someone a boy — let alone a Beautiful People boy like Tristan — might have a crush on.
It was true that Tristan was always friendly toward me, and that he was showing up at the truck more and more often. And I probably should’ve felt flattered, but instead, the thought made my stomach churn uneasily.
On Sunday morning, I woke up to an empty house; Mom and Dad both had to work that day. So I tucked myself cozily into the kitchen to play with food. That’s how I always thought of my recipes, as playing, because it was so much fun to scan the contents of the fridge, garden, and pantry for intriguing ingredients.
Today, I had a plan to try out two new creations: bacon jam and peanut-butter-bacon cookies. Luckily, I found the most crucial ingredient in the fridge: lots and lots of bacon.
Once the bacon was sizzling in the skillet, the kitchen filled with a warm, crisp, smoky scent. It was a scent that said all was right with the world, and it made you want to believe it, even when you knew it couldn’t possibly be true.
I breathed in deep, then grabbed a piece of crisp, still-crackling bacon and popped it in my mouth. Mmmm. Even if we just sold strips of bacon straight off the griddle at the truck, and nothing else, we could probably keep our customers happy. Bacon was just that darn good.
After I’d chopped the bacon into tiny bits, I sautéed some onions and garlic, then tossed half the bacon in with it. Then, I added brown sugar, a hefty dollop of maple syrup, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and finally, a spoonful of mustard. While the mix was simmering, I started on the batch of peanut-butter cookies, loving the feel of the sticky batter as I rolled it between my fingers.
The messier my hands got, the calmer I felt. Slowly but surely, my frustrations about Mei and Ben, about Asher and Tristan and Karrie and Flavorfest, began to work their way out through my fingertips.
Soon, the first batches of cookies and jam were ready. The jam was a beautiful cranberry color and smelled amazing, and I thought I had a winner. But then I tasted it. In theory, I believed that bacon could make pretty much anything taste better. But in jam? Not so much. I couldn’t even swallow the bite I took. Cleo told me the best chefs always admit to their mistakes, and the bacon jam was an utterly gag-worthy one. So I threw the jam away with a sigh.
The peanut-butter cookies, on the other hand, were divine. Cooking is a little like baseball, I guess: You win some, you lose some.
“I hope you didn’t pack a lunch,” I said to Mei when I sat down in art history on Monday morning, “because I thought you could do some taste-testing for me? I went on a little bit of a cooking spree yesterday.”
She caught sight of the cooler I was holding, and her jaw dropped. “Omigod,” she said. “The last time you did that was right after you forgot to study for your history test and you failed it.” She leaned toward me. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” I was so relieved she was honing in on my mood for the first time in days that I wanted to hug her. “Asher’s still copping an attitude about the Tasty Truck, I may have started a war with Karrie, Flavorfest is probably going to get canceled, and …” And you’re so busy being Ben’s girlfriend that you forgot about me. It was right there on the tip of my tongue, but I stopped it before it poured out.
Then Mr. Toulouse walked in, and Mei silently mouthed, “Talk more at lunch?”
I nodded, my heart skipping happily. Maybe Mei was back to her old self.
But when noon came, Mei flagged me down in the hallway outside the cafeteria.
; “Tessa,” she said. “I forgot that I have my first decoration meeting for the Sweet Heart Ball during lunch today. But I told Ben and Leo about the food you brought, and they’re dying to try everything. They rallied a bunch of their friends to be your taste-testers, too.”
“Great,” I said, trying to disguise my disappointment. “In other words, I get to spend my lunch hour watching a bunch of boys inhale my works of art and then burp out critiques?”
“Something like that.” Mei laughed and shrugged. “But I’m sure Ben will give you some good feedback. And I’ll call you later and we’ll make plans to do something fun this weekend, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, mustering up a good-natured smile.
Then I squared my shoulders and walked into the cafeteria with my cooler. I saw Asher at the Beautiful People table, watching as I laid out the food. But when I glanced his way, he turned back to his friends, avoiding my eyes. Good. Let him feel guilty about what he’d done on Saturday. He should. I noticed Tristan at the table, too, and when he waved to me, I looked quickly away. Why were boys so confusing?
Ben and the cavemen showed up then, and there was nothing confusing about them: They were hungry, and they wanted to try my bacony treats. They finished off the bacon-bits brownies and maple-bacon cupcakes in under two minutes, and afterward, the only feedback I got was a monosyllabic “Good.” Sigh. So much for my discerning taste-testers.
At the Tasty Truck that afternoon, things felt frosty between me and Asher. And when Cleo went to the rooftop garden for more tomatoes and Gabe left for his class, I couldn’t help but say something.
“So,” I said coolly as I placed a slice of bread in the toaster, “did you enjoy your frozen yogurt after the game?”
Asher shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t let it go,” he said, frowning. His knife came down faster on the onions he was chopping, and I noticed that he was getting better at cutting, even in one week’s time. “I saw that look you gave me on Saturday,” he said. “You think I’m a complete sellout.”
You're Bacon Me Crazy Page 5
