How to Make Friends

by Charlotte Barkla

  ‘Mind chopping some vegetables, Edie?’ Dad passed me a chopping board. ‘Edie, Edie, will you ple-ease chop some veggies?’ He sang, using a carrot as a microphone.

  ‘Sure!’ I loved any opportunity to practise surgical techniques.

  As I was carefully dissecting pieces of broccoli, my eyes fell upon Mum’s recipe book. It was one that we hadn’t used for a while – it had only recently resurfaced in the move.

  I ran my fingers over the cover, a smile spreading from cheek to cheek. Dad and Winnie were probably right – my classmates would forget all about the slime eventually. But perhaps there was a way to accelerate the process? And what better way to my classmates’ hearts than through their stomachs?

  I arrived at school the next day with a spring in my step and a container full of cookies stowed in my backpack.

  ‘Bye, Max. Bye, Dad!’ I called, with a wave over my shoulder.

  ‘Bye, Edie!’ Dad said, grinning. ‘Good luck with your experiment!’

  ‘Cookie, yay! Go, Dee-Dee!’ Max waved excitedly from his pram.

  The night before, Dad and Mum had both agreed that baking cookies for my class was a nice idea, as long as I wrote out the ingredients list for my classmates, so they could check for any allergies. Of course I was planning to do that – what kind of scientist would I be otherwise? I’d whipped up a batch straight after dinner, and had barely needed to look at the recipe, I knew it so well.

  As I skipped past the handball courts and headed towards my classroom, my heart was as light as a feather. Everything was going to plan for my next experiment, but there was one more person I needed to run my idea past before I could put my awesome Apology Cookie Experiment into action.

  I found Mr Zhu sitting at his desk at the front of the classroom. He was leaning back in his chair with a newspaper stretched out in front of him, and a stack of geography textbooks piled under his feet.

  I rushed up to him.

  ‘Edie!’ he said, quickly putting his feet down. ‘You scared me.’

  ‘Would you like a cookie, Mr Zhu?’ I thrust the container towards him. ‘I made them myself. They’re really delicious! Well, I’m pretty sure they are. I didn’t get a chance to try one last night, but they always taste amaz–’

  Mr Zhu smiled, stopping my verbal diarrhoea. ‘You baked these for our class?’

  ‘Yep, they’re chocolate chip,’ I said, nodding enthusiastically.

  ‘How lovely, my favourite!’ He chuckled, the corners of his eyes creasing. ‘Why don’t you wait until the end of the day, and you can hand them out then?’

  My stomach dropped. ‘The end of the day?’ I was hoping to be back in my classmates’ good books well before then. I didn’t want to wait a whole day.

  ‘Well, we wouldn’t want to spoil your classmates’ lunches, would we?’

  ‘No, I guess not.’ I sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll wait.’

  As I trudged back out the door, I couldn’t help but think that was exactly what Mum and Dad would’ve said too. I’d always wondered if adults had to go through some kind of secret training programme before they’re allowed to be parents or teachers. I suspect that’s where they learn phrases like:

  Don’t eat that, it’ll spoil your dinner.

  One day you’ll understand.

  If you keep making that face, it’ll freeze that way.

  After an extremely long school day, the final bell rang.

  ‘I have an announcement, everyone.’ Mr Zhu rocked back on his heels, his braces under his thumbs. ‘Edie has a special treat for you all. Please come up the front, Edie.’

  I stood up.

  ‘I wonder if it’s more slime.’ A low voice stopped me in my tracks. It was Emily James. She was gripping her science trophy with both hands, her knuckles white.

  Ling gasped, and covered his mouth with his hand.

  ‘No, it’s not slime,’ I said pointedly.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Mr Zhu, frowning over his glasses. ‘No more talk of slime, thank you, Emily.’

  I held my head high and fetched my container from my backpack. Then I skipped to the front of the classroom.

  ‘I have here some freshly baked, completely delicious, non-slimy –’ I paused and raised an eyebrow at Emily James ‘– cookies.’

  A couple of boys near the window sat up straight. ‘I wanted to apologise about the slime the other day, and show you all how excited I am to be joining 5Z at Cedar Road Primary.’ I opened the container, revealing the rows of scrumptious cookies. They still had that delicious, freshly baked cookie smell, even though I’d baked them the night before. ‘I hope you enjoy them!’

  Annie B smiled at me for the first time since Monday and even Emily James stopped scowling.

  ‘Thank you so much, Edie,’ Mr Zhu said warmly, then looked up at the class. ‘Isn’t that a lovely gesture, everyone?’

  My classmates nodded. A few kids licked their lips.

  ‘Now,’ said Mr Zhu, his serious expression back. ‘Make sure to check Edie’s ingredients list if you have any allergies. And please wait until you’re outside before you eat them – preferably at home.’ He frowned over his glasses. ‘I don’t want to see any crumbs in the corridor, thanks.’

  With chocolate on offer, he could’ve asked everyone to sing the alphabet song while doing backflips all the way home, and they would’ve agreed.

  As my classmates lined up to collect their treats, glares turned to grins, and hushed whispers of ‘Slimy Edie’ turned to excited exclamations of ‘Cookies!’ and ‘Chocolate!’ Even Ling collected one, although he bolted out the door pretty quickly afterwards, I have to say.

  ‘Thanks, Edie.’ Annie B placed her cookie in her lunch box. ‘I’ll have it when I get home.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said, beaming. ‘Take an extra one, there are plenty left!’ Annie B had ended up at the back of the cookie queue, so I figured she deserved it.

  ‘Really? Thank you.’ She took one more and packed it into her lunch box. ‘My little brother will love this.’

  ‘Oh, you have a brother?’ I stowed the remaining cookies in my backpack and swung it over my shoulder. ‘How old is he?’ I waved to Mr Zhu and walked down the corridor beside Annie B.

  ‘I have three brothers, actually.’ Annie B opened her eyes wide. ‘The twins are twelve, and Theo’s two. He’s the one with the sweet tooth.’

  I grinned. ‘My brother Max loves sweets as well.’

  We chatted all the way to the front gate, comparing our brothers’ weird appetites. (Just like Max, Theo could inhale a banana in record time, and refused to eat anything green.)

  As I waved goodbye to Annie B at the front gate, my heart felt like it was on a jumping castle.

  Things were looking up. At last.

  Dad and Max were waiting for me under the jacaranda tree.

  ‘You’re grinning like a magpie with a burrito!’ Dad said. ‘I take it you had a good day?’

  ‘It was the best!’ I gave Dad a hug. ‘My cookie project went exactly to plan.’ I leaned into the pram and planted sloppy kisses on Max’s chubby cheeks.

  ‘That’s fantastic, Edie!’ Dad pushed the pram along the footpath, and I skipped beside them.

  ‘Yay, Dee-Dee!’ Max said, clapping his hands together. I’m pretty good at interpreting toddler talk, so I knew that meant Max was proud of me.

  ‘Don’t suppose you have any leftovers, to give us energy for the long walk home?’ Dad raised his hand to his forehead, faking exhaustion.

  I laughed. ‘Yes, of course!’ I’d saved some for us for afternoon tea, but I could tell from the look in Dad’s eye that they weren’t going to last until then. I popped open the container and offered one each to Dad and Max.

  ‘Awesome, thanks, Edie.’ Dad reached inside. ‘They look amazing!’

  Dad’s eyes glimmered as he took a giant bite of cookie. But instead of the usual look of contentment he has when sampling my baking, his eyes bulged. His face screwed up a little, and he coughed twice bef
ore swallowing.

  I frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Umm . . .’ Dad blinked. ‘Nothing, they just have a bit of an . . . unexpected flavour, I guess.’ He took a second (much smaller) bite and chewed slowly. ‘They’re good though,’ he added in a strained, high-pitched voice.

  ‘Unexpected flavour?’ I repeated, scratching my head. How could chocolate-chip cookies taste anything but amazing? Could Dad’s tastebuds be malfunctioning in his old age?

  I shrugged it off and kept walking, pretending not to notice when he binned the rest of his cookie at the next bus stop.

  It wasn’t until Max tasted his cookie that I started to worry.

  ‘No, no!’ Max’s cookie came flying out from the pram, almost hitting a woman walking her dog.

  ‘Max, no!’ Dad scolded, picking up the discarded cookie.

  The lady shook her head as she overtook us. Even her dog gave us a dirty look.

  ‘Max, what’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Yuck-yuck.’ He crossed his arms and gave me his grumpiest expression.

  Something was definitely up. Dad’s reaction was a little unusual, but Max’s was plain weird. Max loves sweets – I’m pretty sure he’s never refused an opportunity to eat a cookie in his life.

  ‘What’s wrong with you two?’ I popped open the container and grabbed the last one. ‘Chocolate-chip cookies are the best!’

  I took a bite to demonstrate its deliciousness. But, as soon as the cookie touched my tongue, a bitter taste flooded my mouth and I gagged, spluttering crumbs down the front of my school uniform.

  ‘Are you okay, Edie?’ Dad patted me on the back, his brow furrowed.

  ‘No, not really.’ Something was wrong. Very wrong. ‘Hang on a sec.’

  I dropped my backpack on the footpath and rifled through my experiment notebook until I found the extra notes from my Apology Cookie Experiment.

  Ingredients: 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 1 cup choc chips, 1 egg, 50 grams butter, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 cup baking soda . . .

  Wait, what? One cup of baking soda? That wasn’t right! I’d switched the baking soda and sugar quantities!

  ‘Oh, no.’ My stomach twisted as I realised the gravity of my mistake.

  The cookies tasted terrible. Truly terrible.

  My classmates were not going to be impressed.

  The next morning, I woke up with a lump in my throat like a giant piece of bitter biscuit. What if my classmates thought I did it on purpose? The thought made me feel sick.

  Plus, it was Saturday, which meant I had two whole days of sweating to get through before I’d be able to clear things up with them. Two whole days! That was forty-eight hours of complete torture.

  After breakfast that morning, I skulked around the house, feeling sorry for myself. As I passed Max’s room, Mum was standing in front of a bare-chested Max, crossing her arms. Max was wearing his favourite shorts – the red ones with the paint stains – as well as a pair of butterfly socks that used to be mine.

  ‘I just need you to stay still for ten seconds,’ Mum said, shaking her head. She attempted to pull his dinosaur T-shirt over his head, but his flailing arms got in the way.

  ‘No, no!’ he exclaimed. He tried to make a dash for the door, but I grabbed him before he could escape.

  ‘Come on, Max.’ I lugged him back to Mum, then poked funny faces to distract him while she slipped his T-shirt on.

  ‘So . . .’ Mum said, once we’d finally managed to clothe him. ‘What’s up, Edie?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s eight-thirty – you’ve usually got some kind of experiment on the go by now. What’s happening today?’

  I smiled. That was true. I usually had something planned for my Saturday experiment by the time I went to bed on a Friday night.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I replied. I didn’t feel like going into the cookie story right now. It still felt a little raw. Dad and I had talked about it after school yesterday, and decided I’d apologise to my class on Monday. Until then, there was nothing much I could do.

  Mum frowned, but before she could quiz me further Dad poked his head into the room.

  ‘Anyone want to help me with the grocery shopping?’ He grinned and waved the shopping list around. ‘It’ll be fun!’

  ‘No!’ Not surprisingly, Max wasn’t keen. He screwed up his face and shook his head.

  ‘No, not me either,’ Mum said, sighing. ‘I have a mountain of work to get through today.’ Since starting her new job, Mum kept bringing stacks of paper home every evening. She’d spend hours poring over them, biting her nails. I’d snuck a peek at one of the documents the other night, but it was just boring plain text. No pictures or anything. Yawn.

  ‘Edie?’ Dad wiggled his eyebrows.

  I giggled. ‘Sure!’

  Grocery shopping wasn’t exactly my favourite activity – I’d already conducted every experiment I could think of relating to supermarkets – but I was in need of distraction.

  I skipped down the hallway behind Dad.

  ‘No Broccoli Bowling Ball Experiment this time, okay?’ Mum called behind me.

  ‘Okay!’ I called back.

  Dad stopped short, his eyes round. ‘Broccoli Bowling Ball Experiment?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I assured him. ‘I’ll be on my best behaviour.’

  At least, that’s what I fully intended.

  In my experience, shopping centres can be pretty interesting places. That is, until supermarket staff catch you experimenting with cereal box stacking structures, like what happened to me last year. (For the record, they were not appreciative of my diagrams showing efficient tower arrangements. They were more focused on the cereal pops and crunchy flakes that had managed to escape their packaging and scatter across the shiny floor.)

  Either way, I still quite like shopping centres. Sometimes, they have those little coin-operated rides that you can play in (like mini aeroplanes or pretend buses), and sometimes they have chemists where you can try sunglasses on for free. And sometimes, just sometimes, they have people in the middle of the walkways handing out samples.

  We were in luck that day. As soon as we stepped through the automatic doors, I spotted a smiley saleswoman in the middle of the aisle.

  ‘Yes!’ I fist-pumped. If there was anything that would distract me from my problems at school, it was a free sample.

  ‘Can I go get a sample?’ I turned to Dad. ‘Please?’

  He glanced at the display. ‘Yeah, I suppose. I’ll take a look over here.’ He gestured to Kev’s Cameras. (Dad’s not as enthusiastic as me about free samples, but he’s quite enthusiastic about cameras.)

  I left Dad drooling at the CLR-5000B, and headed straight for the stall.

  The lady had the shiniest hair I’d ever seen, and a golden name badge that read Fiona.

  I bounded up to her. ‘Hi, Fiona! Mind if I try a sample?’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Sorry, this moisturiser is only for adults.’ She smiled a fake smile. ‘I don’t think you’d be interested.’

  But Fiona was wrong. Of course I was interested! ‘Actually, I love moisturiser,’ I corrected her. ‘We always buy special moisturiser for my mum for Mother’s Day – Dad and I pick it out together. My brother Max tries to help, but he isn’t all that helpful. Did you know he once –’

  ‘Fine.’ Fiona cut me off with a roll of her eyes. ‘You can have some.’ She sighed as she held out the bottle and pumped a dot onto my palm.

  ‘Awesome, thanks!’ I rubbed it between my fingers – it felt almost as good as homemade slime, and it smelt nice and minty.

  ‘Can I try some more?’ Before she could answer, I grabbed the bottle, unscrewed the lid and poured it straight onto my palm. (I know from experience that those pump dispensers are not particularly effective for testing a product. You need to tip out a whole pile if you want to conduct a proper test.)

  ‘It feels great!’ I grinned at Fiona as I rubbed it all over my hands.

  But she didn’t respond. She just stared at me, her jaw practic
ally on the floor.

  I sniffed my hands. ‘It smells nice, Fiona. I do like it. But I’d like to test it out on my face and arms as well.’ The tester bottle was empty, so I pointed to the glass cabinet behind her. ‘Mind if I grab another bottle? This one’s empty.’

  But Fiona’s face went fiery red. ‘Yes, I do mind!’ she snapped, her hands on her hips. ‘You wasted that whole bottle!’ She pointed to the empty bottle I’d discarded on the counter.

  At that point, Dad appeared. His brow furrowed as he took in Fiona’s crimson skin tone. ‘Everything okay, Edie?’

  ‘Yeah, everything’s great!’

  I wasn’t sure about Fiona (she seemed to be frowning a lot), but I was having a fantastic time. ‘This moisturiser is awesome, Dad. It smells amazing.’ When we picked out moisturiser for Mum, I was always in charge of finding the one with the best smell.

  An idea hit me like a bolt of lightning. I snapped my fingers. ‘You should try it on your feet! It might help with the, you know –’ I leaned over and whispered loudly ‘– terrible smell.’

  Ever since he’d started playing tennis again, Dad’s feet had been particularly odorous. Fixing his smelly feet had been on my ‘experiment to-do list’ for a while, and I wondered whether a simple moisturiser could be just the solution I was looking for.

  Fiona’s eyes bulged.

  ‘Err . . . No thanks, Edie.’ Dad cleared his throat, glancing sideways at Fiona. ‘They don’t smell that bad. Anyway, I’m pretty sure this type of moisturiser isn’t for feet.’

  ‘Really?’ I took a closer look at the label on the bottle.

  He was right – it was called Miraculous Wrinkle Cream. The label had a picture of a woman with long, flowing hair. She was smoothing the wrinkle cream onto her cheeks, and smiling like she’d won the lottery.

  ‘No, it’s not for feet.’ Fiona glared daggers at me. ‘It’s face cream, and it’s not for playing with.’

  I’d been conducting a scientific test, not playing with it, but I didn’t bother to correct Fiona. I was too busy checking my hands to see if they were any less wrinkly than before. (They weren’t.)