“Yes,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
The boys’ laughter filled the air. I listened to it, trying to make myself breathe. But I couldn’t. It was like someone was standing on my chest, pressing harder and harder.
She reached over and took the books from my hands, then walked toward the sliding glass door. “I’m sure you understand, I can’t have someone watching my children who displays such a lack of judgment. Do you know an accident can happen just like that?” She snapped her fingers. “I’m going to get my checkbook and pay you for the past five days. Please, stay here and watch them for another minute. And then your services will no longer be needed here.”
After she left, I went over to the pool. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want them to see me like that. I didn’t want her to see me like that.
“Bye, boys. I have to go now.”
“You throw it away now?” Lucas asked.
It made me smile. He asked like it was no big deal. Like it wouldn’t matter to them one bit. Maybe they didn’t even know what it meant.
“No. I’m the one being thrown away. I’ll see you guys later. Be good for your mommy, okay?”
Sue came back and handed me my check. I apologized again, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Her eyes said it all.
I knew I had to tell my parents. Not just tell them I wasn’t working for Mrs. Canova anymore, but tell them why. If I made something up, like I quit or something, word would get back to them that I’d lied. Mom knew a lot of people in Willow, and she’d eventually find out, whether I told her or not.
Still, I didn’t go home right away. I rode my bike to the library, the hot air stinging my eyes, making them water.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the hot air.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t go to the travel section when I got to the library. I went to the cookbook section instead. It was time to come up with an idea. No more excuses.
“Isabel?” said a familiar voice as I was sitting at a table, looking at a lemon torte recipe.
I looked up.
“Mr. Nelson,” I said, louder than I should have. “What are you doing here?”
Okay, stupid question. He was holding a stack of books. “Oh, you know, summer vacation is for reading, right?”
“Right.” I smiled.
It was weird seeing my social studies teacher in shorts and a T-shirt. He looked different. Not like a teacher at all. More like an ordinary guy.
“Cookbooks?” he asked. “Taking up a new hobby?”
I shut the book. “I guess. I’m entering a baking contest. The finalists get to travel to New York City for a bake-off. Figured it might be my only chance to fly on an airplane and go somewhere interesting.”
He sat down across from me. “Sounds like fun. My wife and I had a layover there on our way to Germany last summer. Stayed a couple of days so we could take in a Broadway play. It’s an amazing city. All the people there? I don’t think there’s any place like it.” His eyes smiled at me. “You’d probably love it there, Isabel. Seems to me you’re quite the people person.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “What part of Germany did you go to?” I asked as I picked at an annoying hangnail on my thumb.
“Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, Heidelberg. We went all over. It’s a beautiful country. Didn’t care for the food much. But everything else was fantastic.”
“Where are you going this summer?” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair, tipping it off the floor a little. It was funny to see an adult do that. I always got in trouble for it at home. “We’re going to Washington, D.C., in a couple of weeks.”
I sighed. “I’d love to go there. I’d see the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and the National Museum of Natural History for sure.”
He laughed. “Yep. We’ll see all of those.”
“You’re so lucky. Sometimes I feel like I’ll be stuck in Willow forever.”
Mr. Nelson tilted his head a little and looked at me kind of funny. “Is everything all right at home, Isabel? Your parents doing okay?”
“Yeah. Just busy. We’re getting ready to open a cupcake shop. You know where the Bleachorama used to be? The building is now the future home of It’s Raining Cupcakes.”
“Wow, that’s exciting!” He stood up. “I’ll have to stop by. I love cupcakes.”
“That’d be great! We open on August fifteenth.”
“Okay, Isabel, I need to get going. But I’ll try to come by for the grand opening. And good luck with that contest. Are you going to make cupcakes?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
“See ya later,” he said.
“Say hi to the president for me!”
I pulled out my passport book and wrote in it:
Mr. Nelson made me love
reading about other places.
But reading about places
and going places
is just not the same.
—IB
I told Mom and Dad about the pool incident over a dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Mom didn’t say a whole lot, just shook her head and pushed the food around on her plate.
“I feel bad, you know,” I told them, wanting them to believe me. “I’d never want anything to happen to those little boys.”
Dad took a drink of milk. “Drowning accidents can happen so fast. It probably just scared Sue something fierce. She’s mad now. But she’ll get over it. You apologized, right?”
“Yeah. But I don’t think she believed me.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Look at it this way. We’re getting close to opening day. Your mom could probably use some help with grocery shopping and testing some more recipes. Right, Caroline?”
“I suppose,” she said, staring off into space.
“Mom, aren’t you excited?” I asked. “You open in just a few more weeks! I’ve been telling everyone I see.”
She stood up and took her plate to the counter. “Don’t remind me. I’m not ready. I don’t know why I thought we could be ready by the fifteenth. It’s too soon.” She turned around. “David, I think we should wait. I think we should postpone the opening.”
Dad stood up. “Honey, we’re not going to wait. All the guys have been working so hard to have it ready. You just have cold feet. That’s all. But Isabel getting fired is a blessing in disguise. She can help you with whatever you need—running errands, trying new recipes, advertising. Put her to work.”
I sighed. There went the rest of my summer vacation.
While they continued their discussion, I snuck off to my room. I took a seat at my desk, feeling defeated about the entire day and thinking maybe I should just crawl into bed, when I saw two pieces of mail that had come for me.
The first was a postcard from my aunt, with a picture of the St. Louis Gateway Arch on the front.
Dear Isabel, I’ve been to St. Louis many times and never took the time to go up to the arch. It was fun! The view from the top was incredible, and there’s a cool museum inside about Lewis and Clark and their trip. Hope all is well with you. Is the cupcake shop coming along nicely? Love, Aunt Christy
The second was an envelope with Sophie’s hand-writing. I ripped it open and read.
Dear Is,
Camp sucks. I think I’m getting too old or something. Every activity seems lame, lamer, and lamest. I mean, canoeing on the lake isn’t fun. It’s work! Just ask my biceps. And archery? I used to be happy just getting the thing somewhere on the target. But now? No way. I want to hit the bull’s-eye, baby! And of course, it’s impossible. So I get frustrated and throw the thing on the ground. And then they yell at me. And then I cry. And then . . . well, you get the idea.
I want to come home. Next year, when my mom tells me I have to go, I’ll just stay at your place and eat cupcakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two weeks. Your parents won’t mind, right?
What’s going on in Willow? Working on your recipe? How are Thing 1 and Thing 2, otherwise
known as Lucas and Logan? I don’t know why I’m asking you questions. By the time you get this letter, I’ll be on my way to the Grand Canyon, so you can’t write me back. Can’t wait to catch up when I get home.
Time for campfire. At least there won’t be any singing tonight. Rachel’s guitar somehow tragically lost all its strings. I wonder how that happened?
Campily yours,
Sophie
Thanks to Sophie, my stinky, stinkier, and stinkiest day ended on a happy note. I folded up the letter, tucked the envelope into a desk drawer, and crawled into bed underneath a blanket of turtles, figuring I’d better quit while I was ahead.
Chapter 7
coconut mango cupcakes
A TASTE OF THE TROPICS WITHOUT GETTING ON A PLANE
The next day, Mom and I were going through all the boxes that had been delivered, trying to figure out if we still needed to buy anything. Mom didn’t say a word. She just emptied the boxes, took notes on her clipboard, and mumbled to herself every once in a while.
I wanted to tell her it’d be okay. I wanted her to know I thought it was great that she was trying to make a dream come true. I wanted to say something to make her feel better about everything. But I didn’t know what to say. How many times had I wished I’d been born with the knowing-just-the-right-words-at-the-right-time gene, like Sophie had? More times than there are red-eyed tree frogs in the forests of Costa Rica, that’s how many.
I decided maybe the best thing to do was to talk about something completely different. “Mom, where did you and Dad go on your honeymoon?”
She looked up from her clipboard with her left eyebrow raised. “What? Why?”
I shrugged. “You’ve never told me. And I’m curious.”
“Well, we went to the Oregon coast. Stayed in a cottage for a week. It was very nice.”
I peeled the packing tape off the top of the box in front of me. “You didn’t go to Hawaii? Or Mexico? Or the Caribbean? Don’t most people go to places like that?”
“Sometimes. And your father wanted to, I think. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t envision myself getting on a plane.”
My hands stopped moving, and my eyes looked up at her. “What do you mean?”
She stood up, a pair of wooden spoons in her hand. “I’m afraid, Isabel. I’m afraid to fly.”
“You never told me that. How come you never told me?”
She shrugged. “I guess it never came up.”
I could feel my heart racing. It didn’t come up? All those times I’d rambled on about how I’d love to be like Aunt Christy, flying here and there and everywhere? All those times when I’d asked, “How come we never go anywhere?” Her response had always been brief and generic. “It’s just not in the budget,” or “Maybe someday we’ll be able to.”
Once again, it was all about her. The anger inside of me grew, like a cupcake expanding in the oven. I gritted my teeth and tried to sound as sweet as a chocolate chip cupcake. “Is that why we’ve never gone anywhere outside of Oregon?”
She made a checkmark on her clipboard. “Oh I don’t know, Isabel. There are a lot of reasons. Anyway, I know you want to travel. And you can blame me if you want to. But just think, you have the whole world to look forward to when you’re older.”
I started to respond to that with something I probably would have been sorry about later, but I didn’t get the chance. There was a knock at the door.
I ran to open it before Mom had even taken a step. As the door flew open, Stan’s big smile greeted me.
“You’re home!”
“We just got in,” he said. “And I wanted to bring you these.” He held up a white box. “I thought you might enjoy one of my favorite treats from England. I bought these on the way to the airport and carried them with me the whole way. Judy thought I’d lost my mind. But jam tarts are delicious. And you were so kind to share your cupcakes with us.”
I took the box from his hand. By now Mom was standing behind me. “Please, Stan, come in. But you’ll have to excuse the mess. We’re just going through the equipment for the shop. Not long until we open, you know.”
He nodded as he stepped inside. “Yes, I know. August fifteenth, right? Those carrot cake cupcakes were wonderful, Caroline. Very moist and tasty. If your shop had been open, I’m sure Judy would have run downstairs and bought a half dozen more. I predict you are going to have more business than you can handle.” He rubbed his belly. “And I predict my already large waistline will be getting even larger.”
I looked at Mom, and she was all smiles.
“I got your postcard,” I told him. “Thanks for sending it. Did you like the castle?”
“We sure did,” he said. “That was actually one of many we saw. We had a great time. I’ll have to show you the pictures one of these days.”
“I’d love that,” I said.
He looked around at the clutter on the floor. “Well, I don’t want to keep you. Let me know how you like those tarts, Isabel.”
He opened the door and stepped back into the hall.
“Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Jam.”
“Jam who?”
“Jamind? I’m trying to get outta here!”
“Bye, Stan,” I said.
I skipped to the kitchen, carrying the box of tarts.
“Mom, come try a jam tart,” I called, the anger I’d felt earlier now set aside on the cooling rack.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m not really hungry.” She paused, then called out, “Hey, I just remembered, how is that cupcake recipe coming along for the contest?”
I pulled a slightly squished but sweet-smelling jam tart from the box and took a bite. It was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted.
“I’m, uh, still working on it.”
“Do you need some help?”
That was pretty much the last thing I needed. “You can’t help, Mom. That’s one of the rules, remember?”
Besides, I thought, as I took another bite of the scrumptious tart, I don’t think you’ll want to help me once you find out I’m submitting a jam tart recipe instead of a cupcake recipe.
I pulled out my notebook.
Cupcakes are popular.
So is Disneyland.
Popular is good,
but it doesn’t always mean
the best.
—IB
Chapter 8
root beer float cupcakes
A GOOD CHOICE EVERY TIME
At the library, I found hundreds of recipes for jam tarts. The basic recipe was pretty simple. But that didn’t mean anything. I needed to make something different. Something all my own.
The tricky part was going to be baking jam tarts without Mom knowing what I was up to. If she found out, I knew her feelings would be hurt.
One afternoon I finally had the apartment to myself while Mom was running some errands and Dad was working downstairs. I’d just finished baking a batch of tarts that I’d made with some fresh lemon juice squeezed into the pastry crust. They were good, but still not something really different or totally fantastic.
I was racking my brain as I drank my second can of root beer, trying to figure out how I could make the world’s greatest jam tarts, when I heard voices outside the apartment. As keys jingled, I heard Dad. And then Mom!
I grabbed the pan of tarts and ran to the family room, and without really thinking, I threw open the door that leads to the fire escape. And just like that, I was standing on the platform, looking down at the street below, with a pan of tarts in my hand.
I swear, sometimes I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, as Mom likes to say. Why didn’t I just go to my room and throw the pan under my bed? Now I was stuck out there until they left, unless I wanted to suddenly appear and have them ground me forever. They’d told me probably a hundred times the fire escape was off-limits.
The door has glass in it, so I had to go to the very edge of the platform and stand against the railing to keep them
from seeing me.
People scurried along the sidewalk below, completely unaware that I was standing above them. I put my hand over my mouth to keep myself from giggling at the thought of jam tarts suddenly raining from the sky. But the pastry in that batch was on the heavy side, and the last thing I wanted to do was to give someone a concussion. I could just picture someone going to the emergency room claiming they’d been hit on the head by a jam tart falling from the sky.
I stood there for a long time, listening to my parents chatting away inside, although I couldn’t hear specifically what they were talking about. I took a bite of a tart and wondered if they might be worrying about me. I always left a note letting them know where I was going.
There were stairs that dropped below the platform I was standing on, and those stairs were one way out of the tight spot I’d gotten myself into. The problem was that the stairs didn’t go all the way to the sidewalk. If I took the stairs, I’d have to jump from the last rung to the sidewalk. I couldn’t tell how far it was, but from where I stood, it looked like a long way.
So I waited. And I waited. Then I had to go to the bathroom. Bad. I made a mental note to skip the two cans of root beer the next time I decided to hang out on the fire escape for an hour.
Finally I decided I had two choices. Die at the hands of my father, or die at the hands of the sidewalk below. It was a hard decision. But I decided my father might end up being a bit more forgiving than the concrete sidewalk.
I walked into the family room, and neither of them were around. I smiled and did a little skip across the floor. Maybe I could actually get to my room and throw the pan under my bed like I should have done in the first place, and everything would be fine.
I thought I just might make it when I heard my mom from her room.
“Isabel?” She peeked her head out of the bedroom. “Where have you been? You didn’t leave a note.”
Then she looked at the pan in my hand. “What’s that?” Now she came all the way out. “What’s going on, Isabel?”
“I, um—”
Dad came out of the bathroom across from my room. “Hi, honey. We were getting a little worried. Where’d you run off to?”