It's Raining Cupcakes (12 page)

D
ad asked me to leave so he could have a private talk with Mom, so I showered and left.

I wasn't sure exactly where I was going, but I had an idea. I just needed to find a little courage first. I ran into Lana downstairs as she walked through the door, carrying a grocery bag. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and she wore overalls splattered in paint.

“Hey, Isabel, how's it going?”

I sighed and leaned up against the wall. “I don't know. Wait. That's not true. I do know. Terrible.”

“Oh, no. Sorry to hear that.” She paused, like she was trying to decide if she should say the next thing she was thinking. “Well, do you have a few minutes? I'll show you what I do when I need a pick-me-up.”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

I followed her upstairs and into her apartment. She put the bag of groceries on the counter. Then she waved at me to follow her toward the back of the apartment.

The second bedroom in her apartment wasn't a bedroom at all. She had turned it into a painting studio, with canvas and easels set up around the room and a big drawing table next to the window.

The paintings were incredible. One of them was a picture of a hillside, with rolling green hills and little flowers blooming in the sun. Another was a picture of the beach with a little girl walking in the sand. It looked so real, it was like I was looking out the window, watching the blond-haired girl walk along the water, admiring the big blue ocean.

Lana went to the closet and grabbed a long white jacket and handed it to me. “I have a friend who is a scientist. Lab coats make great smocks.”

I put it on and buttoned it closed in the front while she tore off two big pieces of paper from a roll that sat in the corner.

She laid them in the middle of the floor, and then she went to a bookshelf and picked up some pie tins. Lana took bottles of paint off another shelf and squirted some paint into the tins.

“Okay, Isabel, when was the last time you painted with your fingers?”

I smiled. “Um, never?”

Her mouth opened wide. “What? You've never finger-painted?”

I shook my head.

She smiled back at me. “Well, this will be fun!”

She dropped to her knees, stuck her fingers into the blue, and then swirled it around at the top of her piece of white paper. Then she put her hands in some white and went back and mixed it in with the blue swirls she had just made. The blobs started to look like clouds.

“Cool!” I said.

I kneeled next to her and stuck my fingers in some red. It felt cold, wet and kind of sticky. On the paper, I swirled my fingers around and around, making big and little circles.

I did the same with the blue, and when the blue and red mixed, I had red and blue on the paper, but I also had purple.

“Purplicious,” I whispered.

“It's fun to mix colors, isn't it?” Lana said.

I looked at her paper where she had painted clouds and the sun and was working on a flower growing out of the ground. She'd done that all with her fingers!

Mine looked like something a two-year-old would do. Just color and squiggles. And suddenly I wanted more color. More squiggles.

I put all my fingers in the paint this time, then moved them hard across the page, in big, sweeping motions, going this way and that way. Soon there weren't any distinct lines, but instead, waves of color across the page.

Finally I dipped my index finger in the red, and right in the middle of the wavy mess, I painted a heart.

I leaned back and looked at it. Lana stopped what she was doing and looked with me.

“It's beautiful,” she said. “What does it make you think of?”

“My insides,” I said. “Waves of love, of anger, of sadness, of everything, all mixed together.”

She nodded. “But that heart you drew? That shows me that love is the thing that matters most to you. That even when everything is messy, your love is there, shining through.”

“Do you think that might be a wave of courage?” I asked, pointing to a brownish-grayish wave of paint next to the heart.

She smiled. “You know, that looks
exactly
like a wave of courage. Wow. How did you draw that so clearly?”

I stood up and grabbed the picture. “Thanks, Lana. That was fun. I think I'm going to take this and give it to someone.”

“You might want to let it dry first,” she said. “It's pretty wet.”

“That's okay. If I walk over, it'll dry on the way.”

We went out to the kitchen and washed our hands. I took the smock off and handed it to her.

“Thanks again, Lana,” I told her as I walked to the front door. “I hope she likes it.”

She wiped her damp hands on the front of her overalls. “Actually, Isabel, I'm pretty sure she'll love it.”

I went home to tell Dad I was going to Sophie's, and then I started on the long walk to the yellow duplex. I held the picture flat in my hands, so it could dry in the warm rays of the sun, Lana's words echoing in my ears.

When everything is messy, your love is there, shining through.

I hoped with all my heart Sophie would see that too.

I
'm pretty sure the walk to Sophie's that warm August day was one of the longest ones of my entire life.

When I got there, Hayden answered the door, talking to me through the screen door, Daisy barking like crazy behind him. “What's the secret password?”

“Huh?” I asked.

“What's the password?”

“Um, open sesame?”

“Bo-ring.”

“Okay. How about, Mars is red?”

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “I like it. You may enter.”

I walked through the door, and Daisy jumped on me as if to say,
Notice me, love me,
pet me!

“Alien invasion, alien invasion!” Hayden yelled.

“Hey, who are you calling an alien?” I asked as I bent down to pet the dog. She rolled over, giving me her little white belly to scratch.

If only my life could be as easy as a dog's,
I thought.

“Alien or not, Daisy sure is happy to see you.” I looked up. Sophie stood there, looking cute as always, wearing black shorts and a frilly yellow blouse.

I stood up, my heart beating quickly in my chest. I swallowed hard. “I hope she's not the only one,” I said softly.

“Chickarita,” she said. “To my room.”

I followed her there. Her room smelled good, like baby powder. She sat on her bed, bouncing up and
down slightly. I could tell she was nervous too.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I was a jerk. Jealous of you, I guess.” I went over and kneeled in front of her. “I brought you a peace offering. Please, forgive me?”

She laughed and pulled me to my feet. “Stop it. Of course I forgive you. And I'm sorry for criticizing your answer during the interview. I was just trying to help. The last thing I wanted to do was upset you.”

I nodded. “I know.”

She took the picture from my hands. “Wow, this is cool. Did you make it?”

I wiggled my fingers in front of her face. “With my very own hands.”

She laid it on her nightstand. “I love it. Thanks, Is. So, did you see the picture of us? In the paper?”

I rolled my eyes. “Unfortunately.”

“It's fine. And the article is good. I predict big sales.”

I sat on her bed. “Well, I predict no sales. Mom wants to sell the place. I shouldn't be surprised. I mean, the woman is afraid to get on an airplane. Actually, I'm pretty sure she's afraid to do
anything
.”

“You're so not like her,” she said.

I looked at her. “What? You don't think so? Sometimes I worry I'm too much like her.”

She shook her head. “No way. If I handed you a ticket to Peru right now, you'd go. Even though it's a billion miles away and who knows what kind of food you'd eat there or if they have humongous spiders that kill people. You wouldn't hesitate. You would just go. And that day the reporter came over? Most people would have stayed in their room, using the worst hair day in the history of the universe as their excuse. But not you. You went out there and did what you needed to do.”

Daisy nudged the door open with her nose, ran in, and jumped onto the bed in between us. Both of us reached over to pet her.

“But I really didn't do what I needed to do. I didn't help my mom at all. My answer to that reporter's question was so lame. And I knew it.
You
did what needed to be done.
You
knew the right thing to say. Not me. And that's why I got mad. Because I wish I could be more like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're so determined, Sophie. And you know what you want.”

She stood up and faced me. “So tell me. What do
you
want?”

I sighed and put my head in my hands. “I just want to get out of Willow.” I looked at her. “Get away from this place that seems to makes my mother crazy. I can't stand it.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Can't stand what? Willow? Or your mother?”

It felt like she'd stuck a knife in my chest. It hurt. It hurt so much, tears came from deep inside that tender, hurting place in my heart.

As soon as she said it, I knew she was right. It wasn't Willow I wanted to get away from. It was my own mother. Because I had no idea how to relate to her. To talk to her. To help her. All those years I'd tried, I could never understand why she couldn't be happy. Why wasn't being my mom enough? Why was she always looking so hard for something else to make her happy?

Sophie sat down and wrapped her arms around me. She let me cry for a long time.

“I'm sorry,” I told her when I pulled away, because my nose was running a lot and I didn't want to get snot on her pretty yellow blouse.

“Me too,” she said. “I shouldn't have let you wear that stupid hat. See? I'm not so perfect either.”

When I got back to the apartment, I didn't go home. I went into the cupcake shop. It was Sunday, and the workers weren't around. The door was locked, but our apartment key also opened the shop door, so I was able to get in.

The glass cases were all assembled and in place. They looked amazing. I could just picture tray after tray of little cupcakes in various colors and flavors. Next to the cases was a light pink counter. I went and stood behind the newly purchased cash register sitting on the counter.

“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Johnson. What can I get for you? One dozen banana cream pie and one dozen carrot cake? Are you sure on the carrot cake? Oh, of course, yes, they're your husband's favorite. Yes, I know, men can be odd about their food choices, can't they?”

“And what will it be for you, Stan? Oh, why yes, of course, the chocolate coconut are jolly good indeed. Three dozen, you say? Oh, I hope we have enough. It's been busy today.”

I could picture it all so clearly, it was as if I'd done it a thousand times. The cupcakes, the people, the fun conversation.

I turned around and ran my finger along the clean counter where just yesterday, Grandma and I had worked, making cupcake after delicious cupcake.

I pulled the passport book out and wrote this:

Food brings people together.

All over the world,

people gather together and eat.

In America, churches have potlucks

and neighborhoods have barbecues.

I like that about America.

—IB

My family needed the cupcake shop. Because we needed to be brought together.