Katie and the Cupcake War (5 page)

“That would be great!” I said. “And I'll help you cook for Grandma and Grandpa if you want.”

Mom smiled. “That would be fun. We can make a dish for you to bring to the barbecue, too.”

So
on Sunday we ended up cooking together, which was fun. I wanted to make an enchilada casserole for Grandma Carole, but Mom thought it might be too spicy for her. So instead we made a big pot of chicken soup. There was enough for us to have for dinner, with grilled cheese sandwiches on the side.
Yum!

“We still need to make something for your barbecue,” Mom said. “How about a pasta salad?”

“How about a
Mexican
pasta salad?” I suggested. (Can you tell yet that I am on a Mexican-food kick?)

“That sounds interesting,” Mom said. “How would you do that?”

I thought about all of my favorite Mexican ingredients that we used in my cooking class. “I could put in black beans and tomatoes, and maybe some shredded cheese and some corn even. And avocados, of course!”

Mom nodded. “That sounds good. And you could put lime juice in the dressing. That could be tasty.”

Because we've been cooking a lot of Mexican food, we had everything we needed in the house. Mom helped me cook the pasta—I used one of those squiggly shapes—and then when it cooled down, I mixed everything except the avocados together. I kept adding stuff and tasting it, and it was pretty good. Mom told me to wait to add the avocados until tomorrow, or else they would get brown.

So the next day at noon I was sitting in Mom's car with the bowl of Mexican pasta salad in my lap. When we pulled up we could already see a bunch of people at Emma's house. Her two older brothers,
Matt and Sam, were playing basketball in the driveway with a couple of their friends.

Both of Emma's brothers are nice. Matt is one grade above us, and he likes to tease all of us Cupcake Club members a lot. Sam is in high school, and he never teases us like Matt does. And even though they both have blond hair and blue eyes (just like Emma and Jake), I think Sam is cuter.

“I'll come get you around four,” Mom said, leaning over to give me a kiss. “Have a good time. Call me on my cell if you need me, okay?”

“Sure, Mom,” I said. Then I got out of the car, balancing the bowl as I tried to close the door.

“Think fast, Katie!”

A basketball whizzed past my face, and I looked up to see Matt grinning in the driveway. Sam ran to retrieve the ball as it bounced down the sidewalk.

“My hands are kind of full here!” I told Matt.

“Sorry,” Matt said sheepishly. “I didn't know.”

Sam ran up to me and tossed the ball to Matt. Then he peered into the plastic wrap–covered bowl.

“What is that?” he asked. “It looks good.”

“It's, um, Katie's Mexican Special Salad,” I said. “I just invented it.”

“Well, if you made it, then it must be good,” Sam said, and I could feel my face getting hot.

“I'd better bring it over to your mom,” I said, and then quickly walked away.

I found Emma, Mia, and Alexis in the kitchen.

“Yay! Katie's here!” Emma said.

I held out the bowl. “I brought a Mexican pasta salad.”

“Thanks,” Emma said. “Let's bring it outside.”

Emma's family has a big backyard, which is perfect for them, because they all like to play sports. The Taylors had set up a canopy for the party, and I put my pasta salad on a big picnic table that was covered with a blue flowered tablecloth. There was lots of food on the table already—pickles, green salad, cut-up veggies, potato salad, deviled eggs, and a plain pasta salad. I was glad I had made my pasta salad a little different.

Outside the canopy, Mr. Taylor, Emma's dad, was grilling chicken. On the grassy lawn beyond, Mrs. Taylor and some other adults were sitting in lawn chairs and talking.

Jake hurried over to us and shoved a Wiffle ball bat into my hands. “Katie, play baseball with me!”

There was no way I could disappoint a cute kid like Jake. Emma, Jake, and I decided to be on one team, and Mia and Alexis were on the other. We didn't play for real. We mostly just pitched the ball
to one another and ran around.

Then all the boys came into the backyard.

“We want food!” Matt yelled.

“Matthew, whatever happened to ‘please'?” called back Mrs. Taylor.

“Please!” Matthew said. “Give me some food!”

Mr. Taylor carried a big platter of barbecued chicken to the table. “No pushing, people. There's enough for everybody.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “We'd better get over there if we want to eat. When there's food around, my brothers act like a school of angry piranhas.”

“Don't call me a piranha!” Jake said. He looked mad.

Emma hugged him. “Not you, Jakey.
Those
two.”

We walked over to the picnic table, and we could see that Emma was not exaggerating. The boys were piling their plates with humongous mountains of food. Sam was spooning my Mexican pasta salad onto his plate.

“Dude, save some for the rest of us!” Matt complained.

“Maybe,” Sam said. “It's too good.”

Then Matt punched Sam in the arm, and Sam almost dropped his plate. Luckily, Mrs. Taylor appeared just in time.

“All right, boys, that's enough,” she said. “We've got hot dogs coming up next if you're still hungry.”

There was still plenty of food left, so the Cupcakers got our plates together and then went to sit on a blanket Emma had spread out for us under one of the trees in her yard. For a minute, I couldn't help but think of all my past Labor Days, which I spent hanging out with Callie at her house. It was a little weird to be somewhere new, but I had my three best friends with me. And that felt good.

Even better, we didn't talk about Callie or the BFC or even the fund-raiser. We talked about teachers and that new cooking contest reality show on TV, and Alexis complained about her older sister, Dylan, and Mia complained about her stepbrother, Dan.

“My grandma Carole's going to have heart surgery,” I blurted out during the conversation. I'm not sure why I said it, but I guess I wanted my friends to know.

“Oh no! Is she going to be okay?” Emma said.

“My mom says she will be,” I answered.

“Your grandma is supernice,” Alexis said. “Maybe we should make her some get-well cupcakes. Free of charge, of course.”

I smiled. Alexis may be all about business sometimes, but she has a big heart, too.

“I hope everything goes okay, Katie,” Mia said. “I'm going to make your grandma a get-well card.”

“You guys are the best,” I said, and I meant it. Then I leaned back on the blanket and looked up at the blue sky that peeked through the leaves of the tree. For that moment, everything was perfect.

I really like it when that happens.

T
he next day we had school again, and now that Labor Day was over, it felt more real. Like summer was definitely over, even if it was still kind of hot out.

The teachers were taking it seriously too, and on Tuesday, I got slammed with homework in every class. I didn't want to mess up like I had with my English homework last week, so I made sure to write down everything in my assignment book.

Something else happened on Tuesday too. That's when Callie started acting totally different. Well, not
totally
different, but she wasn't acting like the Callie I knew. The BFC Callie was acting even worse than the PGC Callie.

Let me give you some examples. On Tuesday the Cupcake Club was eating lunch when Sophie
and Lucy came over to our table. They're mostly friends with Mia, but they're nice to everyone.

“Congratulations, Mia, you made the list,” Sophie said. But she didn't say it in an excited way. She sounded more sarcastic.

“What list?” Mia asked.

Lucy nodded over to the BFC table. “Callie, Maggie, and Bella invited us to eat lunch with them today. So we said yes, and while we were there, they started making a list of who has the best hair today and who has lame hair. Can you believe it?”

“That is so rude,” Alexis exclaimed, fuming.

“Yeah, you and Katie are both on the lame-hair list,” Sophie told us.

That made me mad, but I decided to make a joke about it instead.

“Oh no! I guess my dreams of being a famous hair model are over,” I said, and everyone laughed.

Alexis stood up. “I should go over there and tear that list to pieces.”

“Don't do it,” Mia said. “We can't show them that it bothers us.”

“Why should it bother you? You're on the good list,” Alexis said.

“It bothers me because you guys are my friends,” Mia said.

“I must be invisible,” Emma said, twirling a strand of her blond hair. “I'm not even on the list at all. I think that's even more insulting.”

“Just thought you should know,” Sophie said with a shrug, and the two girls walked off.

Alexis didn't look mad anymore. She looked thoughtful. “Interesting,” she said. “I wonder why they invited Sophie and Lucy to sit with them.”

“Maybe they're recruiting new members,” Emma suggested.

“They probably just want to find somebody to make their cupcakes for them, so they don't have to do the dirty work,” I said, feeling cranky again.

“I don't know,” Mia said. “The PGC was always so closed off. Maybe Callie is trying to open things up and be a little friendlier.”

Alexis snorted. “Right. The ‘new and improved' BFC led by the ‘new and improved' Callie.”

So the hair thing is one example. Then there's the whole flirting thing. In social studies, Callie and Maggie were whispering to each other before the bell rang. Then Tyler Norstrom, this tall boy on the basketball team, walked into the room. When he walked past Callie's desk, I noticed she did this thing where she tossed her hair over her shoulder. Then she looked straight
at Tyler and batted her eyelashes at him.

You know, Callie is really pretty, and I guess she can pull off that kind of stuff if she wants to. But this hair-tossing person was not the Callie I grew up with. Now she was becoming more like Sydney every day.

After school on Tuesday, I went right home and started on my mountain of homework. I decided to do my English first, so I wouldn't forget it. I scanned the instruction sheet. We had to write about the assigned book we read over the summer. There were all these choices on what to write, and I picked writing a letter about the book. I wrote a really good letter, giving all the details of the book, and it was one page longer than Ms. Harmeyer asked for. I was pretty satisfied when I was done, because I knew it would impress her.

The next morning I saw Callie in the hallway. She was at her locker with Maggie and Bella. Then my friend Beth Suzuki from Spanish class walked by. Beth has a kind of funky fashion style, like Mia. She was wearing black leggings and a black top, with a black-and-white scarf around her neck and red high-tops.

I actually heard Callie say, “Red sneakers?
Seriously?” It wasn't a particularly funny or clever thing to say, but both Bella and Maggie laughed. I don't think Beth heard them, though.

And those examples aren't even the worst. At lunchtime, I was in the hall, walking to the cafeteria, when Callie came over to me.

“Hey, Katie,” she said. “Do you want to eat lunch with us today?”

I felt like a bus hit me. What was Callie up to? I was really surprised. Then I realized she was waiting for an answer. Well, whatever her plans were, I wasn't about to give her any satisfaction.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I always sit with my
friends
.”

Callie flinched, like she was shocked by my answer. “What gives?” she asked me. “I'm trying to be nice here.”

“You mean nice, like when you put me on your lame-hair list?” I asked.

Callie's face turned a little red. “Maggie did that.”

“Right. Because
her
hair is so awesome,” I said. I knew that was childish, but I couldn't help it.

“We were just goofing around,” Callie said. “Come on, sit with us.”

On a scale of one to ten, my annoyance level with Callie was at a hundred.

“If you're trying to make things up to me, it's a little late,” I said. “And don't expect me to jump when you ask me to do stuff, like Bella and Maggie do.”

“Wow, and I thought you were my friend,” Callie said, acting hurt.

“I
was
your friend. Your best friend,” I replied. “And then you dumped me for Sydney. You let Sydney say mean stuff about me, and you didn't stick up for me. Half the time you acted like you didn't know me. So don't tell
me
I'm not a good friend. I never did anything like that to you.”

I could feel my eyes stinging, and I saw a few people staring at us as they walked by.