The Cupcake Queen (12 page)

“Sorry about the smell,” Blake’s mom says.

“What smell?” I ask, making them both laugh. I laugh, too, but the whole way to their house, I breathe through my mouth.

 

 

The air in the greenhouse is thick, so thick you can see it moving in the breeze from the overhead fans. “It’s a little humid in here,” I say. Blake just nods, but I notice that the points of his hair look like they’re wilting a bit. Tally is near the back of the greenhouse, trying to open one of the crank windows. Blake walks past with some sort of brown liquid in a bucket. He ladles a spoonful over each plant as he passes.

“Yum, huh?” Tally says, walking back over to me. “Poop Soup.” I wrinkle my nose and she laughs. “It’s all-natural.” She laughs again as my face stays contorted.

Blake walks past again and I catch another whiff of the mixture.
“Manure du jour,”
he says. He makes his way down a long line of tomato plants.

“Cream of Crap,” Tally says.

“Dung Drop Surprise,” Blake says. By now they are both laughing. I can’t help but smile.

“Jus d’excrément,”
Tally says.

“Lame,” Blake says. He walks back over to us and points the spoon at me. “Now you.”

I close my eyes and try to run through all the words I know for poo. “Reese’s Feces?”

Blake squints at me for a moment. “Not bad,” he says. “For a beginner.” He puts the bucket down beneath the table and pulls out cardboard trays. He thrusts one into my hands and gives one to Tally, who tries to protest. “Oh, hush. It’s not like you have anything better to do.” She frowns at him and he frowns back, making her smile. “Here, Penny, you take the middle aisle.” Tally makes her way over to the right. “Only pick the red ones,” Blake says loudly. She waves the back of her hand at him and disappears behind a forest of tomato plants.

“Couple weeks ago Tally was here helping me and she picked a bunch of unripe ones. My mom had a fit. Luckily she convinced her buyer that green tomatoes were all the rage.” He reaches into the leaves of a plant. When he pulls his hand out he’s clutching an orange-and-red-striped tomato about the size of a grapefruit. “Okay, this is what you’re looking for,” he says. He pushes his thumb gently against the tomato and pulls it away, leaving a faint mark. “Pretty, aren’t they?” I nod. “They have a gruesome name, though. Bloody Butcher.” He puts the tomato in my box. He works alongside me, trying to look like he’s not checking every tomato I pick.

“So what’s the mystery with Mr. Fish?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral. What I really want to know is more about Marcus, but talking to Blake about him is too weird.

Blake pulls a tomato off the next plant and examines it. It’s dark purple, almost black. “He’s building something up in the woods above town,” he says.

“Building what?” I ask.

“Not sure,” Blake says. “Radio towers or something.” He puts another tomato in my box. “Maybe he’s trying to contact aliens.”

I keep picking, working up my courage for another question. Finally I ask, “Do you know Marcus very well?”

“I did,” Blake says. “I mean, before.” He’s quiet for a minute. All I can hear is the whir of the fans above us. “I don’t think anyone knows him now,” he says.

“Except Charity,” I say.

“I doubt it,” he says. He makes his way around the corner to the next row, and I think we’re finished, but he pauses. “Don’t let Charity get to you. She’s mostly harmless.”

Mostly,
I say to myself as he walks away, his box slapping against his leg. I’m not so sure. I’ve seen her be nasty to other kids, but with me she turns the meanness volume way up. She doesn’t even try to lower her voice when she’s ragging on me. About my hair, or how I’m dressed, or just how I talk. And she never lets up. But it’s the Marcus stuff that drives me really bananas. She’s always talking to him or walking with him. And she makes sure I notice.

“Hey!” Tally yells over the buzz of the fans. “When do we get a break?”

“When you’ve actually done some work!” Blake yells back, making me laugh. Not even the thought of Charity can ruin my mood for long. I vow never to eat another tomato as I fill my box. Every once in a while Tally yells a gripe about working conditions or child labor laws, and Blake tells her to hush and get back to work. The humidity is making my hair stick to my neck, but as I get into a rhythm of picking, I realize I’m humming—something I haven’t done in a long time.

After working in the hot greenhouse for more than an hour, I’m happy to take a break. We sit on the back porch of Blake’s house. Me in an Adirondack chair overlooking the pond, Blake and Tally squished on the glider.

“So how come you don’t have seventeen pets?” I ask Blake. Tally has been going on and on about this new kitten at the ARK. I’m just not sure my cat, Oscar, is ready for a sibling.

“Allergies,” Blake says. “I have to take an antihistamine to get within a hundred feet of Tal’s house.” He kicks the ground and the glider starts to move. “Of course I’m allergic to everything. Animals, peanuts . . . you name it.” As if on cue, he sneezes. He smiles at me. “Living in the country is rough when you have allergies.” He takes a handkerchief out of his pocket—one of those blue ones you always see on cowboys—and blows his nose. “What was it like living in Manhattan?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess it was like living anywhere else.” Blake takes a bite of his tomato, eating it like an apple. He swears it’s good.

“Yeah, except there’s actually things to do there,” Tally says. She pulls her knees up, hooking her heels on the edge of the glider. “There we could be going to museums and bookstores and sitting around in cafés.” She sounds wistful, and it makes me miss the City for a moment. “Here, we have what? Picking tomatoes.” Tally leans into Blake with her shoulder. “No offense.” Blake smiles at her with tomato in his mouth, making Tally wrinkle her nose.

“Do you miss it?” Blake asks me.

I nod and look at Tally, but she’s rubbing at the toe of her sneaker, trying to make a tomato stain go away. “Some things,” I say.

“Your friends?” Tally asks. She doesn’t look up when she talks—just keeps rubbing the toe of her sneaker.

I haven’t been in contact with anyone that much. I want to be, but I’m afraid that if I tell my old friends about my new friends, they might make fun of them. They wouldn’t understand it if I told them I picked tomatoes and had fun doing it. “It’s mostly my dad I miss.” I feel like a jerk as soon as the words are out of my mouth. After what Tally told me, I have no right to whine.

Before I can think of something to say to make it better, Tally looks up at me. “It’s hard,” she says sympathetically, and I just nod.

“Know what else is hard?” Blake asks. We both look at him. “Listening to you two sometimes.”

“What do you mean?” Tally asks.

“Girls are so dumb.” Tally squints at him threateningly, but he continues. “With guys it’s simple. When I hang out with my friends, we just chill. You two are all with the
‘Oh, I wonder if so-and-so likes me.’
” Blake makes his voice high when he says it.

“Is that supposed to be me?” Tally asks.

“Yes, you.” Then he points at me. “And Penny. All of your kind.”

“Are you as offended as I am?” she asks me, pretending to be insulted. I nod.

“I’m going to end this thing,” Blake says. “Tally, do you take Penny to be your friend?”

She looks at me and says, “I do.”

“Penny, do you take Tally to be your friend?”

“I do, too.” A tiny spark glows inside of me, one that I didn’t even know had gone out.

“I now pronounce you two friends,” Blake says. He kicks the ground to make their glider swing. “Now can we please talk about something more interesting?”

“What could possibly be more interesting than our friendship ceremony?” Tally asks.

“Anything,” he says. “As long as we don’t have to talk about how we
feel
about it.” Blake takes another bite of tomato and then throws the stem end over the fence to the chickens. We laugh as one of them grabs it and runs off, making the others chase it around the yard. If only my City friends could see me now.

chapter thirteen

Sunday morning Gram gets me up early to pick blueberries. I mean early—like dark-thirty. She wants to make enough jam to last the winter. Even though it’s before dawn, Mom is already gone. She’s been working long hours at the bakery. Twice this week I found her asleep on the couch, a book tented on her chest and her reading glasses still perched on her face. I’ve tried to help, but Mom and Gram keep reminding me that school comes first.

“I can see my breath,” I say, dropping a handful of berries into my pail. Gram just smiles at me—or I think she does by the look in her eyes. Her mouth is mostly covered by her scarf.

“Autumn is just around the corner,” Gram says. She rakes her fingers through the bush, making blueberries fall into her pail. “You’ll love the fall here, Penny. Once the leaves start turning, the hills look like they’re on fire.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then she looks over at me, sliding her scarf down so I can see her whole face. “How are you doing?”

“I’m cold,” I say.

“I meant more in general.”

If it were Tally I’d say I was generally cold, but I know better than to push my luck with Gram. “I’m okay, I guess.”

“You want to try again?” Gram asks. She rakes more blueberries into her pail. Already she’s more than doubled my haul.

I sigh. “It’s hard.” I pull another berry from the bush I’m working on and pop it into my mouth, buying myself a little thinking time.

“You already have a couple of friends,” Gram says.

I nod.
And enemies,
I think. “I like being with you. And I like school—mostly.”

“Any cute boys there?”

“Gram! I am not having
that
conversation with you.” She laughs, and I immediately give in. “Well, there is one. . . .”

“Mmm-hmm. One is all you need.”

Yeah, too bad there are at least two of us interested in him,
I think.

We work for a while longer. Just as the sky is starting to brighten, Gram tells me she has enough berries for two cases. She’s nice enough not to mention that she has about seven times as many berries in her pail as I do in mine. We start walking back down the hill toward her house. The closer we get, the more we can smell the ocean. Gram stops when we hit the sand and looks out over the water. I think she’s going to make some comment about the gulls or the clouds or some other part of nature she’s forever trying to make me notice, but she doesn’t.

“Your parents love you,” she says.

“I know.” Coming from Gram, it doesn’t sound hollow. “I just wish—”
Wish what? I don’t know anymore.
“I just wish she’d talk to me,” I say.

“You should tell her that. Goodness knows I’ve tried.”

I want to tell Gram that I’ve actually heard her trying. And I know Mom’s just trying to shield me. Dad, too. But part of protecting someone is letting them know what they’re being protected from.

“Just give it a little time,” Gram says. I nod. Since it looks like we’re staying for the near future and then some, I have time to give. A lot of time.

 

 

Monday, Gram leaves me a note, telling me she’s out picking berries again. She also leaves me fresh blueberry muffins for breakfast. Art has become my favorite class, and that’s saying a lot, since it’s the only class I have with Charity. Miss Beans steps to the center of the room. “This weekend, I’d like all of you to start thinking about what your contribution to the parade is going to be.” She passes around old HHHS yearbooks, featuring photos of parade floats. The floats look just like you would expect. There’s a truck hauling the biggest pumpkin I’ve ever seen. The Boy Scouts have a float about first aid. They must have been practicing some pretty advanced stuff. A couple of the kids have realistic-looking head wounds, and three of them seem to be missing limbs. Tally and I point out the funny ones to each other before passing the yearbooks to the next table.

“Remember, if your float idea is selected,” Miss Beans says, “you’ll get to see your vision realized. Your float will carry the Hog Queen and her court.”

“Awesome,” Tally whispers. “I can hardly wait.”

I try to picture my mother getting excited about riding around town on a farm trailer decorated with Styrofoam and crepe paper. The back table starts whispering and giggling. Tally makes another face at me and does a fake beauty queen wave, making me laugh. I look over at Charity and see her staring at me. She mouths something, but I can’t decipher it. I know it’s mean, though. It’s obvious from her expression and the way everyone at her table has to cover their mouths to keep from laughing. She does her ice queen smile and looks away.

We keep passing yearbooks around as we start sketching our ideas. I’m just blocking in the trailer when I see Tally stop on a yearbook page and then slam the book shut. She quickly puts it in her lap.

“What is it?” I whisper. She just shakes her head. I look up and see Charity smiling at me again. “Show me.” Tally shakes her head again and then shoves the book under her chair.

When it’s time to clean up, I hang back while everyone else stacks their sketchbooks in their cubbies. I slide the yearbook out from under Tally’s chair and open it in my lap. One of the pages is dog-eared, and on it I see an old photo of what must have been my mom. It’s impossible to tell for sure, because the face has been drawn over with black ink. You know, the usual—glasses, mustache, black teeth. Underneath the photo someone crossed out her name and wrote in
Hog’s Hollow Ho
.

My stomach twists. I rip the page out of the book and crumple the paper in my lap. I don’t bother to hide it from Tally when she sits down.

“Aren’t they clever?” Tally says loudly. “How do they think up these things? It must take them weeks.” Then, under her breath, she says to me, “Don’t let those morons get to you.”