The Cupcake Queen (20 page)

“No,” I say. “You were just trying to spin things. At some point, you just have to accept reality. Even if it sucks.” I toss my muffin to the ducks, too, and walk off the bridge. This time Tally doesn’t follow me.

 

 

When Miss Beans announces that my float won the contest, it has the effect I expected. Charity glares at me, but I just look away. I have bigger things to worry about. Miss Beans passes a sign-up sheet around the room. People are supposed to choose which element they will build for the float. I notice that no one at the back table even looks at the paper before passing it along. No surprise there.

Tally writes her name on one of the blanks then hands me the sheet without looking at me. It’s almost full, which surprises me. The support, especially from Tally after I was so horrible, just makes me sadder, and it’s all I can do to keep from crying.

Miss Beans suggests that we all meet at the Bealses’ barn this weekend, looking at me for confirmation. I nod but wonder whether I’ll be packing up my stuff this weekend. I don’t even know which apartment we’d be moving back to—his new one, our old one, or a different one? The thing is, I have trouble even imagining my parents together again. It’s been so long since they were happy. It’s definitely time for all of us to talk. I tried to call each of my parents when I got to school, but both of their lines clicked immediately over to voice mail.

Tally doesn’t wait for me when the bell rings. She just walks out without glancing back. Blake pauses at the door, but I look away. When I glance back up, he’s gone. I decide to spend lunchtime in the library instead of the cafeteria. At least then I can be alone. I sit at the back table and open a book in front of me.

All that talk about Thanksgiving and too many orders was just a game.
Mom and I talked,
Dad said in his e-mail. If my mom knew we were moving back to the City, why couldn’t she have told me, then?
Now we just have to work out the details.
It’s yet another thing that my parents are going to make happen
to
me. No discussion. No asking what I want.

I hear talking on the other side of the bookcase. Just voices, no words. But it’s the voices that make me stand up and look. Marcus and Charity are sitting together, their heads bent over a book. I watch for a moment, feeling the pit in my stomach get even bigger. I shut the book I was pretending to read and pick up my backpack. I get up too fast, knocking the chair over. I don’t bother to pick it up when I run out of the library. I don’t stop when I hear Marcus calling my name either.

I walk as fast as I can to the restroom, keeping my face down. Most people are still outside, eating lunch, so the halls are mostly empty. I lock myself in the last stall and lean against the door. Everything that could go wrong has. Just when I start to take some comfort in that fact, I find I’m wrong yet again.

The door to the restroom opens and closes. Hard-soled shoes click on the floor, heading my way. “I know you’re in here.” I hold my breath. She can’t mean me. The footsteps stop on the other side of the stall door. “You might as well come out,” she says. “I’m not leaving.”

I sigh and close my eyes. “Why? So you can rub it in?”

She’s quiet and for a brief moment I hope that she has silently floated away, but again I’m wrong.

“Just come out,” she says.

I sigh and turn the latch. Charity is leaning against the sink with her arms folded.

“What do you want?” I ask. I am surprised that my voice isn’t defeated, like I feel, but angry.

“I want you to get out of my life,” she says, without missing a beat.

“Why do you hate me so much?” I ask.

“Because you were born,” she says. “Ever since you came to town, you’ve been in my way, starting with my birthday and all the way up to today, when you were spying on me in the library.”

“Excuse me for reading.”

“Reading? What, no lunch? No lard à la mode?” she asks, smirking.

“You were the one who fell for that, not me.”

“Well, you and your friend’s lame tricks aren’t going to stop me from winning.” She jabs her finger at me. “You can tell her she has zero chance. People like you and her don’t even belong here.”

“We wouldn’t dream of taking anything away from you, Charity,” I say flatly. There’s no point in explaining to her that Tally is doing it for charity.

“Right. Like you didn’t take my boyfriend?” She narrows her eyes at me.

This takes me by surprise. “What? Marcus is always hanging out with you,” I say.

She glares at me. “You’re so stupid, Penny.”

“What are you talking about?”

She stares at me with her arms folded, then pushes away from the sink. “No, you know what? You are just going to have to find out how stupid you are on your own, because I have better things to do than hang around and talk to a loser like you.” She walks out the door before I can say anything else.

 

 

I decide to take the rest of the day off. By
decide
I mean instead of going to fifth period, I just walk out and keep walking. I turn onto the now familiar dirt road off Main Street. I stop and look at the finished Jupiter, finding the seam that Mr. Fish was working on when I gave him and Marcus the cupcakes. Without the scaffolding, it seems smaller, more fragile. I keep hiking the uneven trail, following the distinctive tracks of Marcus’s four-wheeler. I’m tired of having my life spun for me. First by my parents, and then by Charity and her friends. Even Marcus. I’m not even sure why I came up here, but it feels like I’m away from everything. I can see why Mr. Fish traded the beach for the woods.

It’s so quiet that the sudden clank of a hammer startles me. I have to scramble up the last bit of hill, grabbing onto rocks with my hands. I pull myself up over the lip of the rise and see the curve of the skeleton that will eventually become the sixth planet.

Mr. Fish is bent over a sheet of paper that he has spread out over a big rock. I clear my throat so I won’t startle him. He looks around quickly but smiles as soon as he sees me. “What are you doing up here?” He pulls his sleeve back and checks his watch. “Playing hooky?”

I nod and walk over to him. He searches my face for a long moment, and for a second it seems like he’s going to ask me something, but then he turns to the paper spread in front of him again. “Well, I am not condoning skipping school, but it’s good that you came along. I could use some help.” I look at the paper where he’s pointing and see that it’s a huge schematic drawing of Saturn, complete with enormous rings. It’s covered with arrows and notes, little reminders and warnings.
Watch this joint. Don’t forget to add support here.
His finger rests on one of the junctions between the planet and the rings. “I can’t seem to make this look like it’s floating
around
the planet instead of hanging from it.” I tilt my head and look at the drawing, remembering that I had the same dilemma with my cupcake.

“Well, you saw what I did,” I say. I had to use little threads of sugar to attach the rings. “Maybe it’s okay if you can see the supports. I mean, it’s not like people are going to think that it’s magically just hanging there.” He smiles at me a little. “Maybe instead of making it like it should be, just make it like it is.” He nods and looks back at his drawing.

“Marcus told me you were smart,” he says. I blush when he says it. “I’m glad he has a friend like you.”

Had
a friend like me,
I think. I look at the toes of my boots. “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Fish?”

“You just did,” he says with a quick grin. “Go ahead. I’ll answer you the best I can. Although I’d be the first to admit that I don’t have all the answers.”

“What made you do all of this?” I ask, pointing to the metal skeleton of Saturn.

“Note to self,” he says, pretending to write on the paper in front of him. “Beware of Penny’s questions.” He sighs and leans against the rock, looking out into the hills.

“You don’t have to . . . ,” I begin, but he raises his hand.

“I’m just trying to tell
myself
why I did it in one thousand words or less.” He smiles over at me. “The easy answer is: I had to.” He pauses, looking at his hands. “When my wife died, Marcus and I went into a free fall. We needed something to hold on to. Something that connected us to her.”

Like a lifeline,
I think.
I could use one of those right about now.
“It’s amazing,” I say, looking out over the hills, where Venus is just catching the afternoon light.

“It is.” He pauses and then laughs. “That makes me sound like an egomaniac. I meant the idea is amazing,” he says. “The execution?” He looks behind him at Saturn. “Fair.”

“I think it’s good,” I say. “Really good.”

He shrugs. “Thank you,” he says. “It has been good for me. But I’m ready to be finished.” He smiles and looks over at me. “So what’s with the questions?”

“I’m just trying to figure some things out,” I say.

“Life things?” he asks. I nod. “Life can be pretty hard.” I nod again, afraid I’m going to start crying if I speak. He’s right. Even though my life is nowhere near as hard as his or Marcus’s—or Tally’s, for that matter—it
is
hard. “I’d like to tell you it gets easier,” he continues, “but it doesn’t. It just gets different.”

“It’s hard when things don’t happen like you think they’re supposed to,” I say.

He looks up at Saturn for a long moment. “I guess at some point you just have to let go of what you thought should happen and live in what
is
happening.” He runs his hand through his hair, just like Marcus. Then he turns to me. “I know it’s not easy, though.”

“That’s for sure,” I agree. We both stand there, examining the sixth planet. I try to imagine it all finished, but can’t. For now, it’s just a big jumble of metal pipes.

“Now, I would be neglecting my duties as a grown-up and parent if I didn’t give you a ride back into town.” He points toward his truck, which is parked down the hill on a dirt road I didn’t even know existed. He rolls up his sketch and pushes it back into a long cardboard tube, which he tucks under his arm. “Ready?” he asks. I nod and follow him down the hill, hopping over several frozen puddles as I go.

“Are you excited about the festival?” he asks once we’re inside the truck.

I think about my float, about all the things hanging off it. Things that have come to mean so much to me in such a short time.

“I am,” I say, and I realize it’s the truth. I just hope I’m still here to go to it.

Mr. Fish drives slowly, steering carefully through the deep ruts. Even so, we bounce around so much that I have to hang on to the handle above the door. When we reach the paved road, he turns to me.

“Where to?” he asks. “Home or school?”

“Actually, could you drop me at the bakery?” I ask. “I need to talk to my mom.”

“Sure thing,” he says.

When we pull up to the door, I thank him for the ride. “Sorry to take you away from your work,” I say.

He waves the thought away. “It’s good for a guy to come back down to earth every once in a while. And this is a tasty destination.” He points to the bakery window. “I like that your mom named the place after you.”

I look at him, surprised.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know,” he says. “
You
are The Cupcake Queen. It’s a well-deserved title, I must say.” He waves as he pulls away.

The CLOSED sign is on the front door when he drops me off, so I have to go around to the back. It’s cold in the kitchen. My mother is sitting with her back to me, her head in her hands.

I take a deep breath. “I want to know what’s going on,” I say before I have a chance to lose my nerve. My mother turns to look at me. Her eyes are puffy and red. She sniffs slightly and tries to smile but can’t quite make it happen. “Hi,” I say. It comes out soft. Almost a whisper.

“Hi,” she says just as quietly.

“You’re back early.”

She looks at me and then at the clock over the sink. “You’re out of school early.”

I sit down on the stool across from the table without saying anything.

She looks back down at the table. “I should have talked to you long ago.” She sniffs again and reaches into her pocket, pulling out a very crumpled tissue. “I was just waiting for the right time.”

I almost ask why in five months there wasn’t a good time. But I keep my mouth shut. I want to hear what she’s been waiting so long to say. She takes a deep breath. “All these meetings your father and I’ve been having . . . they’re about you.” She looks back up at me. She seems to be searching my face for something.

“We’re moving back,” I say.

She seems surprised. So surprised that I know I’m wrong. “No,” she says. “
We
aren’t.” She sniffs again into her tissue.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Dad said—”

“Penny.” She sighs. “Your father and I are getting a divorce.” And there it is. The announcement that I’ve been waiting for, bracing myself for. I wait for the tears to come, but they don’t. I just feel numb.

“The meetings . . . your father wants you to come live with him,” she says, gazing just past me, like I’m already gone. “He said you and he talked about it.” She looks right at me, her eyes wet now. “He said you begged him to let you come back.”

I feel off balance and grab onto the table for support. I think of the e-mails, the voice-mail messages. The conversation we had weeks ago. All that time I wanted
us
to go back. Not just me. I wanted all of us to be in the same place. I kept thinking if I could push their lives closer to each other, they’d figure out how to put our old life back together. But maybe this was as much as they could do. Half.

“We have a good life here, don’t we?” Mom says.

I nod. She’s right. Aside from a few things, it
is
a good life.

“Is it that you miss your dad?”