The Cupcake Queen (5 page)

“Your mother was Miss Hog’s Hollow?” Tally asks.

I look at the shiny crown perched crookedly on her head. “I guess,” I say, and shrug.

“Around here that is a very big deal.”

I look at my mother’s face in the photo. I try to see what she was thinking when they took the picture, but after a moment I give up. I can’t even figure out what my mom is thinking when she’s standing right in front of me.

A man in a three-piece suit walks up to us. “Can I help you girls?” He looks at us as if we smell bad, which we might, after all that walking with heavy backpacks.

“We need to change some money,” Tally says. She crunches another pretzel, emptying the tiny bag. He looks at us for a long moment before deciding that stinky or not, we do have money. He directs us over to a teller named Linda. We have to help each other with the backpacks. I put mine on the counter first. It makes a heavy sound followed by a short jingle.

“We’d like to turn these in,” I say. Linda lifts the backpack with some effort and upends it over the sorting machine. When most of the coins have filtered through, she takes Tally’s. We watch the numbers on the meter flicker past thirty dollars without showing any sign of slowing. Finally the clinking slows to a trickle and then it’s silent.

“Seventy-four dollars and ninety-eight cents,” Linda says.

“We must have missed a couple,” Tally says, winking at me.

Linda takes two pennies from a dish and drops them into the machine. “There,” she says, and smiles at us. She counts the bills into my hand. “Next time maybe you shouldn’t wait so long.” I imagine in Linda’s mind we have jars of pennies scattered everywhere.

We take our now empty backpacks and walk outside. I try to hand Tally half of the money, but she won’t take it.

“You earned it,” she says, smiling. “Just buy me something to eat. I’m starving.” She was about to grab another bag of pretzels, but Mr. Three-Piece Suit shook his head at her.

“Like what?” I ask. I stuff the bills into the front pocket of my jeans. We start walking back down the hill and toward the center of town. I look for
him
, but he’s gone.
Just as well,
I think.

“Something sweet,” she says. “Something chocolate.”

“I know just the place.”

 

 

“How cool is this?” Tally asks.

We sit near the back of the bakery’s kitchen on upended milk crates. Gram laughed when I told her the story about the pennies, but I think seeing me with Tally was what really made her happy. She pulled two of my bug cupcakes out of the case, a ladybug one for Tally and a bee for me.

“Your mom is the Cupcake Queen. Awesome,” Tally says. She pulls one of the black licorice antennae off her cupcake and chews it. “Wait a minute. This place opened in the middle of summer. Have you been here the whole time?”

I shift on the milk crate. “I’ve kind of been hiding out,” I say. I focus on my cupcake, not wanting to look up at Tally. It is sort of weird how I’ve been here for three months and I haven’t really met anyone.

“I did the same thing when I came here.”

I look up at Tally, who is busy chewing the second antennae, this one still attached to the ladybug’s head. “Don’t look so surprised,” she says. “You aren’t the only one who was dragged to Hog’s Hollow against her will.” She pauses and smiles at me. “At least that’s what I’m assuming. Most people wouldn’t
choose
to come here.” She takes a bite out of the top of the cupcake, sending a shower of red sprinkles onto her lap. “You first,” she says through a mouthful of cupcake.

“Why am I here?” I ask. She nods and takes another bite, smiling at me with red teeth. I take a deep breath and tell her about my parents separating, leaving out some parts. It’s not like it’s a secret, but thinking about it still gives me a stomach-ache. Tally nods and keeps biting at the top of the cupcake. The icing is almost all gone. “I’m going to move back soon,” I say. She just raises her eyebrows at me. “Now you,” I say, before she can ask any questions.

“Okay,” Tally says. She takes a deep breath and brushes crumbs off her lap. “My mom took off when I was small, so it’s always been just me and my dad. We moved around a lot. Too much, I guess. My dad’s a musician, so we spent a lot of time on the road. So, last winter he decides I need more stability. So now I’m staying with Poppy, my mom’s sister. But my dad’s coming back to get me soon. As soon as things even out for him.” She says it fast, all in one breath, and then looks down in her lap again, suddenly intent on a tiny hole in the knee of her jeans. Something about the way she’s trying to push her baby finger through the hole gives me the feeling I’m not the only one leaving things out. Tally looks up, giving me another half smile before taking another bite of her cupcake. “So, you haven’t met anyone else here?” I think about telling her about the guy on the beach, but decide not to when I realize I know more about his dog than about him. I just shake my head. Tally looks at me like she’s going to say something else, but she takes the last bite of her cupcake instead.

“What’s the RPS Society?” I ask, reading her shirt.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors,” she says. “Don’t laugh. Some people take it very seriously.”

The back door opens. It’s one of the deliverymen from the dairy.

“Hey, Mr. Fish,” Tally says. Now it seems that
everyone
in Hog’s Hollow has a food name. “You’re working at the dairy?”

“Hey yourself, Miss Tally. Just making a little extra money. What are you doing here?” He notices me sitting across from her and smiles. “I see someone has found the ghost girl.”

“Are you the ghost girl?” Tally asks me. I shrug.

“She’s been haunting this bakery all summer,” Mr. Fish says, taking off his hat and wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “I was beginning to think maybe only I could see her.”

“Nah,” Tally says, smiling at me. “She’s real enough.”

Mr. Fish starts putting the quarts of cream and the boxes of butter into the refrigerator. “How’s Poppy?” Mr. Fish asks. His head disappears behind the door of the refrigerator as he reaches way into the back.

“She’s good,” Tally says.

He nods. “You tell Poppy I asked about her, won’t you?”

“I will,” Tally says. Mr. Fish smiles slightly, but his eyes stay sad. He stacks the empty milk crates on top of one another, letting us keep the two we’re sitting on. He slips the dolly under the rest and tips the stack toward him.

“See you,” he says to us, pushing the screen door open. He leaves, letting the door smack shut behind him.

“That was the infamous Mr. Fish,” Tally says, leaning back and brushing at her jeans again. I start to ask why he’s infamous, but before I can, she’s on her feet. “Okay, then. Friday after school. My house.”

I stand and follow Tally to the back door. She shoulders her backpack and pushes the door open.

“Your house?” I ask.

“Big blue house at the end of the beach. Just past the pier.” She pushes through the screen door, and I catch it before it slams shut. I watch her walk to the end of the alley and start around the corner. “Friday,” she calls.

“Friday,” I say, and let the door shut. I turn and see Gram watching me, smiling. “What?” I ask.

“Oh, nothing,” Gram says. She walks to the refrigerator and pulls out a sheet pan full of cupcakes. “Any new ideas?” she asks.

“Maybe,” I say. “I don’t want to tell you in case I can’t do it.”

“You, Penny, are just like your mother. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

The
just like your mother
thing makes me pause for a second. It seems the longer we’re in Hog’s Hollow, the less certain I am about anything. Most of all my mother.

I sit on the stool in the kitchen and pull out my spiral notebook and pencil. I flip past the designs I made for July (flags and Uncle Sam hats and fireworks). I keep flipping through August. (Sea stars, fishing boats, crabs, beach umbrellas. I even made cupcakes that looked like ice creams. They were huge and baked in real cones.) I had started on September, mostly apples and stacks of books, but I flip to a new sheet of paper and start sketching.

I love art, but I’m not really what you’d call an artist. I mean, I like to do a lot of crafts, and I have a pretty good eye for detail and design, but I can’t really do things like the artists who used to have shows in my mom’s gallery. Those were all
important
works of art. I’d rather do things that are fun and make people smile than things that make people fold their arms and say “hmmm” a lot. My dad always called it “the art gallery moan,” like people were responding at such an emotional level that words couldn’t quite capture it.

I take a measuring cup off the hook in front of me and use it to outline a circle on the sheet of paper. I agreed to work here because Gram said if I didn’t stop moping around the house, she’d find me a job. It was pretty much
choose
to work at the bakery or get
forced
to work at the boatyard, scraping the underside of the fishing boats, or at Gram’s friend’s farm, moving compost around. Easy choice. Bakery. At first I just did dishes and stacked supplies and stuff, but then one day my mother got a big order from one of the bed-and-breakfasts, and she needed help. I found out I liked baking and, even more, I liked decorating. Of course I didn’t tell Gram that. She’s impossible when she knows she’s right.

“Hey there,” my mother says, coming through the back door. She’s wearing jeans with the cuffs rolled up and a tie-dyed T-shirt I’ve never seen before. She walks behind me and tries to peer over my shoulder. “Can I see?”

“Not yet,” I say, putting my hand over my drawing.

My mother turns, reaches into the refrigerator, and takes out a bottle of water. “How was your day?” she asks. I think about French class and Tally and the boy with the dog, who didn’t have the dog this time. And about pennies and Rock, Paper, Scissors and the infamous Mr. Fish. And the seventy-five dollars I have stashed in the front pocket of my jeans. I shrug. “The first day can be pretty hard,” she says.

“Yeah,” I mumble. Like she has any idea. “It was okay, I guess.” And I guess that’s about right. It was okay.

“Good,” she says, and I look back down at my notebook. I try to think if OKAY is an acronym for something. I write “Ordinary” for the
O
and “Average” for the
A,
but I can’t think of anything for the
K
and the
Y.
All I come up with is “Kinda” and “Yellow,” but that doesn’t make any sense. I sigh and try drawing again. I’ll bet Charity didn’t know she’d inspire a new cupcake with her locker prank. I have to work carefully on the proportions. Abraham Lincoln has a really long face.

chapter six

So far I have had to change my shirt three times, and that was even before breakfast was over. Shirt number one got splattered when I tried to open the new jar of raspberry jam and ended up wearing half of it. I dumped a mug full of tea on shirt number two. I changed the last time because I found a hole under the arm of my favorite thermal shirt, the one with pictures of sushi all over it.

“Another big day,” my mother sings, coming into the kitchen. She’s picked up this annoying habit of half singing everything, as if at any moment she’s going to burst into song. And the weird thing is, she does it whether she’s happy or mad or sad or whatever. It’s supremely irritating. She pours herself a cup of coffee and leans against the counter, scrutinizing me. “Is that what you’re wearing?” she asks. I look down at my shirt, reading KISS ME. I’M IRISH. Upside down. It’s written in fuzzy green print that’s starting to peel off from so many washings.

“Yep,” I say. I think about singing a response but don’t because I’m not sure if she will like it or hate it, and right now I’m not in the mood to be very likable. My mother makes a
humph
sound and then walks to the end of the living room where the computer is set up. I stare out the window, trying to see through the last of the morning fog.

Every night this week I’ve gone walking on the beach. I tell my mom it’s for the exercise. I tell Gram it’s because I’m enjoying nature. I tell myself that it’s no big deal. I’ve seen
him
twice, but both times it was from inside my house. Once when we were eating dinner. We’d just sat down. I couldn’t figure out how to gobble down a whole bowl of soup and race out the door without drawing a lot of unwanted questions. The other time it was raining, so hard that I thought for sure he wouldn’t be out there. But from my dry spot on the glider, I could see two shapes making their way down the beach, one on two legs, the other on four. They were past so quickly that there wasn’t any time to get down to the beach. That and because I don’t run, there was really no good reason for me to be down there. Well, none I want to admit to.

 

 

We’re starting with collages in art. We’re supposed to bring in “items of personal significance” for our project. We’re supposed to express who we are inside. “I want to really see what’s going on in there,” Miss Beans told us. It’s just another example of why I’m pretty sure she’s a new teacher. She hasn’t figured out that one of the greatest desires that most teenagers have is to
hide
what’s going on inside, not collect it all together and glue it onto a big piece of poster board and then hang it out in the hall for just anyone to look at.

“This is lame,” I whisper to Tally. Her project is a bunch of liners for CDs and a couple of guitar picks and set lists. I didn’t know what those were until she told me it was just a list of the order of songs that a band plays at a gig. She actually talks like that.
A gig.
So really her project isn’t about her at all, but about her dad.

“It’s pretty summer-campish,” she says. I look at my own project and sigh. Mine has a brochure from one of my mom’s art shows, some pictures of me and my friends ice-skating in Central Park, and a bunch of ticket stubs from museums and movies. While Tally’s project is mostly about when she was on tour with her dad, mine is mostly about my other life, my real life. I try rearranging some of the ticket stubs so they look like they’re petals blooming out of the coffee stirrer from Dean & Deluca, but I can’t seem to get what Miss Beans calls “layering.” I check the clock. Only twelve-fifteen. I’m not sure I can rearrange for fifteen more minutes.