The Cupcake Queen (6 page)

“Penny,” Miss Beans says, walking up behind me. I’m busted. I turn and see she’s looking at me, not my project. “You look like you could use a break.” Okay, so maybe she’s not totally clueless. “Could you take this to the office for me?” I nod and she hands me a thick envelope.

“Lucky,” Tally hisses at me.

I walk out of the art room and into the empty hall. I stop by the water fountain and get a drink. I’m in no hurry to get back to class. I just can’t seem to make the leap between craft and art that Miss Beans talked about. She said the difference is that crafts show the artist’s skill while art shows the artist’s soul. Whenever I think of my soul, all I picture is a blobby floating thing that changes color depending on my mood.

The office is empty when I walk in. I peer into Constance’s bowl of Jolly Ranchers, but all that’s left are a couple of sour apple ones and a few blue ones that I guess are raspberry. It’s weird how one day someone just decided that blue things were going to be raspberry. Why not blueberry, or plum or something? I look around to see if anyone’s watching and reach in for a blue one. The door to the office opens behind me. I drop the candy and turn around, expecting to see Constance walking in, but it’s not her.

It’s him.

“Caught you,” he says with a smile. He comes over, peers into the bowl, then shakes his head. “It’s sad really,” he says. “I’m pretty sure those are the same candies that are always left.” He walks around the desk, opens the middle drawer of the file cabinet, and pulls out the biggest bag of candy I have ever seen. He upends it over the fishbowl, filling it all the way to the top with Jolly Ranchers. He raises his eyebrows and tilts the bowl in my direction. I reach out to take a candy. “The flavor you pick says a lot about a person.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” I say.

“That’s pretty much my life during third period. Running errands. Developing candy-based theories about people’s personalities.”

Suddenly, picking a flavor seems to hold a lot of weight. I decide on grape, my favorite.

“Interesting,” he says. He puts the bag of candy back in the file cabinet and turns to watch as I unwrap the Jolly Rancher and put it in my mouth.

“So, what’s your theory?” I ask.

“It’s complicated,” he says. “I’ll give you the short version for now.” I like the way he says “for now.” It hints that there is a “later” out there somewhere. “Grape people are artistic and like to be alone a lot.”

“What about cherry?” I ask.

“Cherry people are nice.” He says “nice” like I’d say “boring.”

“I almost picked raspberry,” I say.

“Interesting,” he says, nodding. “Raspberry people are adventurous. Risk takers.” I’m not sure that’s me at all.

“What about the others?” I ask.

“Watermelon people are popular.” He digs in the bowl, pulling out each flavor as he talks about it. “Apple people try too hard.” He pulls out a yellow one and looks at it.

“How about lemon?” I ask.

“Lemon people are mean,” he says. “You don’t want to get on the bad side of a lemon person.” Something tells me Charity is a lemon and the advice is coming too late.

The door opens behind me and I turn to see Constance walk in. I feel myself blush, like I’ve been caught doing something wrong.

“I have a—I mean, Miss Beans asked me—” I finally just stop talking and hold out the envelope. She takes it and walks around to the other side of the desk, opening it as she goes.

“Thank you,” she says, looking up at me. “You can go back to class, um—” She pauses, searching my face.

“Penny,” I say. She nods and looks back at her desk. I glance over at
him
, but he’s looking at something Constance is handing him. At least now he knows my name.

I head back to class, sucking on the candy. I’m halfway down the hall when the bell rings. Doors open on both sides of me, and soon the hall is completely filled with people opening lockers and grabbing lunches to take outside or to the cafeteria. I thread my way back to the art room and find it empty. My collage is no longer on my desk but scattered under it. There’s a big footprint in the middle of my paper. Two of my photos are bent in half, and several of them seem to be missing altogether. I start picking everything up.

“Hey,” Tally says from the doorway. “Where have you—” She stops when she sees what I’m doing. She comes over and bends down beside me. “I’m sorry. I just went to get my lunch. I was going to put your collage away, but Miss Beans . . .” She pauses and looks around. “She
was
in here. I wonder where she went.”

The snarky part of me thinks
who cares where she went
, but I know it’s not Tally I’m mad at and definitely not Tally I should lash out at, so I just keep picking up the pieces of my project and trying to flatten the bent photos.

“Penny,” Miss Beans says, walking into the room. “I thought you got lost.” She’s smiling when she says it. She walks over to where Tally and I are crouched. “Oh, did someone accidentally knock your project off the table?” I nod at the “knock” part. Not the “accidentally” part. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I had to go and help a student.” She picks up the big piece of poster board. “Charity was having a hard time getting into her locker.” I nod. I’m sure she was. More like she was creating a distraction while one of her friends wrecked my project. Miss Beans sees the footprint in the middle of the paper and looks at my face for the first time. “I have more paper, Penny,” she says.

I just shake my head, not trusting my voice. I feel like recently everything is either really good or really bad. Mostly really bad.

chapter seven

If someone found out they only had one day to live, they should totally move to Hog’s Hollow, because here every day feels like an eternity. So, three eternities later and finally it’s Friday. And the only thing I can think to be happy about is that I actually have something to do that doesn’t involve butter, sugar, or heavy cream. Today’s the day I’m supposed to go over to Tally’s house.

I decide to walk there along the beach instead of along the road. I tell myself that it is because it’s a nice day and walking along the water is better than along asphalt, but it’s not really a nice day. It’s raining and the wind is whipping across the water and I have to duck my head to keep the blowing sand out of my eyes. So, exactly what is the reason? Because I’m looking for a big golden dog named Sam. And truthfully not so much the dog, but the guy with the dog.

I climb up the warped wooden steps onto Tally’s back porch. Before I reach the door, it opens. “Hi,” a woman with curly red hair says. “Come in out of the wet.” I try to shake off as much sand and water as I can before entering. Even the inside of my mouth feels gritty. “You must be Penny,” she says, smiling. “I’m Poppy. Tally’s aunt.” She twists a blue ring on her left hand as she talks. “They’re in the living room,” she says, pointing the way. Then she steps outside. “Tell Tally I’ll be in my studio if you guys need anything.”

“Thanks,” I say. Then it registers. She said
they.
I keep telling myself I’m from Manhattan and this is Hicksville and I should be able to handle meeting new people, but my stomach keeps flipping over. I pass four cats sunning themselves on the windowsill. Each is fatter than the last.

“Yay,” Tally says, standing up and walking over to me. “Right on time.” She pulls me toward a boy with brown spikes of hair sticking up everywhere. He’s bent over two pieces of paper on the floor. “We need someone to break the tie,” she says. Okay, when Tally told me “some people” took Rock, Paper, Scissors very seriously, I didn’t know she meant
she
does. Or rather
they
do. On the floor are two drawings. One simply says CHOOSE WISELY above a sketch of three hands, one making the sign for a rock, one a pair of scissors, and the other a piece of paper. The other drawing says: PAPER IS THE NEW ROCK.

“They’re for our fund-raiser,” the guy says. When he talks, the spikes move a little, making him look like a palm tree in the wind.

“Fund-raiser?” I ask.

“For the ARK.”

“The ARK?” I’m starting to feel like a parrot.

“Yeah,
R-P-S
for the
A-R-K,
” Tally says, saying each letter separately.

“ASAP,” Blake says.

“H-U-S-H,”
Tally says. She turns to me. “The ARK is the animal shelter on the other side of town. We’re selling T-shirts to raise some money.” I nod, feeling
D-U-M-B.

“So which one do
you
like, Penny?” Both of them are looking at me. Talk about high pressure. I look from one drawing to the other, then at the two of them waiting.

I get down on my knees and look closer. “Can I have a piece of that?” I ask, pointing to the pad of paper. “And a pencil.” I hunch over the pad and sketch quickly. I pause when a cat comes over and bats at the end of the pencil. I’m pretty sure this is a different one—cat number five. When I’m finished, I’ve combined the two shirts into one. On the front it simply says PAPER IS THE NEW ROCK. On the back are the graphics and the warning to choose wisely. Below that in big letters I’ve written SAVE THE ARK. I sit back on my heels to let them see.

“Cool,” Tally says. “See, I told you.” She elbows the guy in the ribs, making his spikes wobble more.

“I’m Blake,” he says finally. “Welcome to the Save the ARK Society.”

“There are usually more of us—” Tally stops when she sees my questioning face. “Really,” she says. “It’s the rain. Or maybe it’s because school just started.”

“Tal,” Blake says, leaning back over the pad of paper for a closer look, “it’s not the weather. Or school starting.” Tally frowns. Blake turns to me. “Tally is in denial.”

“I am not,” Tally says, folding her arms.

“You’re denying you’re in denial?” he asks. She squinches up her nose at him. “Everyone is over at the library for the Hog’s Hollow Days meeting,” Blake says.

Tally is still frowning. “Not everyone,” she says.

“Okay,” Blake says, smiling at Tally. “
Most
everyone.” He turns to me. “It’s a very big deal around here.” Tally shrugs. “You didn’t tell her?” Blake asks, turning to Tally.

She shakes her head. “I do have other things to talk about,” she says. She keeps her arms folded and continues to frown, but I can see she’s having a hard time keeping up the mad thing.

“Tally was banned from Hog’s Hollow Days.” He smiles as he says it. I notice Tally lost her battle and is smiling, too.

“How does one get banned?” I ask.

“Tally and the events coordinator had creative differences.”

I lift my eyebrows at her. She shrugs again. “Long story. Let’s just say I could have handled it better,” she says. Blake shakes his head. “You hungry?” she asks. I guess I’m not going to get the whole story now.

“Starved,” I say, and follow them into the kitchen. We stand around the island, munching on apples and oatmeal cookies. I count six cats now. Blake turns on the radio. “I love this song,” I say. Tally bites into her apple.

“You like Nathan’s Sunday?” Blake asks.

“Like them? Doesn’t everyone?” I ask. He nods and smiles. “I tried to get tickets when they played Madison Square Garden.”

“No luck?” Blake asks.

“No. I mean, maybe if my mom had let me camp out overnight.” That was a huge argument between Mom and me. One that lasted for weeks. It’s funny—I used to really stand up to her on things. But moving to Hog’s Hollow has changed that somehow. Now I can’t even stand up to her when she wants to buy Super Chunk Skippy instead of the smooth Jif that I like.

Blake reaches for another cookie and I turn and gaze out at the ocean. The whole back wall of the kitchen is windows, so you can see a wide length of the beach. The sun is fighting through the clouds, brightening the sky. Hanging in front of the window are dozens of glass balls, each swirled with color.

“They’re Poppy’s,” Tally says, seeing me looking at them.

“She made those?” I ask. Tally nods. I walk over and reach up to touch one of the balls gently. It spins slowly, casting rainbows of light all over the room.

I hear a door slam and soon Poppy enters the kitchen. She pulls a handkerchief from her head, letting her red hair spill across her forehead.

“You found the cookies,” Poppy says. She takes one of the apples and bites into it. She reaches down and rubs an orange cat behind the ears.

“These are amazing,” I say, touching a ball covered in spirals of blues and greens. “It looks like the ocean.” Poppy leans against the counter, watching me. I walk along the window, examining all of them, but I’m drawn back to the first one, the ocean one. I touch it again, watching the waves of blue and green shift as it spins gently. I always feel like I’m not going to say the right thing about someone’s art, like I don’t know the right words. “They are really beautiful,” I say.

Poppy smiles and says, “Thank you,” and I feel like maybe I did say the right thing. Is it that easy—just say what you think?

“Oh,” Tally says through a mouthful of cookie, “I saw Mr. Fish the other day.”

Poppy looks at Tally. “I haven’t seen him in a long time.” She takes another bite of apple and chews thoughtfully. “Not really since he moved.”

“He seemed good,” Tally says. “He’s working at the dairy.”

“If you see him again . . .” Poppy stops and looks at the apple in her hand. “I was going to tell you to ask him to drop by.” Tally nods, and they look at each other for a moment. “Maybe I’ll swing by the dairy and just say hi.”

Poppy smiles at me. “Penny, feel free to come over anytime. You seem to have a real eye for art.” She picks up the handkerchief and ties it over her hair again. “Of course I mean that in a very self-congratulatory way.” She laughs at herself. “You’ll have to excuse me. I have a date with a soldering iron.” She lobs the apple core at the trash can as she walks toward the window. “The rain’s stopped. You should go out.” She smiles over at Tally. “You know, fresh air and all that.”