The Stars of Summer (16 page)

PURGATORY PANTRY

G
LADYS SPENT A LOT OF ENERGY ON
Thursday and Friday carefully avoiding Hamilton, but it wasn't until she was sitting on Orchard Beach in the Bronx that Saturday that she felt truly at ease. There was no way he would find her here. Even her own parents had a hard time finding the beach, taking several wrong turns off the parkway before stumbling upon it.

Orchard Beach was more crowded than the others they had visited, but that didn't stop Gladys's mom from chasing her into the water. “We'll work on your backstroke today,” she said. “Pretend you're a . . . um . . . well, there must be something you cook face-side up, right?”

It wasn't her mother's best cookingmeets-swimming metaphor.

The Completos Locos stand was more pleasant than the beach. Its hot dogs looked fresh and appetizing, nestled into toasted buns and topped with bright green avocado chunks, ripe red tomatoes, and artistically swirled mayonnaise. They were served up by a tattooed man who spoke Spanish at about a million miles an hour with most of his customers.

The dogs were even tastier than they looked, though once again, Gladys wished that she'd paid closer attention while sampling the other vendors' products. She would just have to decide which hot dog deserved the top spot when she started writing her review.

Gladys and her parents washed their dogs down with a traditional Chilean drink called mote con huesillo, which was kind of like iced tea, except that each cup also had half a peach and a bunch of barley floating in it. Gladys's parents weren't fans, and even Gladys had to admit that it wasn't her favorite, but she had read about it in her background research on Chilean food and appreciated the chance to try it. She was already thinking about including a section in her review on pairing your hot dog with the perfect drink when thunder sounded in the distance.

“I think we're done here,” her dad said, and Gladys didn't object.

• • •

Gladys hunkered down with her journal on Sunday and the hours slipped by, but the words didn't flow as easily as usual. She had no shortage of material to work with—she'd eaten hot dogs in all five boroughs, after all—but what exactly should she say about them? When she thought about Nathan's, for instance, the memories she'd heard from Mr. Eng and her mom filled her mind rather than the tastes of the hot dogs and fries she'd had there. And when she tried to picture the Thai dogs, all she saw was her parents shrieking and frolicking in the sand.

It was like the hot dogs themselves wanted to fade into the background of whatever scene they'd been eaten in.

By dinnertime, Gladys had only managed to write a handful of sentences, half of which were crossed out. Thank goodness she had a whole week left to work on the review! She trudged downstairs when her mother called, grabbed a Sticky Burger from the take-out sack on the counter, and settled between her parents on the sofa for the latest episode of
Purgatory Pantry.

The camera zoomed in on Chef Rory Graham, clad in chef's whites from head to toe except for her long, green-polished fingernails, which drummed on a countertop as the contestants filed into the kitchen. Every week, someone got eliminated, and now there were only four contestants left.

“Chefs!” Rory barked. “A particularly hellish challenge awaits you this week! A brand-new restaurant will be opening its doors in Times Square
this Friday
, but its menu is one item short. Each of you will attempt to fill this hole with your own original creation.”

Four chef hats bobbed up and down as the contestants attempted to out-nod one another.

“The restaurant's owner will help me judge your entries,” Rory continued. “The highest-scoring creation will be featured on his menu on opening day, and its chef will receive a five thousand dollar bonus. But the chefs who create the lowest-scoring items will find themselves”—the camera zoomed in on Rory's bloodred-lipsticked mouth as she pronounced the show's famous catchphrase—“
in purgatory!”

Gladys's parents gasped, as if Rory didn't say this every single week.

“Come on, get to the cooking,” Gladys muttered. All this preliminary hoopla always drove her crazy. She wanted to see what BeBe Watkins would come up with this time. BeBe had the fastest chopping technique Gladys had ever seen, and no challenge had flapped her yet. On last week's episode, she'd defeated Clay Martolucci—Gladys's least favorite contestant—in an onion dice-off for immunity.

But Rory droned on. “And here comes our guest judge for this week: Chef Christoph von Schnitz!”

Gladys excused herself to refill her water glass. The celebrity chef bios were always so boring.

She was about to turn the kitchen faucet on when the announcer's voice said, “But can the Sausage King of Dusseldorf succeed in his latest venture—an upscale hot dog restaurant in the middle of Times Square?”

Gladys's cup clattered into the sink as she raced back to the den.

Sure enough, there was Times Square on the screen, its theater marquees and Jumbotrons blinking and blazing. The camera showed workers heaving a huge sign into place. V
ON
S
CHNITZ'S
H
EAVENLY
H
OT
D
OG
S
, it said, and then, in slightly smaller letters: T
HE
B
EST
W
ÜRST IN
N
EW
Y
ORK!

Gladys gripped the back of the sofa as the camera cut back to the
Purgatory Pantry
kitchen, where Chef Rory welcomed Chef von Schnitz with a kiss on each cheek.

“Christoph!” she cried, batting her purple-tinged eyelashes. “You're opening a restaurant in New York at last!”

“Yes, yes,” von Schnitz commented airily. “This has been in the works for a while, but it's all very top secret, you know? My menu already has five fabulous gourmet varieties of hot dog, but I am looking to add just one more.” He turned to the show's contestants. “This is where you come in!”

“That's right,” Rory said. “Christoph von Schnitz's highly anticipated hot dog emporium opens to the public
this Friday.
Will your creation be on its heavenly menu? Or will you find yourself”—the camera zoomed in again—“
in purgatory
?”

Gladys's parents gasped again—but this time Gladys gasped with them. A huge new hot dog restaurant, run by a German sausage expert, was opening in the heart of Manhattan this Friday? Her review was due the following Monday, and obviously wouldn't be complete without a sampling from Heavenly Hot Dogs.

The show cut to a commercial, and Gladys cleared her throat. “Wow,” she said, circling back around the sofa. “That new hot dog place looks pretty great, huh?”

“Sure does, Gladdy,” her dad said. “We'll have to try it at some point.”

“Well, how about next weekend?” Gladys asked.

Gladys's mom shook her head. “A place like that, on opening weekend? It'll be mobbed! No, honey, let's wait a few weeks, at least.”

“And anyway,” her dad said, “we're going to Pennsylvania on Saturday for an overnight, to visit Grandma, remember?”

Fudge!
Gladys had forgotten about that trip. “Right,” she said. “Well, maybe we could stop through the city quickly on the way there?”

Gladys's dad chuckled. “Only if they're open at eight a.m. We'll need to get going early, to beat the traffic.”

Gladys nodded mechanically, but inside, her brain felt like it had been set ablaze with a crème brûlée torch. How could this be happening? After all her expeditions to try hot dogs in the far corners of the city, she was going to have to skip the one right smack in the middle of Times Square?

The show came back on, and Gladys sank into the sofa's cushions as Rory and Christoph explained the rules of the hot dog challenge. But she couldn't enjoy watching the contestants cook, even when BeBe hacked at pickles and hot peppers like a crazy slicing machine. There was a countdown clock in the screen's corner, and Gladys felt like a timer had been set for her, too. Every second that passed was a second closer to when her review was due—a review that would be incomplete without a visit to Heavenly Hot Dogs. But how was she going to get there?

OPERATION TOP DOG, TAKE TWO

“
HEY, CHARISSA,” GLADYS SAID AS THEY
walked through the archway at camp the next morning. “Remember when your parents rented that limo and we all went into the city together?”

Charissa's face scrunched into its you're-talking-like-a-crazy-person look. “Of course I remember. It was my
birthday.
”

“Right,” Gladys said quickly. “Well, it was so much fun! Do you think they might want to do something like that again soon? Like, maybe on Friday?”

“I
wish
,” Charissa said. “But Daddy said that was a one-time thing. He commutes into the city for work on the days he's not here, and he hates going in when he doesn't have to.”

Fudge,
Gladys thought. There went that idea.

The morning announcements began, and after everyone finished singing the camp song with a rousing “Yay, camp!” Mrs. Bentley retook the microphone. “Now remember,” she said, “interim swim tests will take place this Friday—and any camper who doesn't pass the Basic Beginners test will be required to take extra lessons for the remainder of the camp session. There will be no makeup tests or do-overs!”

“I hope you don't have to take extra lessons,” Charissa said as they stood up. “Though if my plans go right, you won't have to worry about that jerkface either way after Friday.” She looked pointedly at Hamilton, who was standing at the edge of the crowd—alone, as usual.

“What plans?” Gladys asked.

Charissa lowered her voice. “Let's just say that Rolanda might find herself having heatstroke on Friday during a
certain somebody's
swim test. She'll definitely need Coach Mike to help her, so there won't be anybody on hand to save Mr. Bigshot Author when he starts to slip under the water.” Charissa made a glugging sound and wiggled her hands over her head in a cruel impression of Hamilton sinking.

Gladys felt like someone had just slipped an ice cube into her bloodstream. “Charissa,” she said. “You can't let Hamilton
drown
!”

Charissa lowered her hands, laughing. “Of course not! That would cause all kinds of legal hassles for my parents. Ro will just leave him in the pool long enough to give him a good scare. He'll get so traumatized that even his parents won't be able to force him to come back to camp!”

Gladys could hardly believe what she was hearing. “Look,” she started, but just then, Charissa checked her watch.

“Ooh, I've got to run to the office,” she said. “Catch ya later, Gladys!” And with a whip of her ponytail, she was gone.

• • •

All day, Gladys tried to corner Hamilton to warn him about Charissa's plan, but she never got the chance. He swam on the opposite side of the pool, quickly took off across the field after their lesson, and barely mumbled “thank you” when she served him his ham sandwich at lunchtime—with bonus arugula from her own ingredient stores.

Was
he
avoiding
her
now? He must have been as embarrassed by the almost-date-asking conversation as she was.
Well, okay,
Gladys thought to herself.
Maybe if Charissa sees that he's leaving me alone, she'll call off her terrible plan.

• • •

That afternoon, Gladys finally found what she'd been looking for all month in the mailbox: an envelope addressed to her from the
New York Standard
containing the payment for her second published review.

At least I got to it before my parents did,
she thought, and sank down onto her front stoop. As she shredded the check into papery strips, her brain focused on the new review that was due in a week. Her parents weren't going to take her into the city this weekend, and neither was Charissa. Who could help her now?

Gladys tried to imagine what Sandy would say to her in this situation. He'd probably start with “Come on, Gatsby.” Or “Get it together, Gatsby.” Or—

“Jeez, Gatsby, you look awful.”

Gladys looked up. Right in front of her stood a glowing apparition of Sandy, grinning from ear to ear.

Great—now she was seeing things. The stress had gotten to her, and she'd finally cracked.

Except that her angelic vision of Sandy then took a step to the side and lost his halo. Gladys blinked as the sun flashed into her eyes, and she turned to find plain old Sandy kicking at her front stoop with his sneaker. “What, I don't even get a ‘welcome home'?”

Gladys leapt to her feet and—without pausing for even a moment to consider whether she should or shouldn't—flung her arms around him.

“Whoa, Gatsby, careful!” Sandy laughed. “You don't want to break this—I went through a lot of trouble to get it back for you.”

When Gladys finally released him, she saw he was holding her tablet.

“How did you get that back?” she said. “And what are you doing home?”

“Well, those are actually both parts of the same story,” Sandy said. He ran a hand through his messy blond hair. “It may also involve me getting caught breaking into Director Samuels's office, and, uh . . . possibly being thrown out of karate camp.”

“No!” Gladys cried.

“Yeah.” Sandy glanced back toward his own house and lowered his voice. “My mom is not thrilled with me right now. But I don't care. I'm happy to be back!”

Gladys laughed—she couldn't help it. Sandy was home! Her heart felt as light as a meringue.

“Okay, now you're pretty much caught up on my news,” Sandy said. “So what's going on with you? Have you made it to all those hot dog places yet?”

“Yes . . . and no.” Gladys told him about her lastminute discovery of Heavenly Hot Dogs. “I don't know how I can possibly get there on Friday,” she said. “Unless . . .” An idea was coming to her, and she paused to let it ripen. “Unless you can convince your mom to take us! Do you think she would?” It seemed like the perfect plan—Mrs. Anderson liked foreign foods, and they'd already chatted about interesting hot dogs.

But Sandy didn't share her enthusiasm. “There's no way,” he said glumly. “She's really mad at me. Technically, I'm grounded—no phone, no Internet. I'm probably not even supposed to be talking to you, but Mom's at yoga, so I figured I could risk it. I'm sure she'd never agree to anything as fun as a trip to the city.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Gatsby.”

“Don't be sorry,” Gladys insisted. “It's my fault you got in trouble! You wouldn't have broken those rules if I hadn't snuck you my tablet in the first place.”

“Eh, I don't know,” Sandy said. “Life without screens was
really
hard. I probably would've broken into the office eventually, just to get online for a few minutes.”

Gladys was skeptical, but she didn't push the issue.

“And anyway,” Sandy continued, “at least we got away with some stuff. Director Samuels never sniffed out my brownies or cookies. Thanks for those, by the way. Wrapping them up in my underwear was a really good trick.”

Gladys felt herself blush at the mention of underwear, and she shifted her gaze away from Sandy. “So, um, have you got any ideas for getting me into the city this week?”

“Just the same old plan we came up with at the beginning of the summer,” Sandy said. “Sneak out of camp! I mean, wasn't that the whole reason you agreed to go in the first place? So you could
sneak out
when you needed to?”

“I . . .” Gladys started. “I just . . . don't think that sneaking out will be as easy as we thought.”

“Sure it is,” Sandy said. He reached down, plucked a twig off the lawn, and started rolling it back and forth in his hands. “You can just call into camp fake-sick. Then, when your mom drops you off, instead of going inside, you sneak off to the train station. That way, camp will think you're home, and your mom will think you're at camp.”

“Yeah, but I have responsibilities there now,” Gladys said. She reminded him that she made lunches every day, and added that Friday was her big swim test. “If I miss it, I'll have to take extra lessons, which means I won't have time to cook lunches anymore. Plus, there's Hamilton—”

“Who's Hamilton?” Sandy asked.

“Just . . . a kid,” Gladys said. “But he's, um, not the best swimmer, and I kind of wanted to keep an eye on him on Friday. You know, to make sure he does okay on his test.” For some reason, Gladys didn't feel like launching into the whole story of Hamilton's crush on her and Charissa's swearing her revenge. She'd already burdened Sandy with enough of her problems.

Sandy flung his twig out onto the lawn. “I don't get it, Gatsby,” he said. “I thought that writing for the
Standard
was your dream. Are you really saying that taking a swim test at Charissa's stupid camp is more important than nailing this review?”

“I . . . no, of course not.” When Sandy put it like that, the choice seemed obvious. “Of course you're right,” she said, trying to make her voice sound as firm as possible. “I don't know what I was thinking.”

“That's okay,” Sandy said. “I guess things kind of fall apart when I'm not around to remind you of your posterities.”

“My . . .
posterities
?” Gladys asked, momentarily baffled. “Oh—I think you mean my priorities.”

“Right, those,” Sandy said, and Gladys laughed. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed hearing Sandy's regular abuse of the English language.

“So, we're agreed?” he asked. “You'll sneak out of camp Friday and go to Heavenly Hot Dogs?”

“Yeah,” Gladys replied. “I mean, that's definitely the right thing to do.”

She just wished she believed it herself.

• • •

Over the next two days at camp, Hamilton continued to avoid Gladys, and Gladys did her best to point this out to Charissa. “Wow,” she said at the lunch table on Wednesday. “I've hardly seen Hamilton around at all this week. Which means he definitely hasn't been bothering me.”

“Good,” Charissa replied. “But we want to make sure the message
really
sinks in on Friday. Don't we, Ro?”

Across the table, Rolanda bared her teeth in a sharklike grin.

It was hopeless. Gladys didn't see how she could possibly avert disaster on Friday . . . unless she told Charissa the truth. But would Charissa be willing to stay friends with a person who liked someone she hated?

Gladys steeled herself. Rolanda might be a good junior lifeguard, but Gladys didn't trust her to know the difference between letting someone “get scared” and letting them drown for real. And now that Gladys wasn't planning to be at camp on Friday, she knew that staying silent was just too dangerous. She had to confront the plan's mastermind head-on.

“Charissa,” she said as they dropped their trays off at the kitchen window. “I need to talk to you in private. It's urgent.”

“Sure,” Charissa said. “You girls go on to the pool without me.”

The scowling group of CITs slunk away, and Charissa guided Gladys down the wooded path where Gladys had entered camp on her first day. They stopped under the biggest oak tree. So far, so good—they were out of earshot of any other campers.

“Charissa,” Gladys said, “Hamilton doesn't deserve to be scared out of camp. He hasn't been following me around or bothering me. He's actually a pretty nice person, once you get to know him.”

The irony didn't escape Gladys that she had used almost the exact same words to describe Charissa to Hamilton a few weeks back. Hamilton had seemed to take her word for it—but how would Charissa react?

Gladys looked into her friend's gray eyes, anticipating a flash of fury. But instead, she saw the very last thing she would have expected: tears.

“Do you like him better than me?” Charissa asked, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

“What?” Gladys was truly taken aback by this reaction. “No, of course not! I mean, I barely know him, really. I just don't think he deserves to be punished.”

Charissa blinked rapidly. “You swear?” she said. “Because it just wouldn't be fair if you liked him better. I mean, I know he's a celebrity, but I'm the one who picked you to come to my birthday party, and who got you into camp.”

“Charissa,” Gladys said, “I don't like people because they're famous, or because their parents own camps. I just like them if . . . you know, they're nice to me, and we have fun together.”

“I don't think any of my other friends like me for those reasons,” Charissa said, her voice growing smaller with every word. “I think they only like me because . . . well, they're afraid not to.”

Gladys didn't know what to say—so she simply gave her friend a hug.

It took a moment for Charissa to hug her back, but when she did, she held on to Gladys for a long time. When they finally separated, Charissa pulled a tissue out of her shorts pocket and used it to dab at her eyes.

“So,” Gladys said cautiously, “will you call off the plan for Friday? And . . . maybe consider giving Hamilton another chance?”

Charissa, looking more like her normal self now, considered these questions. Finally, she said, “Look, Gladys—I just don't know. I mean, first impressions are very important to me. Once I make my mind up about somebody, it's made up forever.”

“But that's not true!” The words were out of Gladys's mouth before she'd had time to think. “You changed your mind about me. A few months ago, I was just like Hamilton to you. But then we got to know each other . . . and now we're friends.”

Finally, a hint of a smile crossed Charissa's face. “Yeah,” she said, “now we're friends. Best friends.”

Well,
Gladys thought,
Sandy is kind of my best friend already—
but this didn't seem like the right time to bring up that technicality. So she just smiled back.