Truth Game (3 page)

When I get home from work, Mom is waiting for me with an episode of
Pastry Wars
already queued up on the TV. After I was in a bake-off this summer, Mom got really into watching food competitions. She even recorded a bunch of episodes of
Pastry Wars
while I was in Florida so that we could watch them together. It's funny that before my dad left, Mom and I seemed so different from each other that we could barely have a conversation. Now, I feel closer to her than I do to pretty much anyone else.

“Any news yet?” she asks, and I know she means about the show.

I shake my head. “I've been checking my email all day, but nothing yet.”

Mom sighs. “Okay then, talk to me,” she says as we settle in on the couch and start nibbling on dinner, some leftover spinach and shallot quiche that I made the other day. “How was the first day?”

I tell her about how I spent most of it wandering around totally lost and how I barely saw Evan or Marisol or anyone else I know.

Mom pats my hand. “You'll adjust to it all soon enough. Don't worry.” She picks up the TV remote. “I can't wait to watch this episode! They're supposed to make cookies that you can stack like Legos. Isn't that wild? And Chip is wearing dark blue in this one. You know how much I love him in blue!”

I swallow a bite of quiche. “And, um, Dad was there today.”

She looks at me. “At your school?”

“He brought me lunch this morning, said he didn't want to miss my first day.” Her reaction means she had no idea he was back in town. I shouldn't be too surprised. Knowing Dad, he probably decided to move and had his bags packed and his plane ticket booked all in the span of a day. He's always been kind of impulsive that way.

“Well,” Mom says. “Well.” Clearly, she's a little stunned. I guess she didn't really believe that he would come back either. At least not so soon. Maybe Dad's trying to reinvent himself like I am.

Then my phone tells me I have a new email, and I forget all about my dad. All I can do is stare at the email titled: “Your
Pastry Wars: Teen Edition
Application.” Oh my goldfish. It's here!

“Open it, open it, open it,” Mom chants when I tell her.

Finally, with shaking hands, I open the email and start reading.

Dear applicant,

Thank you for your interest in being on
Pastry Wars: Teen Edition
. While we think you have a lot of talent, we cannot offer you a spot on this season's show. We wish you the best of luck in your baking endeavors, and we encourage you to try again next year!

Sincerely,

Chip Ackerson and the
Pastry Wars
Team

The phone slips out of my hands and drops on the couch. “I didn't get in,” I say softly.

“What? That's impossible!” Mom says. She reads the email, and her frown lines get deeper and deeper. “Oh, honey. I'm sorry.”

I know I'm being stupid. Getting onto the show was a long shot. It was like setting my heart on winning the lottery or something. But I can't help it. I did set my heart on it, and now my heart's been crushed.

• • •

It's an annual tradition for Marisol and me to rehash every minute of our first day of school over the phone on the first night. Last year, I remember gushing about Steve Mueller for about half the conversation while Marisol considered what outfit she should wear the next day. This year, I'm obsessing about getting rejected from
Pastry Wars
while Marisol stresses about Ms. Emerald not wanting to advise the Fashion Club.

“I can't believe she said she doesn't know enough about fashion!” Marisol says on the other end. “You should have seen her shoes. They were straight out of a magazine!”

“Maybe she just doesn't want to do it.” I can't blame someone for not being a club joiner. The only club I'd ever consider is the cooking one. Nothing else sounds at all exciting.

“But she has to,” Marisol insists. “All the other teachers are already advising clubs or coaching sports teams. I asked the guidance counselor about it, and he said she's the only one left.”

It figures that we've been in school for only a day, and Marisol has already talked to the guidance counselor. When she's focused on a goal, she doesn't waste any time. Somehow that only makes me feel worse about not being on
Pastry Wars
. Marisol has her life all planned out, and just when I thought I did too, it all fell apart.

“The outfit you made for my audition video was perfect,” I tell Marisol. “You should show it to Ms. Emerald.”

She lets out a breath into the phone. “I still don't get why they didn't pick you, especially since your dessert was so fancy! I've never seen you make anything like that before.”

After days of rejecting recipes, I'd finally decided on a mille-feuille, which is a three-layered cake with pastry cream, whipped cream, and frosting smeared in between layers of puff pastry. I figured an ooh-la-la French pastry would definitely wow everyone. I guess I was wrong.

“If you want, I could bake something for Ms. Emerald,” I offer. “Food bribery always does the trick.”

I hear Marisol giggle. “I'm not sure that would prove to her that I should have a
fashion
club. Andrew said he could make a film to help me plead my case, but he's so wrapped up in his new school lunch documentary that I doubt he'll have time.”

We groan in unison. Andrew ignored our advice and went ahead with the school lunch idea. I'm hoping he'll put a couple of zombie toys in it and liven things up, but so far, he's been really focused on getting exclusive interviews with the lunch ladies. They've been doing their best to avoid him.

“Hopefully, he'll figure out a different topic,” I say. Talking about Marisol's boyfriend makes me think about Evan. “So…I had a question. How do you know when to hold Andrew's hand? Do you grab it every time you see him?”

“I don't know,” Marisol says, her voice dropping to a whisper the way it does whenever she talks about things with Andrew, just in case her mom is nearby. “I guess I hold it whenever it feels right.”

“But how do you know it's right? Is there a signal he gives you or something? Like what if Evan wants to hold my hand before gym class, but I totally miss the signal?”

“Rachel, you're overthinking this. There's no right or wrong way.”

That's easy for her to say. She's obviously doing it the right way without even realizing it. But maybe she's right and I am overthinking things.

“Okay, I'll stop stressing about it,” I tell her. “I guess I'm just—”

“Hold on a sec,” Marisol says. Then I hear muffled voices in the background. “Sorry,” she says after a second. “My mom's reminding me it's a school night, and I still have to go through my outfits and figure out which ones to bring for Ms. Emerald tomorrow. I'll talk to you later, okay?”

Then she hangs up the phone, and I realize that it's the first time we've ended our first-night-of-school conversation without doing our yearly prayer to the pineapple gods. A few years ago, we'd both had way too much sugar and were dancing around my kitchen with a couple of pineapples. (Don't ask.) Somehow that led to us begging the pineapple gods to help make our school years amazing, and the tradition stuck. Yes, it's kind of bizarre, but when you're really low on the popularity totem pole, sometimes you get a little desperate.

Even though Marisol already hung up, I hold the phone to my chest like we always do. Then I close my eyes and whisper, “I call on the pineapple gods to hear my prayer. Please, let me be the best version of myself this year. And please, please, please, let my desserts get on TV somehow!” Then I bow my head and add, “Praise be to your delicious tropical juices.”

When I open my eyes, for just a second, I get a little tingle down my spine. And that's when I know for sure that the pineapple gods have heard me.

“Evan,” Andrew suddenly says through a mouthful of mashed potatoes at lunch the next day.

“What?” I say.

“Evan,” he says again, motioning toward the front of the cafeteria.

I turn to find Evan waving at me from the doorway. What is he doing here? I jump up and hurry over to meet him. “Aren't you supposed to be in Spanish class?”

He holds up a bathroom pass. “It's down the hall, so I thought I'd say hi and see how you're holding up.”

I have the urge to throw my arms around him. “Still bummed about
Pastry Wars
,” I admit, “but better now that you're here.”

He grins. “It's nice seeing you outside of gym class. It stinks that the only time we see each other is when I actually stink.” He chuckles. “By the way, that was a nice volleyball to the head you took today.”

“Thanks. I'm really talented like that. Wait until we play basketball. I'll have a concussion in no time.” I go to playfully smack his arm the way I've seen other couples do, but instead I wind up hitting him square in the elbow.

“Ow!” he cries, cradling his arm.

“Oh my goldfish. Are you okay?”

“Wow, you got my funny bone.” He laughs. “You really are talented.”

“I'm so sorry!” I cry, mortified, but Evan is smiling.

He shakes out his arm and then glances over his shoulder, like he's afraid of getting caught. “So, listen, can you do me a favor? My sister finally told me about working at the bakery with you, but she swore me to secrecy.” He rolls his eyes. “I know having her around isn't ideal, but…any way you could keep an eye on her? I'm kind of worried about her.”

I blink at him. “You are? Why?”

“She's been acting weird lately. I know my dad losing his job hit her hard. She's not used to my parents telling her ‘no,' and now she hears it all the time.”

I bite my lip to keep from saying something snide. I don't exactly feel bad for Briana, but it's sweet that Evan is worried about her. Especially since they aren't exactly close.

“And that game she's been playing,” he goes on. “She's kind of become obsessed with it.”

“The Truth Game?” I ask.

“Yeah. She keeps asking me all these questions about stuff that happened years ago. I don't know. It can't be good to keep rehashing all the things you did, can it?”

I shrug. “Maybe it is if the past keeps coming back to bite you in the ascot,” I say, using one of my dad's favorite goofy fake swears.

“Okay, gotta go,” Evan says. “But I'll try to come see you tomorrow.”

“Won't your Spanish teacher mind?”

“Nah. I'll tell her I have a tiny bladder.” He crinkles his eyebrows. “Any idea what the word for ‘bladder' is in Spanish?”

I laugh as he flashes me one last grin before disappearing around the corner. I might not be on TV, but I certainly have the best boyfriend I could ever ask for.

• • •

When I get to the home ec room for the first meeting of the Cooking Club, my legs freeze up in the hallway and refuse to move. I have to remind them that I belong here. This is the only club in the entire school that I'm interested in, and it could finally be my chance to be around people who love food as much as I do. I can't let my awkwardness around strangers get in the way of that. Besides, I worked with a couple of total strangers when I was in Florida, and it was fine. Well, except for the whole “getting accused of stealing” thing.

I open the door and peer inside the room, expecting to see it bursting with fellow cooking enthusiasts. Instead, I find my gym teacher leaning on one of the linoleum counters and talking to a skinny guy in supertight jeans.

“You here for the cooking club?” Mrs. Da Silva asks.

“Um, yes?”

“I know you. You're in my third-period class, right?” she says. “Lee?”

I nod. “Rachel Lee.”

“Come on in. We'll start in a second. I'm hoping we'll get a couple more.”

I go inside and sink into a nearby chair. This is it? One other member and a gym teacher as our adviser? This is definitely not the bustling club I was imagining where I get to finally make high school–level stuff.

“I'm Pierre Moreau,” the skinny guy says with a hint of an accent.

“Hi,” I say. “You're French.” Ah, yes. My sparkling conversational skills never fail.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” he says. Then he does a little snort-laugh like he's made an awesome joke. “So what kinds of things do you cook?”

“Desserts mostly. I want to be a pastry chef one day,” I say. And then, for some reason, I wind up telling him about my
Pastry Wars
audition.

“Sorry you didn't get in. What did you make for it?” he asks.

“A mill fill.” I wait for him to look impressed, but instead he frowns.

“A what?” Then his eyes widen. “Oh! Do you mean a mille-feuille?” His accent is perfect, and it sounds nothing like what I said. “You can also call it a Napoleon, you know.”

“Oh yeah. I know,” I mumble, my cheeks getting hot. Oh my goldfish. Is that why my audition video got rejected—because I couldn't pronounce the name of my dessert right? I could kick myself in the head for being such an idiot. “What kind of cooking do you do?” I ask, trying to change the subject.

“I'm into molecular gastronomy.”

“Is that like the astronomy of gases?” I blurt out.

He lets out another snort-laugh. “You're funny. No, it's a scientific approach to food. You start by looking at the chemical reactions happening during the cooking process, and then you…”

But I stop listening because at that moment the door opens, and a guy comes in. I suck in a breath when I recognize him.

“Rachel!” he says, sounding surprisingly glad to see me.

“Hey, Whit,” I say, getting to my feet. I should have known Adam Whitney, a.k.a. Whit, would be here. When he and I took a pastry class together during the summer at Ryan's Bakery, he'd mentioned that he lived in the next town over. Somehow though, it hadn't occurred to me that we'd be going to the same school until now. Of course he'd be in the Cooking Club when he likes baking as much as I do. Even if he's kind of full of himself about it.

“Okay,” Mrs. Da Silva says, glancing at the clock. “I guess we should get started. So a little about why I'm here. The teacher who used to advise this club retired, and the school asked me to take over. I might not know a lot about cooking, but besides physical education, I also teach health, so I know all about nutrition. I figure that's a good fit.”

I try not to groan. Considering that most of my desserts are essentially flavored sticks of butter, nutrition isn't exactly on my priority list a lot of the time.

“What are our club goals?” Pierre asks, his laptop open, his fingers poised to take notes.

Mrs. Da Silva shrugs. “That's up to you all to decide. What are you interested in, Moreau?”

“I've been experimenting a lot with foams,” he says. “Last week I made a porcini mushroom foam. I want to do more of that kind of thing.”

“Sounds pretty low-calorie,” Mrs. Da Silva says with an approving nod. Then she turns to Whit. “How about you, Whitney? Any cooking goals?”

“My sister's kids are really picky eaters. All they ever eat is Cheetos. I want to learn to cook some stuff that they'll actually like.”

“Ah, the challenge of getting young people to eat healthy,” Mrs. Da Silva says.

“What happened to getting a job at a fancy bakery?” I ask him. That was pretty much all he could talk about over the summer.

Whit shrugs. “I still want to do that, but I spend so much time babysitting my nephews that I guess I've been thinking more about everyday food.”

“And what about you, Lee?” Mrs. Da Silva says. “What's your goal for the year?”

Is it some kind of rule that gym teachers can only call you by your last name? “I guess I want to wow people with my desserts,” I say slowly.

Mrs. Da Silva gives me an uncertain look. “Okay, but is there something specific you'd like to work on?” When I can't give her an answer, she smiles and says, “Well, let's start with something small today. How do ants on a log sound? Healthy and delicious!”

I'm convinced she's joking until she takes out some celery sticks and tells us to start slicing them into “logs.” Oh my goldfish. Is this really the kind of stuff we're going to be doing? Forget high school cooking. It looks like I'm back in elementary school.