Katie Sprinkles and Surprises (12 page)

We parked on the street, and when we walked up to Vinnie's, Jeff and Emily were standing there. She looked just like her picture, with long brown hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a skirt too, and I briefly wondered if she was also trying to
make a good impression or if she just liked skirts.

Jeff gave Mom a kiss on the cheek. “Hello,” he said. “Katie, this is Emily. Emily, this is Katie.”

“Hi,” Emily and I said at the same time, both shyly. Then we kind of just looked at each other.
Awkward!

“Let's get a table,” Mom said quickly, sensing the mood, and we went inside.

We quickly walked across the black-and-white checkerboard floor to a table along the wall. Mom and I sat on one side and Jeff and Emily sat on the other, so Mom was across from Jeff, and Emily and I were staring at each other.

“I'm glad you suggested Vinnie's. This is Emily's favorite pizza place too,” Jeff said. “Right, Emily?”

Emily nodded. “Yeah, the veggie pizza is really good.”

“It is,” I agreed, and from the corner of my eye I could see Mom beaming. I knew what she was probably thinking.
They like the same pizza! They're going to get along!

But Emily and I didn't say much after that. Jeff and Mom were doing all the talking.

“I'm so hungry, I could eat two whole pizzas!” Jeff said. “That hospital run took a lot of energy. Right, Emily?”

Emily nodded again.

“Katie had a busy day too, at the children's museum,” Mom reported. “Wasn't it busy there, Katie?”

I nodded. It was like Mom and Jeff were trying to have our conversation for us. Thankfully, the waitress came over.

“What can I get for you guys?” she asked.

“How about two veggie pizzas?” Jeff suggested.

“And a salad,” Mom added.

“And garlic knots,” Emily piped up.

“And chicken fingers,” I added, and then we all laughed.

Jeff shook his head. “Wow, I guess we're all hungry!”

The waitress left the table, and after laughing like that, things seemed a little less awkward.

“Emily loves to bake too,” Jeff said. “Right, Emily?”

“Yeah,” Emily said shyly. “I saw some pictures of the cupcakes you do on your website. Where do you get your ideas for decorations? That's my favorite part of baking.”

“Then you would love my friend Mia,” I said. “She is really artistic, and she comes up with a lot of our designs for us. I guess it runs in the family.
Her mom is a fashion stylist. She always dresses like she's a model herself.”

Emily's eyes got wide. “Wow, really? You have cool friends.”

That made me feel kind of proud. But it's true! I do have cool friends.

“So, what school do you go to?” I asked.

“Hamilton,” Emily replied, and I was surprised.

“No way!” I said. “I went there.” But then I remembered Mom said Emily lived in the same town as us, so it made sense. “Is Mr. Hadler still the custodian? He was so nice.”

“I know!” Emily agreed. “Once, in second grade, I got lost on the way to the library and he helped me. And he always sings those funny songs.”

I laughed, and then I remembered I had an assignment from Alexis.

“So, the Cupcake Club was wondering if you had ideas for other light cupcakes,” I said. “So we can build up our selection.”

“Sure,” Jeff said. “I'll make a list for you and get together some recipes. Then maybe you can come over and help Emily and me whip up some test cupcakes.”

“Great,” I said, and I knew Alexis would be really happy.

Then our food came, and we didn't talk much, but mostly because we were eating and not because things were awkward. Actually, things felt really normal, which was nice.

When we stepped outside of Vinnie's after dinner, it was dark out, but bright streetlights lit up the sidewalk.

“You know,” I said, “King Cone is right down the street.”

I will use any opportunity to get ice cream. But part of me didn't want the night to end, not just yet.

“After all that food?” Mom asked with a groan. But Jeff looked interested.

“Well, we did burn a lot of calories today. . . .”

“Yay!” Emily said, and that settled it. We walked to the ice-cream parlor. It's the kind where you line up outside to get your ice cream.

“What'll it be?” Jeff asked as we walked up to the window.

“A vanilla and chocolate twist cone, with lots of rainbow sprinkles,” I said.

The girl behind the counter heard me, and she disappeared and quickly reappeared with the cone in her hand. There were so many sprinkles that I couldn't even see the ice cream underneath. Perfect!

“Can I have the same?” Emily asked.

“That looks good,” Jeff said. “I think I'll get one too.”

“Me too,” Mom said.

Soon we were all holding our very sprinkly ice-cream cones.

“Wow, they really sprinkled on the sprinkles,” Jeff joked.

“I love a sprinkling of sprinkles!” Mom added, and they both cracked up. I looked at Emily, and we rolled our eyes at each other.

“Let's take a walk,” Jeff suggested.

We didn't get far when we saw Olivia Allen with her mom and dad.

“Mr. Green!” Olivia shouted. And then she gave me this curious look, like she was trying to figure out the scene.

“Hi, Olivia,” Jeff said pleasantly. Then he held out his hand to Olivia's parents. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Allen. I'm Olivia's math teacher.”

“Oh,
that
Mr. Green!” said Olivia's mother. “Olivia talks about you all the time. I used to be a teacher too. But when we moved here, Olivia was adamant that I not teach at her school. She said she'd be too embarrassed. So I became a tutor instead.”

Jeff laughed. “Well, I try not to embarrass anyone
too much,” he said with a wink at Emily.

Olivia turned red, and then I saw her looking at my mom, sizing her up. I was glad my mom looked really pretty.

“Well, nice to meet you,” Jeff said, “but we've got to get moving before our cones melt.”

We continued down the street. “Ugh, she's so annoying,” I complained when they were out of earshot.

“Now, Katie,” Mom said in a warning tone.

“No, actually, she's pretty bad,” Jeff said, and I must have had a totally surprised look on my face because Jeff smiled at me and then shrugged.

“Are most of the kids in middle school annoying?” Emily wanted to know.

“No, they're mostly nice,” I promised her. “You'll probably make a lot of new friends. I did.”

Emily asked me a lot more questions about middle school, and Mom and Jeff were talking about a new recipe Mom was going to try, and it was all kind of nice.

I was still thinking about what Jeff said about Olivia. That was surprising, that adults could see kids as real people like that. And the fact that Emily was coming to middle school soon—that was surprising too.

I guess you could say the last few weeks have been sprinkled with lots of surprises. Some bad, but mostly good, and in the end, I was left with a lot of pretty colors all mixed together, and that was the best thing of all. Because everyone knows sprinkles make everyone happy. Especially rainbow ones.

D
o you need help with those, Katie?” I asked.

My friend Katie was carrying two cupcake carriers stacked on top of each other, and a bag of supplies dangled from her wrist. It made me a little nervous watching her. Katie is my BFF here in Maple Grove and I love her, but she's had some serious cupcake disasters before.

“No, I got it,” Katie assured me. She carefully placed the carriers on our cupcake sales table and then looked around. “Wow, there's some cool stuff here.”

We were inside the Maple Grove Women's Club, which may not sound super exciting, except that it was the day of their craft fair. Local artists and craftspeople were setting up tables with the stuff
they'd made, like knitted scarves and handmade beaded jewelry.

“Yeah, I hope we can look around a little,” I said. “Alexis was really smart to suggest we set up here.”

At that moment my friend Alexis walked up to us, carrying a notebook and a cash box.

“Did I just hear you say I was really smart?” she asked with a grin.

I nodded. “I never would have thought to sell cupcakes at a craft fair, but it's kind of a genius idea.”

“Not genius, just obvious,” Alexis said. “People who go to craft fairs get hungry. Besides, our cupcakes are handmade too, and they're like little works of art. I think the decorations and flavors you guys came up with are genius.”

“Thanks,” I said. I was pretty proud of what we had done. “We should get things set up before it starts.”

My mom is a member of the Women's Club, so I had arrived early with her and started to set up the table. Once Alexis had suggested we sell at the craft fair, we came up with a theme: Crafty Cupcakes.

Whenever we do an event, we have to plan out a bunch of things: what flavor to make the cupcakes, how to decorate the cupcakes, how to display
the cupcakes, and how to decorate the table. For the craft fair, I thought we should stick with what people think of as traditional “cupcakey” colors—pink, mint green, light blue, and yellow. So the first thing I did was put down a pink tablecloth. We had used it for a baby shower once, and we like to reuse things to help with the costs.

Then I set up a backdrop, which I made from one of those big trifold cardboard displays that you can get for school projects. For the middle panel, I cut out letters from scrapbook paper to spell out “Crafty Cupcakes.” The papers had little white flowers and dots on them, so it looked really cute. Then I had drawn some pictures of cupcakes along with pictures of crafty things, like paintbrushes and yarn and knitting needles.

On each side panel, I had printed out our Cupcake Club logo: a cupcake in a light blue wrapper with pink icing and a red cherry on top, and the words “cupcake” above it and “club” below. I had designed the logo myself at summer camp. We made T-shirts with the logo, too, which we wore whenever we had a cupcake event. Anyway, I stood up the backdrop at the back of the table, and then I was ready for the cupcake displays.

It's tempting to buy cool new stuff for our
displays each time, but then we wouldn't make as much profit. And Alexis is always talking about profit since that's the money we get to keep. So we reuse what we can or make what we need. For this display, I bought some wooden cake stands from the craft store and painted them in our cupcakey colors. Then I added a clear, shiny coat so that it would be safe to put food on the stands. They looked really pretty on the table.

“I'll get the rest of the cupcakes from the car,” Katie said, hurrying off.

“Mind if I set up the cash box?” Alexis asked.

“That's fine, I've got this,” I said.

I slipped on some thin plastic gloves and opened up the first carrier. It contained our first batch of cupcakes: vanilla cake with vanilla icing, decorated with flowers made of fondant. Fondant is this paste made of sugar that you can roll out like dough and cut into shapes. We'd used pink and yellow for the flowers, so I put them on the green cake stand for a nice contrast.

The second carrier held our “yarn” cupcakes. We'd made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. Then we'd used marzipan, which is a sugary almond paste that you can shape into stuff—kind of like edible modeling clay. We'd dyed it blue and
then rolled it into little balls of “yarn,” to go with the crafts theme. The yarn looked really cute sitting on top of the icing. I put those on the pink cake stand.

Katie came in carrying more cupcake carriers. The third held chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. We'd decorated them with little jelly candies that we thought looked like jewels. For our fourth kind of cupcake, we had gone with one of our more adventurous flavors—lemon ginger, because a lot of people will buy a cupcake if it's a flavor they've never tried before. We'd topped them with pale-yellow lemon frosting and decorated them with birds.