Katie Sprinkles and Surprises (2 page)

But I still wasn't prepared the next day when Mom told me she had actually set up a time for me and Jeff to meet. She broke the news on Sunday night, when we were eating Chinese food on the couch and watching shows on the food channel together.

“So,” Mom said, during a commercial, “I've invited Jeff over for dinner Saturday night.”

“What?” I asked, letting a forkful of cold sesame noodles fall right onto my lap.

“Like we talked about,” Mom said.

“I know,” I said. “It's just I didn't think it would be so soon.”

Mom looked concerned. She has brown eyes like I do, and they're very expressive. It's easy to tell when she's worried or sad. “Do you really think it's too soon? Because I could cancel.”

Right then I had a tough decision to make. All I had to do was say so and Mom would call it off. But I kind of felt bad for Mom. I knew she really liked Jeff.  And, I mean, she hadn't had a serious boyfriend for, like, ever.

I sighed. “Saturday is okay.”

Mom put her right arm across my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. “Thank you, Katie. I know you'll like him.”

I didn't say anything, and the show came back on. I finished my sesame noodles and then cracked open a fortune cookie.

“Good things come to those who wait,”
read the fortune inside.

I looked at Mom. Was this fortune for her? I slipped the fortune into the pocket of my pajama pants.

The next day at school I decided it was time to give all my friends the Jeff details.

“So, my mom is inviting her boyfriend over for dinner Saturday night so I can meet him,” I blurted out at the lunch table. Sometimes it's just easier to tell people stuff that way.

“You mean Jeff?” Emma asked. She's a good listener; she always remembers every detail of every story you tell her.

I nodded. “Yeah, I might as well get it over with. But Mia made me feel better. I figure if I don't like him, Mom will break up with him.”

Emma frowned. “Maybe. But didn't you see that movie on the romance network? This girl's mom had a boyfriend, and the girl didn't like him, but the mom married him anyway, and it turned out he was a secret jewel thief.”

I suddenly felt worried. “I didn't see it, but it was based on a true story, right?”

Alexis interjected. “Katie, your mom is a lot smarter than that woman in the movie. If she thinks he's a nice, good guy, then you'll probably like him too. Besides, it's just one dinner. You can't let too much ride on it.”

“Alexis is right, Katie. That woman in the movie was nothing like your mom,” Emma agreed.

“Katie's mom is so nice,” Mia remarked.

“Definitely,” Emma said. Then her blue eyes got big. “Oh, I know. At our cupcake meeting on Thursday we should bake cupcakes for the dinner!”

“You mean, like, ‘Hey Jeff, I hope you're not a creep' cupcakes?” I asked.

“More like ‘Nice to meet you' cupcakes,” Emma said, laughing.

“It's a good idea,” Alexis said. “We have a request for strawberry cupcakes for a party in a few weeks. We can test out the recipe.”

“Wait. So now Jeff is a cupcake guinea pig?” I asked. “What happened to ‘Nice to meet you'?”

“He won't know the difference,” Alexis pointed out. “Besides, it's the thought that counts.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Text me the recipe, so I can make sure we have the ingredients.”

I heard my cell phone beep in my backpack ten seconds later. Alexis is superorganized. That night Mom and I went shopping for the ingredients, and on Thursday we were ready for our cupcake meeting.

The Cupcake Club meets every Friday during school lunch, but we have to meet at other times too because business has been pretty good since we started. Alexis handles most of the business stuff because she's best at it. She keeps track of how
much money we earn and spend and keeps a record of our supplies and other expenses. She also makes sure our clients pay us, which is important.

Some meetings, all we do is business stuff, which is boring but important. At other meetings, we bake cupcakes for our clients or test out new cupcake recipes. It's important to try new flavors, because if you don't test them, then you won't know if they're good or not until it's too late, and all it takes is one bad batch of cupcakes for a client to ruin our business. That's why it was a good idea for us to make a batch of the strawberry cupcakes that day. And yeah, they have a mix for that, but we make our cupcakes from scratch. “From scratch” means we make everything fresh, from the beginning. That's why they're so good!

Alexis, Emma, and Mia all got to my house at five. My mom had started a batch of veggie chili in the Crock-Pot that morning, so we could all eat dinner after our meeting. We got started baking right away. My friends and I have gotten pretty good at baking together. Usually two of us work on the batter while the other two do the icing. Alexis knew the strawberry cake recipe by heart from studying it, so she and I did the batter together.

“It's not easy to get cake to taste like strawberry
without using artificial flavor,” Alexis remarked. “But I think the jam in this batter is going to be nice.”

“And using homemade strawberry syrup to flavor the icing will really taste good,” I added.

Mia was stirring the strawberries, water, and sugar on top of the stove while Mom supervised.

“It smells awesome,” Mia reported.

The strawberry syrup cooled while we baked the cupcakes in the oven. Then Mia and Emma mixed the syrup in the blender with butter and powdered sugar to make the frosting. When the cupcakes were done, we had to wait for them to cool before we iced them, so Mom spooned us bowls of veggie chili. Mia and I put sliced jalapeños on top of ours, because we like things spicy. After the chili, we iced the cupcakes.

“They look so pretty,” Emma said admiringly.

“The client wants pink flowers on top, but you can work on that, right, Mia?” Alexis asked.

Mia nodded. “No problem.” She designs most of our cupcake decorations.

“These look great, but they're kind of boring for ‘Nice to meet you' cupcakes,” I said.

Mom smiled. “Oh? Who are these for?”

“We thought we could use some for our dinner
with Jeff,” I said, and Mom looked like she might burst with happiness.

“Oh, that's so sweet of all of you,” she said, beaming. “Thank you! He will love them.”

“I hope he likes pink,” Alexis said.

“If he doesn't like pink, then he's just not a good boyfriend,” I announced, which made no sense at all if you think about it. But Mom didn't look worried. “Anyway, I still think they look boring.”

Then I remembered the sleepover with Mia and had an idea. I ran into the kitchen closet and came out with a container of rainbow sprinkles.

“These make everything better,” I said with a grin, and I grabbed a spoon and started sprinkling the cupcakes.

Alexis shook her head. “You are rainbow crazy.”

“Sprinkles are great,” Mia said. “They cover up any mess you make with the icing.”

“And they're pretty besides!” I added.

When we were done, we had a plate of very cheerful cupcakes. We stood back and admired our work.

“If Jeff doesn't like these, then he has no soul!” I said.

T
he next day I brought four of the “Nice to meet you” cupcakes to school for our Friday Cupcake Club meeting. It's been a tradition since we started—every Friday is Cupcake Friday! (Although Mia has often suggested we move it to Monday, since she hates Mondays and she thinks cupcakes would make them better—which they would. But it's hard to break a tradition once you start it.)

Sometimes it's tempting to dig in to the cupcakes before we eat lunch, but we have learned to restrain ourselves. Besides it's more fun to “save the best for last.” So as we ate our lunches, Alexis went over cupcake business with us.

“I have some exciting news,” she announced. “I got an e-mail last night from a brand-new
client. The director of the Maple Grove Children's Museum wants us to bake cupcakes for the opening of a space exhibit there next month.”

“Outer space?” I asked. “Cool! We could do cupcakes with alien faces.”

“Or cupcakes that look like planets,” Mia suggested.

Emma looked thoughtful. “What kinds of flavors can you do for outer space?” she wondered out loud.

“How about . . . green cheese, for the moon?” I exclaimed.

“Ew!” all my friends said at once.

“But we use cream cheese in cupcakes all the time,” I pointed out.

Before we could discuss green cheese cupcakes any more, Mia suddenly pointed. “Oh my gosh! Look at Olivia. She's trailing after Mr. Green like a lost puppy.”

Mr. Green, the new math teacher everyone was talking about, was monitoring the lunchroom that day, because all the teachers take turns. I guess it wasn't his first time doing it because he seemed really comfortable. He was walking among the tables, making sure everyone was eating and cleaning up after themselves and not throwing food and
being jerks. Some teachers walk around with a mean face on, but Mr. Green was smiling and chatting with people.

Mia was right about Olivia; she was two steps behind him, and it looked like she was trying to offer him an apple from her lunch.

“Oh my gosh, that is hilarious!” Alexis said. “She is making a fool of herself!”

That may sound mean, but I guess we have some issues with Olivia. When she was new in school, Mia had become friends with her. But Olivia totally used Mia and then dumped her so she could be a part of the BFC, the Best Friends Club. She also did a bunch of other stuff to Mia that wasn't very nice. So if Alexis was going to point out that Olivia was making a fool of herself, I wasn't going to stop her.

Emma sort of defended her. “Lots of girls have crushes on Mr. Green,” she said (and the way she said it, I wondered if she did too). “You have to admit, he's really gorgeous.”

“I guess,” I said. Mr. Green has wavy brown hair and nice green eyes. (Mr. Green with green eyes! No wonder.) “But he's a teacher! Ew!”

“Ew!” Mia agreed. “I mean, he seems really awesome, but I could never think of a teacher as gorgeous. That's just weird.”

Then Alexis quickly nudged her. Mr. Green was walking up to
our
table.

“Hello, girls,” he said. Then his eyes landed on the see-through cupcake carrier on the table. “Hey, I've heard about the Cupcake Club. Your cupcakes are legendary.”

“Thanks,” Emma said, and I saw she was blushing a little. “Would you like one?”

Mr. Green held up his hands. “No, but thank you. I see there are just enough for the four of you. Guess I'll have to hire you for something if I'm going to get to taste one.”

Alexis whipped out a business card faster than a cowboy drawing his gun in a shoot-out.

“We do custom orders,” she said, handing him the card. “No order is too big or too small.”

Mr. Green laughed. “Good to know. Thanks.” And then he headed to the next table.

Mia leaned in. “I bet Olivia is so jealous right now! What do you want to bet she'll bring him a cupcake on Monday?”

“She can bring in all the cupcakes she wants, but they won't be as good as ours,” Alexis said confidently.

“Well, anyway, I guess I can see why everyone likes him,” I said. “He seems nice. And, hey, it's pretty cool he's heard about the Cupcake Club already. I mean, he's only been here, like, a week, right? We must be famous.”

“Not famous enough, if you ask me,” Alexis said. She looked through her notebook. “Well, I think that's all the new business for now. We should all think of ideas for the space exhibit, though.”

I nodded. “No problem. I'll probably want to live in outer space after I meet Jeff tomorrow.”