Pyxis: The Discovery (Pyxis Series)

For Dustin

|| 1 ||

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE bake sale, some PTO members got lathered up about students selling homemade cookies and cupcakes. In typical fashion, one alarmist sent out an email to the rest of the PTO, rife with exclamation marks and parental concern, claiming that most high schools only allowed store-bought items at bake sales. Bake sales had been around, well, probably since humans first figured out how delectable it was to mix flour, sugar, eggs, and salt, and cook the concoction to solidity. I’d bet my driver’s permit that no one had ever died from a homemade snickerdoodle.

Mr. Diamonte, Tapestry High’s principal, had enough sense to recognize an overreaction when he saw one. He struck a compromise by posting signs on the bake sale tables that said, “The goods at this sale were made in facilities not approved for production of food items.”

Facilities? Really? As though we baked our cookies in toilet stalls? I was sure I saw Mr. Diamonte roll his eyes a little when he taped the signs to the tables. But at least the PTO was satisfied, and I didn’t have to figure out what to do with four dozen petits fours.

With my wares displayed on one of the dozen chipped and stained foldout tables lining Tapestry High’s main hallway, I stood ready for customers. A couple of junior girls I only knew by name were arranging salad-plate-sized chocolate chip cookies on trays next to me. The rest of the half dozen or so bake salers bent over their tables, engaged in similar activities.

My best friend, Angeline Belskaia, was in charge of grabbing our lunches and scurrying up here to help me, since she was the one who’d coerced me into this in the first place. I twirled a strand of hair tighter and tighter around my index finger until the tip of my finger started to tingle. School fundraisers—school activities in general, really—are ick, so not my thing.

The bell rang, releasing the student body for lunch, and I searched the growing crowd for Angeline. She’s barely five feet tall, and I imagined her politely smiling and side-stepping as she tried to thread through the crowd without getting trampled.

As students herded past, several paused at the bake sale tables to gawk at the selection. I’d sold half of my petits fours already during the twenty-minute morning break between second and third hour. I expected the rest to go at lunch.

“Sorry I took so long. I had to stop first, I was about to pee myself.” Ang appeared at my elbow, breathless and clutching our lunch bags along with two cans of Diet Coke.

I grinned at her and popped open a can. “I’ve got turkey. Want to trade?”

I knew Ang’s lunch bag contained an egg salad sandwich. I also knew that, despite her deep love of egg salad, she wouldn’t want to eat it today because Toby Ellison was standing down the hall at the brownie table. Not that Ang would have the guts to march up to him and confess her undying love or even start a conversation about the weather, but just in case she talked to Toby, she wouldn’t want to smell like egg salad.

“Yeah,” she said, equally sheepish and grateful. She gestured with her lunch bag and did a little pursed-lip giggle. “Um, it looks like you’ve got some customers.”

I looked up from my lunch and realized Andy Jones, a senior on the varsity basketball team, towered over my petits fours. A couple of other guys loitered behind him.

“You’ve got more of those awesome cakes. Sweet!” He pumped his fist as if celebrating a three-pointer.

I couldn’t help smiling because I knew that a few feet down, Sophie Marcelle was scowling. I snuck a peek and caught her sneering in my direction. I smiled bigger.

“Want another blue one?” I asked, offering a petit four made of alternating layers of white cake and dark blue frosting. I’d used my smallest frosting tip to write “Tapestry Bluejays” in looping script around the crisp, sugared shape of a bird. These weren’t just pastries. They were works of art rendered in edible media.

“These things are amazing, Corinne.” His voice was low and awed, like he was in church. He gazed into my eyes and handed me some money. “I can’t believe you made them. They’re just so …
amazing
.”

“Uh, yeah, thanks. Maybe I should call them ‘amazing fours’ instead of petits fours, ha ha.”

He lingered with the cake, staring at me as if my face held the answers to the great questions of the universe. I waited, eyebrows raised, thinking he might say something else, but he just stood there. Awkward.

“So, um, thanks for supporting the student activities fund?” I said.

He took the hint and started walking away, but he kept his head turned over his shoulder toward me. He hardly even flinched when he collided with a couple sophomore guys in his path.

A mass of students congregated around the tables, so I didn’t have time to think about why Andy was being such a freak.

“Hey, Corinne.” Jordan Something-or-other, a junior, planted both palms on the table and leaned so far in front of a few other guys that the bottom of his green t-shirt came dangerously close to dragging through frosting. A silly, lazy grin spread across his face. “So, how’s it going?”

I stared at him for a second, trying to figure out why he seemed so friendly. Was he a friend of my brother’s? Or … Oh my God, was Jordan Something-or-other trying to
flirt
?

I almost snickered, but instead, I slid the tray of petits fours back a couple of inches and retreated one step. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t even remember the guy’s last name, and he was totally invading my space. I mean, I could smell cinnamon gum on his breath. I did
not
want to be close enough to smell what type of gum someone was chewing. Unless it was maybe Ang, or possibly Mason.

Well, I wouldn’t smell Mason’s gum breath now, not after the crap he’d pulled. I scowled at the floor.
That’s right, jerk. You’re out of the … the I’m-Okay-With-Smelling-Your-Breath Club.

Jordan Gumbreath cleared his throat, and I snapped myself back to the task at hand. “Did you want to buy something?”

He started to respond, but the crowd behind him jostled a little, and his hip bumped the table hard. I looked around in confusion and realized an actual shoving match seemed imminent. I shot a look of alarm at Ang. Eyes wide, she nodded.

“Easy, there’s plenty for everyone,” I said, and I smiled with all of my teeth in what I hoped was a soothing expression. I’d put too much work into those petits fours to have them splattered all over the hallway if a fight broke out.

I scooped up a cake, handed it to Jordan, and made change. After I sold petits fours to four more guys I didn’t really know, they all drifted away without any more shoving.

When there was a pause in sales, I turned to Ang.

“What the hell was that?” I gave a subtle tilt of my head toward Andy, Jordan, and the others. “And now with the lurking?”

A vertical line formed between her eyebrows as Ang frowned. “Yeah, weird. And now they’re just totally watching you. Like, really
staring
.”

She sounded incredulous enough that I could have been offended, but I wasn’t. I mean, I knew I was okay to talk to and not bad to look at, but I wasn’t one of
those
girls, the type guys fought over. I wasn’t like Sophie. Not that I’d ever seen guys actually fight over Sophie, but I could imagine it happening. And I could imagine her eating up every second of it.

Ang must have been thinking something similar because we both turned to check out Sophie’s table. She’d only sold a few of her cupcakes—sad, boring little Betty Crocker things, with blue and yellow sprinkles on top.

I smirked. I’d stayed up until two in the morning making my petits fours, and it wasn’t because I had a lot of school spirit. I did it mostly because Ang, wearing her sophomore class secretary hat, asked me to contribute something. But I also knew Sophie would be making something, and there was no way she’d be able to pull off anything like my petits fours.

I caught a blur of motion in my peripheral vision. Andy was waving to me like a little kid scrambling to get Santa’s attention at a holiday parade. I looked over to make sure Sophie was watching. I caught her eye and gave her my sweetest fake smile. She rolled her eyes and angled her body away from me.

I shoved the last bite of Ang’s egg salad sandwich into my mouth and washed it down with Diet Coke.

“Will you cover for me?” I asked Ang. “I’m going to run and get some water.” She nodded, and I took off.

I had to pass Sophie’s table to get out of the bake sale area. I was surprised none of her minions lurked nearby. She rarely traveled without her entourage.

As I passed behind her, she swung a wave of her auburn hair over her shoulder with a practiced flick of her chin. I caught a whiff of too-fruity perfume that stuck, forming a sour coating on my throat.

“Nice cakes, Corinne. Did your daddy make them for you?” Her words seemed to crackle in the air like sparklers.

I ground my teeth, stared straight ahead, and kept walking. I wasn’t in the mood to go head-to-head with the Queen Witch. Her comment didn’t surprise me, though I really wasn’t sure where her venom came from. It wasn’t like I bragged about my dad’s café, and it certainly didn’t make us wealthy. In fact, I’d been working there since before I was old enough to be payroll-legal.

I bounded down the stairs to the sophomore hall, grabbed my water bottle from my locker, and filled it at the fountain near the stairs. I turned to go back up and squeaked in surprise at the green shirt four inches in front of me. I looked up to see Jordan’s grinning face.

“Oh, sorry about that,” I said, and then added with a raised eyebrow, “I didn’t know you were there.”

“So, you gonna be at the café after school?” He stared into my eyes, chin lowered, with the fringe of his nearly-black hair just brushing his long eyelashes. He didn’t seem to notice that I’d sloshed a few drops of water on his shirt, or care that he’d just scared about a year off of my life.

I held the water bottle in front of my stomach as a barrier. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I do after school.” I edged sideways. He mirrored my movement.

“Okay, cool,” Jordan said. I caught a whiff of cinnamon. “I’ll come by and see you.”

I eyed the stairwell over his shoulder.

“I should really get back up to the sale,” I mumbled, then dashed around him and took the stairs two at a time.

A shiver zipped up and down the back of my neck as I topped the stairs and turned back toward the sale. I was starting to suspect that I’d set something in motion, but what could I have done to cause this weirdness?

|| 2 ||

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, I perched behind the coffee shop counter in my dad’s café and replayed the bake sale scene in my mind. Ang was working the espresso machine while I manned the register, and in between customers, we dissected the situation.

“I don’t know why you’re so concerned. I mean, Andy’s hot,” Ang said. “Jordan’s pretty cute, too.”

“That’s not really the issue, though. They were acting so freaking weird. And they’re just … I don’t know.”

“You don’t like Andy?”

“It’s not that…” I hesitated as my thoughts flew back to the Winter Solstice Festival and Mason.

“Oh,” Ang drew out the word and nodded. “Maybe you should just go with it, though. Then Mason will know you’re not waiting around for him.”

It was no surprise Angeline knew what I was thinking. Still, I wasn’t proud that my interest in Andy was just to make Mason jealous.

“Yeah, well. Maybe Andy was just really, really into the petits fours, and that’s all it was. He’s probably already forgotten about me.”

I straightened as the bell on the door chimed and two of Sophie’s groupies, Genevieve and Hannah, sashayed through the door. They’d both styled their hair in imitation of Sophie’s side-parted loose waves, with bangs swept to the left. It took all my self-control to not roll my eyes. They wore huge smiles as they headed to my counter.

“Corinne! Oh my God, your cakes were the best! I swear, I will never eat cake again unless you make it. Soo good,” Genevieve said in a breathy rush.

I began to wonder if I wasn’t giving myself enough credit for my baking skills. Apparently I’d gained some big fans with those petits fours.

I remembered that Genevieve and Hannah had bought one of my petits fours to share at lunch—a yellow-frosted one because they were afraid the blue frosting would stain their teeth—plus two of Sophie’s chocolate cupcakes. And Hannah’s allergic to chocolate.

“You want to order something?” I said.

“Well, yeah, duh. But we wanted to say hey to you, too,” Hannah said with a perky little raise of her shoulder. “I totally love your hair, by the way. Really cool.”

This had to be some kind of joke. I swept my hair behind my ears. I’d dyed a chunk of it purple over the weekend, and I knew for a fact that Sophie and her entourage had been mocking it all week. To be honest, I wasn’t sure the purple streak was really me, but at least it set me apart from the Sophie clones.

I decided to call their bluff.

“Oh, really?” I gave them innocent, wide eyes. “I still have some dye left. I could do you guys, too.”