The Magic Cake Shop (2 page)

“Of course I did! I came up with the idea!” sputtered Mr. Burblee.

“But I was the model. Without me, no one would have remembered your idea. My irresistible beauty is the reason why Chic-Chic is so popular.” Mrs. Burblee smiled and primped her hair.

Mr. Burblee scowled.

“Don’t scowl—you’ll get wrinkles,” said Mrs. Burblee.

They finished the rest of their dinner in silence.

In addition to being a model for Chic-Chic, once a week Mrs. Burblee pumped up sales by working behind the counter at the boutique. She was very good at charming hordes of men into buying pricey eggbeater or porcelain hats. “Trust me,” Mrs. Burblee would coo to a male customer, “your wife will love it.” She would give him a smoldering look, and before he knew it, the befuddled man would have his credit card swiped and his hands full of a hatbox.

Chic-Chic had a no-return, no-refund policy.

Working together, the Burblees did ripping good business. Mrs. Burblee bamboozled men into handing over
their wallets, and Mr. Burblee’s commercials brought in women desperate to seem fashionable at any cost.

Chic-Chic allowed the Burblees to live a life of complete luxury. They drank fancy champagne and ate rare caviar by the gallon. Mrs. Burblee had a jewelry box stuffed with emeralds and pearls. Mr. Burblee kept his seventeen yachts in the most expensive boathouse in the city. Together they owned a small island in a fashionable part of the Pacific Ocean.

But despite their wildly good looks and fortune, the Burblees had one great, terrible blot on their dipped-in-gold world.

I
n their opinions, Mr. and Mrs. Burblee had the perfect, most beautiful life—except for one annoying detail.

That detail was a little girl called Emma.

Emma was Mr. and Mrs. Burblee’s daughter. When Mrs. Burblee saw her baby for the first time, she shuddered. “Gracious, I do hope she grows into something more becoming.”

Mr. Burblee glanced at Emma’s straight brown hair, smatter of freckles, and steady brown eyes. He patted his wife’s hand. “Don’t worry, darling. She’s sure to become a stunner.” He poked at a freckle on Emma’s face. “And if she doesn’t turn into a first-rate beauty, there’s sure to be surgery and operations to fix her.”

But Emma did not turn into an angelic vision of loveliness. Her teeth grew in slightly crooked. Her freckles increased year by year. Her hair stayed straight. Her eyes remained brown and steady—though as she grew older, they developed a glint of fire.

Emma gave her parents more headaches than they could count. Every time Mr. and Mrs. Burblee tried a beauty treatment on her, she found a way to undo their efforts. She refused to have her teeth straightened or her ears pierced or her eyebrows plucked. When Mrs. Burblee dragged her to a salon to curl her hair, Emma kicked the stylist and got banned from the salon. When Mr. Burblee bought her an uncomfortably stylish dress for her sixth birthday, it was found three days later in the local pet shop. Someone had neatly shredded the dress into bedding for the display puppies to nap in.

Emma never kept her dresses clean and wore pants when Mrs. Burblee wasn’t looking. She avoided baths and toothpaste like the plague. Much to her parents’ horror, she did not dive into a world of nail polish and lipstick and glamour products. Instead, she spent most of her time digging for buried treasure in the park with Charles, the Burblees’ chauffeur.

Not only did Emma drive her parents nuts by not caring about her looks, but she also bothered them with the Troubles of the World. One day she came home from school, her face flushed with anger. Mrs. Burblee took one look at her daughter and said, “Emma, you look horrible! Your face is all splotchy.”

“Mom, guess what I learned today!” Emma threw down her book bag and stood shaking with fury.

“Well, for heaven’s sake, be less loud when you’re mad—it’ll ruin your vocal cords. And you have
got
to learn how
to look angry without your face turning into a pepperoni pie—it’s unladylike.”

“Did you know that every five seconds a child dies of hunger?”

Mrs. Burblee paused. “Who told you that?”

“Ms. Bailey, my social studies teacher.”

Mrs. Burblee sighed. “First of all, you should not be upset over something so silly. Why, some mothers I know would just
die
to be as thin as starving children. And second of all, I
refuse
to have a teacher make my daughter look like a blotchy, splotchy mess. I’m calling your principal right away and having that awful woman fired.” Mrs. Burblee took out her phone, hunted for a number, then pressed a button.

“That is not the point!” Emma said.

Mrs. Burblee frowned. “Hello, Principal Jenkins? Yes, this is Emma Burblee’s mother. I need to have a word with you about Ms. Bailey.”

Emma went silently to her room. That night, she logged on to her computer and did some research. The next morning, she emptied the lipstick-shaped bank that her parents had stuffed with money and given to her on her last birthday (“for plastic surgery when you turn eleven,” they had said) and mailed every crisp bill to End World Hunger, a group that gave food to thousands of people around the globe.

The next day at school, Emma found Principal Jenkins and got her to promise not to fire Ms. Bailey in exchange for an extra-fancy Chic-Chic hat.

W
hen Emma displayed no interest in fashion, Mr. and Mrs. Burblee were terribly displeased. When she gave her allowance to street musicians instead of spending gobs of money on makeup and perfume, they fretted and frumped.

But what drove Mr. and Mrs. Burblee absolutely, maddeningly batty was Emma’s endless curiosity about food.

Mr. and Mrs. Burblee regarded most food with horror and revulsion. Mr. Burblee liked nothing better than a tiny meal of carrots and water. Mrs. Burblee carried around a little vial of vinegar that she sniffed from if she had to pass a bakery or sweet shop. “Vulgar, nasty places,” she would mutter. If Emma was with her, Mrs. Burblee would force her to sniff from the vial as well.

When Emma was four, the Burblees hired a fashionable cook named Mrs. Piffle to prepare their daily meals. Mrs. Piffle was a slim woman with sharp eyes and clawlike hands who ruthlessly banned anything that smacked of sugar or
butter. She kept the Burblees on a strict low-calorie diet and forbade Emma from eating outside the home.

Every time Emma came back from an outing, she was forced to stand in front of Mrs. Piffle with her mouth wide open. Mrs. Piffle would take a deep sniff, and if she detected even a whiff of candy or sweets, she sent Emma to her room without supper.

On Emma’s first day of kindergarten, Mrs. Piffle handed her a small bag. “This is your lunch. You are forbidden to eat anything else,” she warned.

Emma gave the bag a shake. It was featherlight. “What if my teacher gives me cookies for snack time? Can I eat them?” she asked.

“Absolutely not!” Mrs. Piffle shrieked. “Cookies are for children with no willpower who grow up to be hideous blimps.” In a high-pitched voice, she crowed, “Remember, you’ll only win if you’re model-thin!”

“Quite right,” Mrs. Burblee agreed, patting Emma’s cheek. “Have a lovely day at kindergarten, dear!” she called before flouncing out to go to Chic-Chic.

When Emma opened the bag in the school cafeteria, she found a Tupperware full of bits of kale and cauliflower, cobbled together with a nub of cheese.

“Eeew, what’s that?” asked a girl sitting next to her.

Emma nudged a cauliflower bit. “I’m not sure.” She hungrily glanced at the girl’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Want to trade?”

The girl wrinkled her nose. “No! Gross! Your lunch
smells funny. Hey, everyone,” she bellowed. “Come look at Emma’s stinky lunch!”

“Oh, grooosss!”

“Hey, aren’t you the kid who won’t eat cookies at snack time? You’re weeeeird!”

“Is that alien food? Are you an alien?”

As her classmates crowded around, Emma felt herself shrink lower and lower into her seat. Kindergarten was going to be a long year with Mrs. Piffle’s Tupperware lunches.

O
ne wintry day, Mrs. Burblee arrived home and tossed a wrinkled paper bag on the living room table. Emma, who was quietly gluing together a paper model airplane, looked up. Her mother was eyeing the bag the way a gardener eyeballs a slug chewing on his best head of lettuce.

“Of all the most insulting things!” Mrs. Burblee cried.

Mr. Burblee came out of the bedroom, adjusting his newest tie. “What’s wrong, dear?” he asked.

Mrs. Burblee pointed a trembling finger at the rumpled bag. “What’s wrong is this unsightly Christmas gift Mrs. Finklepop just gave me!”

“Who’s Mrs. Finklepop?” Emma asked.

Mr. Burblee frowned down at his tie. “Isn’t she that woman who buys a Chic-Chic hat each week?”

“That
pudgy
woman who buys a Chic-Chic hat each week.” Mrs. Burblee shuddered. “I try to be extra-nice to her since she is a regular customer, but just
look
at the disgusting thing she gave me this afternoon!”

Emma put down the glue and airplane and scooted over to the table. She opened the paper bag and pulled out a book.
The Chocolate Lover’s Delight
was written in gold cursive on the front.

“A DESSERT COOKBOOK! THAT AWFUL WOMAN GAVE ME A
DESSERT
COOKBOOK!” Mrs. Burblee bawled. “She thinks I like to eat fat-stuffed, sugar-jacked, high-calorie filth!”

“What a wretched woman,” Mr. Burblee said, fiddling with his tie.

“Disgusting,” Mrs. Burblee agreed. She flounced over to Emma. With her index finger and thumb, she plucked the book from Emma’s hands. Holding the book as if it were a moldy grape, she carried it to the trash and dropped it in. “Emma, be a dear and take out the garbage. I can’t stand the thought of that book in my home for one more instant.”

As Emma wiped her hands and got up, Mrs. Burblee marched to the bathroom. “I need a shower to rid myself of the vileness of touching that thing,” she announced, then disappeared.

Mr. Burblee lifted his eyebrows, then went into the bedroom to work on his tie knot.

Emma went to the trash bin and hefted up the plastic bag with the book. She carried it out of the apartment and into the hallway to the trash chute. She was just about to drop the bag into the chute when a nudge of curiosity got the better of her.

She looked left and right.

No one was there.

The hallway was cool and silent.

Emma sat down and reached into the trash bag. Her hand closed on the dessert book. With a quick tug, she removed it from the plastic bag.

Nervously, she ran her fingers over the embossed gold letters on the cover. She opened the book to the first recipe. Her heart gave a tiny jump.

She was staring at a photograph of a five-layered slice of chocolate cake, drizzled in icing and topped with a ripe red strawberry.

Emma turned the page. It held a recipe for chocolate cream pie. Tiny sprinkles of grated dark chocolate floated on clouds of whipped cream that rested on a light brown bed of chocolate custard.

Emma felt her head spin as she looked at the picture. As she turned each glossy, chocolate-filled page, she felt like she had discovered a magic spell book. Words like “mix” and “fold” and “melt” leaped out like secret words of power. She spent the evening in her room, tracing the recipe directions with her finger, trying to make sense of the words and how they could create each breathtaking dessert pictured on the opposite page. For the next two months she read and reread the cookbook, waiting for her chance to dodge Mrs. Piffle and try out her first dessert recipe.

One Saturday morning, Mrs. Piffle fell ill with the flu,
leaving the Burblees to cook for themselves. Mr. and Mrs. Burblee harrumphed and comforted themselves with a bag of baby carrots from the refrigerator before heading to Chic-Chic.

Emma, however, had other plans. Trembling with anticipation, she dug out
The Chocolate Lover’s Delight
from underneath her bed. With a fistful of her allowance clutched tightly in her pocket, she made a trip to the grocery store and came back with ingredients for chocolate cream pie. She spent the afternoon stirring and mixing and sifting, feverishly baking her first homemade dessert. Mindful of Mrs. Piffle’s wrath, she cleaned up her dishes and put them back exactly as she had found them while the pie baked in the oven.