Winner Bakes All (2 page)

“I don't want to cancel our trip, but I have no choice,” her dad tried to explain. “The airfare, the hotel, the meals, the ski rentals. How could we possibly afford it?”

Her mom stormed out of the kitchen and refused to say another word to her father all night. “The silent treatment” was what Tyler called it. “It's when she's super mad, so mad she can't even talk,” he whispered. “This is
baaad
.”

It was bad. Very bad. And Sadie didn't know how to explain all of this to Kylie. Her mom and dad argued once in a while—usually over silly things, like who forgot to close the garage door. It was nothing like this.

“Kylie, do you think my parents will get divorced?” Sadie asked softly. She knew her friend would give her a straight answer.

“Um, I don't know, Sadie. How bad are they fighting?”

Sadie filled Kylie in on yesterday's and today's fireworks.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Sadie knew Kylie was thinking hard before she gave an answer.

“Well, lots of kids at Blakely Elementary have divorced parents,” she finally replied. Sadie thought that was her nice way of saying, “Yeah, it's a definite possibility.”

“But I don't want mine to be divorced. It's awful! You live in two houses and have two rooms. You're always going back and forth…”

“Hey, don't frost the cupcake before it's cooled!” Kylie interrupted.

Sadie scratched her head. “What does that mean?”

“It means ‘Don't think too fast.' Your parents haven't told you they're getting divorced!”

Sadie shook the ugly idea of divorce out of her head and tried to focus instead on happier thoughts—like spending the afternoon with the cupcake club and finishing her math homework in time to watch the Giants game on TV tonight. “Okay, I'll come over.”

“Awesome!” Kylie cheered. Then she added gently, “Whatever happens, Sadie, you know we're all here for you, right?”

•••

Sadie
did
know Kylie, Jenna, and Lexi would always stand by her. She remembered the time last year when she sprained her ankle and was on crutches for two weeks. She thought it was the end of the world, but the girls assured her it was only a temporary setback. She'd be back in the game in no time.

“It's like in
The
Mummy
Returns
,” Kylie explained. “They think the mummy is gone for good…but no! He wakes up again to terrorize Brendan Fraser!”

Sadie rolled her eyes. “This is basketball, Kylie, not a monster movie.”

“Kylie has a point,” Lexi insisted. “The doctor said you'd be fine in two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” Sadie moaned, gently touching her bandaged ankle. “I have to walk around on crutches! How am I supposed to go up and down the stairs at school?”

“Piggyback ride?” Jenna joked. “Or we could tie a rope around your waist and pull you up the side of the building through the science lab window…”

Sadie was moping for two days straight until the girls showed up at her doorstep with a plan to cheer her up.

“Cupcake delivery!” they announced when Mrs. Harris answered the door.

“Oh, my…come right in, girls. She's in the living room. Just be careful: she's not in a great mood and she bites!”

When Sadie turned around, she couldn't believe her eyes. There were Kylie, Jenna, and Lexi, all dressed like giant cupcakes with silver foil wrappers around their hips and red “cherry” balloons tied to their heads. Each girl was wearing a white T-shirt “sprinkled” with multicolored specks of paint.

“Special delivery for Sadie Harris!” Jenna giggled. “A singing cupcake-gram!”

Kylie hit the Play button on her iPod touch, and hip-hop music filled the living room. The trio began to rap:

“Sadie, Sadie, don't be blue!

We've got a cupcake-gram for you!

What's tall and cool and super sweet?

Can
you
guess
who'll be back on her feet?

Sadie, Sadie, give a cheer!

You'll get well soon, we have no fear!”

At the end of the rap, Kylie and Jenna got down on their hands and knees, and Lexi climbed on their backs, forming a pyramid. She wobbled but managed to stand up and toss confetti in the air. “Hugs and sprinkles from PLC!” all three shouted, showering the couch—and Sadie—with glittering shreds of paper.

Sadie and her mom applauded wildly. “That was amazing, girls,” her mother said. “Love the costumes!”

Lexi climbed down. “Aren't they cool? It was my idea to do the cherries on top.” She took off the balloon and handed it to Sadie. “At least we got you to smile!”

Sadie had to admit that she did feel better. They'd even baked her get-well cupcakes with cute little fondant crutches on top.

“This is really nice of you,” she said, licking the chocolate buttercream off her fingers.

“You didn't think we'd let you sit around feeling sorry for yourself, did you?” Kylie asked. “If you can't come to the cupcakes, the cupcakes will come to you!”

•••

Sadie would never forget how the girls had managed to take her mind off her troubles. But divorce wasn't as simple to fix as a sprained ankle. And no amount of cupcakes could help her pass fifth-grade math if she failed her quiz this week. What would she do? What
could
she do?

Kylie read her mind. “We'll work it out,” she assured Sadie.

“We need to come up with a new cupcake of the month,” Kylie told her fellow PLC-ers. “Something that's wintery.” They had spread dozens of cookbooks on Kylie's bed and were flipping through the pages, searching for ideas.

“What about angel food cake…with snow angels on top?” Lexi suggested, holding up her notebook. Sadie checked out her sketch: it was beautifully drawn as always, and the cupcakes looked heavenly.

“I'm thinking candy cane cupcakes—with peppermint frosting,” Jenna piped up. “Or what about hot cocoa cupcakes…with mini marshmallows? You know me…it's all about the flavor.”

“I think those are all cool,” Kylie agreed. “Especially with the forecast this week. They're predicting a major blizzard in the Northeast.”

“Can you say, ‘Snow Day'?” Jenna exclaimed. “I have this awesome flying saucer sled.
Vamos
a
la
nieve!
Let it snow!”

“Snowball fight!” Kylie chimed in. “You are so going down, Jenna!”

“I'm just hoping it hits before Friday's math quiz,” Sadie added. “Don't you think they'll close school if we get a foot of snow?”

“Probably, and that will give us a chance to work on our designs,” Lexi said, getting down to cupcake business. She grabbed her sketchbook and began drawing. “What if we sprinkled the top of a white chocolate cupcake with shredded coconut to look like a snowball?” She held up her sketch.

“Mr. Ludwig will love those for the Golden Spoon,” Kylie said. “Snowball cupcakes in honor of the blizzard!” The girls knew their steady customer would want a brand-new batch of cupcakes to sell in his gourmet shop in Greenwich as soon as possible. He'd already left Kylie two messages asking when he could get his delivery this week.

He was a loyal friend to Peace, Love, and Cupcakes. After all, he'd given them their very first business contract after sampling one of their chocolate cupcakes at a school event. Thanks to Mr. Ludwig, they had become more than just a Blakely Elementary School cupcake club. They were now a real baking business. But he wasn't the most patient person on the planet!

“Maybe we should send out an email blast,” Jenna pointed out. “Let our customers know we've got new flavors. It might help our business pick up a little…”

Kylie flipped through their accounting log. Jenna was right. They had been selling five or six dozen fewer every week. Even Mr. Ludwig had reduced his weekly order from 300 to 240 cupcakes, and just this past weekend they'd had a birthday order cancellation at the last minute.

“I think it's the economy,” Sadie said. “My dad says things are tough all over.”

Jenna nodded. “You can say that again.”

“Is your family okay?” Sadie had almost forgotten that Ms. Medina was a single mom with five kids. Jenna's family didn't have a lot of money to begin with, and her mom relied heavily on her job in a tailor shop.

“My mom says people always need their clothes sewn and hemmed. The less new stuff you can afford to buy, the more you have to fix what you have. She and my two older sisters have been pretty busy lately.”

Sadie was relieved. At least someone was doing well. She wished she could say the same for her family. She didn't dare tell her parents that her basketball coach had mentioned buying new team uniforms this year. They'd freak because the uniform would cost a fortune.

“Maybe your mom could get a job as a seamstress,” Jenna suggested.

Sadie chuckled at the thought. Her mom couldn't even sew on a button. Last year, Sadie had torn her track shorts before a meet and asked her mom to sew them. Her mom had no idea what to do with a needle and thread, so she'd used a stapler and tape to repair the shorts. Just as Sadie crossed the finish line, she heard “
Rip
!
” and felt a draft. She didn't realize what had happened until the track team captain pointed to her butt and giggled, “Nice polka-dot panties!”

“I don't think my mom is the sewing type,” Sadie reflected.

“Well, what is she good at?” Lexi asked. “She must be good at something.”

Sadie twirled her ponytail. “Well, she's good at being a mom. She always says it's the best job anyone could ever have.”

“That's true,” Lexi replied, “but it doesn't pay much, does it?”

“Maybe you could help. Do some baby-sitting on the side,” Kylie offered.

Sadie already felt like she had three full-time jobs: the cupcake club, the basketball team, and being a fifth-grader. She couldn't imagine piling more on her plate, but she felt like she needed to do something to help her family.

“We're just going to have to make more money with PLC,” she told her friends. “I think the more money my family has, the less my parents will fight.”

She noticed that Kylie had been awfully quiet this whole time—which usually meant she was cooking up a crazy cupcake plan.

“Kylie?” Sadie tapped her friend on the shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

“I got it!” Kylie spun around in her desk chair. “Peace, Love, and Cupcakes Points!”

Sadie raised an eyebrow. “Points? Points for what? Like a video game?”

“It's like the frequent-shopper cards my mom uses at the pharmacy and the grocery store,” Kylie explained. “For every cupcake you buy, you collect points until you earn enough to get a dozen free. In our case, if you buy three dozen cupcakes in a month, you get one dozen free.”

“That's a great idea, Kylie!” Lexi exclaimed. “People will order from us every week to earn their cupcake points. We'll have tons of orders!”

“And tons of deliveries to make,” Jenna pointed out. “What do we do about that?”

“Tyler and Corey will help with the deliveries,” Sadie volunteered. She knew she could convince them—especially if it helped make peace between their parents.

“Maybe we should paint Tyler's car to look like a cupcake-mobile,” Lexi suggested. “Cupcake trucks are really popular in New York City. I saw a lot of them there when I was staying with Aunt Dee.”

Sadie shook her head. “I don't think my brother would appreciate that. He thinks his Honda is a ‘babe magnet.'” The girls all giggled.

“What should we say in the email subject line?” Kylie asked. She opened her laptop and began typing.

“What about ‘Get to the point!'” Jenna joked. “As in PLC Points.”

Sadie thought about what would get her attention in an email. “How about, ‘Sweet Rewards: Free Cupcakes for PLC Customers!'”

“Love it!” Kylie high-fived her. “This is going to be our biggest selling week ever!”

The next day at school, the girls needed to run their plan by Juliette Dubois, PLC's advisor and Blakely's drama teacher. Juliette was always very practical with her advice for their business—but she also encouraged them to think big.

“A points program makes a lot of sense,” she said. “Everyone is looking for bargains right now. I've been clipping coupons trying to save money myself. And you'll learn a very important lesson: creating customer loyalty will mean long-term sales.”

Kylie showed her their idea for the email blast.

“So how long do you intend to run this points program?” Juliette asked.

“We hadn't really thought about that,” Sadie answered. “I guess we could run it for a month.”

“I think you might need longer than that to get people hooked,” Juliette considered. “I'd say give it a try for three months and see how it does. When are you sending out the email blast—and to how many customers?”

Kylie gulped. “Wow. We didn't think about that either. I guess our entire customer list—that's 500 people. We could get it out tomorrow so people could order for the weekend.”

“Now that's a plan, man!” Juliette cheered. “Go to it, girls!”

A day later, the club was flooded with requests for PLC's Cupcake of the Week: “There's No Business like Snow Business.” The girls gathered at Sadie's house to bake, decorate, and box the orders so her brothers could deliver them.

“I am totally going to fail my math quiz Friday,” Sadie sighed. “With all of this baking, how will I study?”

“We'll bake
and
study,” Kylie insisted.

Jenna held up her hands, which were covered in flour and buttercream. “Um, I wouldn't bring any math textbooks in this kitchen at the moment. It's a mess!”

“You see?” Sadie said. “It's hopeless.”

“Relax and focus on cupcake math,” Kylie insisted.

Lexi giggled. “Now that would be a cool subject in school! Do you get to frost as you do your fractions?”

Kylie continued: “Sadie, we have a total of 216 cupcakes to bake and have four dozen already in the oven. How many do we have left to bake?”

Sadie thought hard and tried to picture the equation in her head. “Well, 4 times 12 equals 48,” she began. “So 216 minus 48 would be 168.”

Kylie applauded. “And how many dozen is that? Write an equation and solve!”

Sadie closed her eyes and saw cupcakes lined up on a countertop. She pictured them in groups of 12. The equation would be: 168 divided by 12 equals
x
. So
x
would be 14.

“We have 14 dozen left to go!” Sadie answered.

“
Muy
bueno
!” Jenna cheered. “You are so going to pass that quiz Friday!”

A few flakes started falling outside the window just as the girls were putting the cupcakes in the oven. But by the time the last dozen were piped with white chocolate frosting and dipped in shredded coconut, the winds were whipping up and the ground was covered by a white blanket of snow.

“I thought they didn't say snow 'til Thursday night,” Lexi said, peering outside.

“That's weathermen for you,” Mrs. Harris sighed. “I guess they were off by a day.” She looked concerned. “Now your father is going to have to stop working on the Saperstones' garage door. It's getting bad out there quickly.”

Kylie peered out the window. “I don't think I can bike home in this…”

Mrs. Harris nodded. “I think you should all call your parents and tell them you'll be sleeping over here tonight. We'll see how bad it is in the morning.”

Kylie, Jenna, and Lexi cheered: “Slumber party!”

“Better not let my brothers hear that…” Sadie warned. She knew Corey and Tyler would be up to all sorts of tricks if they heard her friends were staying over.

But it was too late. “I smell something good…Hand it over!” Corey demanded. He bounded into the kitchen, tracking snow across the floor, and dropped his dripping wet jacket over the back of a chair.

“Say
please
,” Mrs. Harris corrected him.

“Okay…
please
hand it over,” Corey joked.

Jenna offered him a cupcake, and he inhaled it in two bites. “Would you like to know what you just ate?” she asked.

“Nope. Just give me another one…” He licked his lips. “Or I will torture you guys all night with practical jokes. Did I ever tell you about the itching powder I put in Sadie's sleeping bag when she was eight?”

The girls looked at Sadie for confirmation. “Give him another cupcake,” she said. “I itched for days.”

“I hope the snow doesn't shut down all the roads,” Kylie suddenly thought. “How will we get all these cupcakes delivered?”

“Dogsled?” Corey teased, helping himself to a third cupcake. “Mush! Mush!”

“Nah…reindeer are better,” called a voice from the living room. “On Donner, on Blitzen…” Sadie's brother Tyler appeared in the kitchen, covered in snow. “It's really coming down out there.” He scooped a cupcake off the counter and popped it whole in his mouth.

Kylie, Jenna, and Lexi all stared.

“Don't look so surprised,” Sadie teased. “My big brothers are human vacuum cleaners. They eat anything that's not nailed down.”

Tyler swallowed and let out a huge burp. “Yes, siree, that's me!” He was starting to grab another cupcake when Mrs. Harris swatted his hand away.

“Enough, you two! You'll spoil your dinner. Go get changed and washed up. And girls, let's get this kitchen clean. I know there must be a table somewhere under all that shredded coconut.”

Kylie grabbed a broom and helped Sadie sweep the floor.

“So…your family seems okay?” she whispered.

Sadie shrugged. “I guess…for now.”

•••

Sadie's father finally arrived home nearly two hours later. The roads were iced over, and his truck could barely make its way up the steep hill to their house.

“What a night!” he exclaimed as he opened the front door. His black mustache and beard were white with snow.

“Daddy!” Sadie raced to give him a hug. “I was getting worried!”

“What's that? A fraidy Sadie? I never heard of such a thing!” he teased.

Sadie shivered. “Your nose feels like a Popsicle!”

“I was out in the snow for over an hour trying to fix the Saperstones' garage door opener.”

“Did you see Jeremy?” Lexi piped up, eager to hear news about her “boyfriend,” the Saperstones' youngest son.

“You mean your Romeo?” Jenna teased, referring to the Shakespeare play,
Romeo
and
Juliet
, they had performed in drama class.

“Jeremy's snowed in just like you ladies,” Mr. Harris said. “Chess practice canceled or something like that.” He brushed the snow off the bottoms of his jeans.

“Ooh! I'll go call him now!” Lexi squealed. Sadie rolled her eyes. She couldn't understand how Lexi could care so much about a boy. Sadie had a house full of them…and it was no big deal!

“Did you finish the Saperstones' door?” Mrs. Harris asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “No. I have to do more work on it when this storm blows over.”

Sadie guessed that meant no pay for his work today. She tried to wipe the look of disappointment off his face.

“Eskimo kiss!” she said, rubbing noses. “With a real, live Eskimo!”

He smiled, but Sadie saw that her mom was frowning. “I'll reheat your dinner, Gabe,” she said, and shuffled back to the kitchen.

•••

Later that evening, Jenna and Lexi made themselves comfy in sleeping bags on the living-room rug while Kylie and Sadie shared the foldout couch. Sadie flipped channels until she found Connecticut's
Battle
of
the
Bakers
. “I want the old lady from Beacon Falls to win tonight's battle,” Jenna said, stuffing a handful of popcorn in her mouth. “Go, Granny Annie's Cupcakes!”

“How cool would it be to be on this show?” Kylie daydreamed. “We could totally win, you know. And the prize is $5,000!”

Lexi thought it over. “We might have a chance. But first you have to make an audition video and send it in.”

“So let's make a video!” Kylie insisted. “We could do it tomorrow—I bet there'll be no school. Maybe not even Thursday or Friday.”

“Uh, are you forgetting something? Our cupcake deliveries?” Sadie pointed to the boxes piled high on the dining-room table. “No deliveries, no money.”

“I'm sure they'll plow the roads by midday, and your brothers will be able to drive them over,” Lexi said.

“I need more popcorn for Round 2,” Jenna said, waving the empty bowl. “Would ya mind, Sadie?”

Sadie took the bowl and was about to barge into the kitchen when the sound of low, angry voices stopped her. She put her ear against the door and heard her parents. They were at it again.

“I worked all day for nothing!” her father snapped.

“Well, that's not my fault!” her mother barked back.

Sadie couldn't stand it anymore. Why were they always bickering? Why couldn't they get along?

“Hey, Sadie…where's that popcorn? Commercial's over!” Jenna called.

Kylie was the one who noticed Sadie frozen at the kitchen door, clutching the bowl to her chest and eavesdropping. “You okay, Sadie?” she called.

Just then, the tears welled in the corners of her eyes and Sadie couldn't stop them from spilling down her cheeks. She didn't want her friends to think she was a baby, but she couldn't help crying. She felt like her heart was breaking in two.

“No, I'm not okay!” she sobbed, flinging the empty bowl to the floor. “My parents are getting a divorce!”