Mia's Recipe for Disaster (5 page)

On the train home the next morning, I had two things on my mind:

1. How was I going to finish the dress?

2. Was it going to be weird to see Katie that night at the Cupcake Club meeting?

I didn't know how to handle number two yet, but I decided I could tackle problem number one with some Alexis-style scheduling. I divided a page of my sketchbook into ten squares—the number of days I had to finish. Then I figured out how much sewing I needed to do each day, adding in
my Cupcake Club meetings that I remembered. If I stuck to the schedule, I could have the dress done by next Sunday, do a fitting with Emma, make adjustments, and then take the final photo.

“Whew!” I said out loud, looking at it. It would be tough, but I could do it.

I told my mom my plan when she picked me up at the train station.

“My homework is done, so I'm going to sew all afternoon until the Cupcake Club meeting,” I said, and then I frowned.

“What's wrong?” Mom asked.

“I had a big fight with Katie,” I said, and it felt good to get it out. “She said she didn't like my sketch for the dress! She actually called it boring!” I told Mom the rest of the story, including how I had tried to explain myself to Katie but made it worse by calling her Silly Arms.

“Hmm,” Mom said. “Well, Mia, it sounds like your feelings were hurt by Katie's comments, and you may have lashed out a bit.”

“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “But, I mean, what does she know about fashion anyway?”

We pulled up at a traffic light, and Mom looked at me. “Let me give you some advice. If you are to become a fashion designer, you have to learn
two very important things: one is how to talk to people, especially potential clients. The other, is how to take criticism.”

“But if I'm proud of my work, shouldn't I defend it?” I asked.

“It's all in the way you do it,” Mom said. “First of all, remember that everyone has different tastes. What you may think is classic and chic, someone else may think is plain or dull. Something you may think is overworked and over-the-top might look gorgeous to someone else. So when somebody expresses his or her opinion, don't take it personally. And remember that everyone has his or her own style. That's what makes things interesting.”

I thought about that. Katie loves everything rainbow colored; we sometimes joke that her bedroom looks like a unicorn threw up in it. It made sense that she wouldn't like my gray dress.

“Besides, friends are more important than fashion,” Mom went on. “I'd hate to think of you fighting with Katie over a dress, of all things.”

It was like my being mad at Katie was a balloon, and Mom popped it. Suddenly, I didn't even feel mad or annoyed with her anymore—I just felt terrible about what I had said to her.

I got out my phone and texted Katie.

See you tonight!

I waited, hoping she would text me back right away, but she didn't. That made me nervous.

What if Katie could never forgive me?

I
was kind of glad that I had so much sewing to do, because it kept my mind off Katie all afternoon. Before I knew it, Mom was calling me down to dinner (Eddie's roast chicken and Mom's rice and peas). Then Mom drove me to Alexis's house for our Sunday night Cupcake Club meeting.

I was really nervous as I rang the bell. What if Katie wasn't talking to me? How would we bake cupcakes together? It would be so awkward and terrible.

Then the door opened, and Katie was standing there.

“I'm sorry!” we both said at the same time, and then we started laughing, crying, and apologizing all at once.

“I should never have criticized your dress. You're the fashion expert!”

“I was wrong to get mad when you said the dress was plain. It
is
plain, and I know you love bright colors.”

“But I shouldn't have said it was boring . . .”

“And I shouldn't have called you Silly Arms . . .”

“Let's promise never to fight again!”

“Never, ever again!”

Alexis stepped in between us. “Okay! Enough with the lovefest!” she teased. “Can we please get back to business as usual now?”

I hugged Katie one more time. “Okay, now we can!”

We followed Alexis into her kitchen, where Emma was filling the cupcake pans with paper cups. Alexis's kitchen is superneat, and Alexis had all the baking ingredients set out in a row on the counter. I took the bag of decorating supplies I had brought and dumped it out onto the kitchen table. Alexis grimaced.

“Sorry about the mess,” I said. “It's just . . . we have so many ideas to test out, so I brought a lot of stuff.”

The table was covered with small tubes of decorating gel, bags of skinny black licorice, jelly
beans in Halloween colors—black, green, orange, and purple—and other small bags of candy that I thought would be interesting. Mom had also picked up some candy eyeballs for us. They're pretty easy to find in the baking section of the craft store.

“I thought for the test batch we should do the pumpkin cupcakes, since we can make vanilla and chocolate ones in our sleep,” Alexis said.

Katie held up a can of puréed pumpkin. “I brought the stuff.”

“And I've got butter softening for the icing,” Emma said, nodding to her pink stand mixer, which she had brought for our baking session. “I figure we can do vanilla and then try a bunch of different colors.”

“I'll get to work on the batter,” Katie said.

“I'll help,” I offered.

While Emma and Alexis worked on the icing, I helped Katie make the pumpkin cupcakes. She told me what she needed, and I measured it out for her: flour, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin. . . . There were a lot of ingredients. When the batter was done, we poured it into the cups and then put it in the oven to bake. That gave us about twenty minutes to clean up and hang out.

“So, I can't believe George's party is this coming Saturday!” Emma said. “I think I know what my costume's going to be. My mom's helping me with it.”

“Ooh, what are you going to be?” Katie asked.

Emma's eyes twinkled. “I kind of want it to be a surprise.”

“Well, I don't mind telling you all my costume—” Alexis began, but Emma raised her hand.

“No, don't!” she cried. “I mean, we do everything together. We have a business together, we study together, we hang out together. Which is great. So maybe just this once we should surprise one another.”

“Cool!” Katie said. “I am definitely going to surprise you guys.”

“Yeah, sure,” I agreed, but inside, I was thinking,
My surprise might be that I don't have a costume!
It was the last thing on my mind, really.

Alexis dried her hands on a dish towel. “We should do some scheduling. George's party is Saturday night, so we can't bake then. So when do we want to do the cupcakes for Angelo Ricco's party?”

“Saturday morning?” Katie asked.

“Or we could bake Friday night and decorate Saturday morning,” Emma suggested. “It's always easier to decorate when the cupcakes are cool.”

My mind was racing. Friday night. Saturday morning. When would I find time to sew?

“Um, would you guys mind if I skipped baking Friday night?” I asked. “I only have a week to sew the dress for the contest and . . .”

“Of course!” Katie said quickly. “But you can decorate Saturday morning, right? I mean, we really need you for that.”

I nodded. I'd make it work somehow. “Sure.”

“That works for me,” Alexis said. “And that will give us time to get ready for the party that night.”

The timer went off, and Alexis took the cupcakes out of the oven. Katie did that trick where you stick a toothpick in the center, and if it comes up clean, it means the cupcakes are done. Then we put them in the fridge to cool off quickly, because if you put icing on warm cupcakes, it will just be a melted mess.

We started talking about George's party again.

“So, Katie, are you and George going to his party together?” Alexis asked.

“Well, George will already be there, so it's not like we can go together,” Katie said.

“You know what I mean,” Alexis said. “Are you
going together, like hanging out at the party as a couple?”

Katie's cheeks turned pink, and she shrugged. “Not really. It's not like a school dance or something. And it's not like he asked me. Why, are you
going
with Matt?”

Matt is Emma's brother, who's a grade above us. Sometimes it seems like he and Alexis are all flirty with each other, and other times they're just friends. It's sometimes really weird for Emma to be in the middle.

Now Alexis's cheeks turned pink. “Well, George only invited kids from our grade, so Matt's not going.” Then she looked at me. “What about you and Chris?”

I'm pretty sure Chris likes me, because we have gone to stuff together, like the pep rally parade. I'd been so busy working on the dress that it hadn't occurred to me that Chris hadn't asked me to go to the party with him yet.

“Um, I don't know,” I answered, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “I haven't talked to him much lately.”

“Well, the party's still a week away,” Katie said. “Maybe he's just waiting to ask you.”

I shrugged. “There's no rule that says he has to
ask me to go with him. As long as we're both there, right?”

“Of course,” Emma assured me, only I wasn't feeling so assured. It
was
kind of weird that Chris hadn't asked me yet.

Katie opened the fridge and poked one of the cupcakes. “They're good,” she said. “Let's get decorating.”

“We should taste test one without icing first, to see how the pumpkin flavor came out,” Alexis suggested.

“Good idea,” Katie agreed. She cut one of the cupcakes into four pieces, and we each took a bite.

“Mmm, pumpkiny!” Emma said.

“Yes, the pumpkin flavor is nice,” Katie said thoughtfully. “It might just need a pinch more cinnamon, though.”

I looked at the bowls of icing that Emma and Alexis had made: lime green, orange, purple, and dark chocolate brown.

“So, let's do, like, four cupcakes in each color,” I suggested. “Then we can try different techniques on each.”

Katie raised her hand. “I call purple!”

A few minutes later we had the whole batch iced, and I quickly forgot about my dress and Chris
while we experimented with the decorations. First, I took a chocolate-iced cupcake and stuck four pieces of licorice on each side to make spider legs. Then I added candy eyeballs.

“Hmm,” I mused, standing back. “It still needs something.”

“Sprinkles!” Katie said, handing me a small jar of chocolate sprinkles. “That will make the body look nice and fuzzy, like a tarantula.”

I carefully applied sprinkles to the top of the cupcake. “You're a genius!” I cried. “This looks great.”

Katie grinned. “I learned from the best.”

Emma held up a cupcake with purple icing. She had made a monster face with jelly bean eyes and a gel-icing mouth with candy-corn teeth.

“That is so cute!” Katie cried. “Now I want to make a monster, too!”

I took a cupcake with lime green icing and stared at it. Then I picked up six round fruit candies in different colors and put them on top to look like eyeballs. I used a gel-icing pen to draw a black dot inside each “eye.” Then I picked up a skinny length of red licorice, cut off a short piece, and shaped it into a grimace on the monster's face. A jelly bean made the perfect tongue.

“The kids are going to love these monster cupcakes,” Alexis said. “Perfect. We'll need to take pictures of the cupcakes we make for the party and add them to our website. I'll bet we get a lot more Halloween bookings next year.”

“Good idea,” I said. I wiped off my hands and took out my phone. “Let me take some pictures now, so that we can remember what we did when we make them for real next week.”