Confectionately Yours #1: Save the Cupcake! (14 page)

“W
hat’s going on here?” Dean Whittier frowns at Meghan, who flashes him an innocent smile.

It’s Wednesday, and we’re standing near the front entranceway, behind a card table loaded with mini-cupcakes. We’ve each got a clipboard, which makes us look official. This is something Marco discovered two years ago. He was in a supermarket parking lot, trying to sign up people for a walkathon, but they just kept coming up to him and asking official questions, like, “What are the store hours?” and “Can I have a job application?” He got bored, so he decided to walk around the parking lot, standing in random empty spots, and then — whenever people tried to pull in — telling them that they couldn’t park there. He said that nobody argued; they just looked at the clipboard and drove on.

I’ve always known that story would come in handy someday, and I’m right, because it’s only 8:05, and we’ve already got fifty signatures. Also, I think the cupcakes have been helping. Our table has been mobbed all morning.

Unfortunately, Dean Whittier doesn’t seem impressed by the clipboards. “What trouble are you causing now, Ms. Markerson?”

“Do you mean, How am I helping the students express their ideas to the administration?” she corrects him.

“Oh, boy.” The dean sighs. “I can already tell I’m going to love this one.”

“It has come to our attention” — she points at me, and I resist the urge to duck under the table — “that the PTO plans to ban bake sales and the general presence of sweet treats at school. We simply want to make the students aware of this.”

“Look, you’re going to have to shut this down.”

“Why?”

“You’re bribing students with cupcakes.”

“We’re simply giving away cupcakes. There’s no obligation to sign the petition.”

I flush as two boys snag cupcakes, then dart away from the table. “Those guys didn’t sign,” I point out.

“Would you like a cupcake, Dean Whittier?” Meghan asks.

“No, thank you. I’m not sure that’s appropriate.”

“Would you like to sign the petition?” I ask.

Dean Whittier looks at me in surprise, then laughs. “I’m not sure that’s appropriate, either.”

“Nice try, though, right?” Meghan says with a grin. “Hayley’s good.”

“Don’t let her get you into too much mischief, Ms. Hicks,” the dean says, and walks away. I’m shocked that he knows my name, and wonder if it’s a good sign or a bad one.

“Nice one!” Meghan holds her palm up for a high five, and I slap it.

Once the dean is gone, the traffic at our table picks up. Almost everybody is furious to hear that the PTO wants to ban sweets. One kid even threatens to sue the school if the measure passes. That’s Omar Gomez, though, whose mother is a lawyer. He’s basically always threatening to sue somebody.

I catch sight of Ezra, and call him over. “Sign this petition,” I tell him, thrusting my clipboard at him.

He frowns, but takes a cupcake, anyway. “What’s up?”

“The PTO wants to ban cupcakes, bake sales, you name it.”

“What? That’s how we raise money for our soccer uniforms!”

“Not anymore, if you don’t sign this petition.”

Ezra signs, and immediately calls over his teammate Tom Stacco, who calls over Evangeline Jackson, the captain of the girls’ soccer team. Soon we have members from both teams helping us, handing out cupcakes and asking for signatures, and before I know it, I’m face-to-face with Marco.

“Hi,” I say.

His eyes are flat and hard. “You have a petition?”

“Yeah.” I get the clipboard back from an eighth-grade girl and hand it to Marco. “It’s really great that you’re signing this.” I know my voice sounds gushy, but I can’t help it. I wish he would just look at me and smile, let me know that things are okay between us.

He looks up at me with that same flat expression, almost as if I’m not even there. “I signed it for the soccer team, not for you, Hayley.”

I try hard not to flinch, though my face stings as if I’ve been slapped. He starts to turn away, but before his eyes fully leave mine, I hear myself ask, “Would you like a cupcake?”

Marco stares at me for a long moment, long enough for another person from the soccer team to grab the clipboard out of my hand. Then he takes a cupcake and walks away, slowly pulling the paper wrapper from the side.

Someone puts the clipboard back into my hand just in time for Kyle to ask if he can sign. I give him the clipboard without thinking, until finally he has to ask me where he should put his name.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Kyle. Here.” I take his hand and guide it halfway down the page.

“Hayley! We’re out of cupcakes,” Meghan says.

“Are you kidding?”

“I’m scratching out my name,” Kyle announces.

“No! Don’t. I’ll make you a cupcake,” I promise.

Kyle grins, revealing a dimple in his right cheek. “I was just kidding.”

“Oh.”

“But I’ll take that cupcake.”

“Okay. I don’t know when I’ll have time —”

“Anytime,” he says, and in the next moment, someone pushes him aside and grabs the clipboard from me (again) just as the first bell rings.

The students around our table scatter like minnows surprised by a stone splashing into their pond. I help Meghan fold up the table. “I’ve got it,” she says. “Mrs. Diamond said I can store it in the office.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s light! See you in homeroom.”

I grin at her, then notice a familiar auburn head bobbing down the hall. Seeing a chance for one more signature, I sprint after her. “Artie!” I shout. “Hey! Wait up!”

She turns around and looks at me, her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Hi, Hayley.”

“Um, listen, would you sign this petition?” I briefly explain about the PTO, then hand Artie a pen.

To my surprise, she doesn’t reach for the clipboard.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“You’re starting a petition?”

“Meghan and I are, yeah.”

Artie’s eyes narrow, but she nods, as if that’s the information she was expecting. “I should have known.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“I don’t know …. Isn’t this just a little … juvenile?”

My heart is thudding in my chest. Juvenile?
Juvenile?
My mouth falls open, but the words are still frozen on my lips. I feel as if I’m made of sand, about to blow away in the wind. “Artie, I —”

She purses her lips. “Look, Hayley, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I don’t want to be called Artie anymore.”

“What? What should I call you?”

Seriously, I’m expecting her to say Fabulosa, or Queen Janice, or something equally weird, but what she says is, “My name is Artemis. Devon says that someone with a name as beautiful as that shouldn’t have a boy’s nickname.”

“But — but —” The bell rings, and Artie — Artemis — frowns.

“I’m late. I’ll see you, okay?” And she gives me a friendly little pat on the shoulder — the kind of thing you might do to a child or a dog — and dashes off to her locker.

I stare after her for a moment, wondering who on earth she is.

J
uvenile?
Juvenile is when you call the radio show fifteen times to request that they play the
Batman
theme song!

Juvenile is when you sing to your cat! Juvenile is when you dare your best friend to eat a worm!

Juvenile is when you hide your Barbies under the bed so you can still play with them — even during your first year in middle school!

Juvenile is when you put your finger into the pencil sharpener to see what happens!

Juvenile is when you write a fan letter to the Muppets!

Juvenile is when you tell your best friend not to use the name she’s been calling you since you were both two years old!

That’s juvenile.

That’s
what’s juvenile, okay?

A
million more responses to the word
juvenile
are bubbling in my mind as I yank open the door to the drugstore and storm down the school supplies aisle. Meghan has asked me to pick up some poster board and make a couple of signs to take to the PTO meeting. Of course I said yes. It’s the least I can do — after all, she’s going to be making the presentation. I’ll just stand back and hold up my C
UPCAKES
A
RE
N
OT A
C
RIME
sign.

Anyway, so I’m just standing there, trying to decide between neon pink and neon green, when who should come around the aisle holding a bottle of shampoo but Annie.

She lets out a startled “Oh!” then smiles, and then looks down at the shampoo in her hand as if she wants to make sure it isn’t anything embarrassing.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello.” We both stand there awkwardly, and I wonder if she wants to run away as badly as I do. Instead, we’re held there by some weird force of politeness, and it’s clear that neither one of us will escape until we think of something to say to each other.

“Getting shampoo?” I know — how did I think up something so brilliant, right?

“For some reason, I’ve had the same bottle of conditioner for two years, but I keep running out of shampoo.” I look at her long, lustrous black hair and can’t believe she doesn’t even need conditioner.

She notices the neon poster board in my hand. “Project?”

“Extracurricular,” I explain. “The school wants to ban cupcakes.”

She looks bemused. “Why?”

“Childhood obesity, food allergies, and concerns about safe food preparation.”

“Oh. Those are good reasons.” She shrugs.

“But I think people should be allowed to choose what they eat.”

“Well, it isn’t like you go to a school full of small children, right?”

“No — the youngest are eleven, the oldest thirteen. Some are fourteen.”

Annie laughs. “I could cook dinner and take care of my baby sister when I was eight! How are you going to tell people who are almost adults what to do?”

“Exactly.”

A smile still plays at the edges of Annie’s lips. “My mouth still waters when I think about that cupcake you made the other day. It would be” — she searches for a word — “unfortunate … if your schoolmates couldn’t share in your passion.”

Share in my passion? I never really thought of cupcakes as a passion before, but I guess she’s right. And when she puts it that way, it doesn’t sound juvenile at all. “Thank you,” I say.

Annie nods, then seems to think of something. “When will they decide?”

“There’s a meeting tonight,” I explain.

She places her shampoo carefully on a shelf of notebooks, then reaches behind her neck to unclasp the delicate bird necklace she’s wearing. She holds it out to me. “My mother gave me this when I was your age,” she explains. “It’s good luck.”

I hold up a hand, palm out. “I can’t.” I couldn’t possibly take something that special.

Annie’s face falls. I quickly say, “Maybe I could just borrow it.”

She smiles and steps behind me, and I hold up my hair as she fastens the clasp. The bird is light against my neck. “I feel luckier already,” I tell her.

I expect a laugh, but instead, she cocks her head thoughtfully. “Of course, it is sometimes hard to recognize luck. Often things that appear lucky turn out to be unlucky. And sometimes things that appear unlucky are really good luck in disguise. It all depends on the angle from which you see it.”

“I guess.”

She smiles at me, then picks up her shampoo bottle. We say good-bye. I don’t want to have to stand next to her in line, so I pretend like I’m still trying to decide which poster board to buy and stand in front of the school supplies for another five minutes, staring blankly and thinking about what she said. Like, running into Annie at the drugstore seemed unlucky at first. But she seemed to understand the cupcake cause — and she loaned me her lucky necklace.

And having Meghan’s mother want to ban the cupcakes seemed unlucky, but it gave me a chance to get to know Meghan better. So maybe it was lucky.

Chloe lost her friends … but now she’s friends with Rupert. Is that lucky?

I guess it’s hard to know.