The Cupcake Diaries Collection: Katie and the Cupcake Cure; Mia in the Mix; Emma on Thin Icing; Alexis and the Perfect Recipe (5 page)

“These are absolutely delicious,” Mia said.

Alexis nodded. “The pineapple is supergood.”

“I love the cherry on top,” Emma said.

I was happy that everyone liked them.

“I’ll bring in cupcakes every day if I can,” I offered.

“That might be cupcake overload,” Alexis pointed out. “Even for your cupcake crazy mother. How about one day a week? Like every Friday?”

“Cupcake Friday,” I said. “I like it.”

I liked it for a bunch of reasons. Making cupcakes is fun. But it also meant my new friends wanted to sit with me—for at least another week.

The bell rang, and I turned to Alexis. “Can I follow you to math? I don’t want to be late.”

“Of course!” Alexis replied.

We got to math in plenty of time. Mrs. Moore was already there.

“How nice to see you on time, Miss Brown,” Mrs. Moore told me.

I felt fantastic. My plan had worked.

When the bell rang, Mrs. Moore asked us all to
take out our math books. I looked down at my desk. I had my notebook with me, but not my math book! Had I left it at lunch?

Then I remembered. I had grabbed the cupcake box instead of my math book! It was still in my locker.

With a sigh, I raised my hand. “Excuse me, Mrs. Moore . . .”

She gave me
two
worksheets that night!

T
he morning of Labor Day I woke up with a huge knot in my stomach. I didn’t know what it would be like with Callie at the barbecue. And this year I wanted everything to be especially perfect.

Unfortunately, my need for perfection made me argue with my mom about what kind of decorations to put on the cupcakes we were bringing. The night before, we made vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing, which are Callie’s dad’s favorite. That’s a pretty boring cupcake, so we always add some decoration on the top. Sometimes it’s candy. But lately, Mom’s been into using this stuff called fondant. It’s like a kind of dough, but it’s mostly made out of sugar. You can color it, roll it out, and cut shapes out of it just like cookie dough. But you
don’t have to cook it. Then you can put the shapes on top of your cupcakes and they look amazing. It’s a little hard to make, but as I said, Mom is like Martha Stewart. She could make a house out of fondant if she had to.

Mom and I were looking through the tin of mini cookie cutters for shapes to use. I wanted to use a sun and color the fondant yellow. Mom wanted to use a leaf shape and color the fondant orange.

“But it’s still summer,” I whined. “It’s, like, a hundred degrees out there.”

“Eighty-five,” Mom corrected me. “And summer is over. School’s started.”

“But the first day of autumn isn’t until September twenty-third,” I said. “That’s a fact. A scientific fact.”

“Technically,” Mom agreed. “But as soon as I see school buses driving around, I think of fall.”

I frowned. I didn’t want summer to end just yet. Mom looked at me. She knew something was wrong and I didn’t want to tell her what it was. I sighed and gave in.

“How about half suns and half leaves?” I suggested.

Mom smiled. “Perfect! The orange and yellow will look nice together.”

By noon we were pulling into the driveway of
Callie’s house. It’s easy to find because it’s the only house on the block painted light blue. From the sidewalk you can tell which room is Callie’s—it’s the window on the second floor on the left with the unicorn decal on it. I have one just like it on my bedroom window.

We walked through the white wood gate and headed right for the backyard. Callie’s dad was standing by the grill on the deck.

“Hey, Katie-did!” he called out. He wiggled his eyebrows when he saw the cupcake holder in my arms. “I hope that is filled with lots of vanilla cupcakes!”

“Of course!” I replied. “With vanilla icing.”

Mr. Wilson gave me and my mom a hug. He’s got kind of a big belly, so his hugs are always squishy.

“It’s Barbara’s fault. All that good cooking,” he’ll say, patting his stomach, and everybody always laughs.

I’ve known Mr. Wilson—and Callie’s whole family—since even before I was born. My mom and Callie’s mom met in a cooking class while they were pregnant. In a way, the Wilsons are like my second family. Mrs. Wilson is like my second mom. Callie’s like a sister. And Mr. Wilson’s like a dad. And since I never see my dad, he’s the closest thing to one that I’ve got.

Then it hit me as I was standing there on the deck. If Callie and I stopped being friends, what would happen to my whole second family?

I didn’t have much time to think about it because Callie and her mom came out onto the deck. Callie’s mom and my mom gave each other a big hug. Callie and I nodded to each other. Things definitely felt a little weird between us.

“Where’s Jenna today?” Mom asked. Jenna is Callie’s older sister. She’s a junior in high school. Callie has an older brother, too, named Stephen. He just started college this year.

“She’s with her
friends
,” Mrs. Wilson said, rolling her eyes. “When you’re sixteen, a family barbecue is apparently a horrible punishment.”

Mom looked at me and Callie. “Well, we’ve got a few more years left with these two, don’t we?”

I hate when parents talk like that. Like when we’re teenagers we’re going to turn into hideous mutants or something. It kind of made me nervous, in a way. What if they were right?

“So how do you like middle school, Katie?” Callie’s mom asked me.

I shrugged. “It’s only been two days. It’s kind of hard to tell.”

“I’m so glad the girls are on the same bus route,”
my mom said. “Middle school can be pretty scary. It’s nice that they have each other to navigate through it.”

Mrs. Wilson looked confused. “Callie told me she’s been walking to school. Aren’t you two walking together?”

Callie looked down at her flip-flops.

“It’s no big deal,” I said quickly. “I like to take the bus. Callie likes to walk.”

I just didn’t want to get into a whole big discussion about it. Not in front of our mothers, anyway. I saw Mom biting her bottom lip. She looked at Callie’s mom and raised her eyebrows.

“Callie, why didn’t you mention this?” her mom asked.

Before Callie could answer, Mr. Wilson stepped into our circle.

“Hey, it’s going to be about a half hour before the food is ready,” he said. “I inflated the volleyball this morning. How about a game of moms against kids?”

That sounded good to me. I’m terrible at volleyball, but I still think it’s fun. Besides, anything would be better than standing around talking about why Callie and I weren’t taking the bus together.

“Kids serve first!” I yelled, and I ran into the yard
and grabbed the ball. I tossed it to Callie. “You’d better start. You know I usually can’t get it over the net.”

Callie laughed, and we launched into the game. Let me explain what happens when I play volleyball: I will chase after any ball that comes over the net. I will hit it with everything I’ve got. The problem is I have no idea how to aim it. Sometimes the ball goes way off to the side. Sometimes it goes behind me, over my head. If I’m lucky, it’ll go right over the net. But that doesn’t happen a lot.

Pretty soon Callie and I were cracking up laughing. We kept bumping into each other, and once we both tumbled onto the grass. It was really hilarious. And the funniest thing is that even though I am terrible at the game, we still beat the moms!

“That’s game! Katie and Callie win!” Mr. Wilson called up from the deck.

“Woo-hoo!” Callie and I cried, high-fiving each other.

“And that’s perfect timing,” Callie’s dad added. “Lunch is ready!”

Mr. Wilson might blame Callie’s mom for his big stomach, but he is a great cook too. After I drank two big glasses of lemonade (volleyball makes me thirsty) I dug in to the food on the table. There were
hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, juicy tomatoes from the garden, and of course, corn on the cob. I put a piece of corn on my plate before anything else.

“Katie, remember the time you ate six pieces of corn on the cob?” Callie asked, giggling.

“I was only six!” I cried.

“I can’t believe we weren’t paying attention,” my mom said, shaking her head. “Six pieces. Can you imagine that?”

“And I didn’t even get a stomachache,” I said proudly.

“I love corn on the cob, but I could never eat six pieces,” Callie added.

The rest of lunch was like that. We told funny stories, and we laughed a lot. It was just like last year’s Labor Day barbecue. Like nothing at all had changed.

“Want to go to my room?” Callie asked when we were done.

“Sure,” I said.

“I might eat all the cupcakes while you’re gone!” Mr. Wilson warned.

I hadn’t been in Callie’s room in more than a month. Some things were the same, like the unicorn decal and her purple walls and carpet. And
the picture of me and Callie from when we went to an amusement park and had our faces painted like tigers. Callie with her blond hair and blue eyes, me with my brown hair and brown eyes. Totally different—but the tiger paint made us look like sisters.

Other stuff was new. Like now she had lots of posters on her walls—lots of posters of boys. Most of them were from those vampire movies.

When did she start liking those?
I wondered.

“You’ve got to see my pictures from camp,” Callie said. “I have so much to tell you.”

“I know,” I said. “This is, like, the first time we’ve been together.”

Callie held up her cell phone so I could see it and started scrolling through the photos. As they whizzed by, I saw lots of pictures of her and Sydney and the others. She stopped at a photo of a boy on a diving board.

“That’s Matt,” she said. “Isn’t he cute? He was a lifeguard at camp.”

I squinted at the photo. Matt had short brown hair and he was wearing a red bathing suit. He looked like a regular boy to me. But he didn’t have tentacles or antennae or a tail or anything, so I guessed that was a good sign.

“He’s in eighth grade,” Callie said. “I pass him in the hallway every day between fifth and sixth period. The other day he actually said, ‘Hi, Callie.’ Isn’t that amazing?”

Wow, he can put two words together,
I thought. But out loud I said, “Yeah, amazing.”

Callie’s cell phone made a sound like fairy bells. The photo faded and a text message popped up on the screen.

“No way!” she cried. “
Teen Style
magazine has posted the best and worst fashion from the music awards last night. You have got to check this out!”

It was easy to guess who the text message was from—Sydney. It had to be.

Callie grabbed her laptop and started typing away. A page popped up on the screen.

“That’s hilarious,” she said. “They divided the page into ‘Killer Looks’ and ‘Looks That Should Be Killed.’ Ha!”

I briefly wondered what kind of weapon would be used to kill an ugly dress. Maybe some roboscissors?

“Oh my gosh, that is
awful
!” Callie squealed. She grabbed her cell phone and started texting.

Any fuzzy feelings I’d had before were evaporating. Callie was supposed to be hanging out with
me today. It was like I wasn’t even in the room.

“Hey, Callie,” I said.

“Yeah?” She looked up from her phone.

“I know we’re still friends,” I said. “But the other day you said we were still best friends. I’m just wondering about that. I mean . . .
best
friends sit together at lunch. They talk to each other during school.”

“I know,” Callie said. “But it’s complicated. I still wish we could be best friends, but . . .” She sighed and looked away.

That’s the moment I knew there was no going back. Callie had changed over the summer.

“But what?” I asked.

“You’re still my friend, Katie. You’ll always be my friend.”

“Just not best friends,” I said quietly.

Callie didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to.

“I don’t under—”

Then I heard my mom’s voice in the doorway. “Girls, it’s cupcake time.”

Mom had a kind of sad look on her face. I wondered how long she’d been standing there.

I figured Mom would be full of questions on the ride home. But for once, she wasn’t. I stared out the window, thinking.

Tomorrow I’d start my first full week of school. There would be no more barbecues. No more swimming. Just day after day of middle school.

Maybe Mom was right. It wasn’t September twenty-third yet, but summer was officially over.