All Four Stars (10 page)

COOKING UP A PLAN

GLADYS WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING
still feeling excited. She tiptoed past her parents' bedroom and slipped into the office to log on to her DumpMail account. She needed to make sure the message was still there and that she hadn't dreamt the whole thing.

To her surprise, she found a new message waiting for her from a different e-mail address: [email protected].

The e-mail was filled with all sorts of details about her assignment that Gladys hadn't thought of. For instance, there was a contract for her to print three copies of, sign, and return to the
New York Standard
by mail. It was eight pages long and written in very official-sounding language.

There was another form to fill out with her address and Social Security number. And the biggest attachment of all was a document called “Protocol for Freelancers,” which included detailed instructions for dealing with any number of situations that might come up while she was working on her story. Among the section titles, Gladys saw “Protocol for Interviews,” “Protocol for the Purchase of Food,” and “Protocol for the Rental of Transportation (i.e., cars, vans, rideable animals).”

A creak from next door told Gladys that her parents were getting up, so she hurriedly signed off. All through breakfast, she felt a knot forming in her stomach that had nothing to do with the nuked frozen waffles on her plate. Getting the assignment yesterday had been so exciting that it hardly seemed real, but today it was looking awfully . . . official.

When Gladys arrived in the Rabbit Room next door, Sandy did not make her feel better. “So, what's your plan?” he asked.

“My plan?”

“You know, for getting to that cake place! Are you going to sneak into the city?”

“I-I don't know,” Gladys stammered. In all her visions last night, she was already at Classy Cakes; she hadn't given any thought to how she would get there.

“Well, you can't ride your bike. It's, like, fifty miles,” he said. “You'll have to go on the train. Or ask your parents to drive you . . .”

“My parents can't know anything about this!” Gladys was pretty sure that reviewing a restaurant for the country's biggest newspaper would fall into the “Anything else adults do that kids normally don't” category on the Unapproved Activities list. “They'd never understand.”

“Yeah,” Sandy said, “but don't you think they're gonna figure things out when the review is published with your name on it?”

“They don't read the
New York Standard,
” Gladys said. “No one in this town does. Well, except for Mr. Eng, and I guess your mom.”

“Okay, but doesn't your dad work in the city? Don't you think someone might show it to him?”

“Look, I can't worry about that now,” Gladys snapped. “There won't
be
any review to show them if I don't figure out all these forms and things! I'm supposed to send in my Social Security number. What's my Social Security number?”

Gladys and Sandy spent the rest of the day tromping back and forth between the two houses on a treasure hunt for everything Gladys needed to mail out her forms. They found a card with her Social Security number in her baby book, which was stuffed in the living room bookcase among the photo albums. They found envelopes (pink, of course) in her mother's drawers in the office, and after scouring both houses for stamps, they finally found some in Sandy's basement in a shoe box filled with old letters.

Finally convinced that all Gladys had left to do was actually print the forms, fill them out, and mail them, they made their way back to the Rabbit Room. Gladys would take care of the final steps after school on Monday, when she had the house to herself.

“Oh, good,” Sandy said. “Now we can get back to the fun part—your plan of attack!”

It turned out that Sandy had a great head for planning attacks on unsuspecting dessert bistros.

“Do they have a website?” he asked.

“I'm not sure,” Gladys admitted.

“Gatsby, you should know stuff like this,” Sandy said, quickly typing the restaurant's name into a search engine. A moment later, they were on the home page. With a few clicks, Sandy came up with the opening hours, a map, and a photo gallery of the restaurant's posh-looking dining room.

“Okay, it's gonna be open afternoons and evenings every day but Tuesday. And it's in Midtown, which is good because that means you can walk there from Penn Station if you're taking the train. The prices are expensive and in the pictures it looks fancy, so you'll probably want to be dressed up when you go. The official opening date is”—Sandy made a few more clicks—“two weeks from yesterday, so that means you'll have three weeks to visit before your review is due.”

“Sandy, you're the best,” Gladys said. “What would I do without you?”

“I'm sure you'd figure this stuff out on your own,” he murmured, but she could see a little smile of pride creep across his face.

Sandy e-mailed Gladys the website so she could look at it whenever she needed to at home. By then it was dinnertime, so they promised to meet again soon to brainstorm ideas for getting Gladys into the city.

• • •

When the phone rang the next morning and her mother said it was for Gladys, she assumed it was Sandy, so she was surprised to hear a girl's voice on the other end of the line.

“Hey, Gladys, what's up?” the voice cried enthusiastically.

“Who is this?” Gladys asked.

“It's Charissa, silly!” the voice answered. “Listen, let's hang out at recess tomorrow after lunch, okay?”

Charissa's voice had such a tone of authority that Gladys didn't even feel like she'd been asked a question—the only option was to agree. “Um, okay.”

“Great!” Charissa replied instantaneously. “I like to have these things planned in advance. Like my birthday,” she continued. “I've been trying for
ages
to iron out the details, but parents can be
so
difficult sometimes.”

I know what you mean,
thought Gladys, though she suspected her parents were difficult in different ways than Charissa's.

Charissa chattered on for five more minutes about her birthday, talking so fast that Gladys could barely keep up—there were problems with the tickets, though tickets to what, Charissa didn't say. Apparently, Gladys was already supposed to know.

“Okay, well, great talking to you,” said Charissa after a while. “I've gotta go. Oh, and wear a purple barrette in your hair tomorrow. I'm gonna wear one, and that way we'll match.”

“I don't have a purple—” Gladys started, but Charissa had already hung up.

Gladys groaned. She hated barrettes and hadn't owned any since she was four years old.

• • •

The next morning was cold but sunny, so Gladys was allowed to ride her bike to school. She pedaled slowly and took her time locking the bike to the rack, trying to time her entrance to school exactly with the bell so Charissa wouldn't have a chance to come talk to her before class. Gladys didn't want to find out what price she would pay for ignoring Charissa's fashion advice.

But in the end, Charissa didn't talk to Gladys all day. She, Rolanda, and Marti were all wearing matching purple barrettes, sat in their regular cluster at lunch, and headed out to the playground together at recess without so much as a backward glance toward Gladys.
Maybe they made up over the phone last night,
Gladys thought. She wasn't upset about being snubbed—in fact, she was relieved. Being Charissa's best buddy was very demanding, and Gladys already had enough on her plate!

After school, Gladys printed out the
New York Standard
forms and filled in all the blank spaces. She tried to read them over carefully, but half a page into the “Protocol” document, she gave up—there were just too many words she didn't understand. She was pretty sure that the word
freelance
meant that she was agreeing to work for free, so what else did she really need to know? She didn't care about the money; she was just excited to get published.

So the signed forms went into the corner mailbox, and Gladys devoted herself to homework until dinnertime. With spring break coming up, Ms. Quincy was starting to pile the work on. “If you want a vacation, you have to earn it!” she said daily to a chorus of groans.

• • •

The next afternoon, Sandy had band rehearsal and couldn't meet. The following night, he had to go to dinner with his grandparents, so he and Gladys weren't able to get together until Thursday to talk about the Classy Cakes plan of attack. Gladys wanted to bring some ideas to the Rabbit Room, but she'd been so busy with homework that she barely had an extra minute to think. Even now, as she sat with Sandy and the Hoppers, her mind was half-occupied with her science lab report due tomorrow.

“Do you have any ideas?” Sandy asked Gladys.

“Nope. Do you?”

“Nope.”

Gladys turned to the rabbits sitting on the rug, but they stared back at her as if to say,
We don't have any ideas, either.

Sandy was fiddling with a Lego man he'd found on the floor. “Look,” he said, “I've been thinking about it and . . . maybe we need to ask an adult for help.”

“No,” Gladys said forcefully. “No adults.”

“I don't mean your parents,” he said quickly. “But . . . what about your teacher? She's the one who got you to write that letter in the first place, right? Don't you think she'd be excited if you told her that the
Standard
hired you?”

Gladys shook her head. “Ms. Quincy's always calling up the parents of kids who misbehave in class. School rules probably say she
has
to tell your parents if you're up to something strange.”

Sandy twisted the Lego man's head off thoughtfully, then stuck it back on again. “Okay,” he said. “Then what about my mom? She's really into cooking, and she really likes you. Plus, overall she's pretty cool . . . for a mom.”

Sandy was right—Mrs. Anderson was cool. Gladys loved watching her glide around the kitchen as she fixed them snacks, and she was always happy to pull a cookbook off the shelf and show Gladys the recipe she'd followed. If she ever got kitchen privileges back, Gladys couldn't wait to try some of the techniques she saw Mrs. Anderson using.

But telling her about the
New York Standard
assignment was just too dangerous.

“Sandy, I'd love to tell her, really,” Gladys said, digging her toe into the beanbag chair. “But you guys live
right
next door to us. Even if she agreed to keep it a secret, she talks to my parents sometimes—she could let something slip by accident.”

“I guess you're right.” Sandy flung the Lego man across the room. “But is there anyone else? Maybe someone who lives farther away?”

Gladys was about to say no again when it came to her. Of course! How had she not thought of this earlier?

“Actually, my aunt lives in Paris,” she gushed, “and she used to live in the city. I'm sure she could help!”

“Great!” Sandy said. “Can you e-mail her?”

Gladys shook her head. “She doesn't do e-mail,” she said. “But I could call her this weekend. I'd do it tonight except that Paris is six hours ahead of New York, so it's too late.”

“Well, you'd better make sure your parents aren't home when you do it,” Sandy said.

“Good point.”

A few seconds later, Gladys heard her parents' car pulling in outside, so she stood up. “Hey, thanks for all the help,” she told Sandy. “A grown-up writer can probably figure out all of this stuff on her own, huh?”

“A grown-up writer probably has a car, and doesn't have science labs to do and stuff,” Sandy said. “And anyway, what are friends for?”

A FRENCH CONNECTION

GLADYS DECIDED TO MAKE THE CALL
that Saturday morning while her parents were off at a home improvement store, continuing their quest for the perfect new kitchen curtains. Sitting at the kitchen table, she tapped her aunt's long phone number into the receiver. With the time difference, it would be almost dinnertime in Paris, and Gladys hoped her aunt was at home rather than serving patrons at the café where she worked. In addition to ignoring the Internet, Aunt Lydia refused to carry a cell phone, so catching her at home was Gladys's only chance of speaking with her.

The
beep-beep
noise that the French telephone system used for ringing sounded once . . . twice . . . three times . . . four times. Gladys had almost convinced herself to give up when a voice gasped,
“Allô?”

“Aunt Lydia!” Gladys cried. “You're home!”

There was a pause, then a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “Is that my Gladiola?” Aunt Lydia cried. “Oh, hello, hello! Is everything all right?”

“Yes, everything's fine,” Gladys answered. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Well, of course! Let me just turn down the burner on these beans. I'm making this fabulous stew called cassoulet, but it has so many different ingredients that it takes just about all day to cook.”

Gladys's stomach rumbled. She knew what cassoulet was—she'd seen recipes for it in
Tender Is the Meat
and Mrs. Anderson's
Larousse.
But it was just the kind of complicated dish that she'd never had enough time or money to make on her own. “It sounds delicious,” she said. “I wish I could come over and help you cook.”

“Oh, my Glamarylis, I wish that, too! You know I'd beg your parents to send you here for the summer if I thought there was any chance they'd say yes.”

Gladys nodded, though Aunt Lydia couldn't see her. A summer of cooking with her aunt in Paris was probably the least normal-kid-like activity her parents could imagine.

“So, um, I have this problem,” Gladys started, “and I was hoping that maybe you could help.”

“Why, that's just what aunties are for!” Aunt Lydia cried with a laugh. “Lay it on me, my Glazalea.”

“There's something I need to do in the city,” Gladys started, “and I can't tell Mom and Dad. It's not something bad—just something they won't think is appropriate for a kid my age to be doing.” Gladys paused, unsure if she should say any more. After all, her mother and Aunt Lydia
were
sisters, and she didn't want to put her aunt in the position where she might have to lie to her mom to cover things up. It was probably better if she didn't know all the details.

“Anyway, I know they won't give me permission to take the train on my own,” she continued, “but they let me go with you when you were here. So I was wondering if, um . . . you might want to come visit? Like, sometime in the next two or three weeks?”

The phone's speaker made Aunt Lydia's long exhale sound like the rumbling of a garbage disposal. “Oh, I wish I could,” she said, and sighed. “I truly, truly do. But right now I've only got about two hundred euros in my bank account. Do you know how much that is? Less than three hundred dollars. Even if I could get away from the café without losing my job, it wouldn't be enough for a plane ticket. I'm so sorry, my Glantana.”

Gladys had known it was a long shot before she even made the call, but still, a part of her had hoped. “Fudge,” she whispered, trying to fight back the tears that were welling in her eyes. Now she really had no idea what to do.

“But,” Aunt Lydia was saying, “maybe we can figure something else out!”

Relieved that her aunt couldn't see her, Gladys blinked hard and tried to get her voice under control. “Like what?”

“Well, this secret mission of yours—is it something that you really need to do all by yourself? Or could you pull it off with your parents around? You know, right under their noses without their figuring out what you're up to?”

Gladys tried to picture her family sitting at one of the delicate wrought iron tables in the picture on the Classy Cakes website. Her mom would be texting about work, and her dad's eyes would bug out when he saw the bill . . . but neither of them would pay much attention as Gladys scribbled tasting notes into her journal (which she could hide under a cloth napkin in her lap).

“Actually,” Gladys said, “I think I could do it even if they were there with me.”

“Then voilà!” Aunt Lydia cried. “You just have to trick them into taking you!”

“Yeah, but . . .” Gladys tried to think of some scenario, any scenario, in which her parents would voluntarily take her to Manhattan. It had never happened before. “I don't think that would work. Mom never goes into the city.”

“But your dad works in the city every day. Do you need both of them to take you?”

“I guess not—”

A hissing, popping sound sputtered out of the phone. “Oh,
mon dieu,
it's the cassoulet,” her aunt said. “Hang on, my Glavender!”

Gladys thought some more while her aunt was away. Spring break was coming up. Could she convince her father to take her to the city with him one day? Probably not—he'd been complaining lately about how busy he was at work. But maybe, if the request didn't come from
her
 . . . if it was something more official-sounding, like a school assignment . . .

There was a shuffling noise, and Aunt Lydia's voice came back. “Whew! Caught it before it overflowed. Now, where were we, my Gladragon?”

“Actually, I think I may have figured it out!” Gladys cried. “Our talk really helped. Thank you, Aunt Lydia!”

“Oh, anytime, anytime!” her aunt said. “You'll have to let me know how it all turns out.”

“Okay, I'll let you get back to your cooking,” Gladys said.

“Good luck, my Gladiconia!
Au revoir! À bientôt!
”

“À bientôt,”
Gladys repeated, and hung up the phone. If she was able to pull off the plan that was brewing in her brain, she'd be having dessert at Classy Cakes in less than two weeks.