Emma: Lights! Camera! Cupcakes! (5 page)

Wow! “Xx, Ro”! Now I felt like we were really friends. People would die if they knew Romaine and I were e-mailing each other. This was pretty cool. I imagined the look on Olivia Allen's face—she's kind of a frenemy of mine—and smiled,
imagining her reaction if I told her I was helping Romaine Ford with her wedding. I sighed. It was just too bad I couldn't tell my friends. And that they wouldn't be able to help me. How would I pull this off? I shut down my computer with a pit in my stomach and went to take a shower. Sleep well? I didn't think so.

As soon as I woke up the next day I checked my e-mail and my cell phone, but there was no new info from “Ro.” The pit in my stomach grew minute by minute as I realized I'd have to face my friends at school and not tell them about seeing Romaine on Saturday or about her wedding and the cupcakes I'd be baking for it.

At my locker the next morning, I avoided eye contact with everyone. I was just hoping I'd get home to find an e-mail from Romaine with some brilliant plan that would keep my friends happy and give me a little relief from carrying these secrets all alone.

Unfortunately, Olivia Allen was walking by and stopped to talk to Kim Walker at the locker across from mine.

“OMG! I heard Romaine Ford is already in town and that Liam Carey is coming tomorrow
and is staying at the Stanhope Hotel! We should go stake it out!” Olivia was squealing.

I gulped and willed myself to be silent.

“Totally! Let's go after school!” agreed Olivia's friend Bella.

Olivia continued, “I heard Romaine and Liam are eloping to Tahiti. Isn't that soooo romantic? That's
just
what I would do if I were her. You know, my mom's friend works in a bridal salon, and she said Romaine's wearing a Vera Wang dress in palest pink for the wedding. . . .”

I gritted my teeth. Olivia Allen is such a know-it-all, and she's almost always wrong, wrong, wrong! I wanted to turn around, throttle her, and yell, “She's not eloping! She's getting married right here, this Saturday, in a white Jaden Sacks dress from The Special Day!” It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut.

I slammed my locker door extra hard, though, right as Mia came up alongside me. “Whoa, tiger!” She laughed. “Everything okay?”

I rolled my eyes in the direction of Olivia and motioned that we should walk away. Mia followed. “What's up?” she whispered.

Once we'd gotten halfway down the hall, I exploded. “Olivia Allen is such a know-it-all! It's
always a bragathon with her about how much she knows and what an insider she is! It makes me crazy!”

Mia nodded. “I agree. Totally. What was it this time?”

I sighed heavily. I couldn't tell Mia anything, so my hands were kind of tied. I needed to be vague. “Just . . . she thinks she knows everything about Romaine Ford. It just bugs me.”

“And you really do know her, so it must be doubly annoying!” said Mia.

I looked at her sideways to make sure she was being serious. Suddenly, I had the feeling that maybe people thought I was as bad as Olivia!

“Wait, do people think I'm annoying about Romaine?” I asked urgently.

Mia looked at me in surprise. “What? No! Not at all! The opposite! You're always so closemouthed about it. Romaine Ford could be at your
house
and you wouldn't tell anyone!”

“Okay, ha-ha.” I fake-laughed a little because Mia had kind of hit the nail on the head. “Phew. I just don't want you guys to think I'm, like, possessive of her or something.”

Mia shook her head vehemently. “No. Totally not. In fact, most of the time we wish you'd tell us
more! You kind of keep it all to yourself.”

We'd stopped outside the English classroom where Mia was heading; I was walking on to social studies. “Is that bad?” I asked.

“No, we understand. It just leaves us hungry for more! We just sometimes wish you could trust your best friends enough to tell us. We
can
keep a secret, you know.” Mia laughed. “Bye!”

“Okay,” I said weakly. “Bye.”

“We understand”? “We can keep a secret”? That means they've been talking about me,
I thought as I continued down the hall. My best friends have been talking about me and Romaine Ford, and they understand my secrecy but wish I'd tell them more. Oh boy.

And it was only about to get worse. Way worse.

A
t lunch I ducked into the library and checked my e-mail. Sure enough, there was an e-mail from Romaine:

Hey, Em—

What if we hire the CC to bake cupcakes for the premiere on Friday night? Say ten dozen. Something jazzy. That way you can include them in something and not feel like you totally left them out. You can bill me directly and I'll have the studio pay me back. Let me know.

Xx, Ro

“OMG!” I said loudly.

“Shh!” warned the librarian with a smile.

“Sorry,” I whispered. I quickly exited my e-mail and jumped up, knocking my chair backward in my haste.

I glanced guiltily at the librarian who was now wagging her finger at me.
Sorry!
I mouthed with a shrug as I righted the chair.

She winked and I waved good-bye.

Out in the hall I broke into a run to reach the cafeteria. I fervently hoped the Cupcakers were still there. Luckily, they were!

I ducked through the crowds and beelined for our table.

“Where were you?” asked Katie.

“Are you sitting down?” I asked.

They all laughed because obviously they were.

“I have MAJOR news. MAJOR!”

Their eyes opened wide, and they all began smiling hopefully.

“What?” asked Alexis.

I sat down and said, “Romaine Ford has asked the Cupcake Club to bake ten dozen cupcakes for her premiere on Friday night.”

There was a stunned silence, and then the girls started shouting and whooping so much that everyone in the cafeteria turned to stare, but we didn't care.

We jumped up and hugged and danced in place, and I swear I almost cried, I was so overjoyed. It just felt great to be able to share
any
news with my besties. It was a huge relief.

And guess who walked right up to us to ask what was going on? Yup! Olivia Allen!

“What are you people celebrating?” she asked, with a smirk on her face.

I'd already had the joy of delivering the news once, so I turned to my friends as if to say, “You tell.”

Katie beamed proudly and said, “We're baking cupcakes for Romaine Ford's movie premiere on Friday!”

Olivia's jaw dropped, and she was speechless. It was so classic; it was right out of a movie. She gulped and stammered, “W-wow. Wow. That is so . . .”

“We know,” said Alexis, and turned away to continue celebrating. Olivia staggered away in shock.

We sat back down to talk details, but it was getting toward the end of lunch, and we all had somewhere to be next period.

“Can everyone get together at my house today?” asked Katie. “We need to get cracking!”

We all agreed and stood to go. I'd have to grab a sandwich on our way out and eat it on the way to English, but it was worth it.

Alexis was all dreamy and said, “Can you imagine the exposure for the Cupcake Club? What if we're mentioned in
Celebrity
magazine? You know how they always feature those big celebrity parties?”

We laughed because Alexis was always about the business and our exposure and growth. Then we parted ways, eager to reconvene after school and get cracking, as Katie said. I just hoped I could keep my mouth shut about my other cupcake job. Gulp.

We walked from school to Katie's, brainstorming all the way. It was an unusually gorgeous day—warm and blue-skied, everything smelling great—and it made me happy just to be outside.

“Oh, I hope the weather stays like this for—” OMG. I almost said for Romaine's wedding! Luckily, no one caught my hesitation.

“I know,” agreed Katie. “Even though the theater is inside the mall, Romaine would still have to run from her house to the car, so if it rained, it would ruin her hair.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, digging my palm with my nails
to keep myself from saying any more. Thank goodness Katie had thought I was talking about the premiere.

At Katie's, we gathered around the computer at her mom's desk in the kitchen.

“Okay, the movie,
One Sweet Summer
, is about a woman who owns a candy store and falls in love with this politician who's all about making people eat healthier and wants to make all these new health laws and close down her store,” said Alexis as she read from the movie's website. She clicked on the button to watch the trailer and the music started up. Then Romaine came onscreen looking radiant, her blond hair cut shoulder length and swingy. She was dressed in white jeans and a red-and-white–striped sailor's T-shirt—fresh and cute.

“Awww!” said my friends. I smiled, almost proudly.

The trailer went on to show how the handsome but strict politician wanted to shut down Romaine because her store was next to a school and the kids all came in and bought candy every day, and he thought it was making them unhealthy. But then it turned out she was helping kids with homework and giving good life advice and employing some of them and generally being an all-around
good anchor for the neighborhood. And, as it turns out, none of the kids spent enough money to be unhealthy because they're all poor; Romaine's candy store is barely staying in business. So the handsome politician turns sweet and falls in love with her, and together they get the kids into eating healthier—I almost had to laugh because it's what my mom says: You can eat treats, but it's all about moderation—and it all ends well.

The trailer finished, and we all sighed happily.

“I can't wait to see it!” said Katie, and we agreed.

“Will we get to see the movie on Friday?” asked Alexis.

“She didn't say anything about that,” I said.

“That's okay,” said Katie. “We still get to do the cupcakes!”

“So should we do candy-themed cupcakes?” I asked.

“That could be cute,” said Mia thoughtfully.

“Or should we focus on the premiere and do something movie-ish?” Katie wondered. “I saw something somewhere. . . .” She typed something into a search engine and pulled up some cute cupcakes with “popcorn” on top, wrapped in retro-striped popcorn bucket papers.

“Oooh!” We all loved them.

“Would they be hard to do?” I asked, leaning over Katie's shoulder and squinting at the screen. “What are they made out of?”

“You take mini marshmallows and snip Xs into them, twist them into kernel shapes, and then mist them with yellow food coloring, so they look buttery.”

“And how about the popcorn bucket papers? Is that hard? 'Cause they kind of make it,” said Mia.

“These look like a lot of work. I liked Emma's idea—candy-themed cupcakes. Maybe just make some traditional white cupcakes with white frosting and put colorful candies on top?” said Alexis sensibly.