From Where I Watch You (22 page)

I try to open my mouth to say it wasn’t my fault, but I’m groggy and can’t speak.

When I get better, I have KP duty for the rest of camp. Three hours a day.

It sucks: physical labor in the kitchen with the cook. His name is Big Mitch and he’s been working here forever. He’s tall and skinny and looks underfed, probably because he doesn’t eat any of the camp food and I don’t blame him, even though he cooks it. Big Mitch doesn’t say a lot—mostly he frowns and mumbles and points to tell me to sweep or mop or wipe down tables or rinse out trays, or take out the garbage.

The work is tiring and sweaty and hot. The kitchen feels like a furnace in the summer heat, and I’m so tired by the time I crawl into my cot at night that I only hear the Legally Blondes making fun of how I smell for just the minute before I fall asleep.

On my fifth day of KP punishment, Big Mitch actually lets me off early. He seems like he’s in a good mood. I only think that because he’s not frowning as usual. I’m about to walk out the door to my diving lesson when I see him frosting a cake.

It sits in the middle of the giant wooden island in the center of the kitchen, which I just cleaned. As I watch, Big Mitch doesn’t just frost the cake, he has different bags of colorful frosting and they have these pointy things on the end of them and I’m completely mesmerized, watching the frosting come out all ribbons and loops and twists.

He doesn’t know I’m watching. With a few quick twirls of his hand he’s made the most perfect rose out of pink icing.

I walk over to stand right behind him because I’m fascinated.

“Hey, I said you could go.” He doesn’t take his eyes off his work.

I swallow. “Um, that’s pretty. What are you doing?”

Quickly he glances over his shoulder before looking back to the new rose he makes. “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday tomorrow.”

“You’re really good at that.” I can’t think of Big Mitch with a girlfriend or a life outside of this place.

He swivels around and I’m sure he’s going to drag me by the neck and toss me out. But instead he looks at me and sighs. “Would you like to try piping?”

I grab a bag and squeeze it like toothpaste and icing blobs out and my face goes red. “Oops.”

“Okay. Let’s try on something you can’t wreck, like a piece of bread.”

So we spend the next two hours together before he has to start dinner, with him finishing his girlfriend’s cake and me going through a loaf of stale bread practicing my piping. I pipe all kinds of lines and even little hearts and flowers. They all look like crap, but I’m having so much fun that I don’t care.

“Listen,” Big Mitch says, “I’m only letting you do this stuff because you’re the first kid who’s had KP that actually does a good job, doesn’t bitch, and doesn’t ask when they can leave. Since you’re already here, may as well stay because we gotta get dinner going.”

I swap the piping bags for a potato peeler, and I’m feeling better for the first time since I got here. After dinner clean-up, Big Mitch tells me to stick around again tomorrow and we’ll make a pie. And when I quietly ask if we can make a cake to decorate, he says the day after we’ll bake sugar cookies and that way I’ll have lots to practice on for when I screw up.

And just like that, I love camp.

Every day when I’m supposed to be at diving or archery or horseback riding, I sneak off to the kitchen and bake with Big Mitch.

He shows me how to make donuts and cookies and cakes, and more pies and bread and cinnamon rolls. I learn everything. And I love all of it, and Big Mitch doesn’t talk much but it’s okay because I’m not really into people or talking these days either.

I’ve never been so happy learning something, and it’s the first time I’ve ever learned anything that Mom and Dad didn’t pick for me.

When it’s time for me to leave camp, I hug Big Mitch, because if I say good-bye with words then I know I’ll cry, and as it is my eyes water anyway when I leave the kitchen.

But I’m a little excited to go home and tell Mom and Dad I’ve finally found something I’m good at.

22.
Flatten each one.

..........................................................

Call me. Ur the best baker I know <3

Charlie’s gone, flying over Oregon by now.

Meanwhile I try not to float away on memories of last night.

We all stand, waiting silently and barely breathing, while the judges thank all of us for our hard work and commend us on our creativity.

My hands won’t keep still and neither will anyone else’s waiting in the room with me. I have to imagine everyone else is like me, listening to our pounding hearts as the judges blather on about how we’re the future of the industry. In a roundabout way they even praise us for choosing a creative outlet such as this rather then getting wasted or high or pregnant.

The judges announce the ten honorable mentions, which get nothing but a certificate your mom can stick on the refrigerator and a voucher for free Snowflake Sugar. I keep my smile on because I don’t expect my name to be called for an honorable mention, and I’m not surprised when it isn’t. Maybe it’s Charlie, I don’t know, but I feel an odd sense of confidence.

I’m one step closer to my future now. I wish Charlie could’ve stayed; I wish I had someone to be happy with. I keep one ear on the head judge while I let the rest of me figure out how I should react when I win. Just casual and thankful? Or over the top excited? No, I could never pull that off.

They announce third place.

It’s a boy, one of the poor five who had to stay in the dorm. He squeals because he’s won the mixer I’ve wanted my whole life. I am happy, even though I am also jealous. I clap for him like everyone else does.

The applause dies down while the judges prepare to announce second and first place. With every moment that passes, my grin wanes along with my confidence. The head judge’s microphone screeches feedback. The audience laughs because nothing could be funnier. Any second now I’m going to need the bathroom so I can puke and I’m thankful I didn’t eat this morning. My whole body burns like a furnace, and I punish my lips by sucking them in and biting them.

I never thought this would be so hard, the waiting. I close my eyes so I can calm my insides down. My bakery daydreams play behind my eyelids, brighter and clearer than before. I imagine my shop always smelling of butter and yeast and cinnamon and sugar. Flour sacks sit on shelves, waiting to be turned into love, and I smile when I hear people complain to Charlie how they’re all getting fat on my pastries. I picture Charlie changing the light bulbs that are too high to reach, and I swat his hand when he steals doughnuts because he thinks I didn’t see him. Always in my dreams he runs out and makes deliveries for me, and he never leaves without kissing me good-bye.

Static crackles over the microphone as the head judge bellows out the name of the second place winner.

“Kara McKinley!”

I CAN’T MUSTER EVEN
half a smile when the judges shake my hand and give me the second place prize in an envelope. And I still can’t register any emotion when the gray-haired judge with the giant earrings tells me, “Congratulations, Kara!”

My ears ring, making her words thin out and die.

I don’t hear the winner’s name, but the auditorium erupts and spins around me, a deafening, shrieking mass of colors and applause.

I am second place.

Second is nothing.

Second place means no scholarship to La Patisserie.

Second place chains me to the life I hate, stuck with my crazy mother.

I watch the first place winner: Wedding-Cake-Cookies. She hugs twenty people on her way up to accept her prize and when she offers her arms to the judges, I’m sick.

I wait for them to say something else—that they missed something. How can they pick her? How can everyone in the room be so happy for someone who didn’t even follow the rules? For someone who decorated little fancy cakes when they should’ve been cookies? For someone who doesn’t even want it like I do? I wait for the judges to announce “Oops, we meant to call you, Kara, we made a mistake. You win.”

I’ve worked toward this forever, letting my hopes soar only to see them now, punctured, destroyed, and dead at my feet.

La Patisserie is so expensive, so difficult to get into. They only take on a handful of new students every year, and most of them are over twenty years old.

Mom refuses to let me go.

This was my only chance.

I’m breathless, twisted and pulled from the inside out when I see my dream clutched in Wedding-Cake-Cookie’s hands. She stole it and now she parades it around for the entire auditorium to applaud her. Behind my eyelids, I burn red and hot. I can’t swallow the rock in my throat.

I hate her. Everyone in this building cheers for the wrong person. I want her gone, knocked off the podium into the crowd of screaming hands where they can rip her into pieces and she can die like I am dying now.

July: Thirteen-Year-Old
Carrot’s
Kara’s
Summer
Fun
Hell Before High School

I’ve been home from camp an hour and I’m sitting in the kitchen, watching Mom. She’s been weird since I got home, fussing around the kitchen, wearing an apron.

My excitement over telling her and Dad about what I learned from Big Mitch has dwindled for two reasons: first, how do I explain why I had KP duty, and second, Mom hasn’t asked me one single thing about camp, except if I have a better attitude now.

I’m grabbing a Coke out of the fridge when she says, “We have a guest for dinner, Kara, so why don’t you go shower and change out of your camp clothes.”

She rushes out the back door where Dad is at the grill.

I shower, dry my hair and change into a sundress before I go downstairs. We don’t usually have sit-down dinners together, especially with guests.

I step out of the sliding door—and freeze.

Kellen sits at the table.

And so does Nick.

“Kara, you know Nick, right?” Dad asks, offering me a corncob as I sit down. “He’s been joining us for dinner almost every night this week, and we’re sure glad your sister finally came to her senses about Tad.”

Mom comes to the table, kissing Dad’s cheek. It’s weird for her to do that, but that’s not really what I’m focused on right now.

I stare at Mom’s hand resting on Nick’s shoulder.

Kellen sits very close to Nick and neither of them looks at me.

“So, Carrot, what did you learn at camp?” Dad offers me a piece of chicken. “Did you finally learn to dive, or are you sticking with the belly-flop?”

He and Mom think this is hilarious and both laugh and cover their mouths with napkins, looking at each other and the others. The whole thing is ridiculous because we never have dinner together like this, so why are my parents putting on this whole act for him? I want to know what they’ve talked about every night that I haven’t been here.

Mom puts salad on her plate. “Did you learn archery? Horseback riding?”

Kellen uses her fork to roll her corncob back and forth, back and forth.

Nick cuts his chicken very slow and careful, like it’s the first time he’s ever used a knife and fork.

I can barely whisper. “I learned to bake.”

Dad looks around the table and laughs, covering his mouth because he’s chewing at the same time. When he finishes he says, “What?”

Mom looks at Dad. “She said she learned to bake.” Then she turns to me, sipping her wine. “Oh, Kara, really? Is that all? Did you learn anything else?”

I glare at Mom because she could’ve asked me in the car.

But I don’t want to say another word, and I don’t want Nick to know what I did at camp. I don’t even want my family to know because it’s something that’s mine and has absolutely nothing to do with them.

I shake my head, staring into my plate.

“You mean you spent the whole three weeks there and never learned how to dive?” I can hear Dad’s shoved another mouthful of food into his mouth. “You know, diving is a skill you’ll have for life. But you learned how to make cakes? I could’ve saved us some money, Meg, and bought a few cake mixes—she could’ve learned from reading the back of the box!”

Mom and Dad both laugh at this. I don’t know what’s up with them. They’re both so weird, putting on this act.

I hear forks hitting plates and glasses clinking. In the distance kids holler, lawnmowers buzz, and dogs bark. Kellen and Nick’s plates are barely touched and I wonder how they can sit there together, knowing what he did.

Dad laughs again. “Well, Kara, if you think I’ll be forking out more money for another hobby that you’ll quit next week, forget it, kid, not happening this time. Maybe when you show a little stick-to-itness with something, then we’ll talk.”

“I didn’t,” I start, biting my lip because I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this. “I didn’t ask for money, Dad. I’ll be doing a lot of babysitting.”