Gingerbread (17 page)

Gingerbread and I promised everyone we would make another visit next summer. Danny was the most sad and he said, There'll always be a job here with us for you. Frank said, There will always be a place for you in New York, with us, when you want. I said, Thank you, nice people, and lisBETH said, She really does have good manners, you know?

But by then Gingerbread and I, in our minds, were already halfway home.

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Thirty-eight

I thought
about it on the plane ride home to San Francisco, my new ultra fantastico tribute commune to all things ginger. Think about it. Sustenance, so long as we keep the ginger roots cultivated, will be easy. We'll live on ginger jerky, ginger chicken, and stirfried ginger veggies, we'll drink ginger ale and ginger beer, and for dessert, oatmeal ginger cookies or our favorite staple, gingerbread.

Ash and Josh will be happy-hyper, because we will put them to work constructing gingerbread houses. We won't care if they eat off the sprinkles and candy hearts that were meant to be decoration, so long as they're careful not to choke. Sid and Nancy will chill on the whole scene because we will serve them ginger tea laced with mellow vibes, and just the thought of all those gingerbread-house colors will keep Nancy occupied, coordinating peppermint-stick patterns and LifeSaver-stained glass windows, and will keep Sid-dad on his toes, worrying about cost overruns and labor laws.

Bio-fam will be invited on special holidays, like Labor Day and Columbus Day, those holidays not meant for intimate family occasions but for overall general ginger barbecue fun. Danny and Aaron will have special ginger-scented permits to come anytime they want, but that will be our secret.

Our slammin' girl Gingerbread will tell Leila RELAX! Gingerbread will run the whole joint. She will decide where

172

the ghosts of Ginger Spice, Ginger Rogers, and Ginger from
Gilligan's Island
are seated at dinner, and she will make all those Gingers help with the cooking and cleaning even if they just did their nails. When Gingerbread is tired of all those Gingers' diva-like antics, Sugar Pie will mosey in to take over. Fernando will make all the ladies swoon with the ginger donuts he will make specially for them.

Once a year we will sponsor a ginger-java marathon run from the Golden Gate Bridge to Ocean Beach. Runners will start out under the red mystical spokes of the bridge with the fog whipping through their bodies, and they will end at the finish line at Java the Hut, where they will be rewarded with caffeine, ginger cookies, and more fog.

At the end of the rainbow in Cyd Charisse's Land of All Things Ginger, there will be a Shrimp.

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When I was six months old, I dropped from the sky--the lone survivor of a deadly Japanese plane crash. The newspapers named me Heaven. I was adopted by a wealthy family in Tokyo, pampered, and protected. For nineteen years, I thought I was lucky. I'm learning how wrong I was.

I've lost the person I love most. I've begun to uncover the truth about my family. Now I'm being hunted. I must fight back, or die. The old Heaven is gone.

I AM SAMURAI GIRL.

A new series from Simon Pulse

The Book of the Sword

The Book of the Shadow

BY CARRIE ASAI

Available in bookstores now

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Author Bio

Rachel Cohn is a graduate of Barnard College and lives in Manhattan. Her first novel,
Gingerbread
, was named to the Best of 2002 lists for
Publishers Weekly, School Library
Journal
, Barnes & Noble, and the
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
, and was a Book Sense 76 pick. Rachel Cohn is also the author of the middle-grade novel
The
Steps
, for which she was praised with a starred review in Publisher's Weekly for "once again creating a funny and fiesty narrator." Look out for Cohn's next teen novel,
Pop Princess.

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