Stars So Sweet (8 page)

When her parents left the table, Gladys slumped back in her chair. Baking always helped her let off steam, and cooking new international dishes helped her prepare for her restaurant-reviewing trips. Now, in one fell swoop, her parents had taken away her ability to do both.

How on earth had she ever thought they were ready to hear about her secret job?

Relieved that she hadn't gone through with telling them weeks ago, Gladys got up to preheat the oven. In her unfocused state, though, she turned the temperature a bit too high, and when her macarons came out half an hour later, they had lost their shape and spread out on the pan, turning into what looked like slightly burnt, sticky fried eggs.

Gladys banged the pan onto the range top in frustration. Her cookies were ruined, and who knew when she would have a chance to try the recipe again?

She barely touched the quiche that an exhausted Aunt Lydia brought home from Mr. Eng's for dinner that night, and made a mental note to tell her aunt that she finally understood what it felt like to be too depressed to enjoy good food. But tonight wasn't the night for that; Aunt Lydia had had a trying day of her own.

“Lydia's first day of work and Gladys's first day of middle school,” Gladys's mom crowed as she cleared the table. “It's new beginnings for everyone!”

Gladys heaved herself up from her chair and headed for the stairs. She made one last pit stop on the way to bed, to stare again hopefully at the phone in the office. If anyone she knew could commiserate about having parents who didn't get them, it was Hamilton. But as strongly as she willed him to return her call, the phone stayed silent.

SNACKS FOR ZOMBIES

G
LADYS HAD ALWAYS HEARD THAT THE
first day at a new school was the hardest. But by the time she stumbled into French class the next afternoon with a backpack full of homework assignments, she thoroughly disagreed. Really, the first day was pretty easy, with all that seat shuffling and introducing; it was the second day when you started to do actual work.

At least her scene onstage the day before didn't seem to have made a big impression on her fellow students. In social studies, Charissa had reassured her that many of her classmates had already left the auditorium by the time she'd climbed up there, plus most people probably wouldn't recognize her even if they had seen her. Thankfully, it seemed that she
was right. Gladys's status as a nobody at DTMS was still intact.

“
Bonjour,
class!” the teacher cried once the bell had rung. “My name is Madame Goldstein, and this is Introduction to French. Now, the first thing we must do is give you all new names.”

“New names?” an unfamiliar boy called out. “What's wrong with our old ones?”

The class tittered, and Madame Goldstein smiled. “This is a French class, so we must all have French names! I will take attendance, and after I call out each of your names, I will suggest a French name for you. If you like it, then that will become your name in this class.
D'accord?
”

Gladys and her classmates nodded.

“
Bon.
Now, first we have Amanda Abbey? There you are. How about Amandine?” Madame Goldstein said the new name with a beautiful accent, and Amanda nodded eagerly.
“Très bien,”
Madame Goldstein said. “Very good.” And she spelled Amanda's new name out on the chalkboard.

She continued to call attendance—a boy named Ryan became Rolande
,
Charissa became Charisse
.

“Gladys Gatsby?” Madame Goldstein called. Gladys felt her breath catch and slowly raised her hand. “Ah,
bon.
How about . . . Giselle?”

Giselle—that sounded lovely.
“Merci beaucoup,”
Gladys said, using the phrase for “thank you very
much” that she had learned from her aunt.

Madame's thin eyebrows shot up. “Does our Giselle already know some
français
?”

“Oh, just a few words,” Gladys said, embarrassed that she'd said anything. “My aunt lived in Paris for a long time.”

“Well, I hope you'll be joining our French Club, then!” Madame Goldstein said. “In fact, I hope you all will. It's a wonderful chance to learn more about French culture and get in a little extra language practice. And every year, we take a field trip to a French restaurant in New York City . . .” Madame sighed. “Well, this year, our club will have to brainstorm some new ideas for funding such a trip. Our first meeting will be next week.”

An outing to a French restaurant in the city sounded wonderful; Gladys was determined to help the club make sure the outing could still happen.

Once everyone in the class had been rechristened, Madame Goldstein asked them to rearrange their seats in alphabetical order by their new French names. But first, she taught everyone how to ask what someone else's name was in French, and how to answer. Then they were turned loose to figure out what order they belonged in.

It was a lot of fun, and by the end of the lesson, Gladys was pretty sure she had a new favorite teacher.

After class, Gladys headed to her locker to pack
up. Between all the heavy books now weighing down her blue backpack and the fact that she hadn't eaten since brunch time, she felt slightly dizzy. She wasn't the only one, either—a lot of the other kids around her looked like exhausted zombies as they tottered toward the school exit, and she overheard more than one complain about being hungry. “I'd gnaw someone's face off for a brownie right now,” one boy muttered to his friend.

Gladys wasn't sure about the face-gnawing, but something sweet
did
sound pretty appealing right now. She was debating whether to stop at Mr. Eng's for a fresh-baked cookie or head straight home to see if Hamilton had called when Parm came flying up to her.

“I made it!” she cried. “I'm a starter on the soccer team!”

Gladys's backpack fell to the ground with a thud. “That's terrific!” she cried. “Congrats!” She threw her arms around her friend, who could barely stay still long enough to be hugged.

“I really didn't know how I did at tryouts,” Parm said breathlessly, “but the list just got posted. Almost all the other starters are eighth-graders. I can't believe it! Okay, I'd better run or I'll be late for drills, plus Coach said she had to talk to us about fund-raising today. I hope she has a good idea for how to get us to the tournament—I
really
want to go!”

Gladys grinned at Parm; it was nice to see her so excited.

“Call me later and let me know how your first practice went,” Gladys said.

As Parm turned to leave, Gladys's empty stomach gave a particularly ferocious growl—which gave her an idea.

“Parm!” she cried, and her friend whirled around—as did several other kids at their lockers. Gladys shrank from their stares, but took a step closer to her friend. “Bake sale,” she whispered.

“Huh?”

“If you need a fund-raising idea,” Gladys elaborated, “I think an after-school bake sale could make a lot of money. Especially for the kids who have fourth-period lunch—we're starving!”

Comprehension dawned in Parm's brown eyes. “Great idea! You know that
I
still think most desserts are gross, but I can see how other people might want to buy them. Thanks, Gladys!” She took off then, expertly dodging the kids in her way as her feet dribbled a ghost soccer ball down the hall.

Gladys shook her head. In elementary school, Parm had only ever eaten two things—plain spaghetti and cold cereal with milk—and it sounded like she was still as picky as ever. But Gladys was glad she had liked her idea. An after-school bake sale couldn't come soon enough.

• • •

The phone rang that night just as Gladys was getting into her pajamas, and her heart leapt—maybe Hamilton was getting back to her at last! Her father called her to the phone a moment later, but when she picked up, the voice on the other end belonged not to Hamilton but to Parm.

“Hey,” Parm said. “Sorry I didn't call sooner—my parents made me sit with them through their entire dinner, even though all I ate was one bowl of noodles.” Parm sounded annoyed—more than her family dinner situation warranted.

“Is something wrong?” Gladys asked.

Parm sighed. “Well, yeah. At practice, Coach asked for fund-raising plans, and I mentioned your bake sale idea—”

“Oh, no—she didn't like it?” Gladys asked. “I'm sorry.”

“No, no, Coach loved it, and so did everyone else.” Parm sounded glummer than ever.

“Oh,” Gladys replied. “So what's the problem?”

“They want
me
to be in charge of it!” Parm burst out. “I'm supposed to come up with the recipes and organize the team to get the baking done. I think Coach assumed that since I brought the idea up, I must . . . you know . . .
like
to bake. She said she was gonna try to set up a series of sales, with the first one scheduled for next Monday. But to get ready for the first game of
the season, we've got practice every day after school
plus
Saturday and Sunday! So I don't know when I'd even have time, but it doesn't matter. You know I can't cook.” She groaned. “I'll just have to tell her tomorrow that I can't do it.”

A grin was starting to spread across Gladys's face. “No way,” she said. “You may not be the world's best baker—yet—but you've got a friend who can help you.”

“I couldn't ask you to do that,” Parm said. “You suggested this to help me out, not to get pulled into a ring of soccer-baking madness.”

Gladys laughed. “You forget that I actually
like
to cook. And anyway,” she said, lowering her voice, “right now my parents are only letting me use the kitchen once a week. So if you let me come over to
your
house for a baking project, you'd actually be doing me a favor.”

“I'd be doing
you
a favor?” Parm sounded skeptical. “Okay, I mean this in the most loving way possible, Gladys, but . . . you're a weirdo.”

Gladys grinned. “A weirdo with all the skills you need. What time does your practice end on Sunday?”

“One o'clock,” Parm said.

“Then have the team meet me at Mr. Eng's at one fifteen,” she said. “We'll buy the ingredients, then bake at your house. Who knows—maybe you'll even enjoy it!”

Gladys could practically hear Parm wince at the
other end of the line, but she agreed to the plan. “Okay—thanks a jillion. Maybe this won't be a complete disaster after all.”

Gladys sauntered off to bed after hanging up, visions of soccer-ball-iced cookies dancing in her head. She couldn't wait for the weekend.

BODACIOUSLY FUNKY

T
HAT THURSDAY NIGHT, SITTING OUT ON
the porch, Aunt Lydia told Gladys that she'd had a phone call while Gladys was at school.

“A call for me?” Gladys interrupted before her aunt could say more. “What did he—I mean, who was it?”

Aunt Lydia gave her a funny look. “No, it wasn't for you, my Gladiola. It was for me, from Mr. Eng. He wants me to come in on Saturday and work all day to help with the weekend crowds. See, I told you I did a good job on my first day there!”

“Oh.” Gladys tried not to let her disappointment show. It had been three days now since she'd left Hamilton that message—why hadn't he called her back? “That's great,” she told her aunt. “More work means more savings, right?”

“Right,” Lydia said. She lowered her voice. “But that means we won't be able to go eat in Queens that day. I'm sorry.”

“Oh—that's okay.” Gladys still wanted to try her hand at some Salvadoran cooking before heading to that restaurant, so unless Parm wanted to sell pupusas (traditional stuffed cornmeal pancakes) at her team's bake sale, she was pretty sure she'd have to wait for her cooking day at home next week to make some. Putting off their reviewing trip until the next weekend meant that Gladys would be cutting it close to get her review in on time, but she'd worked on tight deadlines before.

“You just focus on doing a good job at Mr. Eng's,” she told her aunt. “You know, do what he asks and try not to cause trouble.”

“Trouble?
Moi?
” Aunt Lydia harrumphed. “I would never!”

• • •

The school week finished off with an announcement from Madame Goldstein that the French Club would hold its inaugural meeting the following
mardi
(Tuesday). Several of Gladys's classmates seemed happy to hear this news, but Charissa waved a distressed hand in the air.

“Madame!” she cried. “Student Leadership Council already meets on Tuesdays. Next week we're having our officer election!”

Madame frowned. “I am sorry to hear that, Charisse
.
But this is the only time that works for us. Perhaps you can switch off between the two, every other week?”

As the bell rang, Charissa sank back into her seat, pouting. “I already have to switch off between Mathletes and debate on Wednesdays,” she told Gladys. “Plus I've still got dance class, gymnastics, tennis, and horseback! And, you know, homework.”

“Sounds like you might be overcommitted,” Gladys said.

“You say that like it's a bad thing.”

Charissa made Gladys agree to call her the next Tuesday night and tell her about everything she'd missed from the first French Club meeting. “And could you get me any handouts, too?” she said, glancing up at the wall clock. “Shoot, I'm gonna be late for tennis. Have a good weekend, Giselle!”

• • •

Gladys spent Saturday morning searching online for recipes for the soccer bake sale and planning out a list of ingredients. She also raided the kitchen for the right kinds of baking utensils and pans. She was happy to have access to Aunt Lydia's things, since her own collection was not complete.

Then, that afternoon, she and Sandy headed to Mr. Eng's to shop for ingredients for the next battle in the War of Gross Foods.

“You don't think he sells fried crickets, do you?”
Sandy asked. “I was doing some research online, and people eat them for snacks in Cambodia. One blogger said they tasted just like popcorn . . . only with legs that sometimes get stuck in your teeth.”

“I don't know,” Gladys told him. “I mean, Mr. Eng imports a lot of interesting stuff, but I don't think I've ever seen any bugs there.”

When they reached the shop, things seemed even more chaotic than they had been on Gladys's last few visits. The aisles were crowded, shelves were half bare, and Mr. Eng was fielding a line ten customers deep at the cash register. But instead of hurrying around to help customers or restock, Aunt Lydia was standing near the door, a large plate of cheese in her hand.

“Free sample?” she asked customers as they entered the store. “Would you like to try our new Danish blue? It's very robust.”

Customers, of course, stopped to try the cheese, which was creating a bottleneck at the store's narrow entrance. Gladys noticed that the light in the cheese refrigerator was
still
out, though it seemed that half of that fridge's contents were now cubed or sliced up on Aunt Lydia's sample platter.

“Gladys! Sandy!” Aunt Lydia cried. “
Bienvenue!
Would you like to try some cheese?”

“Yeah!” Sandy cried, barreling straight over. “Which one's the grossest?”

Aunt Lydia looked slightly taken aback by this
question, but recovered quickly. “Well, this aged Limburger is rather bodaciously funky, if that's what you're looking for . . .”

She grabbed a toothpick from the tray and speared Sandy a generous chunk. He sniffed at it and almost gagged. “Oh, yeahhhh,” he said. “That's the stuff!”

Though she was happy to see Aunt Lydia help Sandy find a food for his battle, Gladys was also concerned at the amount of food her aunt was giving away for free. “Um, Aunt Lydia,” she said quietly. “Did Mr. Eng ask you to hand out samples?”

“Technically, no,” her aunt responded, passing a toothpick of sharp cheddar to another customer, “but I'm sure he'll appreciate my taking the initiative. Well, if he ever makes it out from behind that register, that is. I'm afraid I might run out of samples and have to cut some more up before he even notices!”

Gladys highly doubted Mr. Eng would be pleased if he did find a moment to spot what was going on. “You know what?” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “I think you've been generous enough. I mean, you'll want to leave some cheese for the customers to
buy,
right? Speaking of which, it'd be great if they could see well enough to read the labels. Did you notice that the light in the cheese fridge is out?”

Aunt Lydia glanced over in the fridge's direction and frowned. “Hmm. Someone really ought to change that bulb.”

Yes, someone should,
Gladys thought exasperatedly.
You!

Gladys loved her aunt, but she couldn't ignore the fact that she did not seem to be doing anything Mr. Eng asked of her. Had she been this bad at listening to her new boss's orders at the café in Paris? Gladys had been sure that the new owners were horrible people and that her aunt was in the right to quit in a huff. But now, after witnessing Aunt Lydia's behavior at work multiple times, she wasn't so sure.

“Here—why don't you let me and Sandy handle the sample tray for a few minutes while you go change that light?” she suggested. “I think Mr. Eng keeps spare bulbs back in the storeroom.”

“Okay, okay,” Aunt Lydia said, “but make sure you push the Limburger.”

“‘Bodaciously funky'—yeah, right,” Sandy muttered as Aunt Lydia moved away. “It's unpopular because it tastes like a foot!” He grabbed another sample and held it out to a man entering the store. “Excuse me, sir, but would you like to try some Limburger? It's vomitously delicious!” The man gave Sandy a strange look, and Gladys couldn't help but laugh as he hurried away.

“You're terrible,” she said.

“No,
this
is terrible.” He waved the sample under Gladys's nose, and her eyes watered. “I'm gonna win on Monday for
sure.
”

A few minutes later, the cheese fridge was bathed in glorious light, the sample platter was bare (thanks, in most part, to Sandy, who forced down several more bites of Limburger “to build up tolerance”), and Mr. Eng was none the wiser. Still, as Sandy lined up to buy his package of putrescent cheese, Gladys couldn't help wondering how many times she was going to have to swoop in and save her aunt from her self-destructive instincts at work.

• • •

Luckily, Aunt Lydia wasn't on duty the next day when Gladys returned to the Gourmet Grocery to meet Parm and her teammates. Still in their practice clothes, the girls peeled off in groups of two or three to troll the aisles for the ingredients Gladys assigned them. Somehow, talking to kids she didn't know was less scary when the subject was food.

Parm, however, did seem a little scared. “How many different things are we making??” she asked, her voice panicky as she looked over Gladys's list.

“I thought we'd do three recipes.” Gladys showed Parm the first recipe she had printed. “The frosting pattern on these cookies makes them look like soccer balls, see? Then there's this brownie recipe I got from Sandy's mom, because kids love chocolate and her brownies are the best. And then, finally, I wanted to make something gluten-free, for the kids who can't eat wheat.” Gladys shuffled to a new page. “I did a bunch
of searching and finally came up with these Indian confections made with chickpea flour.”

Parm looked at the picture on Gladys's printout. “I know those. There's a sweets shop in Jackson Heights where my family likes to go sometimes, and they sell them. But wait! Don't they have some kind of nasty name?” Parm looked at the paper again, then pointed to the subtitle. “Yeah, that's it: barfi.”

Gladys nodded. “I thought maybe we'd just keep the name to ourselves until
after
the kids had tried them.”

“Good plan,” Parm said. “I'm sure it actually means something else anyway, right?”

“I looked it up, and it comes from the Hindi word for ‘snow,'” Gladys told her. “Now come on, let's get these last few ingredients.”

Their bill at Mr. Eng's was not cheap, but Gladys promised the team they would make plenty more in profits the next day. “The good thing about selling three different items is that kids will want to try them all, so hopefully you'll get more than one sale per kid,” Gladys said. Parm agreed that that made sense.

At Parm's, under Gladys's watchful eye, everyone rolled up their sleeves and busted out the mixing bowls. Pretty soon, Gladys could tell who was better at making precise measurements and who was better suited to more physical work, like cracking eggs and mixing dough. With eighteen girls working hard
on their different tasks, it didn't take long before there were several trays of cookies baking in the oven, multiple pans of brownie batter on deck, and another large tray of barfi batter firming up in the refrigerator.

The trickiest part of the entire dessert-making adventure would be icing the cookies so they would look like soccer balls. Gladys had found a video online for how to stretch dots of black icing into pentagon shapes using toothpicks, and she demonstrated for Parm and her teammates on a cooled cookie. It was painstaking work, but the results looked pretty good. Soon, five of the most artistic girls on the team were hard at work on the designs.

At one point, Parm's older brother Jagmeet wandered into the kitchen. A few self-conscious giggles arose from the bakers, but Jagmeet definitely seemed more interested in the food than in the girls. “Cookies! Nice,” he said, and reached for the one Parm had just finished decorating. Gladys had never heard her friend scream so loud—or seen Jagmeet, who was a star basketball player at Dumpsford Township High, run so fast.

Parm had taken a few deep breaths to calm herself down before she realized that Gladys, her teammates, and her mother, who had recently joined them in the kitchen, were all staring at her. “What?” she snapped. “Each of these takes five minutes to decorate! No way was I gonna let him steal one.”

Her mother smiled. “It's nice to see you taking pride in your work, Parminder.”

When her mom stepped away from them, Parm shook her head. “Don't be fooled,” she said quietly to Gladys. “She's just hoping that
I'll
steal one of these cookies. Which I will
not.
Mom still thinks that one of these days I'm gonna wake up and like eating all sorts of things I didn't like the day before. She's living in a fantasy world.”

At that, Gladys couldn't help but think of her own parents. “Hey, you don't think your mom will tell whoever picks me up that we were cooking here, do you?” she asked. “Because my parents are
also
living in a fantasy world—one where they think access to the kitchen once a week is enough for me.”

“I'll make sure she's busy when your ride comes,” Parm promised, and Gladys would have hugged her if Parm hadn't been in the middle of decorating another soccer-ball cookie.

Eventually, the icing on the cookies was set, the brownies were cooled, and the barfi was solidified and cut into tasty-looking cubes. The team agreed to set prices for the items according both to size and the effort it had taken to prepare them: the barfi cubes would sell for a dollar apiece, the brownies for two dollars, and the soccer-ball cookies for three dollars.

“That way, there are also different price points for students who have different amounts of money with
them,” Parm pointed out. Gladys was impressed—her friend really was getting into the spirit of the bake sale now.