The Icing on the Cake (5 page)

It really is good to be back!

Now that second semester has started, seventh-graders are allowed to eat lunch in the quad, along with the eighth-graders who have had it to themselves since September. So far it's been too cold to eat outside, but today is one of those weirdly warm January days when all you need is a fall jacket, and maybe a scarf if your mom gives you a hard time (which, of course, mine does). Frankie, Lillian, and I have staked out a corner of the quad, and we're sitting cross-legged on
our coats with our lunches lined up in the middle like a mini buffet. The sky is practically cloudless, and the sun feels so good on our faces that we all close our eyes for a minute and soak it in, like we're plants desperate to photosynthesize after a long winter.

The sun is so warm on my skin that I almost feel like I'm still at my dad's in California. Unfortunately, thinking about LA reminds me of the party, and an icy wave crashes through my toasty daydream. I open my eyes.

Frankie's poking through the couscous salad I brought, picking out the raisins and piling them up in one corner of the container. She has a thing about raisins in savory food because she thinks they don't match the other flavors. Frankie has been acting kind of quiet and distracted, which isn't unusual on days that we have social studies right after lunch. I'm about to tease her about still having a crush on Mr. Mac, when Lillian yanks her backpack open and pulls out a bulging plastic bag.

“I forgot I brought these!” she says, adding what's left of the cookies she and her mom took home from Saturday's cooking class to our smorgasbord.

Frankie pauses her archeological exploration of the couscous and looks up at us. “You know Errol's nephew—what's his name—he was sitting at my table?”

She asks this in an overly casual way, but she's not fooling anyone. Frankie pretending she doesn't remember a cute boy's name can mean only one thing. I raise my eyebrows at Lillian.

“You mean
Tristan
?” Lillian says, unzipping the bag of cookies.

“Oh, right, that was it,” Frankie says, still acting cool as a cucumber. “So, he seems kind of nice, right? Taking a cooking class with his uncle and everything.”

Lillian pulls a perfect-looking meringue out of the bag. “He didn't say a whole lot,” she says, taking a bite and starting to giggle, “but he was totally hot!”

Lillian always giggles when she talks about boys, which cracks me up.

“Tristan Holland,” I say, “a.k.a. Total Hotness. But a ninth grader. I don't know, Franks, isn't that like cradle robbing for you, after liking Mr. Mac all this time?”

Lillian laughs again, sending little pieces of meringue flying out of her mouth. She quickly covers it with her hand.

Frankie puts down her fork, glaring at me. “Ha-ha. Whatever. I guess he was pretty cute,” she shrugs. “You guys don't, like,
like
him or anything . . . do you?”

I roll my eyes. The truth is, I've been so busy thinking about the party and the whole thing with my mom and dad that there isn't any room in my brain for boys right now. “No,” I say. “But I know who does.”

“Who?” Frankie asks, dropping her casual act and sounding concerned.

I give her shoulder a shove. “You do, you faker! It's so obvious.”

Frankie blushes. “I so do not! No way. I hardly even know him.”

“Well, you have six weeks to get to know him,” Lillian says. “We'll have to figure out a way to make sure he's in your group on Saturday.”

“I know! I was thinking the same thing,” Frankie says, giving up her pretense and grabbing our hands. “You guys have to help me.” The force of her grip crushes the cookie I'm holding, and the crumbs fall onto the remains of Lillian's sesame noodles like sprinkles on a sundae. Frankie lets go. “Okay, maybe I do like him a little.”

“Uh, yeah,” I say, brushing biscotti crumbs off my jacket and hoping it's still too cold for ants.

“Well, if I do, I'm not the only one with a cooking class crush,” Frankie says, giving Lillian the one-raised-eyebrow treatment.

Lillian turns as red as the marinara sauce on Frankie's pasta. Even though she hasn't told us, Frankie and I can tell Lillian likes Javier by the way she looks at him when she thinks he doesn't see her, and how she gets extra quiet when he's around.

Frankie's eyes light up. “Guys, I have a totally brilliant idea.”

I check my phone. “Does it have to do with teleporting to Mr. Mac's class?” I ask. “Because if we don't get going soon we'll be late.”

“No,” Frankie says, as we all start cleaning up. “It has to do with your birthday party.”

“Ugh. Did you have to mention the not-mitzvah?”

“Yes, I did,” says Frankie, dumping what's left of her half-eaten pasta into a trash can, “because the party is the perfect opportunity for me and Lillian to get to know a certain pair of boys a little—or maybe even a lot—better!”

Lillian drops the bag of cookies she was about to shove into her backpack. “What? Frankie, do you lie awake at night thinking up evil boy-related plans?”

Yes, probably,
I think.

“Calm down, Lils, I'm not talking about doing anything creepy or stalkerish,” Frankie says, picking up the broken cookies. “I'm not even suggesting
that we ask them to the party
ourselves
. Nana Silver's going to do it for us—from Liza, I mean. What do you think, Lize?”

“Guys, I'm sure they'll be on the list,” I say. “I mean, I don't really know Tristan, but he's Errol's nephew and I'm planning to invite the whole class.”

Frankie looks pleased with herself. Lillian looks ill.

Lucky for Lillian, the two-minute warning bell rings, and the three of us make a mad rush for the door along with everyone else who decided to have lunch in the quad. As I'm absorbed into the mob of middle school bodies, I replay our conversation in my head. Suddenly the party that I wish I'd never agreed to has become an event my two best friends are looking forward to (or at least one of them, anyway). This probably sounds selfish, but I realize that I don't want Frankie and Lillian to be excited about my party—I want them to totally dread it, just like me!

Now that we've been taking cooking class together, every once in a while my mother lets me help out in the kitchen at home. Tonight is one of those rare occasions: she's making a shrimp dish, and it's my job to peel them. I'm not going to lie, peeling shrimp isn't exactly my favorite kitchen chore, but there is actually some skill involved, so my mother asking me to do it is kind of a big deal.

The shrimp peeler is really sharp, and slicing
open the shell while also removing the vein along the shrimp's back takes practice (I know that sounds totally gross, but it's really not that bad once you get used to it). The trick is to do it quickly, without cutting off your finger in the process. Having to be rushed off to the emergency room for a kitchen accident would definitely not increase my mother's confidence in my skills. Luckily, she bought enough shrimp to feed the whole block, so I'll have plenty of time to perfect my technique.

I'm just getting into a good peeling rhythm when Katie comes in the back door. She's been out running, and there are damp spots darkening her tank top under her arms. Even sweaty, she's practically flawless. Her cheeks are flushed and her ponytail is still perky. If it wasn't for a few flyaway hairs and the faint sweat stains, you might think she'd just stepped out to the corner deli to buy the bottle of water she's chugging, rather than run two three-mile loops around Prospect Park—the biggest park in Brooklyn.
Katie puts the bottle down, takes a deep breath, and then scrunches up her face.

“Ew,” she says, pinching her nose, “what exactly is that smell?”

I hold up a drippy handful of peeled (and deveined!) shrimp and give her an extra perky grin. “Dinner.”

“Really, Lillian, that's just disgusting,” Katie says, holding up her hand to block her view and turning away. “Are you trying to make me throw up?”

“That is
enough
, WeiWei,” my mother says firmly. “I do not put ‘disgusting' food on my table.” For a girl whose Chinese name means “mighty” and “powerful,” Katie is acting pretty wimpy about a pile of raw seafood.

I go back to peeling shrimp, making sure to hold each one high enough so that Katie can't avoid seeing me slice the shell along its back. “And didn't you get straight As in biology last year?” I ask. “How is what I'm doing any more gross than dissecting a frog or a scorpion?”

I fully expect my mother to snap at me for egging Katie on, but she looks up just long enough to give me one of her “warning stares” and goes back to chopping bok choy. She's a biology professor, so maybe she agrees.

Katie glares at me and then turns to my mother. “I'll just have some steamed vegetables tonight, Mama,” she says. “With a small scoop of brown rice.”

“I bought two pounds of shrimp at the fish market,” my mother says, her knife moving rhythmically along the thick white stems. “
Jiāo yán xiā
has always been one of your favorite dishes.”

Jiāo yán xiā
is salt-and-pepper shrimp. It's one of the foods that Chinese people traditionally serve on Lunar New Year, but my mother's is so tasty that we all beg her to make it year-round. Or at least we all used to.

Katie tosses her water bottle into the recycling bin. “Shrimp is full of cholesterol. I can't put that in my body while I'm in training.” She squeezes past my
mother and heads for the table where her backpack is slung over the back of a chair.

Mama waves her hand dismissively. “I am not running a restaurant,” she says, pointing to the rice cooker. “We are having white rice tonight.”

Katie takes a massive textbook out of her bag and shrugs. “I guess I'll just have greens, then.” She holds up the giant book, which I now see is a Shakespeare anthology. My sister is in the advanced English literature class, of course. “I'm off to memorize my sonnet in the bath. We're reciting them tomorrow, and Mr. Gupta says I have a ‘flare for the Bard,' so I don't want to disappoint him.”

I've heard Shakespeare called “the Bard” before, but who even knows what that means? Katie does, of course, like she knows everything. Or like she thinks she knows everything. She's only fifteen, but she acts like she's in college. I don't know how her friends can stand it. Not that she's made any real friends since we moved to Brooklyn anyway. There were a couple
of girls on her soccer team who came over a few times back in the fall, and she texts sometimes with her Model UN teammates, but she's always so busy studying or working out or preparing for a competition, I don't know when she'd have time for friends even if she wanted them.

I finish peeling the last of the shrimp and remind myself how lucky I am to have made friends like Liza and Frankie. I don't even like to think about those first few weeks of school before Mr. Mac put me in their project group and Liza came up with her Big Idea to take Chef Antonio's cooking class. Moving clear across the country and having to leave my cousin Chloe and my best friend Sierra behind in San Francisco was the worst. I've never felt as lonely as I did that first day at Clinton Middle School, standing in the cafeteria and not seeing a single friendly face at any of the tables.

Maybe Katie would be nicer if she had some real friends too. Even back in San Francisco she spent
more time with all of her clubs and teams than with any of the girls on our block or in her class. When we were little, our parents made us go to Chinese school every Saturday—all day. I don't know how I would have survived if Chloe and I weren't always in the same class (our birthdays are so close, we call ourselves “twin cousins”). I would have died of boredom without someone to pass notes to, or to make fun of the teacher with behind her back. But Katie didn't have anyone like Chloe to get her through Chinese school every week. She was as serious about getting straight As there as she was in regular school—the other kids were probably afraid to even talk to her.