Alexis and the Perfect Recipe (12 page)

Emma looked like she didn't believe me, but she hugged me and said, “Thanks, but I don't think you
need to make a choice. I love my brother too, you know.” She swatted my arm playfully, then gasped.

I looked over to see what she was looking at and rolled my eyes. I had, for five minutes, forgotten about Sydney and Callie, but there they were, still standing around. “Yeah, can you believe they had the nerve to show up?”

“Unbelievable!” Emma said in a disgusted tone. When Katie and Mia came back (without Jake, who was now with his mother), we started trying to figure out what we should do. We decided that Emma would say something to Sydney, since Sydney had approached her about the party in the first place. I wondered if we should kick them out, but Mia thought that wouldn't be very ladylike and suggested we tell the manager that there were crashers.

Emma took a deep breath before crossing the dance floor toward Sydney and Callie, who had just spotted Matt. I watched in horror as they surrounded him, and Sydney snaked her arm through his. It made me wonder about Emma's comment about Sydney doing all the work for Callie. Maybe Sydney secretly liked Matt herself.

When Emma joined them, she began talking, and they were all listening to what she was saying. Then Sydney began gesturing and telling some sort
of story. Matt watched the whole thing in silence, I was glad to see, and when the bartender handed him the sodas, he took them in his hands and took a few steps away from the group.

Emma must have made Sydney and Callie feel bad enough to leave, because Callie suddenly grabbed Sydney's arm and was pulling her toward the door. I hoped they would leave!

When Emma and Matt came back with the drinks, Emma looked really mad, but Matt was laughing.

“I hate those two. They are so evil!” Emma exclaimed. “They said Callie's sister, Jenna, had ‘lost' her precious cell phone, so they had to deliver it to her. They didn't want to look out of place, so they dressed up.”

I looked at Sydney and Callie, slowly making their way to the door. “I wonder how it got ‘lost' in the first place if it was so precious?”

“Exactly! So I told them to go,” said Emma.

Matt was still laughing. “The drama with all you girls!” he said. “I can't believe it. It's so dumb!”

“Believe it, mister,” said Emma as she took our drinks from him.

“Thank you,” I said to Matt. But as I took a sip, I saw my mother talking to Sydney and Callie at
the door. She seemed to be guiding them toward the refreshments instead of the door! What was she doing?

Now Sydney and Callie headed toward us. That made me madder than ever, and when I am mad, I think the adrenaline makes me do things I would normally be too afraid to do! I looked over at Matt, and he was looking at them, then at Emma, then at me. And right then he and I both said at the same time, “Wanna dance?”

I couldn't believe it! I know where my courage came from (the adrenaline from being mad!), but I will never know what made Matt ask me to dance. I don't know if Emma said something to him before the party, or his mom, or if he decided it himself, but whatever it was, the timing was great.

Matt and I laughed and hit the dance floor just as Sydney and Callie arrived where we'd been standing. Emma winked at me and went off with Mia and Katie to get some hors d'oeuvres.

The truth is, Matt and I didn't have anything to say to each other. We smiled a lot, and since I am a good dancer, I think I impressed him. He is an okay dancer, but for someone so athletic, he's not that great. I don't want to say I fell a little out of love with him right then, but between Emma's
and my friendship being on the line, us having nothing to say to each other, and him being only a so-so dancer, my crush kind of lost a little fizzle that night. And I was okay with that. I was proud to have set a goal, and to have reached it!

As Matt and I danced, I thought about all of my equations and my research. Oh, I was superhappy the whole time I was with Matt, but I decided that when it comes to love, there is no perfect recipe. There are so many ingredients, and things just have to happen naturally. If you need to force them or manipulate them, then they just aren't meant to be.

There was a lot of crushing going on that night at Dylan's party: I liked Matt, Callie liked Matt, maybe even Sydney liked Matt, Dylan liked Noah, Sam liked Dylan . . . and I'm sure there were a lot more equations that may not have a solution. All I know is this:

Nothing > friends

I repeat: Nothing is greater than friends!

Later that Night . . .

D
ylan's friends freaked out over the cupcakes. People came up to her all night to rave about them, and in the end, Dylan declared that the s'mores disco gift cupcakes made the party. That and Noah coming. They had a plan to go to the movies the very next night, which just goes to show you that if something is meant to happen, it just does.

For me, what made the party were the dance with Matt, the look on Callie's and Sydney's faces when he and I danced, making up with Emma, Dylan loving the cupcakes, and my big moment on the dance floor with Dad. Everyone gathered around and cheered. We were so good! We would have won if it was a contest! At the end he gave me a big hug and said, “Alexis, you are wonderful.
Just the way you are!” I looked over and saw Matt smiling at us, and I smiled back.

When we got home that night (along with Meredith and Skylar, who were sleeping over), I opened my locked drawer and took out the Matt notebook. It had been fun doing the research online and reading all the studies and their results, but it had been hard to quantify the results in a real-life setting. I needed data that was more concrete. And real feedback. Like tonight. I had reached my goal, and I could cross it off in my planner. Matt and I had danced together.

I read a quote somewhere that said, “The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.” Someone named Gudder said it. I think he or she was right. The whole math thing complicated a simple crush. But on the bright side, I got a great makeover, some good love advice, and a dance with a cute boy. It was all good.

I wasn't sure what would happen next with Matt, if anything, or if I even wanted anything to. I needed a new goal, whether it was love-related or not, because when it comes down to it, I am all about setting and reaching my goals. Failing to plan is planning to fail. That's one of my mottoes.

So maybe it was time to focus on business again, instead of love. One thing is for sure: If I'd spent as much time on the Cupcake Club this month as I did on Matt, my friends and I would all be a lot richer!

I ripped the pages out of the Matt notebook. Then I dumped them into the shredder under my desk. It was time for a new goal. I picked up my planner again and on a new goal page I wrote:

SELL MORE CUPCAKES

I sent an e-mail to the Cupcake Club:

Great work! Thanks for putting up with Dylan. And me. Now on to the next assignment!

xoxo,

Alexis

Then I grabbed some SweeTarts and went to see if anyone wanted to watch
Dancing with the Stars
with me.

My Cupcake Obsession

M
y name is Katie Brown, and I am crazy about cupcakes. I'm not kidding. I think about cupcakes every day. I even dream about them when I sleep. The other night I was dreaming that I was eating a giant cupcake, and when I woke up I was chewing on my pillow!

Okay, now I am kidding. But I do dream about cupcakes, I swear. There must be a name for this condition. Cupcake-itis? That's got to be it. I am stricken with cupcake-itis, and there isn't any cure.

My three best friends and I formed the Cupcake Club, and we bake cupcakes for parties and events and things and sell them. We're all different in our own way. Mia has dark brown hair and loves fashion. Emma has blond hair and blue eyes, and lots of
brothers. Alexis has curly red hair and loves math. (Can you believe it? But she really does!)

I have light brown hair, and I mostly wear jeans and T-shirts. I'm an only child. And I hate math. But I have one big thing in common with all my friends: We love cupcakes.

That's why we were in my kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon, baking cupcakes on a beautiful spring day. We were having an official meeting to discuss our next big job: baking a cupcake cake for my Grandma Carole's seventy-fifth birthday bash. But while we were thinking about that, we were also trying to perfect a new chocolate-coconut-almond cupcake, specially created for my friend Mia's step-dad, Eddie, based on his favorite candy bar.

We had tried two different combinations already: a chocolate cupcake with coconut frosting and almonds on top, and a coconut cupcake with chocolate-almond frosting, but none of them matched the taste of the candy bar enough. Now we were working on a third batch: a chocolate-almond cupcake with coconut frosting and lots of shredded coconut on top.

I carefully poured a teaspoon of almond extract into the batter. “Mmm . . . smells almond-y,” I said.

“I hope this batch is the one,” said Mia. “Eddie
finally started taking down that gross flowery wallpaper in my bedroom, and I have to find some way to thank him. I would have paid someone a million dollars to do that!”

“You realize you could buy a whole new house for a million dollars, right?” Alexis asked. “Probably two or three.”

“You know what I mean,” Mia replied. “Besides, you know how ugly that wallpaper is. It looks like something you'd find in an old lady's room.”

“Hey, my Grandma Carole's an old lady, and she doesn't have ugly wallpaper in her house,” I protested.

Emma picked up the ice-cream scoop and started scooping up the batter and putting it into the cupcake pans.

“We need to find out more about your grandma,” Emma said. “That way we can figure out what kind of cupcakes to make for the party.”

“Right!” Alexis agreed. She flipped open her notebook and took out the pen tucked behind her ear. Sometimes I think Alexis must have a secret stash of notebooks in her house somewhere. I've never seen her without one.

“First things first,” Alexis said. “How many people are coming to the party?”

I wrinkled my nose, thinking. “Not sure,” I said. Then I yelled as loud as I could. “Mom! How many people are coming to Grandma Carole's party?”

My mom appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Katie, you know how I feel about yelling,” she said.

“Sorry, Mom,” I said in my best apology voice.

“The answer is about thirty people,” Mom said. “So I think if the cupcake cake has three dozen cupcakes, that would be fine.”

“What exactly is a cupcake cake, anyway?” Mia asked. “Do you mean like one of those giant cupcakes that you bake with a special pan?”

“I was thinking more like a bunch of cupcakes arranged in tiers to look like a cake,” Mom replied.

Mia nodded to Alexis. “May I?”

“Sure,” Alexis replied, handing her the pen and notebook. Mia began to sketch. She's a great artist and wants to be a fashion designer some day.