All Four Stars (9 page)

KEEP AWAY FROM MOM AND POP'S KITCHEN!

GLADYS JUMPED AS A THUNDERCLAP
sounded outside; the lights dimmed, and she heard the computer make a funny sound. The lights came back on full strength a moment later, but a message popped up on the screen saying that the Internet connection was lost.

Gladys turned off the computer and sat for a full ten minutes in front of the blank screen, working things out in her mind. She had promised to supply Fiona Inglethorpe with samples (plural!) of her restaurant reviews, meaning that she couldn't get away with sending less than two. But what restaurants could she write about? She couldn't remember the last time her parents had taken her out to eat somewhere new. And even if she could convince them to eat out tonight—which she highly doubted with this storm—she would still be one review short. She was going to have to write about places where she'd already eaten.

But where? The only restaurants Gladys had ever been to that seemed worth reviewing were the ones she'd visited in New York City with her aunt . . . and that was so long ago, she didn't even remember any of their names.

She would have to write about meals she had eaten more recently. But she ate so little of the food her parents brought home from places like Sticky Burger or Pathetti's Pies, she surely couldn't write about them . . . and according to Aunt Lydia, Sticky's and Pathetti's didn't even count as restaurants, anyway.

The best thing to do, Gladys decided, would be to look at the
New York Standard
's most recent restaurant reviews for inspiration. And since the Internet was down and she couldn't look at the website, she would have to get her hands on a paper copy.

When she stepped out onto the front porch, the rain was coming down much harder than it had been on the way home from school. Suddenly her coat and boots seemed very flimsy, and she wondered how she would possibly make it to Mr. Eng's shop and back.

“Hey, Gladys!” a voice called. “Where're ya going?”

It was Sandy, standing on his front porch and watching the rain. Happy to see him, Gladys ran over. “I have to go to Mr. Eng's,” she said when she reached him. “I need a copy of the newspaper.”

“Don't you get it delivered?” Sandy nodded at the blue plastic–encased lump sitting on the steps outside of the Gatsbys' front door.

“Not the
Dumpsford Township Intelligencer,
” Gladys said with a shudder. That newspaper was so full of typos that she suspected reading it actually made you more stupid. Also, it didn't have a Dining section. “I need a copy of the
New York Standard.
”

“Oh. Does this have something to do with that e-mail?”

“Yeah. I can tell you more about it later, but I'd better go so I can be back before my parents get home.”

“In this rain?” Sandy asked. “Are you crazy?”

“Um, I think it's letting up . . .” Gladys said as bravely as she could, even though she thought nothing of the sort.

“Wait,” said Sandy. “I think my mom gets the
New York Standard.
”

“Really?” Gladys supposed it was possible. Sandy and his mom had moved to town after the article slamming the landfill was published; like Ms. Quincy, they probably didn't know that good East Dumpsfordians didn't read the
Standard.

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure she does,” Sandy said. “Do you want to come in and see?”

“Sure!” Gladys cried. At that moment, the front door opened to reveal Mrs. Anderson, wearing sweats and balancing her laptop in one hand.

“Gladys, what a nice surprise,” she said as Gladys and Sandy shrugged out of their coats in the foyer.

“Hey, Mom,” Sandy said. “Can we have today's
New York Standard
?”

Mrs. Anderson raised an eyebrow. “Should I get your pipe and slippers, too?”

“What?” said Sandy.

“Forget it,” Mrs. Anderson said with a chuckle. “Just an old person's joke. So, what business do you two have with the Dusty Dame?”

“The dusty . . .
what
?” Sandy asked.

“That's a nickname some people use,” his mother said, “for the
Standard.
”

“Why?” Gladys asked. She had never heard the newspaper called that before.

“Oh, I guess it's because some people think the
Standard
is a little out of touch, like a dusty museum or a snooty old lady,” Mrs. Anderson explained, leading Sandy and Gladys down the hall into the kitchen. “And I have to say, sometimes I agree. Take today's Dining section, for example—there's hardly a restaurant I could afford to eat at or a recipe I'd have time to make.” Mrs. Anderson sighed and set the laptop on the breakfast bar. “Of course, it's not always like that,” she added. “Some weeks the writing is brilliant. But things do seem to have slipped a bit lately . . .” She trailed off as she grabbed a bottle of milk from the refrigerator. “How about some hot chocolate, guys?”

“Yes, please!” said Sandy.

“Thank you,” said Gladys. She stepped up on the footrest of one of the kitchen stools like she was climbing a ladder and hoisted herself into the high seat. A minute later, there was a pan of milk warming on the stove, and Mrs. Anderson was snapping a chocolate bar into pieces and measuring sugar out of a large white canister. Gladys had to smile—Mrs. Anderson might complain that the
Standard
recipes were too time-consuming, but she still made hot chocolate the old-fashioned way.

Mrs. Anderson reached up into the cupboard and took down three cups. “I think I'll have some, too,” she said.

Sandy nudged Gladys and pointed to the end of the breakfast bar, where a thick, somewhat mangled-looking newspaper sat on top of a pile of mail.

“Oh, right, you wanted the paper,” Mrs. Anderson said, sliding it down the bar toward them. “Don't tell me you both have current events projects to work on?”

“Yeah, current events,” said Sandy. As soon as his mom was busy again, this time sprinkling spices into the pan, Sandy whispered, “So what's going on?”

“I need the Dining section,” Gladys whispered back. She unfolded the newspaper and they turned the pages together, looking for the word
Dining.

“Now, where am I supposed to put these?” Mrs. Anderson said, laughing. She maneuvered the two full mugs to either side of the wide newspaper pages. “Be careful not to spill on the articles you're going to use!”

Gladys was momentarily sidetracked by the scrumptious scents rising from her mug. She gave the surface a strong cooling blow, then took a sip of the velvety, sweet, and slightly spicy concoction. There was definitely some extra-fancy Vietnamese cinnamon in there! When she surfaced again, she saw that Sandy was turning the pages
back,
toward the beginning of the newspaper.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“I thought it might be easier to check the table of contents.”

“Oh, yeah. Good idea.”

“It's in section D,” Sandy said, and immediately began to rifle through the different clusters of pages that made up the newspaper's sections. “B . . . C . . . E . . . F . . . huh?” Sandy started again, with Gladys leaning over to help. But it was no use—Section D was missing.

“Mrs. Anderson!” Gladys cried—perhaps a bit too urgently, because Sandy's mom spun around with her cup of hot chocolate and slopped a substantial amount onto her saucer.

“Yes, Gladys?” she replied, her eyes wide.

Gladys made an effort to bring her voice back to its normal volume. “Could I see the Dining section you were talking about before?”

“Today's Dining section?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, “but I thought it was so worthless, I already used it to paper the rabbits' cage.”

Gladys and Sandy exchanged a look of horror, leapt down from their stools, and tore down the hall toward the Rabbit Room.

Once inside, Sandy flung open the hutch door. Little Edward Hopper was more than happy to be set free and bounded out of the cage immediately. Fat, round Dennis Hopper, however, was in no hurry to move. He sat heavily on one corner of the fresh newspaper—the very page, Gladys saw as she leaned closer, that contained a restaurant review.

“I need that page!” Gladys cried, and both she and Sandy tugged. Dennis Hopper didn't seem to notice at first, but then gave a loud thump with one of his rear legs and took a small hop forward, settling himself squarely in the middle of the sheet Gladys and Sandy were pulling.

“Stupid rabbit,” Sandy groaned, but then Gladys got an idea. She darted over to the rabbits' food bag and a moment later was sprinkling a few pellets into Dennis's bowl. Hearing the sound of the pellets, Dennis hopped over and stuck his face in, freeing the sheet of newspaper. Sandy pulled it out in a flash.

“Tricking Dennis Hopper away from the food section with
food,
” Sandy said. “That's genius!” And, brushing some fur, a few stray pieces of hay, and a rabbit dropping from the page, he handed it to Gladys.

“Thanks,” she said.

“So that e-mail you sent me . . .” Sandy said. “It was for real? The
New York Standard
wants you to write for them?”

Gladys nodded. “This may sound a little crazy . . .” she started, and she told him all about the second e-mail and her need to come up with two sample “professional restaurant reviews” by tomorrow. “So I thought I should at least look at some real reviews that were already published in the
Standard,
and then . . . I don't really know. I haven't been to a good restaurant since I was a little kid. What am I going to write about?”

“I'm sure you'll think of something,” Sandy said. “Maybe this one will give you an idea.”

“That's what I was hoping,” Gladys said. With a bit of renewed confidence, she flopped down into the beanbag chair to read “Hamburgers Most Haute—A Tour of Manhattan's Gastropub Scene,” by Gilbert Gadfly. But before she even finished the first column, her new shell of confidence cracked like an egg.

Gilbert Gadfly's single article covered no fewer than
six
separate restaurants. What's more, he had apparently been to each restaurant several times, or at least brought a bunch of people with him, since he claimed to have tasted more dishes at each restaurant than one person would ever order.

“Well, that's that,” she said, throwing the newspaper aside and sinking deeper into the beanbag chair. “You can give the paper back to Dennis Hopper. I quit.”

“Why? Didn't it help?” Sandy asked.

“It's worse than I thought,” Gladys said. “That critic must have tried ten different dishes at each restaurant before he wrote about them! How am I supposed to compete?”

Sandy paused to consider Gladys's dilemma. Then he said, “Well, did he
like
all of the restaurants he ate at?”

“No . . .” Gladys replied slowly. “He liked one, and said that three of them were ‘hit-or-miss.' But he really hated the last two. He called the hamburgers at the Skewered Swine ‘rotting lumps of bovine carcass.'”

Sandy made a face. “I don't even know what that means, but it sounds disgusting.”

“Like my dad's hamburgers,” Gladys said, remembering the terrible night two weeks ago when her father had stuck beef patties in the microwave.

“Well, there you go!” cried Sandy.

“What?”

“Think about all the awful meals your parents make you eat. You've already written lots of bad reviews of those in your journal.”

“But my parents' kitchen isn't a restaurant!” she said.
If it were,
she thought,
it would have been shut down ages ago.

“Yeah, but
she
doesn't know that!”

“Who?”

“That Fiona woman! She can't know about every restaurant in the whole world. You could just call it Mom and Pop's Kitchen or something. Write about that time your mom accidentally liquefied the broccoli and tried to pass it off as green sauce for the spaghetti.”

Now Gladys's brain felt like a rotisserie chicken spinning on a spit. “You think I should
make up a restaurant
?”

“It's not like you'll need to make up the meals,” Sandy said. “You've really eaten those. Just the name and the . . . ambulance and stuff.”

“I think you mean the
ambiance,
” Gladys said.

“Sure,” Sandy said. “So there's your bad review. You should probably write a good one, too. Hm. Can you write about your own cooking?”

Gladys shook her head—she knew immediately whose cooking she would praise. Sure, she had only eaten dinner at Parm's house that one time, but she had feasted on enough delicious dishes there to fill an entire review, no problem.

“I know just the place,” Gladys said. “Thank you
so
much, Sandy! I think this might really work!”

AWESOMELY NUTTY

THAT NIGHT AFTER DINNER (A PIECE OF
fish that had been blackened beyond recognition on the outside but was still frozen on the inside), Gladys set to work. She pulled last year's journal out from its hiding place in her pajama drawer and found the entry from her dinner at the Singhs'. Then she took her red journal out of her backpack and flipped to the reviews of the most awful meals she'd eaten at home. She read all the entries over carefully, then turned to a blank page in her red journal and began to rewrite them.

Gladys finished the good review before her bedtime, but had to work on the bad one by flashlight after her parents made her turn out the light. When she finally wrote the last sentence—“If you like your meat cooked all the way through, you'll keep away from Mom and Pop's Kitchen!”—the hour shining in green on her alarm clock showed the latest time Gladys had ever stayed up until. She tucked her journal carefully under her pillow, rolled over, and fell asleep almost at once.

• • •

Waking up the next morning was hard, and the day didn't get much easier once Gladys got to school. At the beginning of the morning's lessons, she quickly realized that she'd forgotten to do her social studies homework in all the excitement of writing her reviews the night before. Her cheeks burned as Ms. Quincy walked up and down the aisle collecting everyone's worksheets, knowing that she wouldn't have one to hand in.

“Do you have a reason, Gladys?” the teacher asked quietly, kneeling down at her desk when Gladys mumbled that she hadn't done the worksheet. “A note from home?”

“No,” said Gladys honestly. “I just forgot to do it.”

“Well, I must say that I'm disappointed.” Ms. Quincy's voice was a bit icier as she straightened up. “That will be a zero for today.”

But Gladys had other things on her mind. For instance, how much time it would take to type up her reviews after school so she could send them before her parents came home. Yes, they had encouraged her to use the computer, but she was afraid that if they heard too much typing coming from the office—rather than the blasting noises of a computer game—they might get suspicious.

As the class lined up for lunch a couple of hours later, Gladys found herself standing right behind Charissa and Rolanda.

“Obviously, I won't be able to invite just
anyone,
” Charissa was saying. “I mean, these things get expensive. Not that my parents couldn't afford it, but I think it's best to keep the celebration small. That way, the focus will really be on
me.
”

“I thought we were best friends,” Rolanda said, somewhat huffily.

“Yeah, well . . .” Charissa drawled, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder and almost whipping Gladys across the face, “you're
one
of my best friends . . .”

At that, Rolanda turned up her nose and marched off to stand with Marti, who was tying her shoe several spots back. Charissa turned to look after her with a shocked expression on her face. She obviously wasn't used to being walked away from. But in a second her expression was calm again and her eyes fell across Gladys.

“Gladys!” she cried a bit too loudly, like she was greeting a friend she hadn't seen in ages. Just then, Ms. Quincy herded the class into the hall and toward the cafeteria. Charissa hung back and fell into step with Gladys, sneaking glances at Rolanda and Marti to make sure they noticed who she was talking to. “Man, I can't believe old Ms. Q gave you a zero for forgetting your homework!” Charissa said brightly.

“Um, I guess,” Gladys said with a shrug. Actually, she wasn't surprised at all—she knew that Ms. Quincy was strict about handing in assignments. What's more, she was sure that Charissa knew, too, since she had raised quite a fuss in class when she received her own zero the week before.

“I mean, sometimes we're just too busy to do all this homework,” Charissa continued. “She doesn't understand that some of us have
lives
outside of school! I have dance on Tuesdays and horseback on Thursdays and sleepovers almost every weekend and what I really
want
to do is gymnastics . . .”

Gladys let Charissa prattle on until they reached the cafeteria, only half listening to what she said. She supposed she should feel grateful that the most popular girl in the grade was paying attention to her, but she knew it was just to get back at Rolanda. Gladys figured that they would part ways in the cafeteria, but when they arrived, Charissa grabbed her by the arm and steered her to the opposite end of the table from Rolanda and Marti.

“So,” said Charissa as she nudged Gladys into the seat next to her, “what have you got for lunch today?”

Gladys had her typical white-bread sandwich, and scolded herself for letting Charissa drag her too far down the table to trade with Leah. The only other thing in Gladys's lunch bag was one of Mrs. Anderson's experimental brownies—caramel walnut this time—which Mrs. Anderson had wrapped in a paper towel and pressed upon her the night before. Gladys never had the heart to tell Mrs. Anderson that she didn't really like walnuts. This time, she took the brownie, hid it in her room, and snuck it into her bag that morning, hoping to trade it during lunch as well. Now it looked like she would be stuck with both.

“Ooh, is that a brownie?” Charissa asked. “My mom never packs me dessert. She doesn't want me to look fat in my leotard.”

“Really?” Charissa was one of the skinniest girls in the grade; Gladys couldn't imagine her looking fat in anything. But she also couldn't imagine getting enough energy for the afternoon from the tiny salad Charissa was pulling out of her own lunch bag. “You want it?” Gladys said, holding out the brownie. Charissa took it right away, of course, without protesting, proposing a trade, or even saying thank you.

Gladys was in the process of unwrapping her sandwich when a shriek nearly made her fall out of her seat. Suddenly, every face at the table was looking at her—or was looking next to her, where Charissa held the brownie at arm's length. She was shaking.

Oh, no,
Gladys thought. Mrs. Anderson was a great baker, but she sometimes got distracted. Had something fallen into the brownie batter—a coin, a paper clip, a (gulp) spider?

Whatever it was, Gladys knew at that moment that her social life—if it could be called one—in the East Dumpsford school system was over. She would forever be known as the girl who poisoned Charissa Bentley, and Charissa would
never
let something like this go. Gladys clutched her sandwich, trying to mentally prepare herself for the humiliation that was coming.

“Oh my
God,
” Charissa said, her eyes wide with disbelief. “This brownie . . . this brownie . . .”

The cafeteria table was dead silent; all eyes were on them. Gladys shivered, and her fingers felt weirdly greasy, though she didn't dare look down.

“This brownie is . . . AMAZING!!”

Gladys had squeezed her sandwich so hard that the mayonnaise had burst out of it all over her hands.

A few seats down, Gladys saw Parm do her usual Charissa-eye-roll, and slowly the table began to buzz again with conversation. Gladys reached into her lunch bag and groped for a napkin as Charissa continued to rave about the brownie—how moist it was, how awesomely nutty and insanely chocolaty, how it was exactly what she wanted for her birthday cake in March, etc., etc. “Where did you buy it?” she asked finally.

“I didn't,” Gladys said. “My neighbor made it.”

“Well, where did she buy the . . . you know, the stuff that went into it?”

“The ingredients?”

“Yeah, the
ingredients.
” Charissa was starting to sound impatient.

“Well, she usually shops at Mr. Eng's Gourmet Grocery on Hamilton Str—” Gladys started, but Charissa cut her off.

“Great,” she snapped, then filled her mouth with another bite of brownie. Gladys took this as a sign that the conversation was over, and bit carefully into her own (now half-exploded) lunch.

• • •

The mayonnaise grease was gone by the time Gladys sat down at the computer that afternoon. It took her about an hour to type up her sample reviews, the terrible one of “Mom and Pop's Kitchen” and the glowing one of “Singhs' Paradise” (“a delightful hole-in-the-wall whose buffet serves up the best of Indian cuisine . . . and if the prices were any lower, the food would be free!”). She attached them to an e-mail addressed to [email protected] and titled it “The samples you requested.” Now all that remained was the short note to the editor. Gladys took a deep breath.

Dear Ms. Inglethorpe,

Here are the sample restaurant reviews you asked for. I hope that you enjoy reading them. I would love to write a restaurant review for the
New York Standard.

Sincerely,

Gladys Gatsby

She couldn't think of anything else to say, and she didn't want to keep Ms. Inglethorpe waiting any longer. So, gripping the mouse to control the slight shaking of her hand, she clicked “Send.”

• • •

The editor's response was waiting for Gladys when she arrived home from school the next day.

Gladys,

I can't tell you how much I laughed reading your review of Mom and Pop's Kitchen today. I pity you for having suffered through so many meals there, but I'm glad you did, because it really produced a hilarious review! And Singhs' Paradise sounds like paradise indeed. Is this restaurant still in business? It sounds like it might be worth a trip into the suburbs to try.

As you may have heard, our regular restaurant critic, Gilbert Gadfly, burned his taste buds in a terrible hot-chocolate-drinking accident, and I'm trying to distribute his workload to other critics while he recovers. I would like to send you to review Classy Cakes, chef Allison Sconestein-Alforno's new “dessert bistro” on 42nd Street in Manhattan. The restaurant opens on March 15, and you will need to submit your review by April 9.

Please write back at your earliest convenience to let me know if you'll accept the assignment.

Cheers,

Fiona Inglethorpe

This time, Gladys lost no time in replying.

Dear Ms. Inglethorpe,

I am so glad you liked my reviews and am thrilled to accept the assignment. As for Singhs' Paradise, I think that they are closed to the public at the moment, but I hope that the owners will open a new restaurant soon!

Sincerely,

Gladys Gatsby

She figured that this was not a huge lie—after all, it would be great if Parm's parents opened a restaurant, though perhaps in a slightly more adventurous town than East Dumpsford.

Gladys clicked “Send.” Then she spun around in the office chair in glee like she'd seen people do in movies . . . and accidentally whacked the computer tower, knocking loose a cable and shutting the whole thing down. “Oops!” she said, and in her frenzy to reattach the cable, she knocked over a cup full of her mother's favorite fuzzy monster pens, covering the desk in feathers and googly eyes. She quickly scooped the pens back into the cup and carefully backed out of the room, worried that her excitement might destroy the office if she stayed any longer. Then she darted down the hallway to yell for Sandy out the window and tell him the great news the old-fashioned way.

“Woo-hoo!” Sandy cried, pumping his fist in the air. “I knew you could do it, Gatsby!” They agreed to meet the next morning, which was Saturday, at Sandy's house to discuss everything in more detail.

Gladys felt so cheerful all the way through dinner (Chinese takeout, her parents' old standby for Friday nights) that she barely noticed how salty her wonton soup tasted or how stale the fortune cookies were. Later, in bed, she had trouble falling asleep since she couldn't stop picturing herself at Classy Cakes, nibbling on pastries and secretly taking notes in her journal for her review. The review that would be published for millions of people to read in the
New York Standard
!