Emma: Lights! Camera! Cupcakes! (13 page)

“Time for a fifth cupcake member?” asked Katie.

“Nah. Not yet,” I said. “But we do need to make a note to share some of the profits with her.”

Mona had dropped off a check from the Fords for the cupcakes, and Alexis was depositing it, along with the one from Romaine for the premiere cupcakes, tomorrow.

We scrolled through the pictures we'd taken at the premiere and at the wedding with our phones. We had promised Mrs. Ford we'd never e-mail them or send them anywhere, especially to be published.

“I know I can count on you girls,” she e-mailed. “I can't wait until we have something else to celebrate, so we can hire you again!”

We had all cheered when we read that.

I brought a tray of the “reject” cupcakes—they still tasted delicious, but didn't look as pretty as
the others (I'm guessing they were the ones Matt frosted), so they didn't make the final cut. Alexis put out a jug of milk and some glasses on the table.

“What next?” asked Mia.

“Isabel Gormley's birthday!” said Alexis, looking at a list.

“Oh, the cupcake competition with the kits!”

“That's going to be so cool!” said Katie.

“And so easy,” added Mia, “compared to a movie premiere.”

“Not so fast!” I cautioned, wagging my finger at her.

She laughed and put her hands in the air like
I surrender
.

Alexis picked up where I'd left off. “Remember, our best clients, like the Gormleys—and Mona—are the most important ones to please. And our simplest cupcakes are the ones we need to work on the hardest. It's all the opposite of what you'd think.”

“A recipe for success if ever there was one,” I said admiringly. I held up a cupcake for a toast. “To Romaine and Liam.”

“And to the Cupcake Club!” Mia added. We all clinked cupcakes together and laughed. It was the perfect end to a perfect (not wild!) weekend.

W
ant another sweet cupcake?

Here's a sneak peek of the twentieth book in the

Cupcake
Diaries

series:

Alexis

the icing on the cupcake

M
y ankles were freezing.

It was a cold and rainy morning, even though it was almost Memorial Day, and the weather was a little fluky: hot and muggy one day, chilly and cool the next. So maybe that explained my cold ankles. But the rest of me wasn't chilly. My ankles felt . . . bare, despite the fact I had on long pants. I stretched out my foot at the breakfast table and looked down. Wait, why was there suddenly so much ankle showing from the bottom of my pant leg? These pants weren't capris! Had they shrunk?

I stood up and shimmied the pants down a little so that they covered more of my ankles. My older sister, Dylan, gave me glance over her teapot and then looked back at what she was reading. Now my
ankles were covered, but my pants were riding too low for comfort. They were practically falling off my hips, actually.

“Argh!” I cried in frustration.

“What's the matter, Lex?” asked Dylan in a slightly annoyed tone. “I'm trying to have a peaceful morning here.” Dylan's been trying to be all mature these days, drinking tea and acting really patient and calm no matter what the situation. She took this relaxation and meditation class, and now she goes around telling us that the house has to be her “Zen place.”

“My pants don't fit!” I cried very un-Zenlike. “And they're not that old! I just bought them with Grandma over spring break!”

Dylan rolled her eyes. “You must've shrunk them. You're supposed to line dry cotton pants like that.”

“I do!” I protested. “Always!”

Dylan thought for a minute, then she sighed and shook her head. “Then it could only be one thing,” she said, returning to the fascinating back of the cereal box.

I guess she wasn't going to tell me unless I asked. And I really,
really
didn't want to ask. But the suspense was killing me.

“What?”

Dylan sighed again, as if it was all so obvious and I was such a nitwit. “Hello? Growth spurt!”

“What?”

“You grew! Happens all the time. That's why they call it ‘growing up.' ” She shook her head.

“But that
fast
?”

She nodded. “It can happen overnight sometimes. You come down in the morning and suddenly you can see things on the top shelf of the fridge that you'd swear you couldn't see when you went to bed the night before.”

“Really?” I walked over to the fridge and opened it. I glanced around the top shelf: yogurt, pickles, mustard . . . Wait, had that temperature dial always been back there? I knew I'd never seen it before because I would have had some fun tweaking it to see if different temperatures saved us money or made things icy. Had the fridge really come like that? I didn't dare ask Dylan.

Feeling slightly freaked out, I shut the door and stood with my back to it, hands still on the handle.

There was no doubt about it.

I had grown.

“So what should I do?” I asked Dylan.

“About what?”

I gestured helplessly at my naked ankles.

Dylan stood up to wash her cup in the sink. “Buy new pants,” she said.

Before I could go to school, I had to change my pants, but I had to try on two other pairs before I found one that fit. At school I ran into my best friend, Emma Taylor, on the way to my locker.

“I grew,” I said, falling into step beside her.

“I know,” she agreed.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Wait!
Really?
You could tell?”

Emma stopped too and nodded. “Uh-huh. I have to look up at you when I talk to you now.”

“Well, when were you going to tell me?”

Emma laughed and started walking again. “Seriously, Lexi? You need me to
tell
you that you grew?”

“I don't know. I mean, it's not like I noticed it myself.” I unlocked my locker and was startled to see how packed my top shelf was. “Ugh. This locker is a pit. I need to clean this thing out!”

Emma laughed again. “See? Suddenly, you can see stuff that's high up. Maybe you could check the top shelf in my locker and see if my mouth guard for soccer is up there.”

I laughed. “What, now I'm renting out my height?”

She giggled. “You could!”

“What, for locker cleanouts?”

“Yeah, you could charge. . . .”

My money-making senses tingled a little. I do have a head for business. Could I earn cash by cleaning out lockers? Probably. The bigger question is, would I want to? A thought for another day.

Speaking of money . . . “Hey, are we meeting today?” I asked. Our Cupcake Club usually meets on Fridays at lunch to plan out upcoming jobs and experiment with new recipes, as well as bake for our regular customers and any weekend jobs we might have lined up. Plus, we always get together at Friday lunch and bring cupcakes; it's a delicious tradition.

“Yup,” said Emma. “We have our lunch meeting, obviously, and then after school we're on for baking. Mia can come now that she'll be at her mom's this weekend. Let's do it at my house.”

“Great. I brought the ledger and everything, just in case we were able to meet. I'll see you later in the cafeteria,” I said, and we headed off to our classes.

Down the hall, I stopped for a quick gulp of
water at the fountain. I swear, I've never noticed how low that thing is. It's, like, elementary school–size! They should really have it raised.