Stars So Sweet (12 page)

PUPUSA PERFECTION

G
LADYS WAS LUCKY THAT MRS. ANDERSON
had volunteered to bring dessert, because she arrived home the next day much later than she'd anticipated. Despite having Charissa in her corner, getting the Mathletes to settle on a bake sale concept had been much harder than it had been with the Drama Club.

Finally, after learning that Shayla's parents had just bought a new deep fryer, Gladys had had an idea. In her research about Cuban food for her upcoming review, she'd been looking at recipes for buñuelos, a sort of doughnut made with yucca flour and licorice-y anise flavoring. In Cuba, they were made twisted into figure eights, but why couldn't they be shaped like any number? The idea of number-shaped doughnuts was a hit,
and Shayla promised that everyone could come to her house to make them once a bake sale date had been secured.

Despite her late start on the Salvadoran dinner at home, Gladys's pupusas came out well. The pancakes proved harder to stuff with meat, beans, and cheese than she'd expected, and several of them developed leaky cracks as she griddled them. But she was able to cover up those imperfections with curtido—a slightly fermented cabbage-and-carrot condiment that was traditionally eaten with pupusas in El Salvador—and nobody at the table seemed to notice.

“Really wonderful dinner, Gladys,” Mrs. Anderson said after polishing off her third pupusa. “But I have to ask, what brought this recipe to your attention? Do you subscribe to an international cooking newsletter? If so, I'd love the link.”

Gladys blinked nervously. Only Sandy and Aunt Lydia knew the true reason for Gladys's sudden interest in Salvadoran cooking—and for now, she wanted to keep it that way.

“Well, we'll be doing the history of the Americas in seventh grade this year,” she said, thinking fast, “so I thought it would be cool to try cuisines from some other countries.” And really, there was nothing false about that—Gladys was always happy to learn about new cuisines.

Mrs. Anderson, though, seemed impressed. “How
conscientious of you! Sandy could stand to take a page out of your book.” She beamed at Gladys, then gave Sandy a gentle nudge. He didn't look up from his plate, where he was busy arranging his curtido into a wild multicolored mop of hair on top of his round white pupusa. The pancake already had eyeholes that were oozing refried beans, and a jack-o'-lantern grin.

Mrs. Anderson nudged him again, and this time his head snapped up.

“Whuh?” he said. “Time for dessert?”

Gladys tried to hold in her giggles.

Sandy's mom sighed, but a minute later she brought out the plate of pumpkin bars she had baked that day. Gladys grabbed one. She definitely needed more sustenance if she was going to make it through the rest of her busy week.

• • •

By the time Gladys, Aunt Lydia, and Charissa headed into the city on the train that Saturday, Gladys was ready for a break. After school on Thursday, Jason Mitty had insisted on cramming chess rules into her already overstuffed brain, and she'd spent Friday afternoon trying—and failing—to explain to the Art Club why recreating Rodin's sculpture
The Thinker
out of marzipan was not the best idea for their bake sale. Then she had stayed up late helping her aunt prepare for her first trade show.

Charissa was exhausted as well from her own extracurricular commitments, so it was left to Aunt Lydia to rally the troops. “Dried meats! In styles from all around the world!” she cried, waving a catalog in the girls' faces. “Oh, I hardly know which booth to head to first. Montana-made elk jerky? Chineseinspired yak-meat floss? Look, there'll even be horse-meat snack bites ‘in the traditional Mongolian style'!”

“Horse?” Charissa's half-closed, violet-shaded eyes snapped open, and she grabbed the catalog. “Oh,
gross
! I
ride
horses every Thursday!” She turned to Gladys, a pleading look in her eye. “Let's steer clear of that booth, okay?”

“Sure,” Gladys said, but when her friend's eyelids closed again, Gladys whispered to her aunt, “Try to grab me a few of those horse-meat bites for Sandy, okay?”

Aunt Lydia winked. “I'll do my best.”

The trade show was set up on the floor of a convention center, a cavernous indoor space filled with booths advertising their wares. Colorful banners flew high above tables, some of them showing pictures of the different animals that supplied their meats. Gladys, Charissa, and Lydia all paused to take in the sheer amount of colors, scents, and sounds that surrounded them. Then Aunt Lydia busted out the spreadsheet she and Gladys had made the night before, and they started off down one of the aisles.

First they were beckoned by vendors waving Australian flags and offered samples of dried emu, camel, and kangaroo. Next they sampled biltong (a South African–style jerky), which came in slabs, chunks, chips, and, Gladys's favorite, snappy sausage-like sticks called droëwors. In addition to beef, the biltong vendors offered a number of antelope meats, such as kudu and springbok, as well as ostrich (which tasted a lot like emu). In the Asian-inspired meat section, they tried yak meat that had been sweetened and processed to a feathery, almost cotton-candy-like consistency, and Charissa turned her back while Aunt Lydia sampled horse-meat bites.

Gladys was most intrigued by the vendors who raised animals from South America—llamas and alpacas—and offered up dried meats from both to try. A handout from one of these vendors taught her that the English word
jerky
actually came from the Quechua word
ch'arki,
which meant “dried, salted meat.”

They finished up their tour of the convention center at a booth of vendors from Montana, who offered bison, elk, smoked duck breast, wild boar, and even alligator jerky.

Gladys had been careful only to take a nibble here and there since she wanted to save space in her stomach for the Salvadoran restaurant. Aunt Lydia and Charissa, however, hadn't bothered to hold back, and spent most of the long subway ride to Queens
discussing their favorites and trying to decide which products might sell at Mr. Eng's.

“I'll definitely buy a lot of those kudu sticks if he starts carrying them,” Charissa promised. “That would be a great protein snack for dance or cheerleading competitions.”

Three cheers for dried kudu!
Gladys thought.

In the end, Aunt Lydia narrowed her list down to seven candidates, which she would discuss further with Mr. Eng. “I'm not sure how many new products he wants to carry this fall,” she said, “but that's why I picked up extra samples.” Gladys had also made sure to grab some kangaroo and alligator samples for Sandy.

They got off the subway in Queens and reached the Salvadoran restaurant, Pupuseria El Gran Sabor, in time for a late lunch. As soon as Gladys walked in and heard the upbeat cumbia music playing, she felt her tired self perk up. It had been over a month since she'd reviewed a restaurant, and she was excited to taste what this one had to offer.

Soon enough, their table was weighted down with almost every specialty on the restaurant's short menu. Gladys was glad she'd made pupusas at home, because now she was really able to appreciate how perfectly formed and expertly cooked these ones were. Among the three of them, they were able to order and try every variety the restaurant offered, including one
pupusa stuffed with a squash-like vegetable called chayote and another filled with nutty-tasting green flower buds called loroco. There were a few intriguing side dishes, too, like starchy fried yucca cubes and a beautifully seasoned rice-and-bean mixture called casamiento. And the drink choices were fascinating—fresh fruit juices in tropical flavors like papaya, guanabana, and marañon (which the menu described as “the fruit of the cashew plant”).

By the time Aunt Lydia paid their bill—in cash—and tucked the receipt carefully into her purse for reimbursement, Gladys's stomach was nearly bursting and her reviewing notebook was full of notes about the unique cuisine of Central America's smallest country.

“That was really fun,” Charissa said on the train back to East Dumpsford. “I wish I could come and help with all your assignments, but soon my weekends are really gonna start filling up. I've got a horseback competition next weekend, and my fall gymnastics showcase is the weekend after that . . .”

“No worries,” Gladys said. “Sandy and Parm want to help out, too, so I'll let one of them come along on each of my next trips.”

Charissa's brow furrowed. “Do you think Parm will actually eat? We have lunch together, and she always brings the same two things.”

“You and Parm sit together at lunch?” For some reason, this surprised Gladys; considering how many
classes they had together, she would have thought Parm and Charissa might want a break from each other at lunchtime.

But Charissa didn't act like it was a big deal. “Yeah. Parm's cool. I mean, I'm not judging her for being picky or anything. It's kind of cute, how fussy she is.”

Charissa not judging someone else's choices? That was new. Maybe Parm was turning out to be a good influence on her.

“So, you haven't mentioned Hamilton,” Charissa prompted.

Gladys was taken aback by this turn in the conversation. “What do you mean?”

“I don't mean anything,” Charissa said. “I just thought he was your friend, so maybe you'd invite him on one of your reviewing trips, too.”

Maybe Gladys would have invited him . . . if he'd returned one of her messages. She had sent him a second e-mail through the Zombietown website that Thursday night, but as of this morning she still hadn't gotten a response.

“He lives somewhere nearby, right?” Charissa continued.

Gladys shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “I have no idea where he lives.”

Charissa blinked her wide, shadow-smeared eyes. “Ohmigosh. You
like
him!”

“What?”
Clearly, Gladys's attempt at nonchalance had failed. “I don't
like
him! Ew.”

Charissa raised an eyebrow, and Gladys wondered if maybe now she was protesting too much. Okay, on to plan B: role reversal. “Why are you bringing this up, anyway?” she asked. “Do
you
like someone or something?”

Gladys had only asked that to get the heat off herself; Charissa was so chatty that Gladys assumed she would spill the beans about any crush she had five minutes after she'd developed it. But to Gladys's surprise, Charissa's cheeks colored slightly, and she turned to stare out the train window. “Maybe,” she said. Gladys waited another moment, but Charissa did not choose to elaborate.

Well, there's a first,
Gladys thought. She was curious to know more, but she wasn't going to press if Charissa was willing to drop her line of inquiry about Hamilton. Still, Gladys wondered what it would be like if her friends started coupling up. Already since she had started middle school it had gotten hard to find time to spend together. If Charissa started going out with someone, would she have any time left in her color-coded schedule for Gladys?

Charissa's crazy schedule was still on Gladys's mind that night at home when she got started on her review for the
Standard.

Some restaurants try to be everything to everyone, striving to appeal to the masses with long, varied menus. But others choose to limit their offerings to the dishes they know they can cook best. In the case of Pupuseria El Gran Sabor on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, this second strategy pays off handsomely. The restaurant's small kitchen may only focus on a few items, but their perfect pupusas—complemented by a small selection of expertly cooked side dishes and unique juices—just about guarantee a delectable dining experience for anyone who pays them a visit . . .

CULINARY SURPRISES

T
HE SKY WAS DARK THAT MONDAY
evening when Gladys finally had a chance to ring Sandy's doorbell.

She had spent the afternoon at Rolanda's house working on the mask cookies with the Drama Club. Several of the other members actually had baking experience, which should have made the undertaking go more smoothly—and it did for a while, until everyone started belting out show tunes from
Phantom of the Opera.
Gladys left the house with both a splitting headache and an intense desire to see the chandelier in Rolanda's dining room come crashing down on every screeching, warbling Andrew Lloyd Webber fan there. In comparison, her street felt blissfully quiet.

Sandy answered his door dressed in
his white karate gi and greeted her by faking a kick in her direction. “What's up, Gatsby?” His bare foot stopped just short of nailing her in her cookie-dough-filled stomach.

Gladys groaned. “Way to welcome a girl into your house, Sandy.” At least this was one friend who was in no danger of pairing up with a member of the opposite sex anytime soon. “I see that the yoga retreat didn't Zen you out too much.”

“Zen is okay in small doses, but a kid has his limits,” Sandy said, holding the screen door open for her. “How was your weekend? Mom's still upstairs, so you can talk as loud as you want.”

Gladys followed him into the living room and spent a few minutes filling him in on the Salvadoran restaurant outing. She had spent Sunday carefully typing up her review (three and a half stars!) and had sent it to Fiona that evening; it would be published in Wednesday's Dining section.

“And I brought you these from the dried-meats trade show,” Gladys said, reaching into her jacket pockets for the samples. “Alligator, kangaroo, and horse. What do you think?”

“Whoa.” Sandy snatched up one of the horse-meat bites and examined the tiny lettering on its wrapper. “This is great. I'll give Jonah notice tomorrow that a new round of competition is coming his way!”

“Well, good luck,” Gladys said. “Oh, and I wanted to
ask, are you free this Saturday? Do you want to come to a Cuban restaurant with me and my aunt?”

“Aggh!” Sandy karate-chopped at the air with one hand in frustration. “Saturday is family day at karate. Even my grandparents are coming to watch. Sorry, Gatsby.”

“That's okay,” Gladys said. She could always ask Parm to come that weekend. “But try to leave the following Saturday open if you can, okay? You, me, Aunt Lydia, and Peruvian food. Sound good?”

“Sounds excellent,” Sandy said. “How should I prepare? Make spreadsheets? Look up recipes? Assemble a country map that highlights its regional specialties?”

“Those are all great ideas,” Gladys said with a smile, “but you can leave the research to me. Just make sure you're hungry that day.”

Sandy jumped into the air and landed in a wide-legged squat that made him look like a skinny blond sumo wrestler. “I won't eat for at least two hours beforehand,” he said. “That should pretty much guarantee that I'll be rapturous.”

Gladys didn't bother correcting him, even though she was pretty sure he actually meant
ravenous
(as in, very hungry). But who knew, maybe by then he'd actually be rapturous (as in, ecstatic), too—especially if the jerkies she'd brought him helped him claim the crown as Gross Foods King of St. Joseph's Academy.

• • •

At the Drama Club bake sale the next afternoon, the first customers Gladys saw were Parm and Charissa.

“Okay, let's get this party going!” Charissa cried. “I'll take ten of these awesome mask cookies. How much is that?”

“Twenty-five dollars,” Gladys told her, since they'd priced the cookies at $2.50 each. Gladys started to gather up the cookies while, next to her, Rolanda opened up a cash box.

“Look at you two, working together,” Charissa trilled. “You guys are friends now, and Parm and I are friends now . . . it's like we're one big, happy posse!”

From the way Rolanda wrinkled her nose, Gladys wasn't so sure that she agreed . . . and Parm looked a little skeptical, too.

“Parm, how many do you want?” Charissa asked.

“Well, as much as I'd like to support the Drama Club, I really don't want a cookie,” Parm said. “No offense, but . . . it has a face on it!
Two
faces, actually.” She shuddered.

“We're happy to take donations,” Rolanda said sweetly. Parm scowled, but dug into her pocket.

“No, no, I've got it,” Charissa insisted. “My treat.” She dug out an extra five dollars and tossed it into the cash box.

It was one of the nicest things Gladys had ever seen
Charissa do for anybody; even Parm had to admit it. “Thanks, Charissa,” she said.

Charissa beamed. “No problem.” She gathered up the cookies that Gladys had put in a bag for her, then headed to French Club, which Gladys would once again be missing.

“I've got to get to practice,” Parm said.

Gladys sent her off with a wave, but when she turned to assist her next customer, she found herself staring straight into the face of Elaine de la Vega.

Her mouth went dry. Elaine was grinning so widely that Gladys wondered if she was trying to imitate the exaggerated comedy mask on the cookies. In any case, it made for an eerie, unnatural look on the normally serious girl's face.

“Hello, Gladys,” Elaine said. “Back at it with the baking, are we?”

Gladys swallowed hard. “That's right,” she said, trying to sound confident. “Me and
my fellow Drama Club members
worked hard on these cookies. How many would you like?”

Elaine waved a hand in the air, as though cookies—like friends—were for children. “I'm just here to observe,” she said. “You know, sniff out new leads. Our first full-length issue of the
Telegraph
will come out just after Halloween. With that retraction Sloane insisted on.”

“Uh, that's great,” Gladys said. Why was Elaine telling her this?

“So there's plenty of time for new stories to be written, and new photos to be taken. Do you know what I mean?”

The
Telegraph
editor's voice was almost chipper, but Gladys knew what was going on. Elaine was making a threat: telling Gladys that, despite the planned retraction, she was still keeping an eye on her. Between that and the girl's freaky grin, Gladys felt like someone had just released an ice cube into her bloodstream.

She wasn't going to give Elaine the satisfaction of showing that she was intimidated, though. “I have no idea what you mean,” she said coolly. “And also, you're holding up the line. Paying customers have priority here—this is a
fund-raiser.
”

Elaine scowled, but moved away. Gladys let out a sigh of relief.

Pretty soon, cookies were flying off the table, and students who had bought just one were coming back for seconds and thirds. In the end, the Drama Club raked in over three hundred dollars, exceeding their goal for expanding the costume budget. When Rolanda announced the total, Gladys found herself getting more high fives than she'd ever gotten before. A pleasantly warm and fuzzy feeling was starting to spread through her usually nervous stomach. It stopped abruptly, though, when the group burst into
song with a celebratory rendition of “The Music of the Night.”

• • •

Between club meetings, schoolwork, and experimenting with a few Cuban recipes, the rest of the week flew by for Gladys. It wasn't until she was on the train beside Parm and Aunt Lydia on Saturday that it occurred to her she still hadn't heard from Hamilton.

Now she was starting to get nervous. Was he all right? Gladys thought back to their evening at the Kids Rock Awards—and how depressed he had been over his distant relationship with his parents. Plus, she knew he didn't have a lot of close friends. She really wished he would get in touch, if only to let her know that he was alive and well.

“Something on your mind?” Parm asked. “You seem a little . . . distracted.”

Gladys shook her head. “It's nothing.” She should be taking advantage of this rare one-on-one time with Parm, not wasting her energy wondering about Hamilton. He was probably fine—too busy attending literary parties to bother writing her back.

Parm now stared at Aunt Lydia as she flipped through a different trade show catalog, this one featuring olive oils from all over the Mediterranean. “Does she really have to go try a whole bunch of new foods every week?” she whispered to Gladys. “That's, like, my nightmare job.”

The statement didn't surprise Gladys—Parm was by far her most finicky friend—but there was something about the way she said it that sounded strange to Gladys's ear. It took her a moment to figure out what, exactly, had struck her.

“The way you just said
like . . .”
Gladys said. “It didn't sound like you. It kind of sounded like . . . Charissa.”

Parm's eyes widened. “Oh, no—don't tell me her speech patterns are rubbing off on me now!” She groaned. “I guess that's what happens when you have almost every class together.”

“She told me you guys sit together at lunch, too,” Gladys said with a smile.

Now Parm looked even more embarrassed. “We sit at a big table with a lot of other people.”

“Hey, there's nothing wrong with changing your mind about someone,” Gladys told her. “I've done it lots of times. And Charissa's really changed since last year, too.”

“I guess she has,” Parm said. “She's more studious than I would have thought. And it was great of her to support both of the bake sales like that. But that doesn't mean I want us to be besties.”

“You can be friends without being best friends,” Gladys said.

“Yeah, that's true. Well, then, I guess Charissa
Bentley is my friend.
Wow,
there's a sentence I never thought I'd say.”

Gladys smiled again.

At the olive oil trade show, they wandered the aisles with Aunt Lydia, Parm refusing all samples as she filled Gladys in on her first couple of soccer matches. Then, in the afternoon, the three of them headed out for their late lunch at Café Havana in Queens.

Gladys's first impression of the restaurant was not very strong; its interior was a bit dusty and poorly lit, and the television in the corner blasting the Yankees game didn't add much to the ambience. But by the time she'd finished her meal, she had a much better feeling about the place. The tantalizing flavors of garlic, lime, and cumin infused many of the dishes she was served, and Gladys especially enjoyed her ropa vieja (a slow-simmered beef dish), fried sweet plantains, and buñuelo fritters, which she had not yet had a chance to make with the Mathletes. She felt slightly embarrassed when Parm pulled out a container of cereal she had brought from home. But Parm had done her duty of ordering extra dishes, and made a nice show of poking at her Cubano sandwich until Gladys had a chance to swoop in and try a few bites.

As they rode back to East Dumpsford on the train, Parm dozed off and Gladys drafted the opening lines for the second article in her series.

In life and in restaurants, first impressions rarely tell the whole story. The atmosphere at Café Havana may leave a lot to be desired, but for patrons who are willing to scratch the (admittedly dingy) surface and give it a real chance to prove itself, there are tasty rewards to be had . . .

She wrote a few more sentences, then turned to gaze out the window. The sun was setting over the apartment buildings of Queens, casting them into a dusky golden light. It was almost October now; New York was getting darker earlier each day and growing chillier by the minute. Soon enough, Halloween would be upon them, along with Gladys's deadline for making her decision about the full-time
Standard
job.

She still didn't know what to do. The past two weeks had gone well—she loved reviewing as much as ever, and having Aunt Lydia on her team certainly made getting to restaurants in the city a lot easier. But balancing her
Standard
work with schoolwork and bake sales had been stressful, and she could only imagine how much crazier a full-time workload would be.