The Cupcake Diaries Collection: Katie and the Cupcake Cure; Mia in the Mix; Emma on Thin Icing; Alexis and the Perfect Recipe (15 page)

“I kind of feel bad for them,” said Katie. “I know they worked really hard on that makeover booth.”

“It’s a shame that their makeovers were so terrible,” I added. “Remember when Sophie showed us what Bella had done to her? She had on so much white makeup that she looked like a clown.”

Alexis shrugged. “Well, I think their problem was that they didn’t work out the numbers first. Each makeover must have cost five dollars if you add up all the makeup they bought, but took twenty minutes to finish. That’s only fifteen dollars an hour. But our cupcakes cost two dollars each, and we could sell one every minute. Do the math.”

“Do I have to?” Katie groaned.

I’ve never known anybody who loves numbers as much as Alexis. It’s probably because her parents are accountants. Actually, that’s something we have in common, in a way. My mom works in fashion, and
I love fashion. I wondered if I would be like Alexis if my mom had been an accountant. . . .

“I hope the girls in the PGC don’t feel too bad,” Katie said, and I knew she was thinking about Callie. “At least they tried.”

While we were talking, Ms. Biddle came up to our table. She teaches science, and we all agree that she’s the best teacher in our grade. She’s really funny, and she has cool blond hair that she spikes up with gel. Every day she wears a different science T-shirt. See? Her clothes tell me she likes science! Today she was wearing a shirt with the periodic table of the elements on it.

“Hey there,” she said. “Do you young entrepreneurs mind if I talk to you for a minute?”

I know what “entrepreneur” means because my mom is one. It’s somebody who starts their own business.

“Sure,” Katie said.

Ms. Biddle slid into the empty chair at the end of the table. “Next Saturday—not this one, but the next one—I have to throw a baby shower for my sister. She loves cupcakes. And I have never made a cupcake in my life that wasn’t burnt or dry as toast. So I was wondering if the Cupcake Club would like the job.”

“We would love it!” Katie said quickly. “I mean, if everyone agrees.”

“Isn’t baking cupcakes just like chemistry?” Alexis asked. “I thought you’d be good at making cupcakes.”

“You’re right,” Ms. Biddle admitted. “Baking is a lot like science. It’s a total embarrassment. I can make anything in a science lab, but put me in a kitchen and I lose all of my mojo.”

“We should definitely do it,” I said.

“I think so too,” Emma chimed in.

Alexis took a small notebook out of her backpack. “Can you please give us the details? Time? Place? Number of cupcakes?”

Ms. Biddle gave Alexis the address. “I think four dozen should do it. How much do you charge?”

“Two dollars per cupcake is our normal price,” Alexis answered. “But you qualify for the teacher discount. That’s half price at one dollar each.”

“Perfect!” Ms. Biddle said with a grin. She stood up to leave.

“One more thing,” I said. Alexis is good with numbers, but she’d forgotten the most important detail. “What kind of cupcake do you want? And do you want any special colors?”

“We don’t know yet if the baby is a boy or girl, so
the decorations are going to be yellow and green. I guess the cupcakes should match,” said Ms. Biddle. “But you can make any flavor you want, as long as it’s delicious.”

“They will be!” Katie promised. “Thanks so much.”

After Ms. Biddle walked away, Katie let out a happy squeal.

“This is amazing!” Katie said. “Our first paying job!”

“Don’t forget we’re doing the PTA luncheon in the spring too,” Emma added.

“This will be good practice,” I pointed out.

“I hope you don’t mind me offering the teacher discount,” Alexis said. “I thought it might help us drum up more business.”

“No, that was a good idea,” Katie told her.

“And it’s a nice thing to do for teachers,” Emma added.

Alexis tapped her pencil on her notebook page. “We should still be able to make a nice profit. I’m still working out how much it costs per cupcake. Our parents donated the ingredients for the fund-raiser, but we’ll have to start paying for our own now.”

“How will we buy the ingredients if we don’t
have any money to start with?” Emma wondered.

“Maybe my mom could lend it to us,” Katie suggested. She always has good ideas for how to solve problems. “Then we could pay her back when Ms. Biddle pays us.”

“That could work,” Alexis agreed.

I had been thinking about what Alexis said about profit. I was excited because making cupcakes is fun, but the idea of making some extra money was pretty nice. I could finally buy that great pair of jeans that Mom said were too expensive.

“So what will we do with our profits?” I asked, thinking about how those jeans would look really good with my favorite shirt.

“We should probably save some to make more cupcakes, and then divide up the rest,” Alexis replied. “But we should talk about it.”

“Can we have a meeting tomorrow?” Katie asked.

“Good idea,” I said. “Maybe we could meet at the food court at the mall. Then we could go window-shopping afterward.”

I’ll find any excuse to go to the mall. It makes living in the suburbs a lot more bearable.

But Alexis wrinkled her nose. “The food court is too noisy for a meeting, don’t you think?”

“Why don’t we meet at my house? We haven’t met at my house in a long time,” Emma said.

Alexis rolled her eyes. “Your little brother is
way
noisier than the mall.”

“No, let’s go to Emma’s!” Katie said.

I was disappointed we weren’t going to the mall, but I was out-voted.

“Cool,” I said.

Katie turned to me. “Joanne’s picking me up tomorrow. I’ll ask my mom if she can take us to Emma’s house.”

“Sounds good,” I said. I was feeling pretty excited about the whole thing.

The Cupcake Club makes living out here a whole lot easier.

A
fter school the next day I met Katie on the school steps. Park Street Middle School is a big concrete building with two sports fields in the back, a little kids’ park on one side, and trees on the other side. There’s a big, round driveway in front where the school buses line up. If someone is picking you up in a car, you have to follow the sidewalk down to the street.

“I think I see Joanne,” Katie said, pointing to a shiny red car.

Katie’s mom is a dentist, and Joanne works in the office there. Most days, Joanne picks up Katie from school and brings her back to the dentist’s office until Mrs. Brown gets off work. Katie’s mom is really nice, but she’s really overprotective, too.

“I’m so glad we have a meeting today,” Katie told
me as we walked. “Otherwise I’d be stuck in a dentist’s office.”

“That does sound really boring,” I admitted.

“It is,” Katie said. “But you know what I hate the most? That dentist’s office smell. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”

“I know what you mean,” I told her. “Every time I smell it, it reminds me of that time I got my cavity filled. That was seriously painful!”

“You should go to my mom,” Katie said. “Her patients all say it hardly hurts at all when she works on them. Although you should hear her lecture about the importance of flossing. Now
that’s
painful.”

Joanne stuck her head out of the car window when she saw us approach. “Hey, girlfriends! How are you doing today?”

“Good,” Katie and I answered at the same time.

We got into the backseat together. Joanne’s red car is really sporty, and she always plays good music. It’s much better than taking the bus.

“So what’s going on at Emma’s today?” Joanne asked.

“A Cupcake Club meeting,” Katie replied. “We got hired by Ms. Biddle to bake cupcakes.”

“Is that the cool science teacher you told me about?” Joanne asked.

Katie nodded. “Yeah, she’s really nice.”

Joanne sighed. “I wish I was going to a cupcake meeting. Instead, I’ve got to go back to the office and try to explain to Mr. Michaels why he can’t put his false teeth in the dishwasher.”

Katie and I giggled. Then Joanne pulled up in front of Emma’s house. “Have fun,” she said. “Katie, your mom will get you on her way home.”

Katie and I thanked Joanne and walked up to Emma’s front door. She lives in a two-story white house with a porch that wraps all the way around it. It’s a really pretty house, except for the big pile of sports equipment in the driveway. There were bats and gloves and basketballs, even a lacrosse stick. There’s also a basketball hoop in the driveway, and Emma’s two older brothers, Matt and Sam, were shooting baskets with their friends.

The ball bounced on the walkway in front of us, and Sam, who’s a senior, ran up to get it.

He stopped when he saw me. “Hey, aren’t you Dan’s little sister?”

“I’m going to be his
step
sister,” I replied. Katie kind of gave me a look. But I wasn’t really Dan’s sister. Or Dan’s
real
sister. I don’t know, it’s all confusing. It was a lot simpler when I was an only child.

“Yo, Sam! Over here!” one of the boys called.

Sam ran off without another word. Then Emma opened the front door.

“Come on in. Alexis has us set up in the kitchen,” she said with a smile.

We walked through the living room, stepping over a giant city of blocks surrounded by plastic dinosaurs. Emma’s little brother, Jake, was standing in front of the TV, watching a cartoon. I think he’s completely adorable.

Emma turned off the TV. “Jake, come into the kitchen with us.”

Jake frowned. “I wanna watch TV!”

Jake is completely adorable—when he’s not crying and whining. Emma says that happens a lot, but he’ll grow out of it.

Emma gave us an apologetic look. “Mom’s at work,” she explained. “She’ll be back soon. I said I didn’t mind watching him since we’re not baking today. He’ll be good.”

“I wanna watch TV!” Jake demanded.

Emma took his hand. “Later, Jake. We’re going to color now.”

That seemed to satisfy him. Emma led us all into the kitchen, where Alexis had a bunch of papers spread out on the table.

“Hey,” she said. “So I’ve worked out how much
it will cost us to make each cupcake if we use basic ingredients. We need to figure out what we’re making in case we need to add other stuff.”

That’s Alexis for you. She loves to get right down to business. We all sat down at the table, and Emma sat next to Jake. She gave him a banana and opened up his dinosaur coloring book.

“I was thinking about that,” Katie said. “Ms. Biddle said the decorations will be yellow and green. So maybe the cupcake flavor could sort of match. You know, like a banana or a lemon cupcake.”

I glanced over at Jake. Gooey banana was smeared on his face. At that moment the thought of eating a banana cupcake didn’t sound too appetizing.

“How about lemon?” I asked. “Lemon is nice.”

Alexis started writing in her notebook. “I’ll have to check on the price of lemons and add that to our cost. How many will we need, Katie?”

Katie shrugged. “I’ll have to look at the recipe.”

“And what about the icing?” Alexis asked. “Should we make the icing green and yellow too?”

“I don’t know about the green,” Katie said thoughtfully. “It’s a fun color for Easter, or to make monster cupcakes. But it might not be good for a baby shower.”

“Yellow is pretty,” Emma said.

Jake tugged on her shirt. “Color with me!”

“Sorry he’s so loud,” Emma said apologetically, and she picked up a crayon to color with her brother.

“Hey, he’s way quieter than Dan, and Dan is sixteen,” I said.

“Thanks,” Emma said with a smile. “I sometimes feel like an alien or something around all these boys. Like I never fit in . . .”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “Living with boys is hard!”

Katie shrugged; she was an only child. And Alexis had an older sister who had really nice clothes, so that had to be good for her.

“It’s not easy,” said Emma. She smiled at me. Maybe Emma could help me learn to deal with Dan.

“So, I googled baby shower themes last night,” I said, pulling out pictures from my backpack. “I printed out some pictures.”

I put my favorite picture on the table. It showed a green and yellow baby shower. Everything was set up on a white table sprinkled with real yellow flowers. There were no cupcakes, but in the center was a white layer cake decorated with yellow flowers and green leaves.

“Ooh, that’s so pretty!” Emma said, and Alexis and Katie nodded in agreement.

“So maybe we could use white icing, and decorate it with flowers and leaves on top,” I suggested.

Katie looked closely at the picture. “Cream cheese icing would be nice with the lemon. But how would we make the flowers?”

“I did some research,” I said. Decorating the cupcakes is my favorite part. “There are so many amazing websites that sell cupcake decorations. I saw some pretty flower molds. You melt chocolate in any color you want, and then you get a little candy flower. Or we could get flowers made out of sparkly sugar. Those could be pretty.”

Jake put down his crayon. “I want a cupcake!” he cried. Emma ignored him and kept coloring.

“Mia, you can be in charge of the flowers,” Alexis said. “And Katie, can you shop for the ingredients? Your mom’s going to lend us the money, right?”