Alexis and the Perfect Recipe (Volume 4) (Cupcake Diaries, Band 4) - Hardcover

Simon, Coco

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1442474939 ISBN 13: 9781442474932

Verlag: Simon Spotlight, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Alexis has a head for organization—but what about her heart?

Alexis Becker is by far the most prepared, very exact, and extremely organized Cupcake Club member. But there’s more to Alexis than meets the eye. Like the fact that she has a messy drawer, and that she likes to secretly dance in her bedroom. And the biggest secret of all? Alexis has a crush! But is there a formula for love?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

From cupcakes to ice cream and donuts! When she’s not daydreaming about yummy snacks, Coco Simon edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes, ice cream cones, and donuts she’s eaten. She is the author of the Cupcake Diaries, Cupcake Diaries: The New Batch, the Sprinkle Sundays, and the Donut Dreams series. Her newest series is Mia in the Middle.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Alexis and the Perfect Recipe

CHAPTER 1

My Sister Takes the Cake

My name is Alexis Becker, and I’m the business mind (ha-ha) of the Cupcake Club. The club is a for-profit group that my best friends—Mia, Katie, and Emma—and I started, and we make money baking delicious cupcakes!

I love figuring out how to run a business and putting together the different building blocks—math, organization, planning—that’s why the girls can count on me for this kind of stuff. Plus, as you can tell, I love math-related puns! My friends are more creative with the cupcakes, so they come up with the designs and other artistic stuff. My one specialty, though, is fondant. I am very good at making little flowers and designs out of that firm frosting. Otherwise, I’m mostly crunching numbers and wondering how to make money. Mmm . . . money!

If the Cupcake Club was an equation, it would look like this:

(4 girls + supplies) x clients = $$$$

Or really, more like this:

(Profit - supplies) / 4 = $

We actually have lots of fun doing it. Most of our clients are really nice people, which is much more than I can say for our latest client: my sister, Dylan. I can practically still hear her fuming.

“It is my party, I am the one turning sixteen, and I have budgeted everything down to the last party favor. I know exactly what I’m doing!” She was talking to our mom behind closed doors, but I heard every word since I was right outside her bedroom!

Dylan never gets out-of-control mad; she’s always in total control. Except that ever since she’d started planning her sweet sixteen party (which was now four and a half weeks away), she’d been cranky a lot. But she never raises her voice when she gets mad. She lowers it to a whisper, and you can hear the chill in it as if actual icicles were hanging from the words. I had to put my ear to her bedroom door to hear everything that was being said. Knowledge is power; that’s one of my mottoes, and I need all the information I can get. About everything.

My mother was sounding kind of amused by the fight, which was about two things: the guest list for the party and the cake. I had an interest in the outcome of both, since I wanted to be able to invite my best friends, and we wanted to bake the dessert for the party. (It wasn’t about the money as we wouldn’t charge a lot; it’s just that it would be great exposure for our business!)

I could picture Mom trying not to smile and to take Dylan seriously. “Darling, I know how careful you are, and I am impressed, as always, by your work,” she said. “I admire your attention to detail on these spreadsheets. However, not everything will be according to your plan, as your father and I also have a say in what works best for this family. Now let’s take a look at this guest list again.”

I grinned. Mom was on my side.

There were some muffled comments and I strained to hear them. Maybe I’d hear better if I put a glass against the wall like I’d seen people do on TV. Or maybe I should lie down and listen through the crack under the door. I pulled my hair into a ponytail, and then lay on the hall rug outside the door.

“The Taylors! Mom! The whole family? That wasn’t in my head count!” The Ice Princess was losing her cool, but I didn’t focus on that. All I could think of was that Emma’s whole family might come. And that was very interesting.

Emma has three brothers. They’ve always all been in the background of things—rummaging around their mudroom looking for a lost cleat or watching TV in the living room. They’re kind of like furniture. When we talk to them at all, it’s just stuff like “Please pass the ketchup” or “Hey! We were watching that!”

Jake is much younger, so he’s cute but not exactly a pal of mine, and Matt and Sam are older, so we don’t really pay attention to them, and they don’t pay much attention to us.

Until recently, that is.

What changed everything was that I had a little direct contact with Matt. He’s eighteen months older, but only one school year ahead (he’s in eighth grade at Park Street Middle School). Usually I am with Emma when her brothers are around, so I guess I see them from her point of view.

But this time I had to call Matt for help with something for Emma, and it wasn’t until he said “Hello” on the phone that in one strange, sudden moment, everything changed.

So what happened? First off, I am very efficient. When something needs doing, I just do it. When someone needs calling, I just pick up the phone and dial. And that was what I had done, without even thinking about it.

But Matt’s voice sounds much deeper on the phone than it does in person, and when I heard it, it threw me off and I panicked, like, Who is this person I am talking to? and Why did I call him, exactly? I kind of had an out-of-body experience. I suddenly realized I’d called a boy, and I almost dropped the phone!

But thanks to caller ID he already knew who was calling, so I couldn’t exactly hang up. Then, just to confuse me further, in the course of our (very brief) conversation, Matt told me how worried he’d been about Emma, and that he felt bad for some things she was going through at the time.

I was shocked!

I didn’t think boys worried about anyone! And feeling bad for someone? That is just unheard of! Suddenly Matt seemed like . . . a real person. With feelings! In the end, it was I who rushed us off the phone. I suddenly got really, really nervous and couldn’t believe I’d had the guts to call Matt in the first place. You know in the old cartoons when the coyote runs off a cliff and his feet are still spinning, but he’s in midair and he only falls when he realizes it? That’s what happened to me.

And now, when I heard Dylan talking about the Taylors, all I could think of was Matt. And that gave me a funny feeling, like fish were swimming in my stomach.

I hope he comes to Dylan’s party, I thought. Or maybe I don’t. Ugh! I don’t know what I want!

Suddenly the door flew open, and Dylan shrieked when she saw me lying on the floor. I blinked as the bright light from her room hit me.

“I hate this family!” Dylan wailed, stepping over me. She stomped down the hall to the bathroom and shut the door as hard as possible without actually slamming it.

“Alexis, honey, what are you doing there?” my mother asked in her “patient” voice.

I rolled up on one side and propped my head on my fist. “Just interested in the outcome of everything,” I replied.

My mother smiled at me and shook her head.

“What?” I said in my most innocent voice. “I just want to make sure that we get the job.”

“You’ll get the job, all right, but these better turn out to be the prettiest and tastiest cupcakes you’ve ever baked,” Mom said. She’s pretty tough. She’s not a CPA and a CFO for nothing.

“Mom, please. We run a very professional outfit.”

Dylan came stomping out of the bathroom and glared at my mother. “This is the person you’d like to entrust my dessert to? This . . . worm, lying on the floor like a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon Spotlight
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1442474939
• ISBN 13: 9781442474932
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande