Heather Hepler - The Cupcake Queen

acknowledgments

Thank you to Stephanie Owens Lurie for being so smart, so kind,
and always so generous. Thank you to Aimee Bissonette for talking
me down off the many ledges. Thanks to everyone at Dutton
Childrens Books and Penguin Young Readers for their continuing
support. (Especially to Julie Strauss-Gabel and Lisa Yoskowitz for
adopting me and this book.) Thank you to Terry, my parents, and
to Bob for having the grace to keep loving me even when I am so
very unlovable. And finally thank you to Brad Barkley for telling
me that I was ready and for always reminding me not to flail.

chapter one

The fact that I wasnt sur prised when my mother handed me the sheet pan filled with pink frosted cupcakes is possibly more disturbing than the cupcakes themselves. Theyre pink, I mean pink. Pink cupcake papers, pink cupcakes, pink frosting, pink sprinkles, and now pink rosebuds. Its like someone drank a whole bottle of Pepto-Bismol and then threw up in six dozen clumps. I cant even laugh about it with anyone, because anyone who would think this is as funny as I do is three hundred miles away. And maybe three hundred miles doesnt seem like much, but when you still have two and a half years before you can driveand thats only if my mother lets me have time off from decorating cupcakes to get my licensethree hundred miles might as well be three million. All I know is I get to spend the next hour putting exactly fourteen miniature pink sugar rosebuds on each of six dozen cupcakes (thats 1,008 rosebuds in case youre counting, and I am) while everyone I know who might think this is as crazy as I do is three billion miles away doing exactly what I wish I were doing right now. Anything other than this.

Hows it going? Gram asks, pushing through the swinging door into the kitchen. I shrug, something Ive gotten really good at. She pulls open one of the big refrigerator doors and sticks most of her upper body inside. I can hear her talking, but the oven fans and whir of the mixer muffle her words.

What did you say? I ask when she closes the refrigerator.

I said your beach cupcakes are a big hit.

I nod and keep placing the tiny rosebuds on the cupcakes, slowly spinning the turntable as I go to make sure theyre even. I know my mother will check. Gram puts a tray of vanilla cupcakes on the counter beside me. She lifts one. These are my favorite, she says, holding up a blue-frosted cupcake with a tiny sailboat on top. Of course the kids like the crabsthey have more icing. She hums as she takes the tray of cupcakes through the door to the front of the bakery. I sigh and use my tweezers to pick up another rosebud and place it on a cupcake.

Cupcake.

Six months ago, if someone had said the word cupcake, it probably wouldnt have even registered. I mean, sure, who doesnt like them? But a whole bakery devoted just to cupcakes? I asked my mother that when she told me. Nothing else? She just laughed, like it was the funniest thing Id said all day. I didnt quite believe it until I saw the man putting the final touches on the lettering on the window: THE CUPCAKE QUEEN.

Penny. I jump at the sound of my name and accidentally jab the cupcake with the tweezers, leaving a hole. My mother sighs behind me. Youre off in dreamland again, she says. Not true. More like nightmareland. She whisks the mutilated cupcake off the turntable and drops it into the trash, replacing it with a fresh one. Here, she says, holding out her hand for the tweezers. I watch as she expertly places fourteen tiny rosebuds all over the top of the cupcake before trading it for another. You just need to focus, she says, completing three more in the time it would have taken me to do one. She hands the tweezers back to me. Focus. My mother is quite possibly the most focused person I know. I feel her focusing on my hands as I struggle to pick up another rosebud with my tweezers. It slips and I end up breaking it. The buzz of her cell phone saves me from another lecture on the importance of attention to details.

She listens for a while after saying hello. Oh no, its okay. Well manage, she says finally, looking at the clock above my head. Just feel better. She taps her free fingers against the counter. Just let me know. She flips her phone shut with a click. Great, she says, her voice flat.

Gram pushes back through the door with another empty tray. Lizzie, those summer cupcakes are going like hotcakes. Ever since we moved from Manhattan, population 1.6 million, to Hogs Hollow, population 5,134, my mother has been Lizzie. In New York, people called her Elizabeth or Ms. Lane.

That was Jeannie, my mother says, holding up her cell phone. Shes sick. My mother sighs again. Probably her tenth sigh in the last hour. There is no way I can do the setup by myself. I mean, there are the flowers and the china and the linens...

Dont forget the cupcakes, Gram says. I have to duck my head so that my mother doesnt see me smile.

Yes, Mother, she says, the cupcakes.

Thats one thing I do like about Hogs Hollow: my grandmother. Shes the only person I know who isnt afraid of my mother. Even my fathers afraid of my mom.

I just cant do it all alone. Jeannie goes back to college in less than a week. She stares at the phone, as if willing Jeannie to call again to say that shes fine, shell be right in.

Take Penny, Gram says, pulling another sheet pan of cupcakes from the refrigerator.

What? we both say. My mother looks over at me in time to see me break another sugar rosebud.

I dont think she my mother begins.

I dont think I I say.

Youll be fine, Gram says, pushing the door to the front open with her hip. She flashes me a grin before it swings shut, trapping me in the kitchen with my mother.

Youll be fine, my mother tells me. I cant tell whether shes saying this to herself or me. After loading the van with cupcakes, extra sugar rosebuds, four huge bouquets of flowers in various shades of (yep, you guessed it) pink, a stack of white tablecloths, and several totes of rented plates and silverware and glasses, my mother got to work on me. First I had to endure the scrutiny. I should be used to it by now, but I never am. Let me paint the scene. Me: black jeans, black Chucks, black T-shirt. Mousy-brown hair pulled into a low ponytail. Burts Bees on my lips. Blue mascara on my eyelashes. I know, but I read in Cosmo that its supposed to make your eyes look more dramatic, and I can use all the help I can get. The problem is not so much me, but my mother. Shes a firm believer in looking pulled together at all times, and it seems Im the opposite of that. Maybe Im pulled apart. So, there I am, a vision in black with flour streaks on my jeans (and probably my face) and my mother is tilting her head at me, trying to see if I make the cut to go to the country club. And I see her thinking no, but then realizing that she has no choice. Its either take me with her where she can keep an eye on me, or take Gram and leave me to run the bakery alone. And, then theres another sigh. Lets see what I can do, she says, walking to the back office, where she keeps her purse.

Fast-forward ten minutes and Im sitting in the passenger seat of the van with what she could do all over me. New ponytail. Higher up, like a cheerleaders. Clean T-shirtwhite, not black. A scrub at my eyes dislodged the blue mascara and a swipe of lipstick at my mouth makes it look like Ive been sucking on a cherry Popsicle all afternoon.

Dont rub at your lips, my mother says, and I lower my hand into my lap. This is a great opportunity for you. She steers across the road and into the parking lot of the Hogs Hollow Country Club. Therell be a lot of girls there your age.