100 Days of Cake Read online

  I want to think I’m saying this for good reasons—V is my sister; I’m worried about her; she did specifically say that no one is paying any attention to her—but it’s maybe more because she was such a bitch tonight. Maybe I’m still annoyed that she hasn’t even mentioned she hung out with my Alex.

  “I didn’t even know she was home yet.” Mom frowns.

  “Exactly. You have no idea what’s going on with her.” Grabbing Pickles’s crabitat, I head out of the kitchen. “I’ve got homework.”

  “In July?”

  “Summer reading. Why don’t you worry about your other daughter for once.”

  I head upstairs to my bedroom and shut the door. I don’t actually pick up The Catcher in the Rye, but I take Pickles out of his crabitat and let him crawl over the book.

  “Is it as good as everyone always says?” I ask him.

  I’m pretty sure he shrugs in his shell.

  A few minutes later I hear Mom knocking on the door to the bathroom V and I share. Parts of their conversation float in through the upgraded six-panel door. Mom is pretty even keel, so it’s mainly stuff when V’s voice gets all high and angry.

  “Just out with some friends . . . No, of course not. . . . I’m not. . . . Fine.”

  An upgraded six-panel door slams.

  Pickles looks at me with his eyestalks.

  “What? She said she wanted people to pay attention to her problems.”

  Pickles doesn’t have to say that’s not what V meant.

  When I get up to pee for the third time that night—all that water we’re drinking in the heat—there’s a noise coming from behind the door to Mom’s room. She must have the TV on. Just like me, she loves old sitcoms. (V gets our mom’s looks, and I get her penchant for laugh tracks. How’s that fair?) I remember the old house, watching reruns with Mom in her sagging-in-the-center bed, V complaining that the shows were so old and silly, but sometimes climbing into that center sag with us. All of us joking about how ridiculous it was that all six of the Brady Bunch children could be sooooo well adjusted, or admitting that we were totally crushing on Michael J. Fox’s overachieving character on Family Ties. It felt safe. Like nothing bad could ever happen while we were in that bed.

  I miss all that stuff. Even if I know I’m way too old for it now.

  Still, I make my way right up to Mom’s door, thinking I should apologize for earlier, maybe see if she wants company. But when I get closer, I realize it’s not the TV at all. The sound isn’t canned laughter but crying. My chirpy beautiful Mom crying; so much worse than her being annoyingly perfect.

  And then I feel terrible for not eating the baked Alaska and for selling out my sister.

  Back down the hall, I knock lightly on V’s door. “It’s me. Can I come in?”

  “I think we’ve done more than enough bonding for one night, thanks,” she hisses. “Go away.”

  So I do.

  DAY 35

  Key Lime Surprise Cake

  FishTopia is closing.

  Forty-five minutes ago Charlie came in while Alex and I were sitting on the counter watching Golden Girls and eating Wang’s Palace lo mein instead of cleaning or checking the supplies or basically doing anything related to our actual jobs, but Charlie didn’t say anything about that. He just called us into his office in the back room and told us that he’s selling the store to a couple from Kansas who want to open a country diner.

  “I’m sorry. I know this place means a lot to you guys,” Charlie said. He’s this huge Paul Bunyan kind of guy, who always seems to be staring off above your head when he’s talking to you, but he seemed genuinely broken up. I still wanted to slap him silly, especially when he added, “We’ll stay open for the next seven weeks, so the summer will be almost over by then, and I know you guys have to go back to school anyway.”

  He told us that we were both really good employees and he would be happy to give us references. “The new owners are probably going to need servers, and with tips, you’d make way more money than I can pay you anyway.”

  I was too numb and shocked to say anything before he went to go pick up Babe the Blue Ox, or whatever it is that Charlie does all day. But now it’s just Alex and me, and I’m on a roll, all lathered up. The more I think about it, the angrier I become.

  “What’s going to happen to our regulars?” I demand, and Alex tilts his head.

  We do have some frequent fliers. Not a lot, but there’s Toupee Thom, who keeps a seventy-five-gallon tank in his office to calm his divorce clients. Then there’s a sweet old couple who come in every six weeks to stock up on fish food and show off pictures of their grandkids in Baltimore. And one creepy dude, who looks like the mad scientist from an old black-and-white horror movie, is in here at least twice a month buying bulk quantities of firefish that he’s probably using in some plot for world domination. Alex and I joke that he feeds the fish to the sharks that swim beneath his lair.

  “All of their fish could starve without us,” I say.

  “I’m sure they’ll just order stuff online or drive to Petco.”

  “And how is Creepy Dude going to take over the universe if he can’t get fish here?”

  “Molly—”

  “Seriously, a country diner?” I say. “It’s a hundred and five degrees. Who wants chicken and waffles? Like, if they wanted to open a sushi joint, maybe.”

  “That would certainly solve the problem of liquidating our inventory,” Alex says, and I can’t believe that he’s making jokes about this. This is FishTopia!

  “How are you not more upset about this?” I demand.

  “I don’t know, Mol.” He shrugs. “This was a part-time gig to save up for school. I wasn’t planning on making a career of it. Were you?”

  What’s wrong with wanting some stuff to stay the same? Why am I the only person in all of Coral Cove who isn’t psyched to have everything be different?

  “What about JoJo?” I ask.

  “It sucks. But I’m sure she’ll find something. Chuck is right; she’d make more money as a server.”

  “I just don’t understand why—”

  “Look, Charlie had to be losing money on this place forever. You can’t really blame the guy. He’s a businessman.”

  “But . . . but . . .” I’m so upset, I can’t find the words. I’m furious that Charlie can shut us down, like the store doesn’t matter, like we never mattered. He’s never even here. What can he possibly know about it? I’m steamed at Alex for being A-okay with it, because apparently this was just some stupid way for him to waste time until his real life begins after graduation. Even though she doesn’t even work here, I’m mad at Elle for wanting to go to school in New York. It’s like no one in the world cares about any of this stuff. Maybe most of all, I’m just angry with myself for being the way I am and not rolling along with changes the way everyone else does. Angry that I let my guard down and allowed myself to be a little bit happy here.

  “But what, Mol?” Alex asks.

  “This is, like, the only good, safe place, and now it’s going away,” I say, and then I’m even madder at myself for saying something so stupid. Alex must think I’m an idiot. Grabbing Pickles’s crabitat, I race for the door.

  Pickles crawls back into his shell in confirmation. What’s the point of all of this? he seems to be saying.

  “Molly, wai—” Alex reaches for my arm, but I storm past him and out the door. I jump on Old Montee and put Pickles in the basket.

  No idea where I’m going, but I pedal so fast to get there that it hurts.

  DAY 36 (TECHNICALLY EARLY MORNING ON DAY 37)

  Banana Cream Coconut Cake

  At three in the morning I have to pee (all that water), but on my way back I realize that Pickles isn’t making all the usual noises he does at night, scratching the sides of his crabitat.

  When I open up the tank, he’s just lying there in the corner, kind of half in and half out of his shell. He’s all curled up and dry, like the hands of an arthritic old man. Even before
I reach in and put him into my palm, I know that he’s dead.

  Dead. Dead. Dead.

  Little Pickles with the bright green shell and cute claws is dead. He led a modest life in his tiny tank, playing with his rocks and the dollhouse couch, crawling around in my hand, eating his pellet food and occasional fruit treats. He liked broccoli; he liked apples. He didn’t have grand aspirations of leaving Coral Cove or going to the right college or getting on an upwardly mobile career track where he could “get serious about the biz.” Once he spent an entire afternoon trying to flip over a pebble. His world was small, but he didn’t realize it, he didn’t know that he was utterly insignificant. None of that mattered; he died anyway.

  Pickles clutched to my chest, I sink to the floor, boneless. I’m not sure when I start crying or how long that lasts. It feels like hours. Eventually I simply run out of tears, out of any emotion, really. I’m completely deflated, the defeated, shrunken skin of a popped balloon.

  My whole universe becomes the cool hardwood of my bedroom floor, this dead hermit crab in my hand. Beyond my bedroom there are other alien worlds. Through the window it gets lighter and lighter, even with the blinds drawn. There are sounds in these worlds: V getting ready for a shift at Jaclyn’s Attic. Shower running, doors opening and closing. Mom’s voice and the cheery anchors from the Today show. “Good morning. I’m Matt Lauer, and this is Today!” Cars and birds and dogs whooshing and chirping and barking.

  None of it affects me. All that stuff might as well be in a book or in some movie playing at the multiplex. It isn’t a part of my world.

  One of those otherworldly sounds—knocking. It takes a few seconds for me to realize it’s someone at my bedroom door.

  “Sweetie? Are you okay?” my mom asks. “I just wanted to make sure that you were ready for your appointment with Mrs. Peck at four.”

  And I remember that in one of those other, outside realms, I was supposed to have picked out my five dream colleges for my meeting with the counselor from Admissions Ace! today.

  When I don’t say anything, Mom hesitantly turns the knob and peeks in.

  Seeing me on the floor, the D-word panic washes over her, and she rushes to my side, gets down on her hands and knees, and presses me against her amazing rack in a hug that is so tight, it’s actually painful.

  “Sweetie? What is it? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “Pickles is dead.” Even in my own ears, my voice sounds flat and detached and weird.

  “Who?” Mom loosens her grip a little and holds my shoulders.

  Opening my palm, I show her Pickles’s shriveled little body.

  “Oh no, your little pet lobster?” Relief practically floods her face, and that makes me angry. Pickles wasn’t a person or even a dog or a cat who could love you back, but he was mine and he was important to me. Not just some lobster. He made me happy.

  “He was a hermit crab.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

  I shrug and say nothing, so my mom uses that smush-smush voice. “Let’s get you a new crab. We can go today after work. Or maybe a gerbil like the ones you and Veronica used to have in grade school? That might be nice—”

  “No, Mom, you can’t just replace him with a freaking gerbil.”

  “You’re right, sweetie.” Mom is back to holding me too tightly. “He was very special.”

  I may be depressed, but I’m not an idiot. I know that to my mom (and, well, everyone), Pickles was a weird, creepy little thing she thought was a lobster. Mom didn’t believe that Pickles was special, and she’s only saying that to pacify me, and that’s somehow worse than suggesting we get a gerbil. It’s like she read all this in some “how to handle your depressed kid” book, which I’m sure she did. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

  “What’s the point?” I say, but I’m not really talking to my mom. I’m not really sure who I’m talking to. “Everything good goes away, no matter what you do.”

  Mom is saying something about how that’s not true, and her face is contorted with worry again like it was before she realized that Pickles was only a crab. But I can’t really hear her. It’s like she’s back in that other world again—the one that’s like a movie, or some book I read.

  “I couldn’t even keep a fucking hermit crab alive.” I keep right on talking to that unknown person. “V is right; all I do is make the people around me miserable.”

  “When did V say that?” Mom’s jaw shifts, which is just great, because now she’s going to yell at V and make things even worse.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, she should know better.” She shakes her head. “That girl.”

  “Please don’t say anything to V. I’m fine, I promise. You’re right; he was just a crab.”

  “Honey.”

  “Really, I’m fine.” I do my best to try to look fine. “Okay?”

  “Okay.” Mom dons this smile that is so big and forced, I wonder if her face will literally crack. Pushing herself up from her knees, she goes to the window and throws open the shade. The sun stings my vampire eyes.

  “There, isn’t that better?” she asks.

  “It’s great.”

  “Look how sunny it is out.” She says this as if it’s a good thing, as if it hasn’t been suffocatingly hot for weeks and the light blazing through the window isn’t already oppressive. “Why don’t you get cleaned up and then come downstairs? Maybe tonight you can help me make peanut butter chocolate swirl cake? That’s probably just what you need today!”

  I can’t look at her, and the sun hurts my eyes. I turn back to Pickles still in my hand. This is hopelessness. Again I find myself wondering about my dad with his big hands. Maybe he would have understood how a hermit crab and a dumb fish store could mean a lot to me. Maybe his hands would have been big enough to hold me and keep me safe.

  DAY 37 (THE REST OF IT)

  Peanut Butter Chocolate Swirl Cake

  Since I was awake almost all night, I feel completely justified staying in bed until I have to go to meet Mrs. Peck in the afternoon. But Mom has other plans. Around noon she knocks on my door.

  “Sweetie, can you come to work with me today?” she says. “The receptionist called in sick, and we could use a little help.”

  “Do I have to?” I’m ninety-nine percent certain this is just Mom trying to keep an eye on me. “I’m pretty tired from last night.”

  “Just for a little while. I can give you a henna rinse or maybe braid your hair again—that looked so pretty the other night.”

  The thought of having to fake smile at Dye Another Day is absolutely nauseating, but maybe if I suffer through a few hours, she’ll get off my back.

  “Fine. For a little bit.”

  As I get up to get dressed, I see Pickles’s crabitat and feel another gut punch. I couldn’t bring myself to throw him away last night, so I ended up setting him back on the dollhouse couch and covering him with a blanket from the dollhouse bed. Pretty soon I’m going to have to throw him away before he starts to stink.

  Dye Another Day is in the vaguely historic downtown part of Coral Cove. It’s one of several brick shops and restaurants in this little roundabout by the movie theater. A few years ago Mom bought the vacant shoe store next door and expanded into the space—adding the spa area and creating a larger shampoo station.

  V and I came for the grand reopening, and I’m sure I’ve come by a few times since, but it has been a while since I’ve actually looked around, and it’s kind of shocking how nice the place is.

  An inviting light blue awning hangs out front, and inside, the walls are a soft taupe. There are these big bold paintings of everyday objects—a blow-dryer, a stack of magazines, bottles of nail polish—I did a few years ago. I completely forgot that I told Mom she could use them. Maybe it’s just the high-gloss frames, but they look better than I remember.

  Also noteworthy, the place is packed.

  There are five chairs, and all of them are constantly filled with p
eople getting color or cuts by Mom and her two other stylists—a twentysomething woman with a really intricate tattoo sleeve on her right arm, and then this incredibly dapper dude with highlights. Both of them look as though they belong in a much more exciting place than Coral Cove. Even with all the chopping going on, it’s really clean; someone with a broom sweeps up the hair almost as soon as it hits the ground.

  Everyone—the staff, the women Gram’s age getting their rollers set, a young mom and her middle-school-age daughter, a business-suited guy on his lunch hour, some college girls home on break—is boisterous and optimistic and appears to be having a grand old time. And Mom is totally in her element. She knows everyone, and everyone knows her. They all share stories about their sig oths, their kids, their troubles with management at J&J. No one can get enough of Mom; she doesn’t suggest that anyone replace their pet hermit crab with a gerbil. Even though I’m bummed and don’t want to be here, I’m definitely impressed.

  The receptionist actually is out, so I field a few calls, mostly just turning them over to whichever of the stylists is free to add the caller to the schedule. By the register, they’re selling some flip-flops for people who come in for pedicures and don’t bring their own sandals. Some pairs have little shells glued onto the strap for decoration. One is the exact green of Pickles’s shell.

  DAY 39

  Orange Pound Cake

  The idea comes to me at four in the morning two days after Pickles dies.

  I literally bolt upright in the sleigh bed.

  I’m not supposed to go into FishTopia until the afternoon, but I have the keys, so it’s not like I have to wait for anyone. I shower, get dressed, and then bike to the store as the sun is splintering the sky. Bonus: it’s not even scorching this early in the morning, so I’m only moderately puddle-y.

  By the time Alex comes in at ten, I’ve already done all the stuff we actually have to do—clean and check the tanks, open the register—but I’ve also swept and mopped the floors and washed what must have been a solid inch of dust off the front windows. (Alex was right the other day, you really could barely see inside.) Plus, in the back room supply closet, I found extra plastic letter and number stickers to fix the address on the door. And there are a couple cans of paint, so we can do something about the dingy walls. But now that I’m thinking about it, we should nix that and get something brighter, maybe a blue that will show off the fish tanks.