“I need coffee,” my mother said, searching through a box labeled Pantry. “Who’s hungry?”
“Here, I got these.” I put the eggs on the counter.
“Where are they from?” She opened the carton. “Wow! They’re gorgeous. The ones that made it anyway.”
“I went to town. The yolks are orange,” I said as I headed upstairs to shower off egg slime and mud.
“Want me to make some?” she called after me.
“No!” I called back. How could they not have even noticed I was gone?
“I have other stuff I brought from home. You want something else?”
“Chocolate cream doughnuts,” I muttered as I moped up the stairs.
“What?”
“Nothing! I’m not hungry.”
7
From: [email protected]
Subject: Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ow ow ooowww. Yes. Coyotes do really sound like that. I know this because I heard them circling our house last night. No lie. If you don’t hear from me again, a mother coyote has fed me to her pups. I guess there could be worse ways to go. Uh, maybe not. Torn apart by coyote teeth has to be one of the top ten worst ways to die.
What’s up?
T.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Hello?
Did you get my email?
Coyotes closing in.
Have you ever seen a blue egg with an orange yolk? We’ve moved to Whoville.
Please send bagels FedEx.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Hello?
Are your parents ever getting you a cell phone? You and my grandparents are the last people on earth not using one. Try working the YOU DESTROYED MY LIFE BY MOVING ME TO THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE thing. Maybe they’ll feel bad enough to get you a phone.
Super busy getting ready for tryouts. My dad got me some private sessions with one of the coaches from Uptown Athletic Center so I could work on my shooting. Gotten way better already.
Send pics of the coyotes.
What’s up with the eggs there? We’ll bring bagels when we come for Thanksgiving. Where do you go for fun up there in Peter’s Village?
• • •
For the next two days, I did nothing except unpack boxes and think about chocolate cream doughnuts.
Did the doughnut witch use milk chocolate or semisweet or dark? Was the cream airy like mousse or thick like pudding? Did she glaze the doughnuts or sprinkle them with powdered sugar?
The second night, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I went downstairs and searched all sixty-seven of my mother’s cookbooks while I finished off the apple crisp we’d had for dessert.
Not even Roland had a recipe for chocolate cream doughnuts. I guess it’s hard to make fried dough presidential. I’m sure I could have found one on the internet, but you never know about recipes you find online. Besides, I wasn’t interested in making just any chocolate cream doughnuts.
On the third day, my parents announced we were going to the library. Jeanine needed books for her project. Of course, she had it all figured out already and was raring to go. She was so fired up, she’d even forgotten about her plan to put my parents under citizen’s arrest for keeping us out of school.
“It’s a field study of the land around our house,” she explained on the drive to the library. “First, I’ll do a map. Then I’ll mark the topography, you know, where the land rises and falls and then—this is the coolest part—I’ll identify and label all the trees, plants, and animals with their common and scientific names!”
“Cool!” I was hoping my enthusiasm for Jeanine’s project would keep anyone from asking about mine.
“Sounds fantastic,” Dad said. “Zoe? What are you looking for?”
“Fairy dust.”
“I was thinking books.”
“You didn’t say that. You said, looking for, and I’m looking for fairy dust because the happy thoughts aren’t working.” Zoe had been watching this old Peter Pan movie nonstop. Now all she could talk about was filling her mind with happy thoughts so she could fly, which, I guess if you ask Peter Pan, is all it takes.
“I don’t think they have fairy dust at the library,” Mom said.
“Can we make some?”
“We’ll see.”
“When we get home?”
“We’ll see.”
“Tawatty Tawatty Dabu Dabu hate ‘we’ll see.’” Zoe smacked the back of Mom’s seat with her vomit bucket.
Tawatty Tawatty and Dabu Dabu are Zoe’s imaginary friends. We have no idea what they look like, but they must be very small because she’s always pulling them out of her pockets. It’s also possible they’re attached in some way because one never appears without the other, and she usually refers to them as the unit, Tawatty Tawatty Dabu Dabu.
Mom turned around and snatched the bucket out of Zoe’s hand. “You know what I hate? When Tawatty Tawatty Dabu Dabu make a mess. No fairy potion project unless I specifically say so, got it?”
“Fairy dust, not fair potion.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I did,” Zoe said.
“And Tawatty Tawatty Dabu Dabu?” Mom said.
Zoe shrugged.
“Behave yourself,” Mom said and handed Zoe back her bucket.
“What about you, Tris?” Dad called over his shoulder. “You come up with a project yet?”
There it was. The question I’d been dreading.
“Yeah,” I said, drawing out the word to buy time.
The truth was, I had nothing. I blamed the doughnuts. I’d tried. I really had. I’d sat for hours staring at a blank sheet of paper, but nothing came. Nothing, but those stupid doughnuts. Even now, with my brain spinning to give me something, anything, that’s still all there was.
“So? What is it?” Mom said.
“Chocolate cream doughnuts,” I said before I could stop myself.
“The ones you were telling us about?” she asked.
“Uh-huh?” I said hopefully. It had been an explanation, not an answer, but if they were willing to accept it as one, that worked for me.
“How can a doughnut be a project?” Jeanine said.
Excellent question. How can a doughnut be a project?
“Sounds like a project to me,” Mom said. “Tell me more.”
“I can’t. I’m still figuring it out.”
“Can’t wait till you do,” Mom said.
“Yeah, me neither,” I said into my jacket.
At least now I had a good excuse for spending every waking second thinking about chocolate cream
