“That’s it?” said Zoe, frowning when I handed her the baggie.
“That’s it,” I said.
She studied it, then ran a finger through the powder. “This is just flour!”
“Sure, if you use it to cook, but not if you use it for, uh, whatever fairies use fairy dust for.”
“But it’s not special.”
“Think of it this way—fairies have wands, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And what are wands made out of?”
“I don’t know. Sticks?”
“Exactly. They’re just sticks till fairies use them as wands. This is just flour till a fairy uses it as fairy dust. Same thing, right?”
“I guess.” She was studying the flour again. “But there’s so little.”
“That’s because this is the powerful stuff, the deluxe dust. A tiny pinch goes a long way. But maybe you can’t handle it. Maybe I should get the rookie stuff.” I took the bag away from her.
“What’s rookie stuff?”
“It’s for the new fairies who don’t know what they’re doing.”
“It’s not flour?”
“No way. The rookie stuff is cornstarch. Maybe that would be safer.”
“Noooooo, deluxe dust! Deluxe dust!” she said. Then she snatched back the baggie and raced to the basement door.
Down in the basement, I helped Zoe put on and tighten her harness. Then we climbed to the landing halfway up the basement stairs, and I clipped her onto the zip line.
“First, I must throw the fairy dust on you,” she sang. Then she took a pinch of flour and tossed it in her face.
“Ready?”
She sneezed and gave me a thumbs-up. I let go, and she squealed all the way down to the other end of the basement.
After five minutes of clip in, walk down, clip out, walk back up, repeat, I was bored out of my skull. That’s when I decided to see if I could teach Zoe to clip in and out herself. I would never have left her there alone, but at least that way, I could use the time to go over step two of the recipe.
It took a couple of tries but eventually she figured out that if she used both hands, she could pull back the little lever on the clip and slip it over the zip line. Once it was on, there was no way she could get hurt since Jim the Kidnapper had gotten these extra safe clips used by mountain climbers. So for the next hour, Zoe clipped herself in and out of the zip line, I memorized how to make the chocolate cream, and everybody was happy. Zoe didn’t even complain when I told her it was time to go back upstairs, mostly because she was out of fairy dust by then.
Zoe didn’t want to stay in the kitchen for step two, so I told her she could play in her room till I was done.
Winnie had warned me that the chocolate cream was the hardest part of the recipe, but it turned out that it was just like making pudding. With pudding, you have this runny, melted chocolate mixture, and you’re stirring so long you feel like your arm will fall off, but the chocolate never looks any thicker. Then, just when you can’t stir one more second, something changes. The runny mixture becomes something new that wasn’t there before, something somewhere between liquid and solid. The secret is just the belief that if you keep stirring, you will eventually get there before your arm falls off.
It was that way with the cream. I’d been stirring forever when suddenly the waves I made with my spoon were there even when the spoon was gone.
I dunked my finger and tasted.
Sweet. Creamy. Rich. But something was wrong.
I took another bite.
Good, definitely good, but just good. No more than good.
I hadn’t done all this work just for good! People didn’t write articles about good or dream about good or get up at the crack of dawn to eat good. Good was not life changing! My insides suddenly felt like they were on spin cycle.
Had I forgotten something? I grabbed the recipe. No. I’d done everything just like I was supposed to.
So what did this mean?
Were life-changing doughnuts like the Tooth Fairy or the Man in the Moon or every other bit of magic in this world? A complete lie?
Had the people of Petersville been deprived so long they couldn’t tell the difference between a good doughnut and a life-changing one?
I put the cream in the fridge and sprinted upstairs.
“Mom?” I whispered. She’d made it to the bed and was pretty clearly asleep. “Mom?” I said again, louder this time.
“Mmm.”
I lay down beside her and whispered right in her ear, “I made the cream.”
“Mmm.”
“It tastes like chocolate pudding.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Mom, please, wake up,” I begged, squeezing her shoulder.
“I’m up. I’m up. What she’d do?”
“Nothing. But the chocolate cream tastes like chocolate pudding.”
“What?”
“For the doughnuts. The chocolate cream tastes like chocolate pudding.”
She pressed her hand to her stomach. “Can you not talk about food, please?”
“Mom, please! I need your help.”
She sat up slowly. “Okay, okay. Let’s just not say the words. So the…the C tastes like P. What’s wrong with that?”
“It just tastes like normal pud—sorry, I mean, P. Not amazing P or C or whatever, and it has to be amazing.”
“Ah, good not great. I’m familiar with the problem.”
“Yeah, good not great.” I knew she’d get it.
“Was it still hot, the C, when you tasted it?”
“Yeah, warm.”
“Finish. Finish the recipe. Make the doughnuts, I mean, the D. Make the D, fill the D, then decide. The whole is always bigger than the parts when you’re talking food. The magic happens when you put them together. PB&J is a totally different animal from the PB and the J and some B, right?”
“I guess. Okay, I’ll finish and then see.” I was still worried, but it’s not as if I had a lot of options. “Sorry I woke you.”
“Be careful when you fry, you know, because the oil—”
“I know.”
“How’s it going with Zoe?”
“Fine. She’s in her room.”
Or so
