“I can’t?” Harley looked around like he suddenly didn’t know where he was. “Jim?”
“Technically, it’s a no-no, Harley,” Jim said. “This is actually Harley’s first term, so he’s still learning. Jax, you want to sell candy necklaces or Flowbees, you go right ahead. You got my blessing and the license too. Right, Harley?”
Harley shrugged his shoulders. “I guess. I mean, if I have to.”
“Thanks, but I think we’ll stick to chocolate cream doughnuts,” I said.
“But now you don’t have to,” Jeanine said, flashing her Yes, I won! smile at Harley.
“Fine,” I said. “Can we get back to the pitch now?”
“Fine? Don’t you mean thanks?” she said, her smile caving in to a big black hole of what’s-wrong-with-you.
I could have tried to explain that Josh and I would have been perfectly happy promising never to sell anything but chocolate cream doughnuts even if it did violate the Constitution, but I knew that would have taken too long.
“Right. I meant thanks,” I said.
Then we turned out the light and started from the beginning, and this time everything went perfectly. Nobody interrupted, and at the end, not only did my parents decide to invest but so did Jim and Harley.
By the time I went to tell Winnie we had the money that afternoon, I’d started to wonder why people had invested. Did they really think the Doughnut Stop would succeed, or had they given us money just to be nice?
“People don’t give you money just to be nice, especially when people is Harley Turnby,” Winnie said.
That should have made me happy. It meant people believed us when we said the Doughnut Stop was guaranteed to be a hit. The problem was, we didn’t actually know that, not for sure.
So what happened if we were wrong?
What happened if we couldn’t even make enough money to pay them back? What if the business was a complete and total flop? What if we were the Flowbee of the doughnut world? We’d promised Harley Turnby we’d make his money back and then some. What would he do to us if it turned out we’d lied?
I knew where to go for answers: the only twenty-seven pages of Starting Your Own Business for Dummies I hadn’t read…Chapter 19: Bankruptcy. It seemed like a jinx to read about what happens when your business goes belly up, so I’d just skipped that part.
But now I wanted to know. Now I had to know.
Just in case.
21
My parents had all kinds of rules when we lived in the city: never take a shortcut through a parking lot; never take the subway by yourself; and if someone tries to take your stuff, just let them have it. But since I’d gotten to Petersville, my parents had given me just one rule: no biking after dark.
At first, I didn’t get it. What did I need the rule for? Why exactly would I want to be riding around in the dark? Then the clocks changed and it started getting dark at four in the afternoon, and the rule didn’t seem so dumb anymore.
Since I didn’t have school or really anywhere I had to be, I’d stopped paying much attention to what time it was. I’d even stopped wearing my watch. The afternoons Josh and I spent skating on the pond, it didn’t matter how late it got since he always stayed for dinner and his mom just picked him up afterward. The problem was when he and I were hanging out at the library. We’d be sitting there making Doughnut Stop plans, and all of a sudden, I’d notice that the bookshelves opposite the front windows were lit up all orange. Then I’d jump up, yell goodbye, and race home. Even though the sun was usually behind the mountains by the time I got there, the sky just above them was still light or at least light-ish, which I thought was good enough. If my parents disagreed, they never said so.
The thing is, there are no windows in the little office behind the circulation desk, and that’s where Josh and I met Winnie two days before the Doughnut Stop’s grand opening. We’d told her we had to meet that afternoon to work out some stuff for the opening. The real reason for the meeting? We were finally going to tell her I’d messed with her recipe. That’s not how I saw it, but I was pretty sure that’s how she would.
“Oh, good, snacks,” Winnie said when she came through the door. “I think better on a full stomach.”
I’d made a batch of doughnuts using the new recipe and arranged some on a paper plate in the center of the table.
“You roll ’em right after you take ’em out of the oil, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Because it looks like you were being a little stingy with the sugar on these, Slick. Don’t do that this weekend.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t forget.”
“He won’t,” Josh said.
“Maybe he should write it down to make sure.”
“Uh, okay.” I looked around for something to write with and on.
“I got it,” Josh said, writing in his Doughnut Stop binder. “Why don’t you just tell Winnie about the…um…your news?”
“What news?” Winnie reached for a doughnut.
“No!” Before I knew what I was doing, I’d snatched the plate out from under her hand.
“What? Those just for decoration?”
“I need to tell you something first.”
“I can eat while you talk. They call it multitasking.”
“Actually…” Josh pushed the plate back across the table. “Maybe she should taste a doughnut first.”
I shot Josh a look.
“What’s wrong with you boys?” Winnie picked up a doughnut and took a big bite.
I squeezed the edge of the table and held my breath.
“Mmm. Mmm.”
“Good, huh?” Josh said.
“’Course, they’re good.”
“They don’t taste…a little different?” I said.
“From other doughnuts? Yeah, a lot better.” She laughed.
“No. I mean, from before.”
She took another bite and chewed slowly. “I haven’t made my doughnuts for more than a year, Slick. But
