Beardo and Baldy began documenting the opening of my bakery with their camera phones. The Friends looked around the place, curious, muttering to each other. I hadn’t put up any decorations. Meadow would know, if she didn’t already, that I hadn’t given my best effort to this tribute. Before she could flay me for my lack of creativity and deference, though, the bomb at the monastery was supposed to go off. I checked the clock on the wall: any minute now.
Kaliah and I brought out the lackluster baked goods and set them on the counter. I stood in the spot that Kaliah and I had previously worked out. More Friends arrived, but they couldn’t fit in the dining area, so they waited outside, protected from the rain by two canopy tents we had set up earlier.
“Help yourselves,” I said.
Meadow stared at the sheet cakes in horror. “This . . . . You’ve debased the Memoirist. You’ve debased our cause.” She turned to Beardo and Baldy. “Take him to the school. Room thirty-two.”
My legs felt heavy and light at the same time. I looked at the clock. The bomb should have gone off by now. What were Zelda and Hugo doing? Had they been caught? I needed to buy more time.
“Wait,” Kaliah said. “You clearly don’t know the art of baking.” She scoffed and made a face like she was offended. “Minimalism is in fashion now. This is known as cookhouse chic, a movement in the baking community marked by nostalgic presentations that mask truly avant-garde, truly revolutionary flavors and techniques. Trust me, after tasting Charlie’s desserts, you will never look at food the same again.”
I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so nervous. Kaliah was an artful liar. And how was she so calm? She hadn’t stumbled on one word.
Meadow had hate in her eyes as she studied Kaliah’s face, hinting at a history between them I could only imagine, but she waved the Zaditorians back. “And we serve ourselves?” she said with a sneer.
“The lack of presentation is the presentation,” Kaliah said. “And there are no plates, either, only napkins. Surrender yourselves to the experience.”
I provided a knife, and my mom stepped forward and began cutting the cakes into squares. As soon as someone took a bite they would know Kaliah was full of crap, and Meadow would take me away.
Hugo’s resistance was waiting nearby for the explosion before they attacked. If they saw me being hauled off, would they intervene or abandon the plan? I wished there was some way I could signal them to attack now.
I cringed as Meadow took her first bite and chewed. She shook her head, clearly underwhelmed. I looked to my mom. Her face projected sympathy and resignation, as if to say, “I’m sorry. My hands are tied.”
Meadow waved at Baldy, and he put away his phone and came toward me, bumping Friends out of his way. Explosion or not, we couldn’t wait any longer. I looked at Kaliah. She nodded, and I turned around. The kitchen and bakery dissolved, replaced by empty bleachers on the other side of a football field as Kaliah threw the Ghost we’d been practicing with.
Around me now were happy, chattering, excited people. The sun shone above. On the field below was a stage with a podium. “Pomp and Circumstance” played over a PA. Beside the podium, an older man in a black robe gave diplomas to a line of young people in black robes, happy young people. Other young people waited in folding chairs, rows and rows of them.
I heard shouts of alarm from the Friends behind me who were trapped in some nightmare that wouldn’t last much longer if Hugo’s resistance didn’t come to our aide soon. I walked out into the open air, above the crowd sitting in the seats below me, along the route I’d practiced. I fumbled around for the doorknob to the bathroom, found it, and went inside. I stepped onto the toilet, blindly, higher up into the air, and retrieved my typewriter from over my head, pulling it out of thin air like a magic trick. Then I heard an explosion go off in the distance, the one we’d been waiting for, and I almost dropped the typewriter on my head.
The sound of rainfall was abruptly louder as the bakery door opened somewhere inside the bleachers to my left, beneath the sun-soaked families in straw hats holding signs and noisemakers. Along with the cheers of joy, I now heard shrieks of rage and fear along with the sounds of fighting. Hugo’s resistance was here! I took what felt like my first breath in several minutes.
When I turned to where the kitchen should have been, Kaliah was holding my mom by the arm, and they were standing in the air twenty feet above the robed college kids. “Hurry,” Kaliah said. “You got five minutes.”
I knew I had five minutes. She’d told me I would only have five minutes three times already today. We were supposed to be heading to the western border now. But Kaliah had agreed to help me with this personal matter and to keep it from both Hugo and Zelda, who would have certainly tried to stop me. But I had to know.
I strode over to them and set the typewriter on a work table that wasn’t there.
“What’s going on, Honey?” my mom said. She sounded nervous.
I ignored the question, pulled out a microwave owner’s manual I’d found in a kitchen drawer back at the house, and I began typing. Either this
