The cookie crumbles, p.1
The Cookie Crumbles, page 1
Dedication
To the bakers who never met a pastry
they didn’t want to bake, and to
the busters who never met a mystery
they didn’t want to solve.
This book is for you.
—T. B. and A. D.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Day One: The Past in Pastry
Laila’s Journal Entry
1. Laila
Lucy’s Journal Entry
2. Lucy
Laila’s Journal Entry
3. Laila
Lucy’s Journal Entry
4. Lucy
Laila’s Journal Entry
5. Laila
Lucy’s Journal Entry
Laila’s Journal Entry
6. Lucy
Day Two: C Is for Cookies . . . and Crime
Laila’s Journal Entry
7. Laila
Lucy’s Journal Entry
8. Lucy
Laila’s Journal Entry
9. Laila
10. Lucy
11. Laila
12. Lucy
Laila’s Journal Entry
13. Laila
Lucy’s Journal Entry
Day Three: Eat Sweet or Die Bitter
14. Laila
15. Lucy
16. Laila
17. Lucy
18. Laila
19. Lucy
20. Laila
21. Lucy
22. Laila
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Books by Tracy Badua and Alechia Dow
Copyright
About the Publisher
Day One
The Past in Pastry
Laila’s Journal Entry
Generally speaking, cookies don’t kill people.
Cookies save people. Cookies are the reason some people get out of bed in the morning. You’ve got chocolate cookies, vanilla cookies, breakfast cookies, macarons, alfajores, whoopie pies, and all kinds in between. I mean, you can basically have an entire conversation with someone just by exchanging cookies.
Side note: I wish I could eat a cookie right now. My nerves need one.
Anyway, as you can tell, and as Stevie Wonder once said—which I’m paraphrasing—I was made to love cookies. I was made to make them. Sell them. Become a cookie tycoon, CEO of Cookie Corp. My future will be full of cookies.
So it was a terrible surprise when some people claimed that one of my cookies nearly killed someone. Like, huge surprise.
I know it wasn’t my fault (not everyone is convinced), but my best friend, Lucy—journalist extraordinaire in training—wants to write a story about the competition anyway. When she shoved a pen at me earlier and said that writing this all down would give us a timeline for the entire first day, I said yes, though it made me nervous. Lucy may think that we have to solve this before someone tries to dish out another service of death or . . . I get arrested, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. Or is it lay? Doesn’t matter, you know what I mean.
Lucy’s pretty smart. So she knows how bad this could be for me if they investigate. I trust she’s doing all this for the right reasons, which is why I’m here bent over a notebook, detailing our first and worst day at the Golden Cookie Competition.
Gulp, my mouth’s as dry as a low-fat shortbread. Right. Let’s go all the way back to before we arrived at Sunderland Academy. That’s the best place to start. No attempted murder (yet), only excitement.
And this time I’ll try not to mention cookies so much.
1
Laila
IT WAS EARLY on a summery Friday morning, and I was at home, draped over my bed, thinking about life and the upcoming competition that weekend. I’d already entered and placed first in the qualification round for our town; now I just needed to compete for the chance of a lifetime. The chance to do great, big things.
The chance to win not only the coveted Golden Cookie award but a free ride to Sunderland Academy next year. One of the best, and therefore most expensive, boarding high schools in the country that, bonus, had one of the best precollege journalism programs. Lucy had already gotten accepted a few months ago, though her parents hadn’t quite figured out how to afford it yet—which was why she was coming along to the competition.
More on that later.
Anyway, Lucy and I wouldn’t be going to high school for another year. Thanks to weirdly drawn school district lines, this would be our last year at the same school—possibly in the same town too—if we didn’t figure out how to go to Sunderland together. And that’d be a disaster.
If I got into Sunderland, we’d share a dorm, catch the bus home on the weekends, and continue along with the greatness that is our friendship.
We needed to go to school together. Outside of Mom, Lucy was all I had.
Lucy lived on the other side of town. She had a nice house and a nice dog—unlike my cat, Catsby, who bit me every time I came too close to her fluffy tummy. Lucy had it all. Good grades, oodles of friends, shiny black hair that still looked beautiful after a sudden, terrible gust of wind, and a wardrobe of well-fitting clothes. But she wanted more, and she was far too ambitious for her own good.
She wanted to be the next Barbara Walters or, better yet, Ariella Wilborn. I’d never heard anyone talk about a journalist the way Lucy talked about Ariella Wilborn, like she’s Captain Marvel.
While Lucy had ambition, talent, and smarts, I had cookies. Everybody’s got their thing, the special talent they’ll use for the rest of their lives, right? Well, food? That was my thing.
Not only cookies. In my spare time on the weekends, I’d (illegally) staged at restaurants around town. I’d learned how to make a mean spicy salmon roll with red pepper aioli, fry chicken according to an old Black woman’s great-grandmother’s recipe (the trick was marinating it in milk), and construct a mouthwatering burger using the right ratios of different types of ground beef. I’d assisted in dinner rushes, meal prep, and once, when Mom was working, I snuck out at five a.m. to help the local baker with his daily bread bake. Food was so totally my thing.
And that was another reason I had to go to Sunderland: its superstar culinary program would boost my special talents so I’d get to bake, expertly and happily, for the rest of my life.
“Laila, you packed? You need anything?” Mom walked into my room, the braids on her hair disheveled and flapping all over the place. She was in her nursing scrubs, and there were dark circles under her eyes, though she hadn’t yet left for work at the hospital on the other side of our small suburb, Fable Creek.
I had just been thinking I could’ve used a new pair of shoes to replace my tight-around-the-toes ones, but they weren’t a priority. “Nope, got everything I need.”
She’d been single momming me since Dad passed away from cancer when I was seven. We lost our house because of the medical and funeral bills, and then we got evicted from our last apartment. Mom was a guilty wreck about it. She thought it was all her fault everything fell apart. It was my job to let her know it wasn’t, that we could still achieve big things even if we had to start from a lower ledge than everyone else. Me winning the Golden Cookie would be good for her too.
And until then, I could stretch my time with these small shoes a little longer.
“How are you feeling about the competition?” She sat down on the edge of my bed and brushed a few frizzy curls behind my ear. I looked up into her hazel eyes. My eyes were all Dad’s: dark brown to match our dark brown skin and dark brown hair; I was a walking chocolate bar. While Mom was lithe and fragile, I was thick. Kids at school used to say it’s because I ate all the time (I didn’t), but now I knew that was how my body was, and Mom’s was different. Despite those differences, I still looked like her. The same nose, same knobby chin, same Cupid’s bow lips.
“I’m fine,” I answered, closing my eyes as she patted my head. “Maybe a bit nervous.”
“You were nervous when you had to qualify, remember?” She nudged my shoulder. “And you came in first place. You didn’t break a sweat.”
I looked at her and smiled as a knot formed in the pit of my stomach. “Yeah, but all the kids going to the competition are winners too.” What I didn’t mention was that all of them were rich and talented and came from upper-crust families. They had all the advantages. Unlike us. “They’re the best of the best.”
“Hmm,” she hummed. “So are you.”
That seemed to untwist the knot a little bit. Maybe she was right about all that other stuff not mattering in the kitchen. It wasn’t about where we’ve been, but where we’re going. “I can do this. And besides, Lucy’ll be there.”
“You two . . .” Mom shook her head. “You can’t be apart, huh?”
“She’s my person,” I retorted. “She gets me.” And I got her too. The thought of not going to school with her made me feel like I was stuck in a black hole of sadness. The same way I felt for a few months after Dad died. Like my world was getting smaller and smaller and I’d be left all alone, floating in space.
Mom, using the last few moments she had before starting a long shift, helped me finish packing my bag. She carefully folded my purple apron, which Dad bought me when I started to cook and Lucy helped remake into a larger one. That way Dad would always be with me, cheering me on.
“You’re brave and talented, Laila, and there’s nowhere you can’t go. Nothing you can’t do,” he used to say. Whenever I was f eeling lonely and lost, I tried to remember that. Repeat it aloud until I felt it.
“When’s the van coming?” Mom asked when my clothes were neatly folded. She rose and put her hands on her back, stretching.
I sat on my suitcase to try to get it flat. Sure, we’d be gone only three days, but I needed my supplies. Specific extracts I’d made myself, like my lemon oil with lemon verbena leaves and my peachy vanilla. The competition rules said we couldn’t bring in our own materials, but I got special permission for these because Sunderland’s kitchen didn’t carry them. “In ten minutes.”
“Good luck, honey.” She put a hand on my shoulder as I stood up. “I believe in you. And remember, I’ll be at work tonight, and then the Emergency Nurses of America conference this weekend. So only call if you need to, okay? Lucy’s parents said they’d be watching the live stream and sitting by the phone if you girls want anything.”
I agreed and swept her up in the most rib-shattering hug I could manage. She gasped only once. “Love you, Mom. I got this, promise.” I meant it. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and there was no way I’d let it pass me by.
She kissed my cheek and took off as the sun began to peek through the fog. And I thought, as I brought my suitcase onto the porch, watching her leave, Wow, it’s chilly for a summer morning. Unusual. But had I known the weekend that was about to happen, I would have realized that unusual was definitely better than attempted murder.
Most things are better than murder.
A van pulled up outside my house at exactly half-past seven. It was a white van, the kind that schools use for teachers’ night out. I knew because one night while I was helping at our local gastropub, I caught the teachers having a dinner meeting and getting a little too liberal with the cocktails. They piled in the van after. Most likely this van. Remembering how queasy they looked, I was apprehensive about sliding inside now.
Until Lucy came out and scrutinized my suitcase. She scrunched her flat, light brown nose. “It’s only three days.”
I shoved my suitcase in the back and jumped into the van. “You’ll thank me if you need to look up a baking term in one of my cookbooks.” Meanwhile, I eyed her backpack as I buckled myself in. “Let me guess, you brought empty notebooks, a voice recorder, one hoodie, one pair of jeans, and a few books about the science of journalism.”
She gave me a sheepish grin that all but confirmed it. “The necessities.”
We settled into our seats in a row in front of two other contestants, from two different middle schools. Lucy had made a dossier on each of these other soon-to-be eighth graders and had me study them for their weaknesses. She was always prepared like that.
I peered behind us. The blond girl with gold, cupcake-shaped earrings was Philippa Willingsworth—a future debutante, because those existed and people were them. She was so well-off she went to a private academy two towns over, where only the rich lived. They had a multilevel Starbucks and overpriced mall stores hanging out on their main street. Worst of all, she was good. Supergood. The kind of good where she’d most likely have her own restaurant one day. So good she didn’t need the scholarship. She didn’t need to compete.
Her weakness: couldn’t make a Bavarian mousse to save her life.
And then there was Micah Dae, cradling some weird plant on his lap. He was from the sister burb of Fable Creek called Fable Falls, where middle-class families were living their best lives. His parents owned a casual-dining restaurant, where he worked the cash register three nights a week in between Junior Botany Society meetings. Despite being a nerd, or maybe because he was a nerd, he was totally cute.
His weakness: a bit too classic (aka boring) with his flavor choices.
All in all, with the other two contestants arriving at Sunderland in a different van, I liked my odds. Which was probably what both Micah and Philippa were thinking as they sized me up.
Micah glanced at me and my brain blanked. “I brought some cookies for everyone. As a way to . . . like . . . say hi.” He shifted the plant off his lap and dug out a small plastic bag of mangled, crumbly dark brown cookies from his hoodie pocket.
They didn’t look enticing, but I accepted one to be polite. So did Lucy and Philippa.
Once I took a bite of the soft, light cookie, I realized my initial assessment was wrong. Very wrong. They were ginger-molasses cookies, which sounded standard, but they contained a whole lot of delicious spices I was sure Micah thought was his secret blend.
Micah and the other contestants didn’t know my strengths and weaknesses because they didn’t have a dossier made by their best friend about me. But if they did, they’d know that I had a baking superpower: I could take a bite of something and be able to tell exactly what was in it. I never missed an ingredient. Which was why I was able to quickly figure out that these cookies had the traditional seasonings of allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and cardamom, but also some Chinese five-spice powder: a blend of ground cloves, special peppercorns, fennel, star anise, and a cinnamon stick. It was a perfectly warm explosion of flavor.
We all demolished our cookies in seconds. Philippa tossed him a glance and then stared out the window without another word. Probably grasping that Micah was real competition. Lucy, on the other hand, looked somewhat relieved. The ginger might’ve temporarily helped calm her upset stomach. While my own stomach soured as I began recalibrating.
In Micah’s dossier, it said his weakness was that he was too classic with his flavor choices. If these cookies were any indication, the dossier didn’t consider how badly he and the other contestants wanted to win or that a weakness at his level still produced seriously good cookies. Now I had to think about my own weaknesses and wonder if they affected my baking as much as his seemed not to.
Mine: tended to panic under pressure and would literally do anything for Mom and Lucy. And little did the other contestants know that one of them was sitting beside me, still the teensiest bit green, clutching a book about cookies.
Lucy’s: had no idea about cooking, baking, cookies, or the food community, but desperately wanted to get a broad range of writing samples together for Sunderland’s Ariella Wilborn Journalism Scholarship by next week. She already had half a dozen pieces from her time on the school paper. I thought they were all great, yet the coach that the scholarship committee provided to help guide students with their applications had said Lucy’s pieces might all be too similar or simple for the scholarship. Based on the coach’s assessment, this was Lucy’s last, best chance to write some new pieces showcasing a wide variety of her skills: something scholarship-worthy. She was in it to win it this weekend as much as I was.
“Thanks for the cookie. It was delicious.” I put the cheeriest tone in my voice as I spoke to Micah. He nodded before settling into his seat and putting his plant on his lap. I tried to keep cool as I turned my back on my rivals. “How long does it take to get there?”
Lucy glanced down at her phone. “It’s normally an hour, but with all the construction on the highway, my map app says we’ll be there in two hours.”
“Ugh, two hours in a van?” Philippa sighed loudly. “I could’ve had my driver take me, but I was trying to escape my family. I didn’t need their . . . pressure, you know?” She smiled, and I felt it was suspicious, because why, if she had her own ride, would she opt for the van? It was likely because she wanted to suss us all out, get a feel for the competition. When we didn’t return her smile, she sniffed. “Anyway, I didn’t think it was going to take this long. Probably should’ve gone with the driver—would’ve taken the same time, but at least it would have been more comfortable.”
Micah only cocked an eyebrow at no one in particular, yanked his hood down over his short black hair, and turned on his side away from us. I guess he was done saying hello.
And I thought, Wow. He’s so cute. But also, Why isn’t he more excited? This was the competition of a lifetime. You’d think he’d take this chance to figure us all out so he could beat us later. Instead, he seemed bored. Weird, right?
Although maybe he was just tired. Or maybe he was shy and giving the cookies was the most he could do? I didn’t know. Didn’t really matter, because I was focused on winning. No matter what.
Lucy’s Journal Entry
