Food, Cats, and Being Lazy

I was kind of afraid to fall asleep just in case I woke up in the morning to like an animal head in my bed. So I was awake when Paige got home from the dance. She didn’t try to talk to me. She went right to her room. And luckily, the weight I felt on my lap first thing in the morning was just Reggie.

Paige left first thing in the morning to hang out with her friends or something. So I stayed hidden in my room until she was gone. Then my mom reminded me that her candle party was tonight, and I needed to get to work on the cupcakes she was paying me for. So I got my stuff together and went to the kitchen to get started.

I had a really cool surprise for my mom. She had just asked for basic cupcakes with frosting, but I got this genius idea to make them look like little candles. So I even got a cupcake tier and everything I needed to make my own candied flames.

I was just getting the second batch in the oven when I heard a loud crash from behind me. I knew exactly what the sound was. My first batch of cupcakes had somehow ended up on the floor. I winced and groaned out loud, thinking it was Reggie. But when I turned around, Paige was standing right in the middle of the cupcake disaster.

“Oops,” she said in a really snotty voice. “Sorry.” Then she turned and walked away, squishing cupcakes under her shoes as she went.

So she was really, really mad at me. I sighed and went to clean it up before my mom could find out. Then I made a mental note to keep the cupcakes close to me, so it didn’t happen again.

Thankfully, she didn’t come back down to the kitchen. I got the rest of the cupcakes made before my mom got home. I set them up on the cool tier and then started the flame candies. They came out better than I expected. So I stuck one on each cupcake and brought them out to the buffet table my mom set up for all the snacks and food. I really hoped Paige didn’t come down and destroy them before my mom got to see my hard work.

She stayed in her room, and my mom loved the cupcakes. She even gave me a bonus and told me I was hired for Thanksgiving, even though I told her she didn’t have to pay me for that.

But Thanksgiving was destined to be the best meal I’d ever made. I’d never made anything that big before, and I was really excited about being able to take control over the entire kitchen. Usually, my mom ordered a pre-cooked meal from the grocery store, which was never that good. But I had watched every single Thanksgiving episode I could find on the Food Network and even the internet. I took a bunch of notes and made my own recipe based on what I saw. So I felt really prepared.

Paige still wasn’t talking to me, though. At all. After Homecoming, she stopped hanging out with me and returned to being her usual mean self. She never said anything about Vincent kissing me. But she did seem a lot colder to him too, whenever he came to pick her up for appointments. He told me they talked about it and assured her it was his fault and not mine. But she, of course, didn’t believe it. Because why would Vincent have kissed me if I didn’t force him to, I guess?

I was actually kind of glad she wasn’t talking to me, though. Even though it was nice having her as a friend again, I didn’t want to be friends with someone who thought they were better than me. Especially not if they were related to me.

On Thanksgiving, she was about as big as the turkey. I bet in traditional families, everyone would gather around her and “oo” and “ahh” over her belly and baby kicks and all that sweet stuff. But since she was determined to give the baby up and no one really wanted her to keep it, everyone just sort of pretended not to notice. The only thing is that my mom let her eat whenever she wanted, and she was allowed to put her feet on the coffee table.

I spent the entire day in the kitchen. I went to the store with my mom the day before to pick out everything I needed. The guy at the counter said, “Mrs. Finnegan, shall I write up that Thanksgiving order for you?” and he seemed really disappointed when she turned him down and told him I was making it. I made a note to not shop there again just in case he had a vendetta against me.

I loved being in the kitchen. It was one thing to love food so much you could eat all the time. But an entirely different thing to love watching food being made on TV and love reading cookbooks. And it was a whole different level to make something with your bare hands that made everyone happy. I spent years of my life thinking I was talentless and useless, only to find out I was really good in a kitchen. What a gift for a food lover to be good at making it.

The turkey turned out beautiful. It was crisp and golden, and I’d even made homemade gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, and real cranberry sauce. I even made extras like mushrooms (because Paige craved them) and a small ham for my dad because it was his favorite. And it was gorgeous. When my mom came to help me set the table, she looked stunned.

“You’re an artist,” she said, planting a smooch on my head. I felt stupidly giddy inside.

Even my dad kept wandering out of his office to check on me every few hours because he was trying to sneak pieces of the turkey. But I kept shooing him away. Only to turn around and find his finger in the gravy. But the number one thing I loved most about cooking was that it seemed to bring my family closer to me.

We all sat down to eat together. We had people over like always because my mom couldn’t let one holiday be a family-only gathering. But thankfully, she’d had a falling out with the Denvers, so they weren’t invited.

But Vincent stopped by. Paige was just making it a point to make sure he never interacted with me. I wasn’t exactly an expert on flirting, but I was pretty sure that’s what she was doing. And it did bother me. Not just because I sort of liked him. But because I knew she didn’t. She was just doing it to make me mad.