It's Raining Cupcakes by Lisa Schroeder Read Free Book Online Page B

and have them ground me forever.They’d told me probably a hundred times the fire escape was off-limits.
    The door has glass in it, so I had to go to the very edge of the platform and stand against the railing to keep them from seeing me.
    People scurried along the sidewalk below, completely unaware that I was standing above them. I put my hand over my mouth to keep myself from giggling at the thought of jam tarts suddenly raining from the sky. But the pastry in that batch was on the heavy side, and the last thing I wanted to do was to give someone a concussion. I could just picture someone going to the emergency room claiming they’d been hit on the head by a jam tart falling from the sky.
    I stood there for a long time, listening to my parents chatting away inside, although I couldn’t hear specifically what they were talking about. I took a bite of a tart and wondered if they might be worrying about me. I always left a note letting them know where I was going.
    There were stairs that dropped below the platform I was standing on, and those stairs were one way out of the tight spot I’d gotten myself into. The problemwas that the stairs didn’t go all the way to the sidewalk. If I took the stairs, I’d have to jump from the last rung to the sidewalk. I couldn’t tell how far it was, but from where I stood, it looked like a long way.
    So I waited. And I waited. Then I had to go to the bathroom. Bad. I made a mental note to skip the two cans of root beer the next time I decided to hang out on the fire escape for an hour.
    Finally I decided I had two choices. Die at the hands of my father, or die at the hands of the sidewalk below. It was a hard decision. But I decided my father might end up being a bit more forgiving than the concrete sidewalk.
    I walked into the family room, and neither of them were around. I smiled and did a little skip across the floor. Maybe I could actually get to my room and throw the pan under my bed like I should have done in the first place, and everything would be fine.
    I thought I just might make it when I heard my mom from her room.
    â€œIsabel?” She peeked her head out of the bedroom. “Where have you been? You didn’t leave a note.”
    Then she looked at the pan in my hand. “What’sthat?” Now she came all the way out. “What’s going on, Isabel?”
    â€œI, um—”
    Dad came out of the bathroom across from my room. “Hi, honey. We were getting a little worried. Where’d you run off to?”
    â€œThat’s what I was just asking her,” Mom said.
    As we stood there in that cramped hallway, about a hundred lies fluttered through my brain like butterflies in a meadow. But I knew each one would result in more questions and more lies, and I’m a horrible liar.
    My shoulders slumped in defeat. “These are tarts. I was trying to come up with a recipe for the baking contest. I was afraid you’d be mad that I wasn’t making cupcakes, so when I heard you coming in, I ran onto the fire escape.”
    They both looked at me as if I had just told them I’d robbed a bank. Which right about then, sounded like a better way to make some cash than trying to make jam tarts in a cupcake house.
    â€œI’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have gone out there. It was stupid, I know.”
    â€œI’m disappointed in you, Isabel,” said Dad. “The fire escape is off-limits. You know that.”
    I hung my head and nodded.
    Mom took the tarts from my hand. She looked so sad, I thought she might start to cry. “You really aren’t going to submit a cupcake recipe for the contest?”
    I shrugged and tried to look her in the eyes, but it was too hard. I looked down at the floor again. “I, uh, I don’t know. I was just playing around. You know, experimenting. I don’t know what I’m going to submit yet.”
    Dad put his arm around Mom and took the pan of tarts with the