Stir It Up by Ramin Ganeshram Read Free Book Online Page B

backpack bangs against my hip each time I jump.
    The train is packed with workers headed into the city for the 8 A.M. work shift. Even though it’s so coldoutside, all the bodies packed together make the car way hot. I stand between a fat lady in a fuzzy coat and a tall man in a suit. There are so many people I can’t get near a pole to hold on to, but together we all make a human wall. There’s nowhere to fall even if I lose my footing. I hold my backpack’s loop in my right hand, letting it rest on top of my foot. It’s so heavy it pulls me down, anchors me in place. My shoulder begins to throb.
    Forty minutes later the subway pulls into my stop. The constant flow of passengers in and out of the train means I never did get a seat, and now my right shoulder is killing me. When I get to the top of the subway stairs at Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, it’s at least stopped sleeting. I walk through the streets a few more blocks toward Chelsea Market, where the Food Network studios are located.
    Inside Chelsea Market I walk along the snaking black hallway toward the middle of the complex to the café, where my “parent” is waiting to accompany me to the audition. She’s wearing jeans and a bright red V-neck sweater. Her blond ringlets frame her face.It’s the first time I’ve seen her in street clothes. She looks so young and cool.
    “Hey, Anjali!” she says, smiling. “You ready?”
    I’m glad to see her. “Ready, Chef Nyla,” I say.
    “Today I’m just Nyla,” she says. “Your friend Nyla.”
    I smile and feel my body relax.
    “Let’s go, Nyla.”
    I hoist my ten-ton knapsack over my shoulder. Nyla knows her way around this place. I’m right on her heels, following closely. We ride the elevator to the sixth floor.
    There’s a young guy sitting behind a tall oval desk and a few kids sitting on the funky modern couches with their parents.
    Nyla walks up to the desk and signs us in, then comes to stand beside me. All the chairs are full.
    “They said the associate producer will be out to take us to the greenroom shortly,” she tells me.
    Ten minutes later, a heavyset woman with cornrows comes out and introduces herself.
    “Hey, everybody.” She smiles. “I’m Paula, and I’m gonna take you all back to the greenroom. You’ll havea little makeup and then the producer will come out and tell you how it’s gonna go.”
    All of the kids and their adults file after Paula into a door that leads to a bunch of cubicles, then through a back hallway that looks like it belongs in a warehouse. We finally get to an empty room with some couches and two chairs like you see at the hairdresser. The room is tiny.
    “Here you go. It’ll be a little tight, but make yourselves comfortable,” says Paula.
    Nyla grabs my hand and heads quickly to the couch, plopping us down abruptly to make sure we have a place to sit. The other contestants — a girl with red hair and a nose ring, an African American boy, and a blond girl with thick glasses and a sharp pageboy haircut — and their parents stand awkwardly in the center of the room or lean on the wall.
    A woman with curly blond hair and square purple glasses comes in. She’s wearing a long skirt that looks like a bunch of fabric patches sewn together. The heels on her black leather boots are spiky. She’s also wearing a barely noticeable headset in her ear and holding a little black box in her hand.
    “Hi, folks, I’m Brenda Wokowski, the executive producer of
Super Chef Kids.
” This lady is all business, no smiles. “Here’s the breakdown of what will happen today. We’re going to split up into groups of three contestants. The first are” — she looks down at the clipboard she’s carrying and my throat goes tight — “Anjali Krishnan, He Kyong Park, and Jimmy DeFazio.”
    I’m up first.
    Brenda looks around the room as I step forward along with a heavy kid in a Mets jersey and a slender Asian girl.
    “Good,” Brenda says, looking each of us over.