The Cupcake Queen by Heather Hepler Read Free Book Online Page A

CDs and a couple of guitar picks and set lists. I didn’t know what those were until she told me it was just a list of the order of songs that a band plays at a gig. She actually talks like that. A gig. So really her project isn’t about her at all, but about her dad.
    “It’s pretty summer-campish,” she says. I look at my own project and sigh. Mine has a brochure from one of my mom’s art shows, some pictures of me and my friends ice-skating in Central Park, and a bunch of ticket stubs from museums and movies. While Tally’s project is mostly about when she was on tour with her dad, mine is mostly about my other life, my real life. I try rearranging some of the ticket stubs so they look like they’re petals blooming out of the coffee stirrer from Dean & Deluca, but I can’t seem to get what Miss Beans calls “layering.” I check the clock. Only twelve-fifteen. I’m not sure I can rearrange for fifteen more minutes.
    “Penny,” Miss Beans says, walking up behind me. I’m busted. I turn and see she’s looking at me, not my project. “You look like you could use a break.” Okay, so maybe she’s not totally clueless. “Could you take this to the office for me?” I nod and she hands me a thick envelope.
    “Lucky,” Tally hisses at me.
    I walk out of the art room and into the empty hall. I stop by the water fountain and get a drink. I’m in no hurry to get back to class. I just can’t seem to make the leap between craft and art that Miss Beans talked about. She said the difference is that crafts show the artist’s skill while art shows the artist’s soul. Whenever I think of my soul, all I picture is a blobby floating thing that changes color depending on my mood.
    The office is empty when I walk in. I peer into Constance’s bowl of Jolly Ranchers, but all that’s left are a couple of sour apple ones and a few blue ones that I guess are raspberry. It’s weird how one day someone just decided that blue things were going to be raspberry. Why not blueberry, or plum or something? I look around to see if anyone’s watching and reach in for a blue one. The door to the office opens behind me. I drop the candy and turn around, expecting to see Constance walking in, but it’s not her.
    It’s him.
    “Caught you,” he says with a smile. He comes over, peers into the bowl, then shakes his head. “It’s sad really,” he says. “I’m pretty sure those are the same candies that are always left.” He walks around the desk, opens the middle drawer of the file cabinet, and pulls out the biggest bag of candy I have ever seen. He upends it over the fishbowl, filling it all the way to the top with Jolly Ranchers. He raises his eyebrows and tilts the bowl in my direction. I reach out to take a candy. “The flavor you pick says a lot about a person.”
    “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” I say.
    “That’s pretty much my life during third period. Running errands. Developing candy-based theories about people’s personalities.”
    Suddenly, picking a flavor seems to hold a lot of weight. I decide on grape, my favorite.
    “Interesting,” he says. He puts the bag of candy back in the file cabinet and turns to watch as I unwrap the Jolly Rancher and put it in my mouth.
    “So, what’s your theory?” I ask.
    “It’s complicated,” he says. “I’ll give you the short version for now.” I like the way he says “for now.” It hints that there is a “later” out there somewhere. “Grape people are artistic and like to be alone a lot.”
    “What about cherry?” I ask.
    “Cherry people are nice.” He says “nice” like I’d say “boring.”
    “I almost picked raspberry,” I say.
    “Interesting,” he says, nodding. “Raspberry people are adventurous. Risk takers.” I’m not sure that’s me at all.
    “What about the others?” I ask.
    “Watermelon people are popular.” He digs in the bowl, pulling out each flavor as he talks about it. “Apple people try too hard.” He pulls out a