You Should See Me in a Crown(23)
Mack snorts and bumps her shoulder into mine.
“I can’t wait to try out the pound cake you made, by the way. My cheesecake was dead before I even had a chance to duck and cover yesterday.” She crosses herself like she’s in prayer. “We have to mourn a fallen soldier.”
When the warning bell rings to remind us that we have three minutes to get to class, I hesitate to leave but know I have to get going. I’ve never received a tardy slip in my life, and I don’t particularly want to start now. But I also sort of really want to keep talking to Mack.
“I’ll see you at the bake sale later?” I say as I step out of the way of a kid running to class. “I’ll, um, save you a slice of cake.”
I couldn’t sound less smooth, but Mack just smiles and salutes me.
“Wouldn’t miss it, comrade.”
And okay, I spend more time than I should in my next few classes thinking about her saying goodbye to me instead of conjugating verbs in French or finding symbolism in Great Expectations.
We have two lunch periods at Campbell, and since the bake sale is held during both of them, I’m given a pass out of my AP Stats class to staff the table. Madame Simoné makes sure that everyone is settled—latex gloves on and dishes retrieved from the culinary-arts room where they’ve been since last night—before bidding us farewell to get back to her classes. Before she goes, she offers a gentle warning.
“Like I said yesterday, there better not be any dr?les d’affaires today. We’ve already lost a number of candidates to irresponsible behavior this weekend. I would hate for us to see other members of our petite famille removed before this is all over. Comprenez-vous?”
We all nod in unison. Derek and a couple of the guys from the food fight got kicked out of the race for causing such a mess, which no one expected. But when the whole thing was broadcast for all of Campbell to see, it was kind of hard to deny that they were the culprits.
Luckily, I’ve made that pound cake so many times, I have it down to a science, and unlike most people, I was able to get my dish in the oven before the desserts went flying. Me, Harry Donato, Lucy, and Aaron Korman—one of the tennis guys that managed to make it out of the Bake-Off debacle unscathed—all arrange our dishes on a long table in the Commons. Two freshmen have volunteered to supervise the cashbox so that none of us have to handle food and then handle money. We’re mostly only here as smiling faces to hawk our goods.
I look at the other offerings and have to admit that my pound cake looks a hundred times better than anything the other three have cooked up.
Inside, I’m beaming. I can’t seem to move the needle on the rankings by showing up to volunteer events or whatever, but my granny’s signature pound cake recipe never fails. It’s perfectly buttery and still fresh, even after a night in the culinary-arts room. That, paired with the fact that my competition in this arena seems pretty slim, might be the thing that moves me up in the rankings. Even if that just means getting me the hell away from Tracksuit Cameron and safely in the territory of candidates who haven’t fabricated elaborate backstories that involve famous tennis players.
I have two cakes on the table, just like Granny taught me: “One for the goose and one for the gander.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I know that come Thanksgiving, we always have twice as much dessert as we need, and I don’t believe in putting a question mark where God put a period.
Gabi is the first to buy a piece, followed immediately by Britt and then Stone. Stone can’t actually eat hers, because it’s not vegan and she’s “ethically opposed to any food product that required animal labor for our own selfish consumption,” but Britt vows to donate it to one of the ravenous sophomores in her studio art class later.
“I’m stoked you managed to finish this before the melee started.” Britt talks around the pound cake in her mouth. “This is the best. Remember when your granny sent you with some the first time you ever slept over at my house? My mom lost her mind when she tasted it. White people really don’t know what to do with flavor.”
She shakes her head sadly, and I laugh. She’s right: Aside from Gabi’s mom, I don’t really eat anything that my friends’ parents make, for the sake of my palate. Granny sent me with that pound cake in part because she has a thing about showing up places empty-handed but also because she wanted to make sure if worse came to worst, I’d have something to tide me over until she came to pick me up the next day.
You can never be too careful when it comes to eating white folks’ food.
The three of them take their desserts back into the cafeteria when the lines for the table start getting a little long. There aren’t many options to choose from, but I’m surprised at just how much my pound cake is killing everyone else’s desserts.
The line is moving along, and before I know it, Mack is in front of me. She grabs her VIP slice and clutches it to her chest with a wide smile like it’s the Medal of Honor or something equally valuable. As she walks away, she doesn’t even seem to notice when Lucy glances over and huffs at the dramatic display.
“OhmygoshLiz!” Melly, one of the freshman flutes, nearly shoulder-checks Mack on accident as she rushes over and leans across the table to whisper to me. She’s sweet, very enthusiastic, but has to work on not running all the words in her sentences together. “Thisisamazing.”