Free Drive Me Crazy by Terra Elan McVoy Page B

as the screens above fill with a close-up of the finished cupcake. “Of course, don’t be afraid if it makes a bit of a mess.” He holds up a jelly-coated finger and smiles that smile again. More ladies around us squeal and titter.
    I help Lana cut the cupcakes in half while Nono’s on jelly duty and Howie scoops the icing. We get a rhythm going, the four of us, though it is indeed a bit of a mess.
    Not as big a mess as me and Fiona. We haven’t talked since. She never even tried to call. It’s as though when I walked away from our table, I walked right off Fiona’s planet. I only found out she’d gotten her journal back when Izzy Gathing said something about it a couple of days later at lunch. I guess I was glad, but mostly there was that hot, confusing ball of shame and anger inside me that I didn’t know what to do with. So I buried it down and spent the rest of the school year trying to keep up with Kendra Mack and the rest of my new friends.
    I’ve still kept my crush on Cory Baxter, of course, but after listening to Cheyenne Taylor and Neftali Manji talk incessantly about the boys they like—and hearing how Kendra Mack and Izzy Gathing shoot them down—I’m still unsure about revealing who Lagoon really is. Thanks to stupid Fiona, though, Kendra Mack won’t let up with the Loverboy stuff, and it’s getting a lot harder to hide thetruth from her. Being away from everyone this week only makes it worse. When I’m home, I can at least let their conversations take over. I only have to laugh at the right time, be in the right place, or say the right thing in response to someone else. Away from them all it’s more of a challenge.
    “Now, these aren’t the kind of cupcakes you can build an Eiffel Tower with,” Brick Hasselback says, holding one up, “but it’s how I got my start, and I wanted to share it with all of you. So dig in and enjoy your hard work, and I’ll get to signing in a moment.” He grins again before taking a big bite.
    The lights go up, and Nono wipes her hands on her apron to give us all high fives. Howie offers the first cupcakes to me and Lana, and she raises hers, smiling.
    “Let’s have a toast,” she says.
    I lift mine along with Nono and Howie, trying not to get my fingers in the sticky jelly leaking from the sides.
    “To . . . ,” Lana starts, but a strange expression crosses her face, like she doesn’t know what to say. She looks up at Howie.
    “To accomplishing something delicious together,” he says.
    We clink our cupcakes and take bites. Even though thinking about Fiona fills me with nothing but bitterness, I have to admit they are delicious.

Chapter Thirteen

Lana
    H aving so much fun at the baking class with Cassie, Grandma Tess, and Grandpa Howe helps my worry about Mom take the back burner for a while. The cupcakes were amazing, Brick Hasselback was so charming, and Grandma Tess’s excitement was even bigger than mine and Grandpa Howe’s put together. Even Cassie got into it, making sure we had plenty of chocolate flake in that icing, which is why I’m a little surprised she’s so quiet in the car. She still hasn’t uttered a word since we’ve checked into the Visalia hotel and gone up to our room to change for dinner.
    “It would’ve been fun if we’d been able to build a crazy cupcake tower,” I say, wondering if that’s what she’sdisappointed about, since Brick Hasselback is so famous for it. Maybe plain cupcakes weren’t quite cool enough.
    “Mmm.” She nods faintly. “You mind if I wash up?”
    “Go ahead.”
    I have no idea what’s bothering her, but it’s strangely still in the room when she closes the bathroom door. I try to turn my attention to getting ready for dinner, reminding myself that tonight’s restaurant is going to be even better than cupcakes. Broadway! has themed dining wings, each decorated around a different Broadway musical. The servers dress up in costumes and sing songs from your show, and even the menu matches.