Free Mia a Matter of Taste by Coco Simon Page A

that, I was amazed by how cute my friends looked. They didn’t look dorky or weird at all.
    â€œYou guys are the best,” I said, sitting down with them. “And you all look amazing too!”
    â€œSo do you when you wear your glasses,” Katie said. “I hope you believe us now.”
    â€œI do,” I said, although I wasn’t sure if I believed it 100 percent yet. “But, hey, don’t we have a cupcake job to plan? We only have, like, a week before we start baking.”
    â€œYou sound like me,” Alexis joked. “And you’re right. We need a plan, like, right now. I baked some cupcakes last night. Plus, Katie brought all theleftover supplies from our last few jobs.”
    Alexis had neatly set up everything on the kitchen counter. I looked over and saw a tray of vanilla cupcakes, along with sprinkles, edible glitter, chocolate chips, gummy worms, coconut, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
    â€œI was thinking,” Katie said. “Maybe we don’t need all that stuff. If this is supposed to be ‘Come as You Are,’ then maybe our cupcakes should be, like, naked. No frosting, no decorations. Just plain.”
    We all started giggling at that. “Naked cupcakes? Principal LaCosta would throw us out of the carnival if we did that,” I said.
    â€œPlus, they wouldn’t be yummy,” Emma said.
    â€œAnd they might be boring,” Alexis added.
    Katie got up and brought the tray of “naked” cupcakes to the table. Then she picked one up and started talking in the voice of a cupcake (which was sort of high-pitched, which I guess is how Katie thinks a cupcake would sound if it could talk).
    â€œI’m not boring! I’m naked! I’m ready for summer sunbathing!” Katie said.
    We were all cracking up now. Emma picked one up that had puffed up higher on one side than the other. “Look at me! I’m lopsided!”
    I grabbed one that was smaller than the others.“I’m tiny, but I’m still delicious!” I said in my best impersonation of Katie’s cupcake voice.
    â€œSee?” Katie said. “Not boring at all.”
    â€œThat’s only if we do cupcake voices for the whole carnival,” Alexis pointed out. “And I’m not sure I have that in me.”
    â€œBut it’s cool the way all the cupcakes are different and unique,” I said, finally figuring it out. “So maybe that’s what we do. We have to make about a hundred cupcakes, right? So let’s do them in a bunch of different flavors. Then each one could have a different icing and topping. I mean, like mixing them up. Just so each one is unique.”
    â€œI love that!” Emma cried. “That will be so much fun!”
    â€œYay!” Katie agreed. “But we’ll have to narrow down how many flavors and icings we do, so we don’t go crazy. And I think we have enough extra toppings that we won’t have to buy new stuff, so that’s good for our budget, right?”
    Alexis nodded. “That’s great for our budget. This is a terrific idea.”
    I grabbed a cupcake. “Let’s play around with the dozen we have here to see how they could look. Is there any icing?”
    â€œI made a batch of vanilla,” Alexis said. “And wecould always add food coloring to it.”
    â€œPerfect!” I said. “Let’s decorate some and see how they look.”
    We brought the icing and the toppings onto the kitchen table and started decorating our practice cupcakes. I used a paper cup to make a small batch of pale orange frosting for one cupcake. I used a black icing tube to draw hair that sort of looked like mine. Then I made a mouth with big teeth out of tiny white candies.
    â€œAlexis, do you have any cereal?” I asked.
    â€œIn the cabinet to the right of the sink.”
    I found a box of round cereal with a hole in the middle of each piece, which was just what I needed. I