From Not Like I'm Jealous or Anything, a collection of stories about that green-eyed monster, published in early 2006 and edited by Marissa Walsh. Contributors include Jaclyn Moriarty (The Year of Secret Assignments, Feeling Sorry For Celia), Dyan Sheldon (Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen), Ned Vizzini (Be More Chill), and Susan Juby (Alice, I Think, etc.).
This story is about Roo from The Boyfriend List, and it's called "Bake Sale." And of course, this is only the first bit...there's a lot more, and it involves baked goods in unmentionable shapes!
--E
I don't really like baking.
I like eating stuff that other people bake.
True: Cricket, Nora, Kim and I used to go over to Cricket's every week and make batches of chocolate chip cookies. But to be honest, I was really more of a tray-greaser and batter-taster than actual baker. Nora did most of the baking. The one time I took charge of a batch of cookies, something went wrong and the batter was really gloopy; the cookies turned black around the edges, and I got a large burn mark across the center of my palm because I forgot to use a potholder.
But.
Every year around the holidays, there is this charity bake sale at Tate Prep , raising money to buy holiday gifts for the kids at a shelter in downtown Seattle. It's always a big thing, the bake sale; people get really show-offy. The stay-at-home mothers go all-out, and then the non-stay-at-home mothers feel they have something to prove, and go even further out. So it's hardly a matter of a few loaves of banana bread and some sad-looking oatmeal squares. I'm talking about pinwheel cookies with three different colors of batter, cupcakes made to look like ladybugs, cookies decorated like tiny fire-engines, and six-layer ultimate fudge.
Quite a number of Tate girls have inherited their mothers' urge to display their talents as domestic goddesses–and if you're the kind of person who believes that the way to a guy's heart is through his stomach, then the Tate Prep Charity Holiday Bake Sale (CHuBS) is a good time to snag a guy. The thing goes on for a week in the entrance hall to the main building, and boys are always waiting on the front steps, trying to get freebies off the girls who are on their way to deliver their stuff to bake sale central.
Not being the domestic goddess type, I stayed out of the whole thing Freshman year. Cricket, Kim, Nora and I did our parts only by purchasing and consuming large quantities of baked goods instead of eating lunch. But Sophomore year, I had this boyfriend called Jackson: a tall, gravely-voiced junior who stuck notes in my mail cubby, drank a lot of root beer and drove an old Dodge that used to belong to his uncle. He and I had started going out in early fall-–and I had never been so happy.
At least, I thought I had never been so happy. Here's what I mean: writing this now, I know that our whole relationship thing was headed for a major breakup debacle that would completely ruin my life --but at the time, I felt we had something close to love.
So. Everyone at Tate Prep has to do a certain amount of community service each term – and what with going to Jackson's cross-country meets, hanging out on weekends, and doing stuff with him after school, I had gotten seriously behind.
That's where the bake sale comes in.
A popular senior girl named April announced it during assembly in early December. I was sitting in the auditorium with Jackson's arm around me, surrounded by his friends. April said the organizing committee needed a few more people, and to talk to her afterwards if interested, and that sign-up sheets for baked goods would go up that week in the Refectory and the main building, blah blah blah.
"Roo," Jackson had whispered as she was talking, his breath warm against my ear, "are you gonna bake me some brownies?"
"What?" I laughed.
"Brownies," he whispered, nibbling on my earlobe. "I love brownies. Like the kind with lots of walnuts. Or those cupcakes with the cream cheese – what are they called?"
"Black bottom."
"Sounds dirty," he laughed, and kissed my neck.
Things between us at this point were already getting a little weird, though I didn't admit it to myself then. For example: I'd seen this note in his back pocket in another girl's handwriting; he'd gone on this completely anxiety-inducing tennis-coffee date with his ex-girlfriend Heidi, and told me that he thought she was super-beautiful; we had a fight one time when he said he'd call and didn't; and he'd stopped leaving little presents in my school mail cubby every Monday.
This underlying weirdness made me feel kind of spazzed out, but at the same time we were having three-hour kissing sessions, and Jackson was saying things like "I never felt this way before."
Anyway. All you really need to know is that when Jackson got me all hot and bothered in the auditorium, breathing in my ear and kissing my neck and asking me to bake things for him, a tiny part of my brain thought: he'll love me more if I make those black bottom cupcakes.
I am an idiot, I know. But that is what I thought.
I ran right up to April after the assembly and offered my services. Partly because of my sorely lacking community service hours. But really because of sex.
"Roo, you're out of your mind," said Nora, when I told my friends at lunch. "You can't even read a recipe or remember to use a pot holder."
"So?"
"So, this is hard-core baking," she said. "You could do yourself some bodily injury."
"Oh, please. Do you think Jackson would like the black bottoms, or the brownies better?"
"You could just give him a hand-job and save yourself a lot of time and trouble," interrupted Cricket.
"What?" I started laughing.
"I mean," she said, "the way to a guy's heart. It isn't through the stomach--"
Kim leaned across, picked a raisin out of my salad and jerked her head in Cricket's direction. "Her mind is in the gutter."
"—it's through the nether regions!" laughed Cricket.
"I'm not nether-regioning Jackson," I said. "That's way too advanced."
"Everyone knows it," continued Cricket, ignoring me. "There's a line right directly from the you-know-what to the heart."
"Oh, like you're nether-regioning anybody," said Nora.
"I didn't say I was, but I'm not puttering around in an apron, either," smirked Cricket. "And I would fully nether-region before I started opening cookbooks."
"Don't bake," said Nora to me, seriously. "I just know it'll be a disaster."
"Don't nether-region, either," said Kim, sweetly. "If you don't feel like it. Just be yourself. He's already your boyfriend."
"I need the community service hours, anyway," I said.
"Well, if you must, you must," sighed Nora. "But put a sign on the stuff you make. So we'll know not to eat it."
I threw a raisin at her.
But I didn't change my mind.
