Chapter One
The Idea…
“That idea will never work,” Celeste says poking my arm.
“Yeah, your cupcakes were disgusting,” barks Solstice. Celeste and Solstice are twin sisters who think they rule the school.
“Quit eavesdropping, it’s rude. And everyone else seemed to like my cupcakes, I’m sorry you didn’t.” I reply, turning back to Zander. The girls walk away, annoyed by my comment.
“Ignore the, Rayne. They wouldn’t know a good idea if it was handed to them with a label.” Zander says, trying to cheer me up.
“It’s okay, really. I don’t care what they sat, I will make this work.” I say, looking around to make sure the “perfect twins” aren’t around. “Are you with me?”
Zander takes a second to think. “Sure.” He finally answers, “It’s a great idea. We’ll talk about it after school tonight, since you come to my house anyway.”
“Okay,” I say, closing my locker and going to my next class.
You’re probably wondering what this “idea” is. Let me explain. Today is my fourteenth birthday, and I brought 150 cupcakes to school. But these weren’t your typical chocolate or vanilla cupcakes. Instead, Zander and I came up with five crazy flavors: Lemon-Lime, Coffee Crème, Fruit Punch, Peanut-Butter, and Very Berry. We tested each flavor until they were perfect. We baked three dozen of each flavor so we could have extra. Then, we decorated every cupcake with icing, sprinkles, fruit, and other things to complete the flavors. It was so much fun, and I have no idea how we managed to make the flavors. We made sure to write down the recipes for later.
We took 30 of each flavor to school, and my mom took two of each flavor to the food pantry. She does a lot of charity work and thought it be nice to take a treat for everyone. I really worried about people liking them. My eight year old sister Josie, Zander, and I cut one of each flavor into thirds and tasted them. We all thought they were delicious. Zander and I were both impressed with our creativity. We were left with three of each flavor so we split them up. Zander, Josie, and I each got one of each flavor.
We passed out the cupcakes, and people said they tasted like they came from a professional bakery. Not everyone got a cupcake because there’s no way I was going to make over 300 cupcakes. But everybody that did get a cupcake, except Celeste and Solstice, thought they were delicious and wanted me to make more.
As the day went, more and more people complimented me. Zander got an equal amount of compliments. During History, I started thinking about the cupcakes Mom took. Did she give them to the starving people or the volunteers?
That’s when the idea hit me. I quickly scribbled a note to Zander and threw it on his desk:
Meet me @ my locker before 6th period.
~Rayne
~Rayne
I watched him out of the corner of my eye as the teacher talked more about the French and Indian War. He opened the note and read it then gave me a thumbs-up to let me know he’d be there.
Celeste was sitting behind Zander and must have read the note, because she showed up at my locker with Solstice not long after Zander and I got there. I politely asked them to leave, and, surprisingly, they did. Or so I thought.
“So what’s your idea?” Zander asked when the girls were out of sight.
“Well, I was thinking about my mom and her charity work and how she took some of the cupcakes to the food pantry.” I said. Zander was going through his locker as I explained, so I wasn’t sure if he was actually listening or not.
“Everybody loved our cupcakes, right? I thought we could start making cupcake like our flavors and sell them for charity. My mom could help get the money to the charities.” I said, opening my locker and getting out my books. “We’d have to keep some of the money to buy more ingredients, but the rest could go to charity.” And that’s when they walked up. Celeste followed by Solstice. They had been listening to our whole conversation, typical for the O’Ryan twins.
And that brings us back to where I began…
Chapter Two
Making It Work…
Josie and I go to Zander’s house afterschool on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday because those are the days out mom volunteers. When we get to his house, I ask Josie if we can have some privacy. She goes to the other room and starts on her homework.
“So,” Zander says, getting out paper to make notes.
“I think we should start this weekend.” I say, probably too excited about this whole thing.
“What? We can’t do that, we have to plan things out, Rayne. You can’t just jump on every project and expect it to work out properly.”
I don’t like his reaction. Personally, I think he worries too much. “Well, I thought we could bake some cupcakes and open up my garage. We have that extra table in there, and the garage has a door to the kitchen.” I already have this planned out. “We can display our cupcakes on the table, and keep extras in the kitchen in case we run out quickly.”
“But we’ll have to be more organized than that. What about signs and prices? What charities are we donating the money to? I’m telling you, this will take some more time than you think.” Zander says, getting more aggravated by the second. Why does he always have to be so pessimistic and ruin my moments?
“Okay,” I begin thinking about what he said. “How about we charge one dollar per cupcake? We’ll make signs after school on Wednesday. And the March of Dimes is going on soon, we can give the money to my mom and she can take it to wherever it needs to be.”
“Why are in such a rush about this? Seriously—,” I cut him off there.
“Please,” is all I say. We stare at the floor for a few seconds.
Finally, Zander says, “All right. I have some poster board; we can use it for the signs. But if we’re going to work this together, we have to pool our money together for supplies.” He stands up and walks to his dresser.
“I have money saved from my allowance, it should be enough.” He ignores me.
“Here,” he hands me twenty dollars but doesn’t sit back down until I take it, which is a while. “That should help a bit.”
“Thank you, for everything, for helping me with this.” I reach over and hug him.
“One last question,” he says. I let go and wait for what he’s going to say. “What are we going to name our little business? I mean, we have to put something besides ‘Cupcakes!’ on the poster board if it’s going to be a real business.” He smiles.
I take this into thought. “Umm, I don’t know. Good question. What do you think?” Okay, so I didn’t have this completely planned out.
“How ‘bout we ask Josie?” He replies, a sly smile crosses his face. “Hey, JJ, could you come here for a minute?” In about two seconds Josie’s at the door, ready to hang out with the big kids. “What’s the song Rayne used to sing to you when you were little, do you remember?”
“’Somewhere Over the Rainbow’,” she replies with a smile. “Why?” she then asks, probably just as confused as me.
“Oh, no particular reason. You can go back to your homework.” Josie skips away, now singing the song. Zander turns to me, “Anything? Did you get any ideas from that?”
“Wait, you’re referring to the whole ‘business name’ thing? Well, I guess we could name it ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’.” I still have no idea what he’s getting at.
“Or we could shorten it and name it ‘Over the Rainbow Cupcakes’. It’d be kind of like saying ‘Out of This World Cupcakes’ but without using that phrase.” He looks at me like ‘get it now?’
“Oh, because rainbows are in the sky. I get it. That’s a pretty cool name, I like it.” I got to give it to him; Zander’s pretty creative when it comes to that stuff.
“Great, then ‘Over the Rainbow Cupcakes’ it is.” We hear a car horn outside. “I think your mom’s here.”
“Yep, that’s her.” I gather my stuff together and put it back in my book bag. “See you tomorrow.” When I walk out of the room, I find Josie standing around the corner, “You got your stuff.”
“Yeah, I do. Can I help with your cupcakes?” Great, she was listening. What am I supposed to tell an eight year old when it comes to cupcakes?
“I’ll have to think about. Maybe you can if you’re super good this week.” That seems to make her happy, and hopefully it will keep her from getting into trouble. We head out the door to my mom’s car.
Chapter Three
Lots of Cupcakes…
Tuesday flies by so quickly I almost forget what we did in class. Wednesday afternoon we’re back at Zander’s. This time, I let Josie sit with us and draw up the posters. We decide three posters should be enough. Zander uses stencils and writes, “Over the Rainbow”, in big letters on each poster board. Then I draw cupcakes around the name and Josie colors them in. I had to tell her to keep it realistic and try to stay in the lines. Zander and I work on coloring in the letters while Josie does colors cupcakes. When we’re done with all three, there’s a lot of blank space, so I take a permanent marker and write “$1.00 Cupcakes! Sat., March 2nd, starting @ 11:00a.m.! 2013 Yearling Road!” We add some swirls, polka dots, and anything else to fill in the extra space. Zander suggests we sign our names at the bottom, so we do.
“They look great,” I say, holding one up. “Do you have stakes so we can put them in the ground?”
“Sure do,” Zander leaves the room for a few minutes and comes back with six poles, each one having a point at the bottom. We each take two, and, using a lot of tape, manage to attach them to the posters with no damage. We make sure they are secure so the wind can’t blow them away.
“Can I leave these here until tomorrow when I don’t have as much stuff to carry?” I ask, worried something might happen to them.
“Yeah, that’s fine.” Zander replies. “JJ, you can go work on your homework now.”
“Okay,” she says and leaves the room. She’s definitely happy she got to help. She’ll be even happier when I tell her what she can help with next.
Zander looks back at me. “You’re sure your mom’s okay with this?” Again, he’s always worried about something.
“Positive. I asked her Monday night and told her everything we had planned. She thought it was a great idea.” I reply getting out my Algebra book and notebook. “She said she’d be able to get the money to any charity we wanted. I have a feeling this will go farther than just this weekend.”
“Good. I hope so. It’d be so awesome if we could do this all the time.” He says, getting out his homework too. We work on homework for until it’s time for me to leave.
Thursday afternoon we decided that Zander should come to my house Friday night and help bake cupcakes. His mom said that was fine as long as he was home before ten o’clock. We don’t say much more about it. Celeste and Solstice have been bothering us more and more in the days leading up to Saturday. Finally, they leave us alone when I invite them to come and help. They didn’t reply, and I think I may be seeing them on Saturday.
Friday night, Zander gets off the bus at my house, and my mom drives us to the grocery store. We take our recipe cards and buy everything we need for our unique flavors. We also buy ingredients for regular chocolate and vanilla cupcakes that way everybody will find something they like. On the way back to my house, we stop at places around the neighborhood to set up the signs.
When we get home, we organize everything on the counter according to recipe. Then we get to work starting with chocolate and vanilla. We make three dozen of each of the normal flavors and two dozen of every fancy flavor because they take more time. If you do the math, that’s 192 cupcakes. I’m pretty sure we’ll have enough for Saturday.
We finish baking by seven o’clock and go straight to decorating each one. I let Josie help by putting on toppings. Icing goes on every cupcake no matter what flavor, but we also have special toppings to decorate them. A lemon or lime slice on top of the lemon-lime, coffee beans on the coffee crème, sugar sprinkles on the fruit punch, roasted peanuts on the peanut-butter, and raspberries, strawberries, or blueberries on the very berry cupcakes. By the time we’re done, it’s almost nine o’clock, so we take Zander home. When we get home, I’m so tired; I forget to put the cupcakes somewhere.
In the morning, I find all the cupcakes in some kind of container. Mom had put them all away for me so they wouldn’t go bad. I’ll make sure to thank her when she gets up. I shower and get dressed then go out in the garage and set up the folding table. I find an old pencil box to use to hold the money and get a plastic cup for tips. “All tips go to charity,” is what I write on it, and I put a smiley face at the bottom. By the time I get back inside, Josie is dressed and all ready to help.
Zander should be here soon, since he just lives down the street and can ride his bike in daylight. I tell Josie we can start taking groups of cupcakes out. I start with twelve of each figuring I can bring more out if I need to. I grab a pile of napkins and head out to the garage. Josie remembered to keep the peanut-butter ones away from the rest in case someone has an allergy. I take notecards and write the name of the cupcake on them and tape them in front of each group. I make sure to put ingredients that people could be allergic to on the cards just in case.
I asked Mom if she could park the car on the street so the driveway would be open, and she did. Around ten-thirty, Zander shows up and knocks on the garage door. I push the button to open it and find he’s not alone. As suspected, Celeste and Solstice are there too.
“Ready to help?” I ask the girls.
“No, why would we help you? We just want to see if you get any business.” Celeste says back.
“We have lots of cupcakes!” Says Josie, not giving the best reason, but it works for me. Celeste breathes a sarcastic breath. Boy, I can hardly stand her.
“Suit yourself,” I say, turning back to my true partners. “You two ready?”
“Yep,” Zander replies, parking his bike outside the garage. “How ‘bout I go get some chairs for us?” He suggests.
“I’ll be right back, too,” Josie says, going in the house behind Zander. Great, they left me out here with the “perfect twins”.
They don’t say anything snotty or mean, surprisingly. Instead, Solstice walks up to the table and looks around. “How much are the cupcakes, exactly?”
“One dollar each, tips accepted and encouraged because they go to charity.” I reply, watching her carefully. She could do anything to the display.
“Nice,” is all she says back, and she walks out of the garage taking her place by Celeste again.
Finally, Zander and Josie return. Zander has two foldable chairs in his hands and Josie is carrying a large piece of oddly shaped cardboard. When I ask her what it is, she turns it around and it’s a giant cupcake.
“I told my teacher about your idea and everything, and my class helped to color this.” She says, setting it up outside of the garage.
“Thank you so much,” I say, admiring the artwork. Then I notice that on the lines of the icing, they wrote “Somewhere over the rainbow…Cupcakes bake!”
“How cute! You guys are so sweet.” I pick Josie up and spin her around. When I put her down, I ask, “What time is it?”
Zander looks at his watch, “Ten fifty-three. And I think our first customer is coming up the street now.” He looks at me and smiles. I smile back and take a deep breath…here goes nothing.
Chapter Four
A Good Cause…
Sure enough, a young girl about nine or ten walks into the garage. Her face lights up when she sees the cupcakes. “Did you bake all these yourself?” She asks.
“Yep, with the help of my two best friends, of course.” I say motioning to Zander and Josie. “What can I get for you?”
“Can I have a berry cupcake for me and a coffee cupcake for my mom?” She asks, pointing to the ones she wants.
“Of course you can. That will be two dollars, please.” Zander gets the cupcakes she wants as she hands me the money. She hands me a five dollar bill. Oh man, I forgot I’d have to make change. “Um, Josie, can you go in the house and get my money out of my sock drawer?” I whisper. Josie’s gone in a second and back with the money in no time. So she does know where I hide my money, no wonder it always seems to disappear.
I hand the girl three one dollar bills, and she slips them into her pocket. She takes the cupcakes from Zander. “Thank you!” She says as she walks away.
“No problem, you can always come back for more.” I call back, hoping she’ll like them and tell her friends.
I put all the money in the pencil box, including the money from my sock drawer. Zander suggests we throw a dollar in the tip jar just to make it look like we’ve had some kind of business. Two dollar profit already, that’s a good start.
Next, a group of teenagers ride up on bikes. I recognize them from school. They each get their own flavor and put some quarters in the tip jar. They ask if it’s okay to sit in the front yard and eat them. That gives me an idea, and I run inside to grab some picnic blankets. I lay them in different spots on the lawn and say the kids can sit on them if they like. Maybe happy customers in the front yard will attract more people.
The group finishes their cupcakes and leaves. They’re courteous enough to throw their napkins in the trash. Celeste and Solstice are still here. They’ve moved into the garage and are leaning against the wall watching us. We don’t get any business for a while, and Zander and I unfold the chairs to sit down. Josie gets so bored that she starts doing cartwheels and somersaults in the driveway. After about twenty minutes, my mom comes outside with ham sandwiches and a radio. She even brought sandwiches for Celeste and Solstice which I thought was nice. We plug in the radio and tune in on a station. Zander turns the music up really loud and starts dancing around with Josie.
Well, that attracted customers…a lot of customers. So many people come and buy cupcakes that Josie has to run inside to get more. About fifteen people buy a cupcake; some of them even buy three or four cupcakes. Most of the people have young children who love the cupcakes, and they picnic on some of the blankets. Even Celeste and Solstice cave in a buy a cupcake, but they stay in the garage. By the time the rush dies down, out lawn looks like a family reunion. There’s kids eating cupcakes and playing around. People are dancing to the music, and Josie becomes a big hit with her cheers and routines she learned in gymnastics.
But, as always, Celeste and Solstice were up to no good. They go out and sit on one of the blankets with a family they know. Celeste bites into her cupcake and spits it out. “Ew! There’s a hair in my cupcake!” That brings people around her.
“What?! No way,” I can’t believe this; she’s trying to sabotage my business. I turn the radio down and run over to her. I look at what she’s holding in her hand. It is a strand of hair, but it’s definitely not mine or Josie’s. “Um, Celeste, I think that’s your hair. My hair isn’t blonde, or curly for that matter.”
“She’s right,” a young lady says. “Her hair is darker than that, and it’s straight, not super curly. Even her sister’s hair is dark and straight.” I’m glad this woman backs me up on this; I don’t want to lose all my customers.
Well, that made Celeste mad. “Whatever!” She yells standing up and throwing the cupcake on the ground. “I’m never eating one of your cupcakes again! Let’s go, Solstice.”
Before Solstice walks away, she whispers to me, “I like your cupcakes. I think she might be crazy.” Then she runs off to catch up with Celeste, cupcake still in her hand. But Celeste isn’t too happy and smacks the cupcake out of Solstice’s hand.
“Sorry about that, everyone. She does stuff like this a lot.” I pick up the blanket that has squished cupcake on it and wad it up. I return to my table and turn the radio back on. Why does she even try? Why can’t she just get along with everybody?
By three o’clock, business starts to die down. I send Josie inside to count the remaining cupcakes. She comes back after about five minutes and says there’s 102 left. We have about fifteen left outside and decide that once they’re gone, we’ll call it quits. Zander suggests that we should try to sell them tomorrow, and I agree. But we’d have to wait until about twelve o’clock because church isn’t over until eleven.
It takes about an hour and a half for us to sell the remaining twelve cupcakes (we gave in and each ate one). After they’re gone, we count the money. We make eighty-seven from the cupcakes and twenty-six dollars and fifty cents in tips, mostly in quarters. We decide that all of the tips will go to charity plus thirty dollars of the sales. Then, we split the remaining fifty-seven dollars into thirds, each of us getting nineteen dollars.
We pick up the blankets and fold up the chairs. We don’t bother with the table since we’re using it tomorrow. We bring the giant cupcake in the garage just so it’s safe. Zander calls his mom to make sure it’s okay with her, and she said she doesn’t mind since she has to go shopping tomorrow anyway. Then we realize we’ll have to change the signs. I take the blankets inside and throw them in the washing machine then grab a permanent marker and some duct tape. Josie wants to go along, but I tell her not this time.
Zander and I ride our bikes to the first sign and I cover up, “Sat., March 2nd, starting @ 11:00a.m.!” with duct tape. Then I write, “Sun., March 3rd, @ noon!” We do that to the other two signs and ride over to Zander’s house.
He parks his bike and before he gets in the house, I holler, “Right after church tomorrow. You better be there.” He gives me a thumbs-up and I wave back. I get home and close up the garage. When I get inside, I put the lids on the containers of the remaining cupcakes.
My mom comes in the kitchen and hugs me. “I’m so proud of you.” She says. “When I was your age, I would’ve never thought of selling cupcakes for a good cause like charity. I would’ve just kept the money.”
“I don’t want to be greedy. Plus, I’ve learned from the best charity worker.” I say, smiling at her. “After we’re done tomorrow, I’ll give you the total money to take to March of Dimes.”
“Oh, no, no, no, you’re taking the money to March of Dimes. I’ll drive you and Zander up to the office, and you can give it to them.” She says. “I am not getting the credit for donating the money.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say. I can’t wait for tomorrow to come, it’ll be just as much fun as today was.
Chapter Five
The New Idea…
After church, Zander asks if he can just ride with me to my house. I say that’s fine, but he’s in his church clothes and might get them dirty. But he came prepared and had extra clothes in his car. SO we head out to my house. When we get there it’s almost eleven o’clock, so my mom makes us bacon and eggs and pancakes for brunch. Zander changes his clothes and we immediately get to work after we’re done eating.
Like yesterday, we set out the cupcakes in groups, keeping the peanut-butter away from the rest. Yesterday we ran out of napkins a couple times and had to run back inside for more, but today I brought the whole package outside and stashed it under the tables.
Josie gets excited because she finds an old shirt of mine that has a picture of a cupcake on it and it says, “I’m Sweet.” I tell her she can have it since it doesn’t fit me anymore. Then, I put her in charge of bringing out the blankets and laying them in different spots on the lawn. I plug in the radio and turn it on, but I don’t turn it up all the way yet.
When we’re done setting up everything, there’s still about ten minutes until noon, so we open the garage door early. Josie turns the music up when I’m not looking and it blares through the garage. I run over and turn it to where it was yesterday then turn to Josie and say, “Now, we don’t want to wake the late-sleeping neighbors.”
Josie giggles. “Too late,” she says and points to the street. People are on their way here, but they don’t look grumpy. They’re customers! Yes, more customers.
“Here we go,” I say and step back behind the table.
The first people to the table are a group of girls. They all get a cupcake and one of them asks, “What charity does the money go to?”
“March of Dimes.” I reply taking the five dollar bill she hands me.
“That’s nice. Keep the change,” she says and walks off with the other girls. She sounded sad; I wonder why.
I think more people show up today than yesterday because we go through the batches of cupcakes a lot faster. After a couple groups of teenagers buy cupcakes, our first customer from yesterday walks up to the table. Today, she brought her mom with her.
“Do you still have those coffee cupcakes?” the woman asks.
“Of course, we haven’t run out yet.” I say smiling and pointing at the coffee crème cupcakes.
“Oh, thank you. They are so delicious.” She buys two cupcakes for herself and her daughter then walks away, putting her extra dollar in the tip jar.
“She was nice,” I say. “Hey, I’m going to go grab some more cupcakes, looks like we’re getting low on a couple flavors.” I run inside to find very few cupcakes left. We are completely out of fruit punch, so whatever is outside is the last of them. I leave one peanut-butter, one coffee crème, one lemon-lime, and one berry on the counter for us later. Then I just take the rest outside because I figure, at this rate, they’ll sell fast.
The day went by fast. The cupcakes sold out faster. Celeste and Solstice didn’t dare show their faces. Zander, Josie, and I cleaned everything up. Then, to my surprise, Zander said, “Why don’t we do this every weekend?”
“Really? You think we could handle it?” I ask. I doubt we could bake so many cupcakes every weekend.
“Well, yeah. We don’t have to bake as many as this weekend, and we could do it only on Saturdays.” He suggests.
“That actually sounds like a good idea. We would make money for ourselves and charity. We could do a different charity each month.” I say, getting ahead of myself.
“Exactly!” He yells, turning off the radio. “Let’s go inside and eat those last cupcakes. We can make plans, too.”
“Okay,” I say following him and Josie to my kitchen. My mom is sitting at the counter. We each take a cupcake and start talking about the new idea. My mom thinks it’s great and can help us. We plan out each month’s charity, what other flavors we could try, and what profit we could make. Mom really smart with this stuff, and helps us all the way through. We finally decide we will do it every weekend, but only make one-hundred cupcakes.
And that’s how we spent the rest of our Sunday, eating cupcakes and talking about cupcakes, making plans for the future, helping each other out.
