"So the first thing you do is… ?" my mom asked us like she was a teacher.
I couldn't believe this. We were actually spending a snow day with my mom at the restaurant. We were spending it in the kitchen, baking, with my mother. I never thought of myself as cool. But now I really didn't. And there was no hope for me either. I'd forever be uncool if this was how I spent my free time.
"Write the fortunes," I replied. Obviously Kate and Olivia didn't know the answer. And we couldn't stand around forever. The sooner we did this, the sooner we'd get it done. It wasn't that I hated my friends or hated my mom. I loved them all. But I just didn't like having them together so much. All I needed was for Olivia to say something to Kate about PBJ or Kate to obsess about Brendan and for my mom to ask me about boys. Did I like anyone? Kevin's so nice. And on and on. She always said stuff like that.
Now that I was thirteen, adults were always teasing me about having a boyfriend. And I hated it. It's like they believed in arranged marriages or something. Which, believe me, would have been okay because then I wouldn't ever have to worry about talking to boys. But I was never going to admit that, especially not to Olivia and Kate.
"And why is that?"
"Mom." I rolled my eyes, and she gave me a look like she demanded an answer. Just because school was canceled didn't mean she had to start acting like the restaurant was a classroom. "Because when you're baking, you don't have time to write the fortunes."
Olivia was scribbling down stuff in her notebook like she was in a real class and would be tested on this. And Kate was constantly looking at her phone.
They probably didn't want to be here any more than I did.
My mom handed each of us a special kind of label maker that cut the paper to the perfect size to fit inside the cookies. My mom was really prepared. "Prepared" was practically her middle name. I don't know why, but sometimes that annoyed me. I wished she would just once forget an umbrella or burn leftovers. She couldn't be perfect all the time. Did thinking that make me a bad daughter?
We sat at the bar in the restaurant and started writing the fortunes. Well, Kate and I started writing. Olivia just kind of sat there watching us.
I hoped she wasn't still upset about the page-ripping incident. I hadn't even asked her how she felt. That was mean of me. But if it meant we never talked about boys again, that would be all right with me. You never knew when someone would surprise you and you'd say something you'd regret.
It was like my secret crush was this thing I had to carefully guard like the Secret Service at the White House or those guys at Buckingham Palace. Guarding it had become so intense that I found myself barely talking. I felt like an insane person, with all these thoughts running around in my head all day and no way to let them out.
I had to change this. Somehow or some way I had to become normal again.
I typed "There is no normal" into the label maker and hit the PRINT button. It wasn't a fortune really. I wasn't sure what it was. Just an idea. People are always wondering if they're normal. But what if there really was no normal at all? Who decides who the normal people are, anyway?
I rubbed my temples and thought harder.
I thought about other people—the ones who'd get these fortunes. And also about the kinds of fortunes that always cheered me up. Those were the kinds I wanted to give other people.
I typed, "Whatever you are worrying about will work out." That had to work for anyone who got it. Everyone worried, right? At least a little bit.
Before I hit the PRINT button on the label maker, I read that fortune again and again, pretending it was already inside a cookie and I had just gotten it.
Each time I read it, I believed it more and more.
