The Last Super Chef Page 5

  Giggling like an idiot and leaving the phone propped up and recording, I rush to the other side of the kitchen, catching a glimpse of Pettynose halfway up his driveway, head down, mumbling to himself. I yank a spoon out of the drawer and hurry back to the camera.

  “Consistency’s very important in a soufflé, as I’m sure everyone watching knows.” I’m talking a mile a minute. Deep breaths. I dip the spoon into the center. “It should be rich and creamy in the middle, soft and luxurious.”

  I turn the spoon over. The creamy soufflé filling comes out with it, and it’s perfect. I stay quiet, letting my creation do the talking as I use the spoon to fold the center out of the soufflé, velvety and wonderful and exactly how it should be. I hold the first spoonful in the air, inspecting it with a suspicious eye like I’ve seen the Super Chef do a hundred times to contestants on his show. I cool it with a puff of blown air. Taste.

  I’ve made gruyère cheese soufflés before. I botched the first couple, but since then they’ve all been pretty delicious. I have to say, though, this is the best one ever. I’m so amazed by my own work, I forget to speak for a second. “Maybe you won’t believe me, but it tastes even better than it looks,” I mumble through a full mouth of hot food.

  I hear movement at the front door. If it’s possible, I start talking into the video even faster. “Okay! This has been Curtis Pith with my gruyère cheese soufflé entry video for The Last Super Chef. I really hope you pick me. Bye!”

  Stop button clicked. Kitchen lights off. Millions of thoughts running through my brain. What I should’ve said, how I should’ve smiled. Waved. Did I wave? And seriously, “Bye!”? I almost smack the potholder against my forehead, but there’s too much to do.

  There’s no time to clean the ramekin, or the spoon either. I have to take them with me. I grab them and Tre’s phone and start to rush for the back door just as I hear a key turning the lock in the front one.

  At the last second, I remember the oven’s still on. I rush back with my armload of kitchen tools. I squeeze one finger out of the pile and use it to jab at the cancel button. Then I hurry to the door, opening it at the exact same time the front one opens.

  Kneeling outside, I set my stuff down on the sidewalk and pull the back door shut as quietly as I can. I’m hiding the key in the fake rock and burying it back in the mud when I see Pettynose’s shadow stalk into his kitchen, that big schnoz stuck in the air, sniffing away.

  Turd. The one thing I couldn’t get rid of. The aroma. He smells the soufflé.

  I regather the potholder and dirty ramekin and spoon. Pettynose heads for his oven. He pulls it open and peeks inside, one hand resting on the rack. He cries out in pain as he pulls his red fingers back, then tries to stand up too quickly, banging his head.

  Tucking Tre’s phone in my back pocket and the dirty spoon in my front, I take off around the house. I sprint hard, praying the whole time that our landlord doesn’t see me running in the corner of his eye, hoping I didn’t forget anything. Definitely trying not to worry that he might be the exact type of person to have his spoons counted and numbered, or about the fact the oven was still hot and the whole place smelled like melted gruyère.

  8

  The next morning, Saturday morning, our doorbell rings. It’s followed by an urgent-sounding knock. “Ms. Pith? Ms. Pith, are you home?”

  Pettynose. I swallow so hard I feel my gulp drop all the way down to my stomach. Paige lowers the volume on the TV, then twists toward the door. I shift in my chair, my history book suddenly feeling so heavy I have to set it down on the floor.

  “Ms. Pith! Please!”

  He’s here to report us. The campfire for sure. After that, the soufflé. He’s figured it all out. Maybe he had cameras. Or measured his milk with a black mark on the carton. Maybe the neighbors saw us, or maybe . . .

  It doesn’t matter how he knows. He just knows.

  Tre’s still working on the video at his house, stitching together the separate clips we recorded into one long file. I don’t know what I would’ve done if my friend didn’t have a computer and know how to edit video.

  Now, though, I realize we’re going to end up caught before our entry even gets submitted. Forget my chances of making it to The Last Super Chef, the odds of me being the first grounded-for-life fifth grader shoot to the ceiling like a smoothie with a loose lid.

  Mom comes out of our bedroom wiping her hands on a towel. Another knock follows, more like a pounding. She arches an eyebrow our way before sighing and heading for the door.

  Pettynose looks like he’s been through a hurricane. His hair, thin at the top already, is scooped over to one side, like he used his hand instead of a comb. He’s always in a clean button-down shirt, but today he’s wearing one of those old-man V-neck sweaters. It’s all rumpled and kind of tight on him.

  “Do you know how to make a cheese soufflé?” Pettynose asks Mom as soon as the door’s wide enough for him to take an uninvited step inside.

  “A cheese . . . ?” Mom starts. I don’t move a muscle. Not the twitch of a finger, not a shrug of my shoulders, not the hint of a frown or a smile.

  “Miriam, she was my wife, you remember?”

  “I do,” Mom answers slowly. “Of course. You told me about her.”

  Pettynose was married? It never even occurred to me to wonder.

  “It was one of her specialties. She made a fantastic cheese soufflé. A classic one, with gruyère. They were so creamy, and they never fell and . . . oh, they were just wonderful. Miriam did love our kitchen.”

  “They sound delicious,” Mom says. I can hear the confusion in her tone.

  “Last night,” Pettynose says. He checks over his shoulder as if someone might be listening. “When I came home, I swear I smelled one.”

  Mom scratches her cheek. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pettynose, I’m not following. Smelled what?”

  “Miriam’s cheese soufflé! Right there in my kitchen. Her kitchen. Almost like . . . almost like she was there again. My Miriam.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Even the oven was hot. And can I tell you something else? I keep a hunk of gruyère in the fridge. I can’t make a soufflé, but sometimes I take it out to smell it. You know, to remember.” He says it as if keeping cheese around just to smell it once in a while is a perfectly normal thing to do. “Last night, the kitchen smelled like a soufflé, a classic cheese soufflé, a gruyère soufflé, and that block of wonderful cheese . . . it was gone.” These last few words come out in another stunned whisper.

  Mom’s neck muscles contract. I know why. She’s straining to avoid looking back at me with her accusing eyes. “So what you’re saying is . . . you lost your cheese?”

  “I—no!” Pettynose runs a hand over his stubble. I’ve never seen him unshaven before. With that ratty sweater, it makes him look like a hobo. “No, I . . . I don’t know.”

  “I see,” Mom says. “But I’m still . . . What do you think happened?”

  “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  This is it. I stand up. Maybe I can run. But to where?

  Paige waves at me, urging me to sit back down. I do, slowly.

  “It was Miriam herself,” Pettynose cries. “She came back to my kitchen and made a soufflé. It’s the only possible answer. The oven, Ms. Pith. It was hot.” Pettynose looks past Mom, around our apartment. He spins around once, checking the hallway behind him again. “You haven’t . . . She’s not . . . You haven’t seen my wife, have you?”

  “Mr. Pettynose, are you asking if we have a ghost in the building?”

  A ghost? No wonder I’ve never seen his wife. How does Mom know all this stuff?

  Pettynose’s shoulders slump. He runs a hand through his hair, a feeble attempt at straightening it. “No, no, of course not. That doesn’t,” he sighs, “it makes no sense, does it?”

  Our landlord starts to chuckle and, after a few seconds, Mom adds some nervous laughter of her own. Paige starts giggling too. She eyes me. It takes me a second to figure out I should join in. S
oon all four of us are chuckling softly.

  Pettynose points at his temple. “Must’ve been all in my head. I do miss her so much. Maybe my mind decided to play a new trick on me.”

  Our landlord turns to leave. I start to breathe again, heavy puffs of relief. But in the hallway he spins around before Mom can shut the door. “One thing, though.”

  Mom widens the door again.

  “Please ask your daughter and her little friend not to build campfires in the yard.” Pettynose looks around Mom to the couch, where Paige has straightened, pulling her face from her hands. “As I told you last night, young lady, that’s very dangerous,” he says, shaking a finger in my sister’s direction. He shifts his gaze to Mom. “You know how I feel about fires, Ms. Pith.”

  This time our landlord leaves for good. Mom waits for him to round the corner before she shuts the door again. “What an odd, odd man,” she mumbles to herself, her gaze distant.

  When she steps toward us, her gaze clears up, and her eyes narrow. She looks from me to Paige. “Now what’s all this about a campfire?”

  All through the next week we’re on our best behavior. Partly because Halloween’s coming up, and being grounded instead of trick-or-treating is the literal worst. But mostly because, you know, secrets.

  Thankfully, we survive, even if we’re not entirely sure how deeply Mom has bought into our story that we had a sudden, irresistible urge to roast marshmallows Friday night. All we know is, the less we talk about it, the less chance she’ll discover anything about the video or cooking in Pettynose’s kitchen. And there would be no debate—that was definitely a big idea with a capital B and a capital I. Maybe the Biggest Idea I’d ever had.

  And, I realize now, probably the dumbest. While I appreciated all the hard work Tre put into it, when I pop over to his house later that day to help submit our video, it looks amateurish. There’s a ton of cutting and starting and stopping and skipped sections, plus Josh’s phone call in the middle of one of the most important parts.

  I don’t look like a Super Chef at all. I only look like an overwhelmed kid running around like he has no idea what he’s doing.

  The week brightens when Mom gets a phone call telling her that her job-hunting efforts have finally paid off. Her new job’s only temporary, at a law office helping them organize their files so they can move into a bigger space. Two weeks and then she’ll be done. But Mom keeps saying if she impresses them, they might decide to find a permanent position for her. So she’s been really focused on being on time every day and staying longer to do extra work if she has to.

  On Wednesday Mom stumbles through the door at the latest time yet, eight o’clock. On the TV, the Super Chef theme music and intro is already playing: the glass elevator, Chef Taylor striding down the long hall, his smooth entrance into the arena. Like the complete opposite of the fabulous Super Chef, Mom trips on Paige’s boots, throws her coat toward a chair but misses, and practically falls into the couch. She kicks off her shoes and starts massaging her feet.

  “Oh, look,” she says in a tired voice. “Your favorite show, Curtis.”

  It’s this season’s finale. Three chefs vying for the annual Super Chef title. The normal one. Mom dozes off every few minutes, bored out of her mind. The episode ends when a southern chef named Clifford Franks wins the season. His family’s still celebrating with him in the background, confetti falling all around them, when Lucas Taylor addresses the camera. He has to raise his voice above the cheering.

  “Before we go, I wanted to thank all the wonderful kids we’ve heard from in the past few days. Your submissions have been truly awesome. We received thousands upon thousands of them, more than we ever expected. So many of you are so talented it warms this chef’s heart. I’m more confident than ever we’re going to be able to show the world that the future of food is safe in your hands.”

  Thousands? Is someone beating egg whites into a meringue with a hand mixer or is that my head pounding?

  “I’ve employed a huge staff to sift through all those videos and present the best ones to us for final review.” The Super Chef gestures at Chef Wormwood and Chef Graca. “We expect to start notifying the winners next week, and we’ll have a special way to do that. The Nightly News with Brooke Morrison has generously given us a five-minute slot at the end of each of their six-thirty airings. We’ll use these live moments to announce our five winners, one per day starting Monday. We’re moving fast on this one, so each winner will be given—in person—a one-of-a-kind, commemorative certificate to bring to New York, a mere two weeks after the final entrant is identified. This certificate will serve as their entry ticket to our final competition. The first step to becoming the last winner ever crowned in this arena, to being named the—”

  Here the crowd joins in as he pumps a fist into the air with each word.

  LAST!

  SUPER!

  CHEF!

  We check out the rest of the rules at Tre’s house that weekend. The website’s really organized and the info is easy to find, even if some of the fine print is a little hard to understand. A lot of stuff about consenting to being filmed live and infrequent, monitored phone contact with family. The biggest one, though? The Super Five, as the media has already started calling the five as-yet-unknown contestants, must agree to leave school for a few weeks later in November.

  “He did say the winner would be named on Thanksgiving,” I say after reading it, trying to act like I’m not surprised the contest is scheduled to happen so fast.

  “Yeah . . . but wouldn’t it be easier to wait for summer?” Tre asks.

  I lean in and read some more. “Well . . . there is something there about helping us keep up with our school work.”

  “Us?” Tre grins. “You’re already in, huh?”

  My stomach groans. He’s right. Do I really think it’s going to be so easy to stand out among thousands?

  But . . . actually, yeah, I guess I do. Because I have a secret weapon. I mean, doesn’t it stand to reason that if the Super Chef’s the best chef in the world, his son would have to be the best kid chef? Anybody judging those videos should be able to see that straight off.

  Right?

  9

  “This is the life,” Mom says as she settles onto the couch with her huge plate of nachos. Paige and I scoot over to make room, our own dishes of cheese-splattered chips raised over our heads to avoid any accidental dripping.

  It’s Monday evening. The first check from the law firm came home with Mom on Friday, so she bought the good cheese and the hearty tortilla chips needed for my simple yet classic nachos—ground beef, jalapeños, and cheddar. I might’ve also quickly searched for a nacho recipe I once heard of involving caviar. You know, in case soon we could afford such a thing.

  Usually at this time of night Paige is watching her last cartoon before homework starts, but tonight the national news has been on for the past twenty minutes. Mom, between scrolling through her phone and dozing off, hardly notices the change in programming. It’s just that I figured we couldn’t flip over right at 6:55 p.m. What if the first Super Five winner was announced early?

  The final regular news story is about a recall of romaine in Arizona. When anchor Brooke Morrison finishes reading it, she turns to her right and says, “Now, Chef, your restaurants don’t use that lettuce, do they?”

  The camera pans wider, and Chef Taylor is really there, in the studio, sitting with his hands folded on the anchor desk. I sit up straight, matching his posture, as if he can see me as clearly as I can see him. “I’m sure our staff is checking on that as we speak.”

  He and Brooke laugh together, like old friends. When they settle down, she says, “And now we have something very special for our viewers. Or even, if I may say”—she nods at Chef again—“something super. Chef Lucas Taylor—the famous Super Chef himself—is gracing us with his presence tonight. Nice to see you, Chef.”

  “Great to be here, Brooke. And thanks so much for letting us use your show to announce our five
winners this week.”

  “Oh, the honor is all ours. Seems like the entire world is waiting to find out about the five kids who will have a chance to win The Last Super Chef. Was it hard to select them?”

  Chef Taylor nods. “Very. For a little while, I thought we wouldn’t be able to do it at all. Kids are so passionate these days. I wish I’d been as talented at that age.”

  “Now, Chef, I’m very sure you must’ve been.” Brooke straightens a little and returns to her serious news face. “Before we get going, though, I do need to ask you the question that’s burning a hole through every self-respecting Super Chef fan’s brain these days: Why?”

  Chef Taylor gulps. He shakes his head slightly. He doesn’t answer.

  Brooke Morrison presses on. “What I mean is, why the need to end your show? Why Last at all? You’re not exactly retirement age, are you now? And why a kid? Why at this point in time, when you’re at the height of your popularity?”

  “That’s a lot of whys, Brooke.”

  Brooke tilts her head in acknowledgment. “The world wants to know.”

  “I can understand that.” The Super Chef pauses for a few seconds, considering. “But I can only answer one of your questions. The one about the kids. Why a kid? It’s simple, really. Kids are the future. They always have been, every generation throughout history. And that’s exactly what we want. What we’re doing with our last season, trying to give our viewers a glimpse of how bright that future can be, it only works with kid contestants. Do you see? I really want to end the show on a shiny note.”

  Brooke nods but clearly isn’t satisfied. “But why do you have to end it at all—”

  “I’m afraid the rest of my reasons must remain private,” the Super Chef cuts in, his upper lip trembling a little. I can’t tell if he’s nervous or angry. Maybe sad? “Besides, our focus should really be on the Super Five, shouldn’t it? It’s such an exciting opportunity for these kids, and we only have so much time. In fact, I believe one of my partners is waiting to introduce you to the first winner. I think we should check in with him, don’t you?”