The Last Super Chef Read online

  Mom yells, “No, I did not just see you throwing food at my television. What’s going on?”

  I fold my arms into my chest and fall back into the cushions. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, huh? Well, you can do a whole lot of the same nothing in your room, mister. Now march!”

  12

  Friday night, I’m grounded for the last announcement. “If you want to cover my TV in food then maybe you can do without some screen time until next week,” Mom said the night before as I cleaned my projectile panini off the carpet.

  Suits me. I really don’t want to see what spectacular German kid who makes his own strudel or Chinese girl whose grandmother invented Peking duck the Super Chef picks next. I’ll just hang out in my room and be happy doing homework. Or staring at a blank wall with my arms folded across my chest.

  Except Paige must still be curious because I hear Brooke Morrison’s laugh, the one that tells me she’s chatting with the Super Chef again, drifting into my room. I glance at my clock. 6:55 p.m., right on time. I almost rush out there anyway, my legs on autopilot, but then I hear Mom clanking dishes out of the dishwasher and remember I can’t.

  Then the doorbell rings.

  I’d seen Pettynose earlier, when we were walking home from the bus, lurking around our building. He’s probably here to check on us, make sure I’m not cooking. Or maybe I’m in more trouble. Which . . . of course I probably am, because life can’t get any worse right now.

  Good thing I’m already stuck in the bedroom. I mean, how much more grounded can I get? Still, I strain one ear in the direction of the door and the TV. “The final piece of the puzzle,” the Super Chef is saying. “Winner #5 is maybe the most intriguing competitor yet.”

  And Mom says, “Oh my! Can I help you?”

  And Chef Taylor says, “Let’s go to Claire Wormwood right now.”

  And somehow Chef Wormwood’s voice sounds echoey, like she’s coming from both the TV and our doorway. “Thanks, Chef. Yes, ma’am, is Curtis Pith home?”

  And steps thunder toward our room.

  And Paige storms in, pointing behind her and gasping, “It’s . . . the . . . with the . . . and the lights . . . and . . .” She takes a deep breath, and the rest comes out in a whisper. “They’re here.”

  And I still don’t believe her, but I follow her into the living room anyway. And even when I see the bright lights and the cameras and the Chef Claire Wormwood standing a foot in front of Mom, I can’t quite make my eyes adjust to it all. I can’t quite make it feel real. Because it can’t be real. It can’t be.

  “Curtis?” Chef Claire asks, looking over Mom’s shoulder toward me.

  “Y-yes?”

  She reaches into her bag, pulling out the last gold-trimmed certificate. It’s the same one I’ve seen the past four nights, except this one—mine—has a big #5 in the center. “Congratulations, you’re the final member of the Super Five. Do you accept our challenge? Do you still want to compete in The Last Super Chef?”

  I stare ahead. Behind me, on the TV, the Super Chef is saying, “Probably the most interesting winner yet. His video showed us a real urgency, from the moment he committed to making just a single soufflé instead of several—the bravery of that!—to the way he cooked it throughout, in such a hurry. I can already see him handling the deadlines of the contest environment well—and every night in every restaurant in the world, too, I might add.”

  “Uh-oh,” Brooke says. “I’m afraid our Curtis looks a little like a deer in headlights. He has to accept for this to be official, doesn’t he?”

  “Indeed he does,” Lucas Taylor says.

  I have to accept. Have. To. Accept.

  “Curtis?” Chef Wormwood says. She sounds worried.

  “Curtis?” Paige says. She sounds scared.

  “Curtis?” Mom says. She sounds confused.

  “I accept!” I blurt in Chef Wormwood’s direction.

  “You understand the rules?” she asks.

  The rules. What were they again? Filmed live. Weeks away from school, from home. Limited contact with family.

  I glance at Paige. She’s holding her breath. I’ve never missed so much as a Memorial Day, never mind a huge holiday like Thanksgiving. But this year I might be too busy cooking on television in front of millions of people to make my famous oatmeal stuffing for my family. What will they do without me? Order from a restaurant?

  I shiver. At the idea of my family ordering presliced turkey breast from some diner. At the fear I see etched on my sister’s face. The same fear that suddenly seems to reach out and grab hold of my heart, too.

  “What is this?” Mom asks. She blinks and holds a hand up to ward off the bright camera lights. “Accept what? What rules?”

  I meet Mom’s eyes. Take a deep breath. Throw on a grin that probably comes out a lot more like a grimace. “So . . . yeah. Mom? We should probably talk.”

  FROM CURTIS PITH’S RECIPE JOURNAL (Back pages)

  THE SUPER FIVE

  Kiko Tanaka—Japan—A near-perfect beef Wellington.

  Pepper Carmichael—Boston—A complex, rich gumbo while making a dish I never heard of with her other hand. And she’s already got a website.

  Bonifacio Agosto—Mexico—The most incredible mole, handed down from his ancestors.

  Joey Modestino—Chicago—Italian expert, Dad drives a Porsche. Has probably worked with expensive ingredients I’ve never even seen.

  Curtis Pith—Me—Oh man, ME. WHAT WAS I THINKING? In no time at all, I’ll be on my way to New York. Then all I have to do to get that prize is beat all four of these Super kids. Right. Easy.

  13

  “Your time starts . . . NOW!”

  The audience lining the balconies surrounding Super Chef Arena erupts into applause and cheering. Up on the stage, the Super Chef stares at the big clock behind him for a long second, then looks out toward the five of us, standing at our stations. Left to right, Pepper, Kiko, and I have the front row, and Bonifacio and Joey work behind us. They’ve given Bo a little stepping stool so he can reach everything.

  I should be starting already. Instead I stand frozen, waiting for Chef Taylor’s gaze to rotate to me. He’s ten feet tall up on that stage. We’re just about to lock eyes when a lumberjack-size, bearded cameraman steps between us, blocking my view. The heavyset guy is two feet from my face, his bright light shining straight into my eyes. I’m about to put my hand up to block it when I remember the instructions the show producer gave us before we were guided into the arena.

  “Don’t pay attention to the cameras or the lights,” the woman wearing the headset band in her mess of blond curls, Kari, said in a rush after collecting our certificates and handing out multicolored aprons. I got an orange one. Mel, the twentysomething handler assigned to me, helped tie it in back while I just about hyperventilated.

  “Dude,” he whispered as he cinched the straps tight. “You got this.”

  A brief surge of confidence lightning-bolted down my spine, but it disappeared quickly once I found myself directly beneath the scorching studio lights. They’re not just hot; they sear the top of my head like the sun itself.

  I guess I never realized that your whole face can sweat at once. I hope the camera isn’t catching it. And that none of the viewers at home are noticing the way my hands are shaking.

  Actually, I don’t really care what anyone else notices. I’m only thinking of two people watching me right now. My mom and my sister. They’re why I’m here, and if I know Paige, she’s standing an inch away from the screen like I usually do.

  I take a deep breath. I have no idea what I expected my first moments in this competition to be like. I guess I thought the five of us would get the chance to meet each other, and the Super Chef and his staff, too. Maybe I assumed we’d at least be given time to unpack.

  Not in a million years would I have guessed I’d be doing mise en place in front of a giant crowd and a live TV audience less than an hour after I stepped off the private jet that brought me to Ne
w York.

  After Chef Wormwood’s visit to our apartment, Mom had gone through what Paige and I secretly labeled “The Three Stages of Super Chef”—first glad, then mad, finally sad. Glad had been when it seemed like her son had won something. Mad came the next day, when Mom gave us the third degree for how it had all happened, and we admitted to making our video in Pettynose’s house, which meant admitting to cooking in his kitchen, which meant admitting to breaking in and lying to her about the reason for the campfire.

  “But if he hasn’t found out by now, he never will!” Paige assured her, and eventually Mom dropped it because she started to read the fine print that came with my golden certificate. The rules that told her I had to go to New York City by myself for weeks. That we wouldn’t be able to talk much, just a few supervised calls. That I would almost certainly miss Thanksgiving with my family so I could compete in a contest I hadn’t even told her I’d entered.

  That’s when the sad started. It lasted the whole rest of the week.

  Every day Mom alternately burst into tears, then made another urgent call to the Super Chef offices to ask more questions. She was crying again when the limo pulled up at the precise time we’d been told it would.

  “My baby,” she kept saying, hugging me, letting me go, then hugging me again.

  She might not have released me at all if it hadn’t been for Mel. While the driver made a big show of opening one door of the limo and then stepping to the side, clearly hoping I’d hurry up and climb in without discussion, Mel came around the car with a wide smile. He reached Mom and gave her a long hug, like an old friend.

  “I promise to take the best care of him,” he promised her. “Curtis is one hundred percent my responsibility. I won’t let you down.”

  Besides being a culinary student from North Carolina and a huge Super Chef disciple himself, Mel had a certificate in childcare from the Red Cross. We knew because Mom had asked him for a résumé about two minutes after she first received his name and email from the Super Chef people. Not only did he reply right away, he sent back a sparkling clean one. So impressive, she kept wandering into the room while reviewing it, giving us facts about him. “Do you know Mel got his undergraduate degree from Yale?” Now here he is, standing in front of us with a limo, looking just as polished in person as his credentials had promised he would be.

  Mom kissed me about a hundred times and gave Mel about a thousand instructions and reminders before she let me go. By then Paige had made her way over to the limo. She was interviewing the driver about his car—gas mileage, time from zero to sixty, etc.

  I tapped my sister on the shoulder. Mom was still focused on Mel, giving him some new reminder, number one thousand and one. Paige’s face grew pop quiz serious as she turned toward me. “You’re cutting a recipe that calls for one and five-eighths cups of flour in half. How many cups do you need?”

  “Thirteen-sixteenths,” I answered without missing a beat.

  We hugged then, maybe the longest hug I had ever given my sister. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d spent more than a few hours apart, never mind weeks. I closed my eyes and wondered how I was going to do any of this without Paige standing next to me. Without my sister reminding me about measuring and temperature and the rest of the scientific side of cooking it sometimes took longer for my brain to calculate.

  “If I have to spend a month not seeing you,” my sister said into my ear while we were still hugging, “you better win.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Paige pushed back from me, grabbing my shoulders. “Do or do not,” she said in her creepy Yoda voice that sounds a lot more like Rick from Rick and Morty. “There is no try.”

  As the limo pulled away with me sunk into the way-too-big back seat, Mel gave someone an update on his cell. I stretched toward the window to gaze out. I watched Mom grow smaller and smaller, hugging Paige to her side, wiping at the corners of her eyes. The whole week she hadn’t mentioned or asked me about finally meeting my father. I figured it was because Paige was around almost every minute and she still didn’t want her to know. Whatever the reason, I was glad she didn’t bring the Super Chef up. I needed to stay focused on cooking in New York. Cooking and bringing that prize money home.

  The limo guy picked up speed. At the last second I looked out the window on the opposite side. Pettynose stood on his front porch, a cup of coffee in his hand. His angry lips were locked together as his eyes followed the limo. Did he know about the soufflé? Was I leaving Paige and Mom alone to face the music by themselves? I tried waving to him, but he hardly moved.

  Maybe he just didn’t see me.

  Mise en place means “set in place” in French. Basically it’s another word for prepping ingredients, which, after turning in our invitation certificates, was what we’d been informed we’d be doing this first night on TV. We had thirty minutes to prep five artichokes, twenty onions, a dozen clams, and fifteen shrimp.

  No one told us what was meant by “prep.” We were expected to know. In fact, no one told us much of anything except that we weren’t supposed to pay attention to the cameras. Good thing I haven’t missed a Super Chef episode in . . . well, never.

  Working fast, I use my knife to cut the top from the first artichoke, then trim off most of the stem. I start pulling the tough leaves away from the base, then scoop out the hairy choke in the center with a spoon before cutting the whole thing in half. Fill a glass bowl with cold water, drop in first the lemon halves, then my one finished artichoke. The lemon water will keep the artichoke looking fresh for the judges. “Acidulated,” we chefs call it.

  I prep the second artichoke the same way. Then the third.

  Big inhale. Two more to go before I can move on to the onions. This isn’t so bad.

  The air in Super Chef Arena, already thick with tension, splits with the sharp and sudden trill of a whistle. Chef Graca shouts, “Five minute mark! Chefs, you have twenty-five minutes left.”

  What? How could five minutes be gone already?

  I glance over at Kiko. All her onions are diced and piled into plastic containers, filled to the top with not even a millimeter of room to spare. She’s switched knives and started shucking clams. How did she do that so fast? Behind me, Joey Modestino has his tray of shelled and deveined shrimp complete. He’s moved on to shucking clams, too. He catches me watching him with an open mouth and grins at me, then winks.

  I thought it was going so well, but I must be in last place. I have to hurry. When I turn forward again, though, I jump, startled by Chef Graca standing right in front of me. He reaches up to his mouth and pulls his whistle out. “It’s Curtis, isn’t it?” His Portuguese accent sounds a lot stronger in person.

  “Y-yes,” I answer.

  “Welcome to The Last Super Chef.” He presents his right hand. I forget to wipe my fingers on a towel, so when I drop my hand into his, a bunch of artichoke slime comes with it.

  “Tell me, why did you choose to start with the artichokes?” he asks as, with a completely straight face, he wipes the slime away on his already food-stained chef’s jacket.

  I hesitate. Is he saying it was a bad choice? “I thought they’d give me the most trouble,” I confess.

  “Interesting. Well, we already know you don’t mind a tough challenge. Don’t we, Chef?” Chef Graca looks over his shoulder at the Super Chef.

  Taylor waits for the cameras to swing his way. “That’s right, Curtis here gives himself extra work when conditions are already difficult. Let’s look at his road to Super Chef.” He turns toward the big screen behind him. A video starts playing on it.

  My video starts playing.

  The one Tre had spent hours weaving together for me. My submission.

  The video that shows me cooking in Pettynose’s kitchen, plain as the suddenly twitching nose on my face.

  If he hasn’t found out by now, I remember Paige telling Mom, he never will.

  Oh no.

  14

  Part of my mind keeps saying “that coul
d be any kitchen” as my video plays on the huge screen. But suddenly I’m noticing tons of little details. The distinctive pattern and colors of Pettynose’s tiled kitchen backsplash—maroon with green and gold diamonds. The big plaid P in the center of the clock Tre kept panning up to in order to show the time elapsing. Is there another kitchen in the world that has this same combination of décor?

  But I already know the answer to that.

  If he sees this video, Pettynose will no doubt recognize his own kitchen. My only hope is that he isn’t watching, and that none of North Sloan’s residents will let the wrong question slip. Something like “Hey, Arthur, didn’t we see your kitchen on Super Chef last night?” followed closely by “Wasn’t that North Sloan’s own Curtis Pith in the same video?”

  Will Pettynose march right over to our apartment? Nail an eviction notice to the door? Send Mom and Paige to homeless jail for my crimes? Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

  Thing is, we’ve been in homeless jail before. Close to it, anyway. It’s no fun trying to find an apartment Mom can actually afford. You need a lot more than $200.

  The whole time my video plays, I can’t work. Pettynose must be squirming in front of his television watching me act like I own his kitchen, like I really belong there making his wife’s specialty. Which I didn’t know at the time, but still . . . I can’t tear my eyes away. Definitely can’t force my hands back to dicing onions.

  Everyone applauds when my video, which feels like it was approximately one year long, finally ends. What are they clapping for? Are they impressed by how completely and totally I ruined a bunch of people’s lives—including mine—all at once? Only when Chef Wormwood approaches Kiko, says a few words, then starts to play her Wellington video, am I able to move again. The feeling of dread that started in my feet has wormed its way up to my hands. They’re working again, but they’re going strangely slowly and making all kinds of mistakes. My onions aren’t perfect like Kiko’s. Only a few clams left, but the ones I’ve “finished” are a mess, shucked open but mangled where I tried to loosen the meat from the shell underneath.