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chicken and Mom’s rice and peas). Then Mom drove me to Alexis’s house for our Sunday night Cupcake Club meeting.
    I was really nervous as I rang the bell. What if Katie wasn’t talking to me? How would we bake cupcakes together? It would be so awkward and terrible.
    Then the door opened, and Katie was standing there.
    â€œI’m sorry!” we both said at the same time, and then we started laughing, crying, and apologizing all at once.
    â€œI should never have criticized your dress. You’re the fashion expert!”
    â€œI was wrong to get mad when you said the dress was plain. It is plain, and I know you love bright colors.”
    â€œBut I shouldn’t have said it was boring . . .”
    â€œAnd I shouldn’t have called you Silly Arms . . .”
    â€œLet’s promise never to fight again!”
    â€œNever, ever again!”
    Alexis stepped in between us. “Okay! Enough with the lovefest!” she teased. “Can we please get back to business as usual now?”
    I hugged Katie one more time. “Okay, now we can!”
    We followed Alexis into her kitchen, where Emma was filling the cupcake pans with paper cups. Alexis’s kitchen is superneat, and Alexis had all the baking ingredients set out in a row on the counter. I took the bag of decorating supplies I had brought and dumped it out onto the kitchen table. Alexis grimaced.
    â€œSorry about the mess,” I said. “It’s just . . . we have so many ideas to test out, so I brought a lot of stuff.”
    The table was covered with small tubes of decorating gel, bags of skinny black licorice, jellybeans in Halloween colors—black, green, orange, and purple—and other small bags of candy that I thought would be interesting. Mom had also picked up some candy eyeballs for us. They’re pretty easy to find in the baking section of the craft store.
    â€œI thought for the test batch we should do the pumpkin cupcakes, since we can make vanilla and chocolate ones in our sleep,” Alexis said.
    Katie held up a can of puréed pumpkin. “I brought the stuff.”
    â€œAnd I’ve got butter softening for the icing,” Emma said, nodding to her pink stand mixer, which she had brought for our baking session. “I figure we can do vanilla and then try a bunch of different colors.”
    â€œI’ll get to work on the batter,” Katie said.
    â€œI’ll help,” I offered.
    While Emma and Alexis worked on the icing, I helped Katie make the pumpkin cupcakes. She told me what she needed, and I measured it out for her: flour, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin. . . . There were a lot of ingredients. When the batter was done, we poured it into the cups and then put it in the oven to bake. That gave us about twenty minutes to clean up and hang out.
    â€œSo, I can’t believe George’s party is this coming Saturday!” Emma said. “I think I know what my costume’s going to be. My mom’s helping me with it.”
    â€œOoh, what are you going to be?” Katie asked.
    Emma’s eyes twinkled. “I kind of want it to be a surprise.”
    â€œWell, I don’t mind telling you all my costume—” Alexis began, but Emma raised her hand.
    â€œNo, don’t!” she cried. “I mean, we do everything together. We have a business together, we study together, we hang out together. Which is great. So maybe just this once we should surprise one another.”
    â€œCool!” Katie said. “I am definitely going to surprise you guys.”
    â€œYeah, sure,” I agreed, but inside, I was thinking, My surprise might be that I don’t have a costume! It was the last thing on my mind, really.
    Alexis dried her hands on a dish towel. “We should do some scheduling. George’s party is Saturday night, so we can’t bake then. So when do we want to do the cupcakes for Angelo Ricco’s