Secrets and Scones
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2018 by Laurel Remington
Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Belle & Bird Design
Cover images © Kirsty Begg/Stocksy; master1305/Getty Images
Internal design by Danielle McNaughton/Sourcebooks, Inc.
Internal images © Freepik
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
Fax: (630) 961-2168
sourcebooks.com
Originally published as The Secret Cooking Club in 2016 in the United Kingdom by Chicken House Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Remington, Laurel, author.
Title: Secrets and scones : a secret recipe book / Laurel Remington.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, [2018] | Summary: Scarlett, twelve, ended her friendships and activities when her mother started blogging about her every move, but when an elderly neighbor introduces her to cooking, she begins forging new connections.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018010649 | (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: | CYAC: Middle schools--Fiction. | Schools--Fiction. | Mothers and daughters--Fiction. | Blogs--Fiction. | Cooking--Fiction. | Clubs--Fiction. | Fund raising--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R462 Sec 2018 | DDC [Fic]--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010649
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1: The Worst Day of the Week
Chapter 2: The New Girl
Chapter 3: A Bad Day for Somebody
Chapter 4: A Noise in the Night
Chapter 5: Rosemary’s Kitchen
Chapter 6: The Little Recipe Book
Chapter 7: The House Next Door
Chapter 8: A Taste of Cinnamon
Chapter 9: The Scent of Childhood
Chapter 10: A Dollop of Tears
Chapter 11: A Spoonful of Secrets
Chapter 12: A Dash of Friendship
Chapter 13: A Nameless Gift
Chapter 14: The Big Laugh-In
Chapter 15: Mrs. Simpson
Chapter 16: Banoffee
Chapter 17: Secret Samples
Chapter 18: In the Hall
Chapter 19: The Secret Cooking Club Strikes Again
Chapter 20: The Betrayal
Chapter 21: Buttercream
Chapter 22: The New Secret Cooking Club
Chapter 23: Too Good to Be True
Chapter 24: Stick to the Ribs
Chapter 25: Ketchup Sky
Chapter 26: Maple Syrup
Chapter 27: Brainstorming
Chapter 28: An Idea
Chapter 29: The Plan in Action
Chapter 30: The First Post
Chapter 31: Mom’s Little Helper
Chapter 32: An Unwanted Visitor
Chapter 33: The Warning
Chapter 34: Hiding Out
Chapter 35: Finding the Magic
Chapter 36: Friends and Followers
Chapter 37: The Showdown
Chapter 38: Hundreds and Thousands
Chapter 39: The Bake-a-thon
Chapter 40: The Secret Ingredient
Chapter 41: Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
Chapter 1
The Worst Day of the Week
The ketchup bottle farts and the last dregs sputter onto my sister’s toast. My stomach twists, but to be honest, I was already feeling sick. It’s Friday morning, 7:50 a.m.
Ten minutes to go.
“Is there any more, Scarlett?” Kelsie wipes her chin with the sleeve of her school shirt, leaving a sticky, red streak on the cuff.
“No,” I say. “We’re all out, and Mom forgot to order more. But you’ve got enough.” I point to the lake of goop that’s already smeared all over the toast—on top of the butter. Disgusting. Kelsie’s almost seven, but she still eats everything with ketchup like it’s some kind of fifth food group.
I push my soggy Wheaties around the bowl with the spoon, but I can’t eat. My classmates are probably bouncing off walls now that it’s almost the weekend: texting their friends, packing for sleepovers, making cool plans. But not me. Right now, I wish a hole would open up in the center of our kitchen and swallow me.
Because at 8:00 a.m., Mom’s blog post goes live.
My eyes dart frantically around the kitchen. Maybe I could stop it by shutting off the power, or “accidentally” dropping Mom’s laptop in the bathtub, or becoming an amazing hacker and starting a virus that targets the computers of her thousands of followers—all in the next seven minutes. But I know it’s too late. The new post is already on the server, hovering in cyberspace. Ready to pop into existence and broadcast the embarrassing details of my life to the world.
What will it be this week? I think back to everything I’ve done. Not much, since I quit all my clubs and activities at the end of last semester. That put a stop to posts like “Top Ten Reasons to Trash Your Kid’s Violin” and “Tap-Dancing: Did I Give Birth to Three Left Feet?”
But even so, there’s all the things I haven’t done—like making sure Kelsie washes her hands after she uses the toilet and keeping my room clean. Two weeks ago, Mom did a “funny” little quiz about it: “Which Has More Germs: My Daughter’s Room or a Public Bathroom?” That one generated more than two hundred comments from her followers and got her five new advertisers for cleaning products on the site. That night, she ordered in a pizza so we could “celebrate.” Kelsie ate my share (with ketchup), and I sat in my room wondering if it was ever going to end.
I give up on breakfast and take my bowl to the sink. The water runs upstairs, and I can hear Mom humming. She stayed up late putting the finishing touches on her post, and the fact that she’s up early must mean it packs a punch. “Hurry up,” I say to Kelsie. “I don’t want to be late.” Not that I ever want to show my face at school again, but better that than see Mom and pretend we’re some kind of normal family.
“But I need more ketchup.” Kelsie pouts at he
r plate. She scrapes her soggy bread and licks the ketchup off the knife.
“Look, I’ll get some at the store after school, okay? Now go and put on your shoes.”
I grab her plate and take it to the garbage can. On top of the overflowing trash are a few pieces of balled-up paper. I fish one out and uncrumple it. It’s a printout of Mom’s new post that went live—I check my watch—one minute ago. I look at the title: “Bye-Bye, Harvard: My Daughter Has No Interests.”
The words blur on the page as my eyes swim with tears.
Chapter 2
The New Girl
I walk Kelsie to the entrance of her school. A few of the moms whisper to one another when they see me. They’ve all read the new post. When I walk up the hill to my school, a boy from the soccer team makes a face at me. “Bye-bye, Harvard.” He fakes a sob and a little wave.
The two boys he’s walking with start laughing. “Hey, tell your mom we want another post about your underwear,” one of them shouts.
“How about one on your underwear,” I say, rolling my eyes. Because what else can I do other than play along with them? The day the post went up about the fact I still wore Disney Princess underwear was literally the most embarrassing of my life. Until the post “Did Something Die in That Gym Bag?” went up. And the one on our talk about the “birds and the bees.” My face is burning as I hurry off to my classroom. I know everyone at school has already read the latest post. There’s nowhere to hide.
My first class is English. I take a seat at a table at the back, too flustered to realize that Gretchen is sitting right in front of me. She turns halfway around in her seat.
“Hi, Scarlett, you okay?” She sounds friendly, but I know it’s all an act. Gretchen was one of the first girls to try to become “new best friends” with me when Mom’s blog got popular. Back then, I’d thought it was cool that so many people wanted to be my NBF. But then I overheard Gretchen and Alison whispering together. Gretchen was saying how she wished her mom would write a blog about her, that it would be, like, so much more interesting than my mom’s blog because she was running for student PTA representative, while I was the “most boring girl in the world.” I’d cleared my throat so she’d known I was there. “Oh! Hi, Scarlett!” She’d recovered like the PTA princess she was. “How was your weekend?”
“Fine,” I’d said then, but now I just shrug and say nothing. I don’t ask how she is, because (a) I don’t care, and (b) I don’t want to hear about the student council, her new lavender bedroom furniture, her horseback-riding lessons, or any of the other things that Gretchen does because there’s no one broadcasting her boring news to the world.
Alison doesn’t even bother to be friendly. She ignores me, digging in her bag for her lip gloss. Alison’s beautiful—tall and blond with perfect skin and big, green eyes—and what’s more, she knows it. If she were Mom’s daughter, there would be no boring news to broadcast. If I were Alison, I wouldn’t have the time of day for people like me either.
Our English teacher, Ms. Carver, comes into the room and starts writing on the whiteboard. The bell rings, and at that moment someone runs past me up the aisle to an empty seat at the front of the room. It’s Nick Farr, the cutest boy in the whole world. All the girls in my class think so.
“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Farr,” Ms. Carver says, raising her eyebrows.
“My pleasure,” Nick replies. He turns around in his seat and smirks at Alison. My insides droop like a wilting flower. Not that I want a boyfriend yet or anything, but never in a million years will boys like Nick notice that I even exist. And under the circumstances, that’s probably a good thing. I’d die if anyone found out I liked him and it ended up in Mom’s blog.
Because that’s another thing I have to thank Gretchen for. I ignored the “most boring girl in the world” thing, and for a while, tried to make her like me. I worked on her PTA rep campaign, joined a few of the clubs she was in, helped her with her English homework, and tried really hard to be her friend.
But around then, Mom started blogging about more personal stuff, like that I bought deodorant with my allowance, that I still sleep with my old teddy bear, and that I was “trying to get in with the popular crowd.” Things I’d never told Mom because I’d stopped talking to her by then. Someone was leaking stuff. I had my suspicions, so I told Gretchen some made-up things—just stupid stuff about wanting to dye my hair pink and get my nose pierced. Some of it showed up in Mom’s blog. I was mortified—but not very surprised. I confronted Mom, but she managed to twist things around. She said that one of my friends was worried about me, and if I ever needed to talk she was there to listen…blah, blah, blah (and that maybe when I turned fourteen next year I could get my ears pierced). Whatever. So, that’s when I quit all the clubs and activities, and stopped hanging out with Gretchen and Alison. I mean, why bother?
Ms. Carver begins class. My mind churns with thoughts about Mom and how I wish I could start a new life in a new town where no one knows me. Then maybe I could go back to being like I was before—a fun girl with lots of friends, eager to try new things, and laugh at myself when I made mistakes. Was I really that girl only a little over two years ago? I can barely remember a time when I didn’t have this gnawing shame in the pit of my stomach.
I’m staring straight ahead at the clock on the wall when I’m jarred back to reality by something Ms. Carver is saying: “It’s never too early to start getting involved because it takes a lot more than good grades to get into a top college.” I swallow hard. Of course—my teachers read it too.
Just then, the door to the classroom opens. Mrs. Franklin, the principal, walks in, followed by a girl I haven’t seen before. There’s something about her that makes me look twice. For one thing, she’s really pretty—with black, shiny hair, a roundish face, and bow-shaped lips that seem to naturally curve into a smile. But more than that, she looks like she might be nice. She glances at me for a second and our eyes meet.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Mrs. Franklin says to our class. “This is Violet Sanders. She’s new today, and she’ll be joining you.”
The principal gestures to the one empty seat—two away from mine—and the girl sits down. She takes out a notebook and pencil from her bag, biting her lip like she’s a little nervous.
“Fine. Welcome, Violet.” Ms. Carver shuffles her papers and goes back to the lesson.
The new girl stares straight ahead. I glance over at her. Violet. I feel like we’ve got something in common because our names are both colors. But while my name seems all wrong—Scarlett is a name for a vibrant, outgoing, confident girl; not a dishwater blond, all elbows and knees, who’d rather hide in a bag than draw attention to herself—Violet’s name is right for her. Even her eyes seem to be a bluish-purply color. It occurs to me that we might be friends—if she doesn’t know who I am. It would be like starting fresh. But just then, Gretchen looks at Violet over her shoulder and smiles. The breath fizzles out of my chest. That’s it, then. Violet will be claimed by the popular group, my secret will be revealed, and that will be that.
Which is exactly what happens. After class, Gretchen and Alison walk Violet out of the room shoulder to shoulder as though they’ve been best friends forever. They eat lunch together at the same table in the cafeteria. I watch them from across the room. Gretchen shows Violet something on her phone and points at me. Violet glances over, and I look away. Nick comes up to their table and sits down, and they all start talking and laughing.
At that point, I can’t take it anymore. I get up, throw what’s left of my tasteless beans and mystery-meat hot dog in the garbage, and hang out in the bathroom until the next class begins.
Chapter 3
A Bad Day for Somebody
By the end of the day, everyone at school has lost interest in the blog post, and I’m off the hook for another week. I walk home slowly, too exhausted to be embarrassed anymore. When I see Mom, I’ll pretend that ev
erything’s fine, because if I don’t, she’ll blog about my “attitude” and how I don’t appreciate the difficulties she faces.
Which is just so wrong. I kick hard at a rock in my way. I’m proud of Mom and what she’s achieved. In less than three years, she’s well on her way to becoming a really successful “Mommy Blogger.” Each week, her followers log in to read her posts about the trials and tribulations of raising two children as a single mother after her husband ran off with his personal trainer. We hardly ever see Dad nowadays, and Mom refused to take any of his money from the moment he left—not even for me and Kelsie. She started her blog to support us. Which she’s done.
Her proudest moment, at least as far as her followers are concerned, was when Dad came limping back a year or so ago, asking for a share of her blog money. She told him where to go in a vlog that went viral.
Now she writes her weekly post, and in between she has a lot of guest bloggers posting on her site, and a “Rant Page” for anyone to anonymously post on if they want to complain about their kids, husbands or partners, friends, work, mother-in-laws—whatever. She’s got lots of advertisers and is even working on a deal with Superdrug, a drugstore chain, to make a Mom Survival Kit that they’ll sell in all their stores.
So, it’s cool she’s an online celebrity, and while we’re not rich or anything, she’s made enough money for us to move into a three-bedroom house where I get my own room and don’t have to share with my sister. But there’s one big problem: Her trials and tribulations, rants, and things she has to “survive” mostly involve me, and sometimes Kelsie. I know she loves us, but sometimes I think she must really hate being a mom.
I walk slower and slower the closer I get to home. The thought of another evening spent watching Full House reruns with Kelsie makes me feel like a rag doll with the stuffing knocked out. I wonder what Violet is doing tonight. Probably spending a nice evening with her parents, telling them about her first day at school and the cool new friends she’s made, then settling down to play a board game or practice piano or learn Chinese or something—