Alexis's Cupcake Cupid by Coco Simon Page A

iTunes gift card I’d gotten for my birthday, sitting on top as a thank-you gift, so she was waaaay into me right now.)
    At some point, Mrs. Brown came home from work, and she began helping, too. Because she’s a dentist, she has a steady hand, so she can pipe frosting like a pro. I kept looking at the clock as wewent into our final hour, and with not a lot of time left until we had to leave, and with flecks of white frosting, as well as blobs of brown, all over my blue T-shirt and jeans, I started to panic.
    â€œI . . . Would you guys mind if I called home to see if someone could bring my outfit over here?” I asked. There goes Dylan’s professional hair and makeup; now Matt will probably think I look awful, I thought sadly.
    â€œGreat idea!” agreed Emma.
    I dialed home and was lucky enough to get my mom on the phone, and she agreed to bring the outfit on my bed, plus swing by Emma’s to pick up her outfit. So Emma called her mom to tell her what to put out, and then we went back to the decorating. It was just. So. Slow.
    My mom arrived about fifteen minutes later and stayed to chat with Mrs. Brown. After a few minutes, she realized we were totally in the weeds, so she sat down and got to work too.
    And then disaster struck.
    With about two dozen cupcakes left to go, we ran out of brown frosting!
    We had to leave for the party in fifteen minutes.
    My mom and Mrs. Brown told us to run upstairs and change, and they’d figure it out. So we racedup to Katie’s room and put on our outfits. There was no time for showers, so we took turns washing our faces in the bathroom and brushing out hair. Katie generously offered us makeup and perfume and anything we wanted, but I’m not so good at putting that stuff on, and I was so stressed about the cupcakes, I just wanted to get dressed and get downstairs.
    I threw on the cute outfit, which wasn’t too dressy (certainly not like yesterday’s)—dark-washed jeans; a pink long-sleeved T-shirt; a raspberry-colored, fitted fleece vest; and a batik scarf in pinks that I’d wound around my neck a few times, like Dylan showed me. To finish it off, my new pink ski hat. Dylan had also lent me these elaborate lace-up brown leather boots that were really complicated to put on and take off. Since I wouldn’t be skating, I hadn’t minded when she’d shown me how long it would take to put them on. But now that we were running so late, I didn’t have time to fuss with them. I jammed my feet back into my plain brown clogs and clomped back downstairs to see if the moms had come up with a solution. And they had!
    Mrs. Brown was at the stove, stirring something in a pot. I sniffed the air.
    â€œYum! Chocolate sauce?” I asked.
    â€œI had an idea!” said my mom. She looked down into the pot. “That looks about right. And we don’t want it too hot.”
    Mrs. Brown poured the sauce into a little bowl and handed my mom a tiny clean paintbrush.
    â€œI’m going to practice first,” said my mom. “It’s been a while!”
    â€œWhat are you doing?” I asked, intrigued.
    My mom took a thickly folded paper towel, dipped the paintbrush into the chocolate sauce, and then painted a quick series of graceful interconnected lines on the paper towel.
    â€œPretty!” said Mrs. Brown.
    My mom stood back and assessed it. “Huh. Looks pretty good! Now I’ll try it on a cupcake.”
    â€œIt looks like Chinese writing,” I said, coming around the table to look more closely.
    â€œIt is,” my mom said quietly. “It’s the Chinese character for ‘love.’ The word is ai .”
    â€œCool!” cried Mia, who had arrived back in the kitchen. Katie and Emma arrived too, and we explained it to them.
    â€œThat’s perfect!” said Emma. “Because it was Valentine’s Day, and now it’s Chinese New Year, and so it’s love and Chinese