The peach pit, p.7
The Peach Pit, page 7
“The therapy pool?” Joye grumbled. “I can’t stand that thing. Makes my skin itch, so I only go in when they make me.”
“Do you think I could maybe swim in there sometimes?” Herb begged. “It’s shallow, so they wouldn’t have to worry about me drowning or anything. But I’m also a really good swimmer so they wouldn’t have to worry about that anyway.” Herb twisted his hands together, begging. “I love pools.”
“I suppose if your dad would sign some sort of waiver,” Great Aunt Lucinda said, obviously thinking it through. “I can look into it, anyway. Do you happen to have a résumé?”
“A what?” Herb asked.
“A résumé is something people use when they’re trying to get a job. It’s a piece of paper that lists your personal information, like your name and address and phone number, along with previous work experience and education. It makes you seem more professional when you’re applying for a job.”
Herb shrugged. “I don’t have one, but I can make one right now if you think it would help me get the job.” With help from the four ladies, Herb used his neatest handwriting and wrote out his very first résumé.
HERBERT PEACH
East 2nd Street
Duluth, Minnesota
WORK EXPERIENCE
- Mouse Caretaker
- Inventor of Herb’s Cinnaballs™
- Peach Pie Truck Mascot
- 2nd Grade Classroom Hamster Feeder
- Dishwasher Unloader (only sometimes)
- Dog Trainer-in-Training
EDUCATION
- 3rd Grade Student at Lakeside Elementary School
The tip of Herb’s tongue stuck out of the left corner of his mouth while he worked on his résumé. Once he’d written down all the jobs he’d had during the first eight and a half years of his life, he pushed the paper across the table for Great Aunt Lucinda to look over.
“This looks wonderful,” she said. “I’ll put in a good word with Bernie and the higher-ups, and we’ll see if we can get you officially hired as the Birch Pond plant waterer and helper-outer. I’ll act as your manager and see if we can work out some kind of compensation for your service.”
Herb beamed. His first official job! So what if he didn’t have a guest room of his very own to manage at the B&B…just wait until his family heard about this!
9
BREAKFAST PRACTICE
Freddy sat on the dirty floor of his new art shed, sketching more ideas for the upcoming art competition. He’d never been a traditional artist, and he had no plans to become one now. The trouble was Freddy hadn’t yet decided which side of his artistic style to showcase for this particular contest. He already knew he was going to build a replica of his dream treehouse (the idea for which was inspired by one of his favorite books, The 13-Story Treehouse), rather than drawing, painting, or sculpting it. He loved making giant art installations that took up space, captured people’s attention, and challenged him as a builder. But the big question was: Should he build his treehouse so it looked realistic? Futuristic and outer-spacey? Trash-like? Made out of food?
He had too many ideas, and too few easy decisions. Between planning this art project design, the real-world Peach Pit renovation, and his family’s plans for opening the B&B, he was also running very, very tight on time.
For years, Freddy had been sketching some of the rooms he’d want included in his dream treehouse—sketching was one of his favorite ways to shake ideas loose that were hiding or snoozing deep inside his brain. By now, he had a pretty good idea of what his treehouse invention would look and feel like in the real world. But this project would exist in the art world, so there were no limits to what he could create! Freddy’s hand began to cramp up as he drew the pool-sized bathtub in his treehouse, so he decided to take a quick break and head inside the house for a snack.
He scanned the walk-in pantry, looking for something delicious to eat. There was almost nothing other than cans of tomatoes, packets of dried pasta, a couple giant containers of miscellaneous baking supplies that were still left over from their food truck summer, and a few boxes of macaroni and cheese—no granola bars, no candy, no cookies, no nuts, nothin’. So he turned to the fridge, where he found a carton of milk, some buttermilk, a plastic container of blueberries, and some butter. Nothing quick and easy to eat. Luckily, Freddy had learned to cook a few things while they were on their road trip that summer, and decided he might as well whip up a batch of blueberry buttermilk pancakes. It was one of his (only) specialties.
While he cooked, Freddy jotted down a few more ideas for foods they could serve for breakfast at the B&B. He, Lucy, and Herb had been working on a list of their favorite breakfast foods for the past week. Now, Freddy added blueberry scones, blueberry pancakes, and Dutch baby pancakes (which were these cool, egg-y pancake thingies that got cooked in an iron skillet and came out of the oven all puffy and amazing and buttery).
With construction and plumbing and electrical work in full swing at the Peach Pit, Freddy decided now would be the perfect time to really start thinking about the details for the second B in bed-and-breakfast. After their summer adventure running the Peach Pie Truck and camping and eating dinner at campgrounds on the road, the Peach family had plenty of experience cooking and preparing and serving food together. And luckily, they would be hiring an employee—a B&B host—who could help cook and serve and welcome guests. But Freddy wasn’t willing to give up all control to a non-Peach, so he had every intention of guiding the plans for the logistics of how they would welcome guests, from check-in to checkout.
After doing a bit of research, Freddy realized that the key to a popular inn was great food and service. It was good news that they could make food, but they needed more than just food—they needed cuisine (which Freddy had recently learned was a word that kind of meant fancy food).
After scanning hundreds (possibly thousands) of internet reviews, Freddy had discovered that people could spend the night in an actual castle, but customer reviews were almost always brutal if the food or service was only meh. So a good breakfast service would be key to his family succeeding as the owners of Duluth’s newest B&B.
Since they would only be serving breakfast at the B&B, and guests would be on their own for lunch and dinner (the Peach Pit was a bed-and-breakfast, not bed-and-lunch or bed-and-Brussels-sprout-casserole), the Peaches were working on finalizing a list of foods they might serve—an old family apple muffin recipe, and eggs, and those yummy sausage links his friend Ethan’s mom always made after sleepovers. They’d decided they should also serve something sort of like peach pie, since that was a family classic. Herb wanted to serve Herb’s Cinnaballs, which were sort of like sugar doughnuts—but made out of pie crust instead of dough. Lucy argued that they needed to offer some sort of fruit, for nutritional purposes (blech!), and Dad had offered to be in charge of figuring out what kind of tea and coffee they would need to have on hand. Now, what to serve wasn’t really worrying Freddy, but how they would serve breakfast to guests was a different matter.
Though the person they hired to help out would clean the guest rooms and cook and serve breakfast a lot of the time, Freddy wanted to be ready to be as hands-on as possible whenever he was home and could help out. He had always dreamed of being a waiter—the kind who wore one of those snazzy tuxedos and spoke in a fancy accent with a special dish towel tossed over one arm, bowing to customers after he took their order.
But being a good waiter took practice, he knew, so he decided to enlist his two best friends to help. Which is how, a few days later, on Sunday morning, his friends Ethan and Henry ended up sitting in front of full place settings on opposite ends of the Peaches’ enormous dining room table.
“Welcome, welcome!” Freddy said in his best French accent, bowing to his two friends. He’d put on his only button-down shirt, which he’d gotten as a gift from Great Aunt Lucinda the previous year for a special dinner party she’d hosted at the mansion. The sleeves were too short, and Freddy had only ironed the front, since that’s all anyone would see anyway—but he looked fancy enough. “I hope you are both very well!”
Ethan and Henry both snickered. “Why are you speaking with a bad Australian accent?” Henry giggled.
“I’m not,” Freddy argued. “It’s French.”
“Oui oui,” Ethan snorted. “Wee wee, hee hee.”
Freddy turned away from them and rolled his eyes. This was supposed to be his practice for the real deal of serving guests their breakfast at the B&B, so he couldn’t exactly make rude faces at his “customers.” “Welcome, mon amis!”
“I’m not Amy,” Ethan blurted. “I’m Ethan.”
“Amis is French for ‘friends,’ ” Freddy grunted. “Come on, guys, take this seriously!”
Ethan and Henry both cracked up as Henry tucked one of Great Aunt Lucinda’s laciest cloth napkins into the front of his T-shirt like a bib.
Freddy presented them both with menus just as Lucy, Herb, and Dad wandered into the dining room with bowls of cereal. “What’s going on here?” Dad asked.
“I’m practicing for our B and B breakfast service. I asked Henry and Ethan to help pretend to be real customers, so I can get some experience serving people,” Freddy explained, wondering if he’d ever even get started with the breakfast service, or if they’d spend the whole morning just chatting about things. He waved his arm toward the other three members of his family and offered, “Would the three of you like to join these other paying guests at the table? Perhaps the five of you can chat about how you’ll all be spending your day exploring our fine city of Duluth, Minnesota?”
“What’s wrong with your voice?” Herb asked, furrowing his brow. “Are you getting sick?”
“And why would we explore Duluth?” Lucy added. “We live here.”
“Ugh!” Freddy snapped. “I’m speaking in a French accent. It makes our breakfast seem fancier. And you’re not actually going to explore Duluth—you’re supposed to be pretending you’re guests at the B and B! That’s what people do when they eat breakfast at a bed-and-breakfast—they talk to other guests about dumb stuff like being tourists!”
Lucy and Dad both laughed. “Gotcha,” Dad said, settling in at one of the open seats at the table. Freddy took his family’s empty cereal bowls, then set plates in front of the new arrivals. Next, he carefully put out forks, knives, and spoons, just like the pictures of fancy place settings he’d found on the internet.
Dad pounded the table and cried out, “Who do I need to talk to in order to get a cup of coffee around here?”
Freddy frowned at him. His dad wasn’t usually so…well, so rude.
Dad chuckled and whispered, “You said we’re pretending to be real customers, right? If so, I want to pretend to be a terrible customer. It’s good practice.” He winked at Freddy.
“Gotcha,” Freddy said, winking back. “You say you’re in need of a coffee, sir?”
“By now, it probably would have been faster for me to just get up and make it myself!” Dad hollered.
Herb, Lucy, Henry, and Ethan all cracked up. Lucy only stopped laughing long enough to say, “Excuse me, but I believe this knife needs polishing?” She held up one of Great Aunt Lucinda’s old-fashioned silver knives and scowled at Freddy.
Freddy swiped the knife from his sister and replaced it with a shinier one. He hadn’t even gotten their drinks, and Freddy was already fed up with serving people. Hopefully, real guests wouldn’t act as awful as his own family and friends were! He hightailed it into the kitchen and got a pitcher of orange juice, along with a cup of coffee that his dad had actually brewed for himself earlier that morning.
When he set down the fresh-squeezed orange juice, Herb scowled at him. “I don’t like pulp.”
“You love pulp,” Freddy argued.
“My character doesn’t like pulp,” Herb said. “What other drinks do you have?”
“Um.” Freddy hadn’t prepared any alternatives to orange juice. “We have Duluth’s finest water, coffee, and ice water.”
“You’re offering us water or ice water?” Henry scoffed. “That’s exactly the same thing. This feels like a scam! I need to speak with your manager.” He and Ethan both laughed.
“Do you have comment cards?” Ethan said, snorting. Then he whispered, “Being a bad customer is the best.”
Freddy huffed, trying to ignore the annoying comments spewing from the table. He hustled into the kitchen and grabbed the basket of apple muffins he’d baked that morning, along with a bowl of scrambled eggs and a platter of bacon. Sadly, the eggs and bacon were probably lukewarm (at best) by now, but it’s all he had to offer. He hustled back into the dining room and set the food in the center of the table with a flourish.
His best friends both dove for the muffin basket, shoving them whole into their mouths and grabbing a second before his family had even taken one each. “These are yummy,” Henry said. Freddy grinned. It was the first nice thing anyone had said all morning.
Dad nodded as he delicately ripped chunks off the muffin. “They really are delicious,” he agreed. “You might have just gotten yourself a job as the breakfast baker in our B and B, Fred.”
Herb huffed out an angry breath; Freddy knew his little brother got frustrated when Freddy and Lucy were assigned projects that he wasn’t asked to do. Like the guest room thing—Herb was super mad he had to share the responsibility for cleaning, repairing, and decorating one of the rooms with their dad. But the thing Freddy had realized over the past week was, Herb ought to be relieved! Freddy had already spent hours cleaning “The Freddy Suite” (as he’d been calling it), and had quickly discovered just how much more time it would take to:
1. Figure out the theme of his room (he’d come up with ideas, but none of them seemed quite right and his brain was swirling with decisions he needed to make about this and his art competition piece!)
2. Clean the room more and make sure all the bathroom parts were working (and afterward, talk to the plumber and carpenter and stuff about all the things that weren’t working)
3. Order all the right decorations and sheets and stuff
Freddy was not an interior decorator, and he kind of wished he hadn’t asked to be in charge of one of the guest rooms at all. It was a pain, and he’d made almost no progress; Lucy’s guest room was coming along nicely, but the The Freddy Suite was a torn-apart disaster. He’d rather handle customer service stuff; that’s what he was truly good at. Also, between his art project, his guest room details, and helping to fix stuff around the mansion, he was feeling kind of…overwhelmed. He’d never admit it to the rest of his family, but Freddy was starting to wonder if he’d bitten off more projects than he could handle, and now it was hard to chew everything.
Both Herb and Lucy polished off their muffins and reached for the eggs and bacon. Freddy was relieved the muffins were a hit. Wait until they tried his Dutch baby pancakes!
Just as Freddy was starting to feel pretty confident that maybe he could get the hang of this waiter business, Herb grouchily blurted out, “Is there a strange smell in here? My nose is acting up. Do you happen to have…dogs? I’m highly allergic.”
COUSIN MILLIES FAMOUS APPLE MUFFINS
о 2 eggs
о 1/2 C vegetable oil
о 1 C milk
о 1 t vanilla
о 1/2 C brown sugar
о 1/2 C applesauce (optional)
о 1 T baking powder
о 1/2 t salt
о 1 t nutmeg
о 1 t cinnamon
о 1 t allspice (optional)
о 1 large apple (diced)
1. Preheat oven to 400° F.
2. Mix all the wet stuff—except the apple chunks—together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together. Fold the dry ingredients into the mixed wet ingredients and stir. Do not overmix! Gently stir in the apple chunks. Put batter into a muffin tin—either greased or with muffin liners. Fill muffin tins about 2/3 full.
3. Bake for 10–15 minutes, or until a toothpick stuck into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
OPTIONAL: Top with a crumb topping mixture before you put muffins in the oven:
о 1/2 C flour
о 1/4 C butter chopped up into tiny bits
о 1/4 C brown sugar
10
A STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE
Nearly another full week passed before Lucy finally got to revisit her secret, hidden attic space.
She’d spent every day after school that week meeting with her dad and either the plumber, the electrician, or the “Handy Gals” to talk through construction projects. Lucy liked being a part of these meetings, since it made her feel important. She also found that if she was in the room, meetings tended to move more quickly—her dad often got bogged down in little details and liked to know a little too much about how things worked.
But mostly, she loved spending time with the two college women who were doing most of the carpentry work in the Peach Pit. They called themselves the Handy Gals, and both were in the forestry program at the university. One of the Handy Gals—Lila—was the daughter of one of Dad’s coworkers, and the other—Kassy—was her best friend. Lucy hoped someday she’d have a job where she could work alongside her best friend all day. Whenever the Handy Gals were in the house, Lucy learned a ton of interesting information about carpentry and forestry. Unlike all the random facts Freddy was always spouting out, these women’s fun facts seemed like they might actually come in useful at some point in Lucy’s future.
