“All right, kids, time to head out!” Janet shouted from the front of the bus.
“Wait,” Dahlia said. “What? We were on the bus for like, two minutes.”
“Yeah.” London leaned over her slightly to peer out the window, not at all noticing that she smelled like peppermint. “Are we seriously here already? Oh. Oh god.”
Outside the window, the sounds of screaming preteens grew louder with each passing second. They jumped up and down, waving. London was . . . not ready for this.
But when they looked over, of course, Dahlia was smiling.
“Sweet,” she whispered. She waved back, causing the kids closest to their window to squeal even louder.
London leaned back in their seat and exhaled.
They had arrived at their first Real World Challenge.
It was a bar mitzvah. On the plus side, Adam Abramovitz was definitely going to be the coolest kid in his middle school for at least a week.
On the down side, Jeffrey was Dahlia’s group leader.
To be fair, she didn’t know Jeffrey that well. She still didn’t know anyone that well.
But sometimes you had gut feelings about people. And Dahlia had a gut feeling that Jeffrey was a giant jerkface.
“Dahlia.” He pointed at her once the twelve remaining contestants were broken into two teams of six and six. “You’re on hummus.”
“I’m on . . . hummus,” she repeated, her pen paused over her notebook. She did not need to take notes on how to shove chickpeas into a food processor.
“And whatever other appetizers you want to make. You’re the snack table. Make it pretty. All right, now, Ahmed—”
“Wait,” London, next to her, interrupted. “You saw Dahlia win the challenge yesterday, right? The fish challenge?”
Their group’s assigned main course today was salmon. Which almost made Dahlia laugh, when she saw the ingredients laid out on the temporary set the crew had constructed behind this fire hall. It was like she was living in a pescatarian hell.
“Yeah, and luckily she didn’t fall on her face yesterday. I’m not going to have our main course scattered all over the floor.” Jeffrey raised a condescending eyebrow. “This isn’t just for the judges; this is a real event.”
“What the—” Dahlia elbowed London lightly in the ribs to stop them. She was glad London was on her team, and appreciated them standing up for her, but now Jeffrey had actually embarrassed her, and she just wanted everyone to move on.
“Anyway, I believe I’m the team leader here.” Jeffrey glared London’s way, and from the corner of her eye, Dahlia saw their jaw clench. “Dahlia’s on apps. London, you’re on desserts. Now, Ahmed and Beth . . .”
Whatever. She could make a kickass hummus. She loved apps.
“Remember to take this seriously,” London muttered to her, scribbling in their own notepad. “This is a real event. For thirteen-year-olds.”
Dahlia suppressed her snort.
After Jeffrey had finished his orders, London and Dahlia both bolted for the table at the back of the temporary set, like rushing to get the back seat in a school bus, claiming it before heading over to collect their ingredients.
The reality of a challenge like this set in pretty quickly once the judges had given their spiels and the cooking actually got underway. The food didn’t necessarily need to be Michelin-star quality; you simply needed to make a shit ton of it in a short amount of time. Dahlia was all for it. Just building blocks, over and over. Consistency was her jam.
Plus, she felt a small thrill at the idea of making food that was going to be consumed by actual people, not merely sampled by three judges before being thrown away. Whether those actual people were thirteen years old or not.
And, she discovered, there was something calming about working next to London. They were a solid worker, both chill and efficient. The more they worked together, the more she felt like they had gotten the best deal. Appetizers and desserts? That was the good stuff.
They spent the first twenty minutes in comfortable, productive silence.
Dahlia’s good vibe started to wane, however, by the third time Jeffrey had stalked over to criticize her. “Come on, Dahlia!” he had shouted the first time, followed by “You haven’t even started the hummus yet?”
She hadn’t. Because Dahlia was simmering the chickpeas in baking soda and water first, to help remove the skins. This would make a smoother hummus. She’d been working on dough for fresh pita and roasting red peppers while the chickpeas simmered. Her building blocks were stacking up perfectly. She knew what she was doing.