Love À La Mode Read online

  “Hampus, do you have—?”

  “Two steps ahead of you, my friend!”

  A plain white ceramic plate materialized under Henry’s nose. Henry grabbed it gratefully.

  “Did you warm the plates?” Henry asked in disbelief.

  “That was the second step.” Hampus winked. “From the two steps of which I was ahead of you.”

  “Nice touch, man.” Henry set the plate down on his station and slid the omelet onto it. Obviously he couldn’t taste it, but it looked perfect: a fat little yellow caterpillar.

  Ringing, not unlike the fire alarm at Henry’s school, echoed through the kitchen, unbelievably loudly. The timer on the whiteboard turned red, flashing 00:00 as it pulsated like a beating heart. Henry looked around for a clean dishtowel, didn’t see one, and dragged the sleeve of his jacket across his sweaty forehead. So much for keeping his chef’s whites perfectly white. He had a feeling the jacket wouldn’t smell too fresh by the end of the day, either.

  “And that is the time!” Chef Martinet added unnecessarily. “Plates down, knives down, please step away from your stations.”

  Henry glanced over at Hampus’s station. He was relieved to see a perfect-looking French omelet there.

  “I will begin in the front,” Chef Martinet said. “Do not worry, those of you in the back. I understand your omelets may have cooled by the time I arrive.”

  Henry should have realized that choosing this station meant he’d be going first. Oh well. At least he’d get it over with, right? It would be worse, surely, to have to wait the whole time for Chef Martinet to judge him. Well, that’s what he tried to tell himself, anyway, as Chef Martinet approached his station. He slid the plate a bit closer to the edge, like that would make him—and his omelet—more ready, somehow, as he prayed to whatever kitchen gods there might be that his dish was cooked right.

  “Fork, Madame Besson.” Chef Martinet held out her hand. Madame Besson hustled up from the back of the room and placed a plain silver fork in her outstretched palm.

  Not raw in the middle, Henry prayed. Please, not raw in the middle.

  Henry watched Chef Martinet’s fork descend, seemingly in slow motion. As she used it to cut the omelet neatly in half, Henry thought he might scream from the tension, then maybe cry in relief that the omelet was, in fact, cooked all the way through. Chef Martinet speared a small bite of omelet, then brought it up to her mouth. Was Henry going to pass out? Because of an omelet? God, he hoped not. That would be even worse than walking in late. Probably.

  Chef Martinet chewed, then cocked her head, making eye contact with Henry for the first time.

  “It is perfect,” she pronounced, and Henry resolved right then that he was going to write the Serious Eats staff the nicest thank-you e-mail of all time. And maybe figure out if there was a way he could send them a gift basket or something. Perfect. He couldn’t believe it. And he couldn’t wait to tell Dad, who would probably say he wasn’t surprised at all, but Henry was surprised. He’d thought he was a good cook, but he hadn’t known whether or not he’d be good enough to measure up here, where everyone was good. And he certainly hadn’t thought he was good enough to be perfect.

  “Needs more salt.” Henry came back to earth. Chef Martinet had already moved on to Hampus’s omelet. Henry shot Hampus a sympathetic look and received a good-natured shrug in response. As critiques went, that wasn’t so bad. That was something he’d heard Tom Colicchio say hundreds of times on Top Chef, even to people who’d made it all the way to the final four. Even the best of the best were frequent victims of under-seasoning.

  After leaving Henry and Hampus’s table, Chef Martinet praised the “technical excellence” of Clara’s omelet and told Yumi hers had a “sloppy fold,” which wasn’t all that bad. Things didn’t really get awkward until she tasted the omelet made by the girl with the pink hair. As Chef Martinet explained that French omelets were different from American omelets, that hers was folded incorrectly and it certainly shouldn’t have cheese, the girl started to turn the same color as her hair.

  And she wasn’t the only one to have cooked the wrong type of omelet. Moving on to the rows in the middle of the room, Chef Martinet found plenty to criticize whether the students had made the wrong omelets or the right kind. Out of everyone in their class, only Henry, Clara, and Marquis met with her approval.

  And then Chef Martinet was at Rosie’s row. All he could see through the smattering of students was the edge of her toffee-colored braid. He shuffled around until he could catch sight of her face, which was unnaturally pale. She looked like she was about to throw up. Henry hoped her omelet was okay. He couldn’t see it from his angle, no matter how he shifted or ducked.

  “Henry,” Hampus whispered urgently. “Are you having to pee?”

  “I’m fine, man,” Henry whispered back, reddening as he came to a standstill. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Rosie. He prayed that she wouldn’t be embarrassed, like the girl with the pink hair.

  “The shape is wrong,” Chef Martinet said, pointing her fork at the student who shared Rosie’s table, the girl who had come in late. “This is not a French omelet. And mon dieu! More cheese!” Chef Martinet sniffed disapprovingly. “The cook of the eggs, at least, is fine. Not overdone.”

  Now it was Rosie’s turn. Henry felt almost more nervous than when Chef Martinet had tasted his omelet.

  “Again, the shape is wrong.” Chef Martinet sighed, and Henry’s heart sank right along with her sigh. “Again, there should be no cheese.” Henry squirmed, trying to catch Rosie’s eye, but she was looking down at the floor, head bent, trying to hide the flush that crept up her cheeks. “The eggs are rubbery. Terribly overcooked. A poor effort.”

  A poor effort. That couldn’t have been easy to hear. It looked like the girl next to Rosie might have grabbed her hand and squeezed. Henry hoped she had. Henry wished he was back there so he could let her know that it was okay, that it was just the first day, and this test was bogus, anyway. And omelets were better with cheese, and best when they came off the flat top at a diner, and maybe this was one case where the French didn’t really know what they were talking about. Just like their obsession with meat spreads. What was that all about, anyway? Pâté was okay, but honestly, nothing to get all that excited about.

  Chef Martinet moved on from Rosie’s station, and Henry tried to keep shooting Rosie telepathic messages of support as he watched the instructor taste the omelet of a black guy with wire-rimmed glasses Henry hadn’t met yet, who stood next to a white guy with a buzz cut Henry hadn’t met either. There was something familiar about the white guy. Henry frowned, squinting at him, like that might help him place him, somehow. Was he from Chicago?

  Then Hampus inhaled sharply.

  “It is Bodie Tal,” Hampus whispered.

  Bodie Tal. The name was familiar. Just like his face.

  “Is he, uh, famous or something?” Henry asked.

  In the back of the room, Chef Martinet moved on to Bodie Tal’s omelet, cut a neat forkful, and chewed contemplatively.

  “Oh yes. He is most famous. In Sweden, we have Kaka Bomba. I think it is The Cake Bombs in America, yes? Do you have this?”

  “Cake Bomb,” Henry corrected automatically. “With Dash Bray.”

  And then it clicked. Bodie Tal was Dash Bray’s son. Cake Bomb wasn’t Henry’s favorite Food Network show—he really wasn’t that interested in pastry—but he’d caught parts of it often enough that he remembered Bodie now.

  “A real celebrity.” Hampus seemed practically starstruck. Henry didn’t totally understand why. It wasn’t like Bodie Tal was really famous. His dad was famous. Bodie Tal was just famous-adjacent. Like Blue Ivy. But Dash Bray was no Beyoncé.

  “Not enough salt,” Chef Martinet pronounced as she left Bodie’s station.

  “Perhaps I am not in such bad company, then, hey, Henry?” Hampus jostled Henry’s shoulder. But as Henry watched Rosie quickly wipe something off her face that he hoped wasn’t a tear, he
could barely return Hampus’s smile.

  Well, I think we can all agree that was a complete and utter disaster.” Priya plonked her tray down next to Rosie’s, the beef stew threatening to spill over the side of her ceramic bowl as it wobbled.

  “She said I had a sloppy fold. A SLOPPY FOLD!” Yumi viciously tore off the end of her dinner roll. “A sloppy fold. That sounds borderline obscene.” She stuffed the roll in her mouth and chewed angrily.

  “Priya, Yumi; Yumi, Priya,” Rosie said, introducing the two of them. They nodded at each other in solidarity. Rosie took a spoonful of her stew. It was good: warm, earthy, comforting. Rich, but not too rich. The beef practically fell apart in her spoon. It reminded her of Nana’s pot roast, minus the Lipton Recipe Secrets Onion Soup Mix.

  “At least you knew what a French omelet was,” Priya pointed out. “I swear to you I’d never seen that bloody thing before in my life. I thought all omelets came in half-moons.”

  “Me too.” Rosie nodded in agreement. She’d thought all omelets looked like the ones at Cracker Barrel. Wrong. So wrong. And what was worse, she hadn’t even made a good diner omelet. She didn’t understand how it had happened. Rosie knew how to make an omelet. She’d made them before, plenty of times. Sometimes, for big weekend breakfasts before her brothers’ soccer games, she’d set up her own omelet station in the kitchen back home, filling prep bowls with different toppings, although invariably everyone just wanted cheese. But every single one of those cheese omelets was light-years better than the one she’d produced today, when it really mattered. A poor effort. Rosie’s cheeks burned with the shame of it all over again. She took another bite of stew and tried to forget, although she wasn’t sure she’d ever get those words out of her head.

  “Is it even good? A French omelet?” Priya asked. “Looked rather dodgy, if you ask me. A rolled-up bit of egg and nothing else? No thank you.”

  “They’re not bad, if you get the texture right.” Yumi reached across the table, lifted Rosie’s roll right off her tray, and bit into it. “They can be really fluffy.”

  “I’d still rather have a regular old cheese omelet,” Rosie said, trying not to stare too longingly at her rapidly disappearing roll. “It just seems wrong, an omelet with no cheese. What’s the point? Why not just scramble the eggs, then?”

  “Agreed,” Priya said. “D’you think Martinet’ll wait till the end of the semester to chuck us out, then, or just put us out of our misery now?”

  “No way.” Yumi shook her head vigorously. “I’m not letting that oni chuck me anywhere. She’d have to get me onto that plane by brute force, and I’d fight her every step of the way. With my teeth if necessary.”

  “What’s an oni?” Rosie asked.

  “It’s like a demon. Google it.”

  Rosie pulled out her phone, and her whole lock screen was full of notifications. She did the math in her head . . . lunchtime in Ohio. Nothing from Cole, who’d been sucked into the vortex of freshman year. Nothing from Reed, who was undoubtedly still sucked into the vortex of Assassin’s Creed, like he’d been all summer. She tapped onto the series of texts from Ricky.

  Ricky

  Hey Rosie where are the mixing bowls?

  Ricky

  Is there like a special kind of spoon you’re supposed to use?

  Ricky

  This spoon feels kind of small

  Ricky

  Yeah this is def the wrong spoon

  Ricky

  Is mixing with your hands, like, artisanal?

  Ricky

  That’s a technique, right?

  Ricky

  Do you know where Mom keeps the extra

  paper towels?

  Ricky

  We didn’t have blueberries so I put in grape jelly. Basically the same?

  Ricky

  Hmm I don’t think this oven cleaner is working

  Ricky

  Also how do you disable the smoke alarm?

  What on earth was Ricky making?! By the time she opened the next text, she was full of trepidation.

  Mom

  This is Owen on Mom’s phone. I asked Ricky to make me blueberry muffins, like you do. He did not do a good job.

  Then there was a picture of Owen holding a charred lump of something that Rosie sincerely hoped neither of her brothers had attempted to eat. She burst out laughing at the sight of his face, smeared with soot and grape jelly.

  “Did you find it?” Yumi asked.

  “Um. Almost.” Quickly, Rosie fired off a text to Owen:

  Rosie

  DO NOT EAT THAT!!! DO NOT ASK RICKY TO BAKE FOR YOU! Will send you muffin recipe later—you can do it yourself!

  Then she attached a gif of an iguana wearing sunglasses, because why not. And then a text to Ricky:

  Rosie

  Mixing with hands is v. artisanal but only if hands are CLEAN. Grape jelly is not the same as blueberries. Extra paper towels are under the sink. Use wooden spoons to mix—they’re in drawer to left of stove underneath cabinets with mixing bowls. But in future, please refrain from cooking anything that’s not a Totino’s pizza roll for the health and safety of all involved.

  Finally, Rosie Google-image-searched the oni. She flipped her phone around to show Priya the picture of the big, horned, red demon.

  “Oh, Chef Martinet is most assuredly an oni,” Priya said.

  “And I refuse to be defeated by a demon. So just wait until tomorrow, because I’m going to cook something so spectacular, Chef Martinet will be begging me to stay. At the end of this year, they’ll probably rename the school the École de Cuisine Yumi Osaki-Weissman.”

  Rosie wished she had Yumi’s confidence. She felt so confused by her omelet disaster, it was hard to ignore the possibility of being asked to leave. If Rosie couldn’t make an omelet, did she even deserve to be here?

  Rosie looked back down at her phone, opening her e-mail. There was a new one from Mom, with the subject line: How’s it going?

  What would she even say?

  Well, I’m a terrible cook who can’t even slap together an omelet, but at least I have people to sit with at dinner?

  No way. She couldn’t let her mother know how badly she’d done. Mom had been so sure Rosie would excel at the École. But she couldn’t ignore her forever. She’d e-mail her back. Later. Tonight. When she could think of a way to put a positive spin on the whole omelet situation.

  “Excuse me. What do you think you’re doing?”

  Rosie looked up from her phone at the sound of Yumi’s voice and stuffed it back into her pocket. Henry and Marquis stood across from her, trays in hands. Her eyes met Henry’s, and Rosie thought that if she saw anything sympathetic lurking around in there, even the smallest hint of pity, she’d start crying into her stew. Or fling the bowl against the wall. She could almost hear the satisfying crack of china, see the dribbles of brown stew travel down the cream-colored paint, feel the hush in the room as conversation stopped.

  What would Mom think, if she knew Rosie was contemplating chucking crockery across the room? She wouldn’t believe it. Good Rosie. Quiet Rosie. Responsible Rosie. Rosie didn’t throw things. Rosie shouldn’t even be thinking about throwing things. She stuck her hand back in her pocket and curled it around the plastic wings, then looked up at Henry.

  Henry smiled at her, and his eyes crinkled. They seemed to say, Wasn’t today crazy? and not, You are a huge loser who can’t even cook a friggin’ omelet, and so that was okay, and so Rosie didn’t throw anything. She took her hand back out of her pocket and took another bite of stew.

  “Uh, sitting?” Marquis said as he put his tray down next to Yumi’s.

  “Um, no. Nope, nope, nope.” Yumi swung her legs across the seat, blocking Marquis from sitting. “Sorry, golden boys. This table is reserved for omelet losers only.”

  “Come on. There are no omelet losers here. That test wasn’t even fair.” Henry walked around the table and put his tray down next to Rosie’s. She felt her cheeks getting warm as he pulled out his chair a
nd sat.

  “The only thing worse than being an omelet loser is being an omelet sore loser. Move your legs.”

  Grumbling, Yumi did as Marquis asked.

  “It was just the first day.” Henry took a bite of his stew. “Hey, this is pretty good,” he said, surprised.

  “Duh,” Yumi said. “They can’t have crappy cafeteria food at a cooking school. That would just make them look bad.”

  Rosie had been surprised it was good, too. She’d been expecting something like the hot food at East Liberty High, which was barely edible, and best eaten only under the direst of circumstances.

  “Makes sense. So the stew is good. And the omelets weren’t that bad. Nobody’s was,” Henry said, and Rosie stiffened as his leg brushed hers. “Sorry,” he said.

  “No worries,” she said, breezily. She hoped it was breezy. She’d been aiming for breezy. But she couldn’t deny the current of electricity that had run up her thigh at the slightest brush of his leg. Had he felt, it, too? Rosie cast a shy look over at Henry. He was chasing a piece of carrot around his bowl, attempting to lever it onto his spoon. Probably not, then.

  “Rather easy for you to say, Mr. Perfect,” Priya said.

  “Mr. Perfect. Now there’s a nickname I’d be okay with,” Yumi said wistfully. “Guess what Clara started calling me after the omelet incident. When she wasn’t busy rubbing her ‘technical excellence’ in my face,” she added darkly, propping her elbows up on the table as she leaned in. “Sloppy Fold.”

  Marquis guffawed, the sound of his laughter echoing through the dining hall. A couple people at other tables turned to look at them.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he apologized, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. Yumi shot him a look that would have incinerated a weaker being. “Chill, Sloppy Fold. Don’t look so serious.”