On the Back Burner Read Online Free

Peichi?”
    “My whole family! Everyone contributes to the meal. And here’s the big thing,” Peichi said eagerly. “My parents said that you guys could cook with us, if you want.”
    “Cool!” Amanda said. “Would we cook at your place or at your grandparents’ in Chinatown?”
    “I’d love to go to Chinatown,” said Natasha. “I’ve only been there a few times with my parents. Manhattan is so big! Sometimes I get a little nervous there.”
    “I like it better here in Brooklyn, too,” Molly agreed.
    “Not me,” stated Amanda. “I love Manhattan. That’s where all the excitement is—the theaters, the TV studios. And all the celebrities! The minute I’m finished with college, I’m getting an apartment in the city.”
    “Hey, I thought we planned to live together after school,” Molly reminded her. “I don’t want to live in Manhattan.”
    “You have to,” Amanda said slowly as a sly look came over her face. “If you don’t you’ll break my heart.”
    “Oh, great!” Molly cried, throwing her arms wide. “Now she’s going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life so she can get me to do whatever she wants.”
    Everybody laughed. “No, I won’t,” insisted Amanda. “We’ll flip a coin. Or maybe I’ll find some amazing apartment in Manhattan that will convince you to live there!”
    “Wouldn’t that be so cool?” Shawn asked.
    “You can live with us,” Amanda said. As long as you don’t bring Angie with you, she thought.
    “I want to live with you guys, too,” Peichi said. “And so does Natasha. We could cook gourmet meals and deliver them all over New York City! Amanda could go on auditions in the theater district. Natasha would be at the TV studios in the West Fifties every day since she’s going to be a TV star. And Molly, Shawn, and I would go to Yankee Stadium and watch ball games whenever we weren’t cooking or delivering food!”
    “It sounds great,” Molly said. “Maybe we could even have our own restaurant. That would be awesome. I wonder if it will ever really happen.”
    “We should get Sonia back here to ask her,” suggested Shawn.
    “I wonder if she believes the things she says or just makes them up,” Amanda said. She still couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling she had from Sonia’s predictions.
    “I think it was real.” Shawn said. “She seemed to really be concentrating, and she never changed her story or backed down. It was like she saw what she saw, and that was it. If she were only making it up, wouldn’t she have given everyone a good fortune that they wanted to hear?”
    “I got the only really positive fortune, and I don’t even want to be a TV star,” Natasha said.
    “You don’t?” Amanda asked. “I do. I’ll take your fortune, then. It beats losing your best friend.”
    “She only said you’d feel like you were losing your best friend,” Shawn reminded her. “She didn’t say you’d actually lose your best friend.”
    Amanda wondered if Shawn knew that she was the best friend who would be lost. Shawn didn’t seem to be worried about it, though. But the more Amanda thought about it, the more certain she became that Shawn was the one Sonia had been referring to.
    “Anyway,” Peichi said, changing the subject back to Chinese New Year. “Ah-mah said she’d give us a cooking lesson next weekend, if you guys want.” Ah-mah was Peichi’s grandmother.
    Awesome—another guest chef, just like Grandma Ruthie,” Shawn said. A few months ago, Shawn’s dad had taken a long business trip to Australia. Shawn’s Grandma Ruthie had stayed with her in New York, and she had taught the girls how to cook Southern food, her specialty. The clients loved it!
    “ Ohhh! I almost forgot!” squealed Amanda, reaching for her backpack. She pulled out lots of little tubes and jars. “I bought this glimmery lotion at the drugstore. And I got some free samples of these cool masks and moisturizers. We can each try a different