The Dirt Diary Read Online Free Page B

hideous clothes for us to parade around in like people do in movies. I follow after her, trying to push down the stinging feeling in my chest.
    It hurts that Marisol doesn’t believe me about my parents being meant for each other. But I’ll just have to prove her wrong.

Chapter 7
    That night, Mom and I sit at the kitchen table eating leftover spinach-and-artichoke casserole. As usual, we barely have anything to say to each other. I try to avoid glancing in the direction of the dining room where we used to eat dinner when Dad was still here. He always had an endless supply of silly jokes to liven things up.
    I can almost hear him saying: “Two sausages are in a frying pan. One turns to the other and says, ‘OMG, it’s hot in here!’” Then Dad would wait for me to say the punch line: “OMG! A talking sausage!” Then we’d giggle like we’d been dosed with laughing gas.
    “How’s school going?” Mom asks, breaking the silence. It figures she’d try to get me to open up with a generic question. Sometimes it seems like she has no idea how to talk to me.
    “Fine.” Of course, that’s not true at all, but I’m not about to tell Mom that Briana and her friends have been making my life miserable all year. Mom is the type of person who can’t just let a problem go unsolved. That’s how I got stuck apologizing to Brett Stevens in the third grade for throwing an eraser at him, even though he was the one who threatened to wipe snot in my hair.
    The oven timer goes off, and I jump up to pull out the latest batch of brownies. The kitchen fills with the scents of warm chocolate and coconut.
    “Is that a new recipe?” Mom asks.
    “I was in the mood for coconut.” Thinking about Florida so much has made me crave tropical flavors. But now that I’m looking at the coconut creations, they just make me miss my dad even more.
    I take out my notebook and jot down the proportions I used, feeling like a scientist. Dad’s the one who gave me the idea of keeping a cooking journal, and he even bought me this special notebook for it. After a while I started pasting in photos and recipes to help me keep track of everything. I tried showing Mom the journal once to prove to her how serious I am about cooking, but she just commented on how it was a miracle I could find anything in my chaotic collection of recipes.
    As I put the brownies out on the counter to cool, I catch Mom staring at me with her lips pursed into a tight line.
    “I’m not crazy about how much time you’ve been spending baking,” she says. “I know you want to win top dessert at the sale this year, but that can’t be at the expense of your grades.”
    “I’m doing fine.” I’ve never been a straight-A student, but I’ve always done okay in my classes. Maybe I’m not going to go to Harvard one day, but as long as I get into culinary school, that’s all I care about.
    Besides, the bake sale is a lot more important than Mom realizes. Whoever gets the most votes for their dessert wins a hundred-dollar cash prize. That money will go a long way toward paying back the amount I—let’s face it—stole from my college fund. There is no way in Hellmann’s I’m coming in second place behind Angela Bareli again this year.
    “It’s just…” Mom sighs. “I don’t want you to jeopardize your future because of a lack of focus.”
    I can’t believe it. We’ve had this conversation dozens of times, but Mom acts like she has selective amnesia whenever the topic comes up. “I am focused! Cooking is what I want to do. Why can’t you accept that?”
    Mom folds her paper napkin into a tight square. “You’re barely fourteen. How can you know what you want to do with your life? You might change your mind.”
    “I won’t.” I grab my dinner plate and stomp over to the sink.
    Why doesn’t Mom get it? I mean, I literally have mornings when I wake up still smelling the meals I was cooking in my dreams. Isn’t that a big sign that I’m meant to be a chef one