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  For my sweet brother, Jim

  acknowledgments

  A heartfelt thanks to Sara Crowe for loving this book from the start. To Alyson Heller and the team at Aladdin, thank you for your hard work to help make this book what I hope will be a delectable treat for those who read it. Lisa Madigan and Lindsey Leavitt, I owe you a lifetime of cupcakes for giving me your love, support, and writerly wisdom at just the right times. To Scott, Sam, and Grant, thanks as always for everything. Now we have a good excuse to eat lots of cupcakes. Be glad I didn’t write a book about cucumbers.

  Chapter 1

  red velvet cupcakes

  A CLASSIC THAT NEVER LETS YOU DOWN

  The whole cupcake thing started a couple of years ago, on my tenth birthday. My mom tried a recipe for red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting. She said, “Isabel, this recipe comes from a very famous cupcake shop in New York City called St. Valentine’s Cupcakes. We’re going to make these cupcakes for your party!”

  Now, my mother isn’t big on birthday parties. Since I was six, I’ve pretty much planned my own party, from the handmade invitations we deliver right down to the candy we put in the goodie bags.

  But baking is what Mom loves. And it’s the one thing we’ve liked doing together. She told me once there’s something really satisfying about throwing stuff into a bowl and watching a mess turn into something wonderful. And she’s right. There is.

  That year for my birthday party, only four girls were coming for a sleepover: my best friend Sophie, plus two other girls from school. With such a small group, Mom thought cupcakes made more sense than a big cake.

  Those cupcakes turned out delicious. Better than delicious. Amazingly fabulous. And from that day on, all Mom could talk about were cupcakes. Dad and I listened, because we were just glad she was talking about something. When she started talking about opening a cupcake shop, we listened and nodded our heads like it was the best idea ever. I don’t think either of us really thought it was the best idea ever. But after years of trying odd jobs here and there, and complaining about how they were too easy or too hard, too weird or too boring, too right or too wrong, it was nice to hear good stuff for a change.

  The talking turned into more than talking last year, when she convinced Dad to buy an old Laundromat with an apartment upstairs. It’s called a walk-up apartment, and they’re more common in big cities, like New York City or Chicago, than the town I live in: Willow, Oregon, population 39,257.

  Mom didn’t see a Laundromat. She saw a cute cupcake shop where she could make cupcakes every day and finally be happy. I think that’s what she saw. I’ll admit, I didn’t see that at first.

  We moved into the apartment right away, even though the cupcake shop wouldn’t be ready for a while. Mom and Dad took out a loan and hired a contractor to do the work downstairs.

  As a bunch of big, burly guys hauled the washing machines out of the building and into a large truck, I asked Mom, “Where will they go to wash their clothes now?”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “The people who brought their baskets of dirty laundry here every week. Where will they go?”

  She looked at me like I had a washing machine for a head. “Well, I don’t know, Isabel. But it really doesn’t matter, does it? I’m sure there are other Laundromats in town.”

  “Seems like running a Laundromat, where people wash their own clothes, would be a lot easier than running a cupcake shop, where you have to bake all the cupcakes.”

  Mom sighed. “I don’t want a Laundromat. Who would want a Laundromat? I want to bake cupcakes. I want people to walk into my warm, wonderful shop and tell me how much they love my cupcakes. Besides, it won’t just be me doing all the baking. Grandma’s going to help. And you can even help sometimes.”

  Maybe it was the fact that this new adventure had forced me to move away from my best friend, Sophie, who’d lived right next door. Maybe it was the fact that my mother expected me to help without even asking if I wanted to. Or maybe, deep down inside, I didn’t think Mom would be able to pull off this cupcake thing. All I know is I still wasn’t sold.

  “But I don’t get it, Mom. Do you really think people are going to want to eat cupcakes in a place where they used to wash their dirty, stinky socks?”

  This time she looked at me like she wanted to shove a dirty, stinky sock into my mouth. “Isabel, Dad assures me we can turn it into an adorable cupcake shop. Let’s not look back at what’s been, but look ahead to what might be. Okay?”

  Was that my mother talking? I must have given her a funny look, because she shrugged and said, “I heard it on TV. I thought it sounded good.”

  While Mom and Dad were busy getting the shop ready and organizing the apartment, I’d ride my bike up to the public library for something to do. I’d sit at a table right next to the travel section and read books about the places I wanted to visit someday.

  See, my aunt Christy is a flight attendant. She sends me cool postcards from all over the world. When she came to visit last time, I asked her if she liked her job, and she said she doesn’t just like it, she loves it. She gets to meet interesting people and see fascinating places. I asked her if she thought I could be a flight attendant someday, and she smiled real big and said, “You would make a fantastic flight attendant, my dear Isabel.”

  As I read those books, I’d dream of taking a cable car ride through San Francisco, or watching a Broadway play in New York City, or eating pastries outside a cute little café in Paris. Compared to those places, our town of Willow seemed about as interesting as dry toast.

  I’d never been anywhere outside the state of Oregon. Grandma calls me a native Oregonian, like it’s something to be proud of. What’s there to be proud of? The fact that I own three different hooded coats, because it’s the best way to be ready when the sky decides to open up and pour?

  A couple of days after we moved in, Dad and I went to the dollar store because he needed to buy some clipboards and pads of paper for him and Mom. He said there was a lot to do in the coming days, and he wanted to help Mom stay organized. Dad is good at making lists. Not just good. He’s the King of Lists. He usually scribbles them on whatever he can find—the back of an envelope, a corner of the newspaper, a piece of toilet paper. I thought it was sweet how he wanted to help Mom out and buy real paper for a change.

  While he scoured the store for list-making supplies, I wandered down the aisles with a single dollar bill, looking for something interesting to buy. In a bin next to dollhouse-size bottles of shampoo and conditioner were a bunch of white plastic wallets with tiny pictures of suitcases on them. I picked one up and opened it. A piece of paper was stuck inside that said, “Passport Holder.”

  I imagined a girl like me eating a bowl of soup at a restaurant in Athens, Greece. Suddenly she bumps the bowl, and soup spills all over the table. She gasps when she notices her passport is sitting there on the table. But then she breathes a sigh of relief, because she remembers she bought a passport holder at the dollar store to keep her passport safe. She opens it and finds the passport perfectly soup free.

  Of course I had to buy it. Even if I didn’t have a passport to put inside the passport holder.

  When I got home, I put little pieces of paper inside it to make a mini-notebook. I carried it around with me everywhere, and w
henever I had a thought about traveling, I wrote it down. This is what I wrote the first day:

  I want to go

  on many journeys.

  I want to meet interesting people

  and experience new things.

  —ISABEL BROWNING

  As I wrote that in my passport-holder-turned-note-book, I realized something important. If I ever wanted to get past the Oregon-Idaho border, I needed to make a plan. A fantastic, incredible, big moneymaking plan.

  And I thought turning a Laundromat into a cupcake shop was hard.

  Chapter 2

  strawberry lemonade cupcakes

  THE PERFECT PICK-ME-UP

  It says ‘The Bleachorama,’ ” Sophie said, when she finally came over for a visit the day after the Fourth of July. We were standing in front of our building, piles of sheetrock and boards on the sidewalk, and guys carrying tools at every turn.

  They hadn’t taken the tacky neon sign down yet. If I was in charge, it would have been the first to go.

  “Mom’s getting a new one made. Guess what she’s calling the shop?”

  “Caroline’s Cupcakes?” Sophie asked.

  I shook my head. A worker carrying a can of cream soda walked by. I waved at him. He waved back.

  “Cupcakes R Us?”

  I shook my head again. “You’ll never guess. So I’ll just tell you. It’s Raining Cupcakes.”

  “It’s Raining Cupcakes?” she asked. “That’s the name?”

  “Yep. You know, ’cause it’s almost always raining in Willow. Now it’ll be raining cupcakes.”

  “Riiiight. Okay, show me your room. Can we take the fire escape?”

  “Sophie, are you kidding? Dad would kill me. We have to go the normal way.”

  “Have you met Stan?” she asked, pointing to the sign STAN’S BARBER SHOP on the building next door to ours.

  “Yeah. He’s round and bald and has a big, bushy mustache. And he’s really nice.”

  Stan and his wife live upstairs, in an apartment down the hall from us. The first time I met him, I knew I’d like him. He smells like shaving cream, and he loves to tell knock-knock jokes. When I told him my name, he told me this one:

  “Knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Isabel.”

  “Isabel who?”

  “Isabel out of order? I had to knock!”

  I led Sophie between the two storefronts to a door. Behind the door is a little room that doesn’t hold much of anything except mailboxes along one wall and the stairs that take us up to the apartments. Dad told me they constructed buildings like ours to make the most out of the space, and to allow people other than the owners of the shops to rent the apartments above them.

  “Then why did we move?” I’d asked him. “We could have stayed where we were and rented the apartment out to someone else.”

  He just smiled and said, “Your mom liked the idea of walking to work.”

  Living at work is more like it, I thought.

  As Sophie and I walked up the old, creaky stairs, she whispered, “Chickarita, this place is majorly cool.”

  We got to the top and turned to the right. As we approached the door, we heard Mom humming a tune, happy as a sparrow on a spring day.

  “Wow, guess cupcakes really do make her happy,” Sophie said.

  “For now.” I didn’t have to say any more. Sophie knew. My mom has more moods than there are sparrows in Oregon, and that’s a lot.

  When Sophie and I walked into the tiny family room, I noticed it still didn’t feel like home. It felt like someone else’s place with our worn-out furniture and some of the equipment Mom had bought for the bakery.

  The fan hummed in the corner, adding more noise to the room than cool air. Dad swore we’d get an air conditioner for the window as soon as we could afford it. Until then, during the hot months of July and August, we’d have to dream of cold December days and drink lots of ice-cold drinks.

  Mom sat in the old, tan La-Z-Boy, with a cookbook in her lap and a whole pile of them stacked beside her on the end table. “Girls, do you think pineapple cupcakes would be good?” she asked.

  “My mom and I make pineapple upside-down cake all the time,” Sophie said. “My little brother thinks it’s disgusting. But it’s my dad’s favorite.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” Mom said. “I don’t think Isabel and I have ever baked pineapple upside-down cake. Have we, Is?” I shook my head. “Hmmm, I wonder why. Anyway, they wouldn’t be quite the same, but I bet they’d still be good. I’m adding it to the list.”

  “How many flavors are you up to?” I asked, walking toward the kitchen. “Hey Soph, you want a root beer?”

  She gave me a nod and followed.

  “Seven,” Mom said. “I figure I need at least eight to start with. Of course, we’ll have to come up with new ones as we go along. Fun, exciting flavors will keep people coming back. Isabel, you can help me come up with catchy little sayings to go with them. You’re good at that kind of thing.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I can do that.” I reached into the fridge, grabbed two cans of root beer (my favorite), and handed one to Sophie.

  “How about if you have a flavor of the month?” Sophie said, popping the top. “You know, like the ice cream shops have?”

  Mom gave a little squeal. “Sophie, that’s brilliant! Flavor of the month. Why didn’t I think of that? So, what should our first month’s flavor be?”

  “When are you opening?” asked Sophie as she sat down on the plaid couch.

  “Should be August fifteenth,” Mom said. “They’re working fast and furious down there to make it happen.”

  “Hottest month of the year,” I said. “Maybe something with ‘cool’ in the title. Cool as a Cucumber?”

  “Ewwww,” they said at the same time.

  I laughed. “Okay, maybe not.” I took a drink of my root beer. “What about root beer cupcakes? Or iced tea?”

  “I know!” Sophie said. “Strawberry lemonade! Nothing says summer like strawberry lemonade.”

  Mom clapped her hands together, “Yes! I can cut up some strawberries and add a splash of lemon. Perfect! Sophie, you’re a genius.”

  Sophie hadn’t even been there five minutes and my mom had already called her brilliant and a genius. But that’s Sophie for you.

  Mom set the cookbook down and jumped up. “I think I’ll go buy the ingredients right now and make some. And I need some new cupcake pans, since the ones I ordered for the bakery are too large and don’t fit in the oven up here. If you two are still around, you want to help me? It’ll be fun. We haven’t baked together in a while, with the move and everything.”

  I had to admit, strawberry lemonade cupcakes sounded pretty good to me. “Sure, Mom. We’ll probably be here.”

  “Okay. If you need anything, your dad is downstairs, going over some things with the contractor. I won’t be gone long.”

  After she left, Sophie said, “Wow, she really is happy.”

  I nodded. “She’s never been this excited about anything. I just hope it lasts.”

  “Okay,” Sophie said, pulling on my arm, “show me your room!”

  “Close your eyes,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Come on, just do it. I’ll lead you. Trust me.”

  She put her hands over her eyes while I gently pulled her behind me down the hallway and into my room.

  “Okay, you can open them.”

  Now it was her turn to squeal. “Isabel, it’s totally purplicious! How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “ ’Cause I wanted to surprise you,” I said. “Isn’t it just so cool?”

  We stood there, admiring the pretty walls, partially covered with posters of the places I dreamed of visiting: the Space Needle in Seattle, Niagara Falls in New York, the Dover Castle in England, the Swiss Alps in Switzerland, and lots more.

  The person who lived in the apartment before us had painted the bathroom and the two bedrooms really bright colors. Mom and
Dad’s room was turquoise. The bathroom was orange. And my room was purplicious, as Sophie and I liked to say. Our favorite color.

  I walked across the room and turned on the fan. Sophie chugged the rest of her root beer, then did a belly flop on my freshly made bed. “Lucky girl. You get to have a cupcake shop where you can eat all the cupcakes you want and the most fabulous room I’ve ever seen.”

  I set my can on the nightstand and sat down beside her. “I guess. I miss the old neighborhood, though.” I reached over and grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I miss you, Sophie Bird.”

  She laughed and rolled over. “You haven’t called me that in a long time. Oh my gosh, remember that day?”

  How could I forget? We’d climbed a huge oak tree at the park down the street from our duplex. I stopped at about the fifth branch up because it was high enough for me. But not Sophie. She wanted to go higher. She went so high, I yelled up at her, “What do you think you are, a bird?”

  It took her forever to get down. At one point I thought I was going to have to get help. But she did it. She’s amazing that way. She accomplishes whatever she sets her mind to.

  In fourth grade she’d wanted a puppy. Her mom was allergic, so she’d always said no when Sophie asked. But Sophie decided she couldn’t live without a dog any longer, and researched and researched until she found a great breed that doesn’t shed and is hypoallergenic. Within six months, she had her very own Havanese puppy named Daisy.

  In fifth grade she decided she wanted to be the school’s spelling bee champion. She studied words from the dictionary every day for months. It didn’t surprise me at all when she won and went on to the state championship.

  In sixth grade she ran for class president. She wrote speeches, made posters, and went on campaign walks down the hallway, shaking people’s hands. They said she won by a landslide.

  As I sat there with her, I wondered what she would accomplish in seventh grade. And I thought maybe, just maybe, I could get her to help me accomplish something.