Pie Girl
Ellen Potter
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Ellen Potter
Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2017 by Qin Leng
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Potter, Ellen, author. | Leng, Qin, illustrator.
Title: Pie Girl / Ellen Potter ; illustrated by Qin Leng.
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. | Series: Piper Green and the fairy tree ; [book 2] | “A Yearling Book.” | Summary: Piper Green looks forward to serving pie at Peek-a-Boo Island’s annual potluck supper, but a food allergy upsets her plan.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017021197 (print) | LCCN 2016044754 (ebook) |
ISBN 978-1-101-93968-0 (pbk.) | ISBN 978-1-101-93966-6 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-1-101-93967-3 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Community life—Maine—Fiction. | Food allergy—Fiction. | Family life—Maine—Fiction. | Islands—Fiction. | Maine—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues). | JUVENILE FICTION / Imagination & Play. | JUVENILE FICTION / School & Education.
Classification: LCC PZ7.P8518 (print) | LCC PZ7.P8518 Pie 2017 (ebook) | DDC
[E]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781101939673
The illustrations were created using ink and digital painting.
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Chapter One: The Important Stuff
Chapter Two: Poof!
Chapter Three: Fairy Treasures
Chapter Four: Grrrr!
Chapter Five: Pie Girl Pirate
Chapter Six: Checkup
Chapter Seven: Bad News
Chapter Eight: Stinky Fish Paste Bread Girl
Chapter Nine: Phoooosh!
Chapter Ten: Spoooooky!
Chapter Eleven: Pigs and Hearts
Chapter Twelve: Whipped Cream Girl
About the Author
About the Illustrator
For all the wonderful people at Island Readers & Writers and the Maine Seacoast Mission, who bring books and joy to Pie Girls and Potato Ploppers
—E.P.
To sweet-tooth Mark
–Q.L.
My name is Piper Green and I live on Peek-a-Boo Island.
There are two things you should know about Peek-a-Boo Island:
1.All the kids on the island ride a lobster boat to school.
2.There is a Fairy Tree in my front yard.
There’s something else in my front yard too. It’s my toothbrush. Last week, Mom said my toothbrush was too old and I had to throw it out. That made me very upset because my toothbrush and I have been through a lot together.
“Mom, no!” I cried. “I love that toothbrush!”
“Piper, the bristles are falling out.”
“Dad’s losing the bristles on his head,” I said. “Are you going to throw him in the garbage too?”
After that, Mom said we could give my toothbrush a proper burial in our front yard. We put it in an empty spaghetti box with some toothpaste for company. At the funeral, Mom told me I should say a few words about my toothbrush.
I thought for a minute.
“You were a good toothbrush,” I said. “You always cleaned my teeth into sparkling beauties, and you didn’t even mind when my breath stank.” Then, very quietly, I whispered to the box, “I’ll never brush my teeth again.”
Mom heard me, though, and she said that would be a great idea, if I wanted to have teeth like Grandma Green.
“But Grandma Green has those clip-on teeth,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Mom.
“Apple pie, pecan pie, butterscotch swirl,
Pumpkin pie, lumpkin pie,
I’m the pie GIRL!”
I made up that song this morning. I sang it as I walked to the Little Store with my younger brother, Leo. Every time I got to the part that went “GIRL,” I did a hop.
“There’s no such thing as lumpkin pie,” said Leo.
Actually, I knew that. Except “lumpkin” was the only word that sounded good with “pumpkin.”
I ignored him and sang my pie girl song again very loudly. I was in a joyful mood this morning, and I didn’t want anything to ruin it. That’s because today the Sea Star was coming. The Sea Star is a ship that sails around the coast of Maine, helping people who live on the islands. The Sea Star’s crew brings food when the weather is bad and people can’t get across to the mainland, and at Christmas, they give all the kids presents. Plus, once a year, they bring doctors to the islands so that people can have checkups. Today they were coming with a doctor. But that’s not the good part. The good part was afterward, when there would be a potluck supper on board the ship. Everyone on the island brings food to the potluck supper, and whatever dish your family makes, the kids get to serve it.
This year, Mom was making pecan pie. That made me the Pie Girl.
The Little Store was very busy this morning. It is Peek-a-Boo Island’s only grocery store, and it sells all kinds of things—bread, milk, cheese, ice cream, rubber gloves for lobstermen, and lots of other stuff too. Mrs. Spratt was behind the checkout counter. Her cash register kept going Ping! Ping! Ping! as people bought ingredients for their dish in the potluck supper.
I looked at our list:
2 bags of pecans
1 bag of brown sugar
1 bag of flour
Suddenly, I felt something bonk the back of my head.
“Hey!” I shouted as I turned around. Allie O’Malley was standing behind me, waving a wand with a silver glittery star on the end of it.
“What’s the big idea?” I demanded, rubbing my head.
“I was poofing you,” said Allie. She waved her wand around in the air. “Poof, poof! I’m being a fairy today. See? I’m wearing my brand-new fairy skirt.” She twirled around to show off her skirt, which was made of green and silver cloth strips that were pointy on the bottom. It was very beautiful. Then she bonked Leo on the head with her wand.
“Poof!” she said.
“OW!” cried Leo.
“Fairies don’t go around poofing people on their skulls, you know,” I told her.
“Says who?” Allie O’Malley asked.
Right then I really felt like telling her about the Fairy Tree in my front yard. Except I didn’t because it’s a secret. The only other person who knows about the Fairy Tree is my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Pennypocket. There is a hole inside the Fairy Tree’s trunk, and if you put something in there, the fairies will take it and leave you a special gift in its place.
I shut my mouth very tightly in case the Fairy Tree secret trie
d to sneak out of me.
“My mom is making a deviled eggs appetizer for potluck,” said Allie O’Malley as she swished her wand around. “So I’m going to be Appetizer Girl this year. Appetizer Girl is kind of like the star of the show because appetizers get served first.”
“Well, I’m going to be Pie Girl,” I said proudly.
Allie O’Malley frowned. “No you’re not,” she said. “You’re Mashed Potato Girl. Your mother always makes mashed potatoes, so you are always Mashed Potato Girl.”
“Well, guess what? This year, Mom isn’t making mashed potatoes.” I put my hand on my hip and bopped it to one side, very sassy.
“I liked it better when she made mashed potatoes,” Leo said.
“That’s because you were Gravy Boy,” I told him.
Gravy Boy gets to pour the gravy from a little ceramic ship that is shaped like the Titanic. Mashed Potato Girl just plops the mashed potatoes on people’s plates. No one wants to be a potato plopper.
“This year our mom is making pecan pie,” I said to Allie, shaking the bag of pecans at her, “so I’m going to be Pie Girl. Pie Girl.”
I could tell that Allie was not happy about this news. Pie Girl is definitely better than Appetizer Girl because who doesn’t love pie?
Mr. Aronson walked by with a shopping basket full of stuff. Allie screeched and jumped backward, squinching up her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” asked Leo.
“Salt!” Allie shrieked, pointing to the container of salt in Mr. Aronson’s basket.
“So? What’s wrong with salt?” I asked.
“Fairies hate salt!”
“No they don’t,” I told her.
“Yes they do, Piper. They hate salt and they hate the sound of bells and they love butterflies that are yellow and they love riding on giant rats.”
“Says who?” I asked.
“My big fairy encyclopedia. It knows everything there is to know about fairies.”
I felt a little sick in my stomach just then.
“They probably just don’t like too much salt,” I said with a nervous voice.
“Wrong!” Allie jabbed the wand at me. “Fairies hate any salt at all. My encyclopedia says that if you want to get rid of fairies, just sprinkle salt all around their house and they’ll go away.”
Uh-oh.
Because guess what I left for the fairies yesterday?
A pretzel rod. And that thing was covered with salt.
Right after we brought home the groceries, I ran outside to the fat red maple tree in the front of our yard. That’s the Fairy Tree. I figured I would take the salty pretzel out of the Fairy Tree, just in case Allie’s encyclopedia was right.
I scrambled up the tree and then sat in the crook of two branches, beside the hole in the trunk.
“Hello in there,” I said into the hole. “I’m just going to take back that pretzel I left for you guys. I didn’t know about the salt thing. I don’t have a fairy encyclopedia.”
I reached into the hole and felt around for the pretzel. Except there was nothing in there. No pretzel, no nothing. That was strange! When the fairies take what I leave for them, they always leave something else in its place.
I patted around in the fairy hole one more time, just to be sure. It was totally empty.
That bad feeling came back into my stomach again. Because maybe the salty pretzel had made them leave. What if the fairies were gone for good!
I climbed back down the tree and ran next door to Mrs. Pennypocket’s house. Mrs. Pennypocket is an expert on the Fairy Tree, since it was her grandmother who found the Fairy Tree in the first place.
I knocked on her door.
“Come in!” Mrs. Pennypocket called from inside.
Her house smelled very delicious. I found Mrs. Pennypocket in her kitchen, bending over the open oven.
“I have a problem,” I told her.
“Do you?” she said. “Well, I’d better hear about it. Sit down and make yourself comfortable while I give these baked beans a stir.”
I sat down at the kitchen table. Nigel the bull terrier waddled up to me with his tail wagging. I gave his big, fat head a few pats.
Mrs. Pennypocket closed the oven door, took off her oven mitts, and sat down across from me.
“Okay, Piper,” she said, folding her hands on the table. “Let’s hear about your problem.”
So I told her what Allie O’Malley had said about the salt, and I told her about the pretzel rod and how the fairies might have run away, all because of me. Then I started to cry. That made Nigel start crying too, only he cried in little squeaks. He put his head on my leg, and we both cried together.
“Oh dear, you two are breaking my heart,” said Mrs. Pennypocket, looking at Nigel and me sadly. “Hmm. Let me ponder this.” She got up and took a few oatmeal raisin cookies out of her rooster cookie jar and put them on a plate. Then she set the plate on the table and sat back down. She picked up a cookie and nibbled on it. I think it was helping her to ponder.
“Well, as best as I can remember,” she finally said, “my grandmother never mentioned anything about fairies not liking salt. In fact, she said that the Fairy Tree had only one rule: you leave a treasure and you take a treasure.” Mrs. Penny-pocket looked at me carefully. “Did you really treasure that pretzel, Piper?”
“Yes, I did!” I told her loudly. “I loved that pretzel.”
She kept staring at me.
I looked at my hands. Then I looked up at the ceiling. Finally, I looked at Mrs. Pennypocket.
“Maybe I didn’t really treasure that pretzel so much,” I admitted. I scratched Nigel behind the ear. “And I might have taken a bite out of it too. It was left over from my lunch box.”
“All right, then maybe you could leave something else for the fairies,” Mrs. Pennypocket suggested. “It should be something really special this time. How about something that you made? Those are always the best sorts of things.”
I had to ponder that, so I took a cookie and nibbled it. I had to eat two of them before I came up with a really good idea.
“Got it!” I said, and I snapped my fingers. I’m a lousy snapper, though, so it was really just a fast rub.
I hopped out of the chair. “Thanks for the help!” I called as I headed for the door. Quick as anything, I ran back to the Fairy Tree and climbed up again.
“I’m really sorry about the pretzel,” I said into the fairy hole. “I have something else for you, though. I made it myself. Ready? Okay, here it is.” Then, in my nicest voice, I sang the song that I had made up that morning:
“Apple pie, pecan pie, butterscotch swirl,
Pumpkin pie, lumpkin pie,
I’m the pie GIRL!”
Back in our kitchen, Mom gave me three lumps of pie dough and a rolling pin. She showed me how to put flour on the table and roll out the crust until it got bigger and bigger.
I have wanted to use a rolling pin for my whole entire life! Only now I couldn’t enjoy it because I kept worrying about the fairies.
What if Mrs. Pennypocket was wrong and the fairy encyclopedia was right? Maybe the fairies really did go away. Maybe they moved to another tree. Maybe they moved to one of Allie O’Malley’s trees because she knew all about the salt and the giant rats.
I kept on worrying and rolling and worrying and rolling until I remembered…if the fairies left me something for my Pie Girl song, I’d know that they were still here!
I put the rolling pin down and ran for the door so that I could check the Fairy Tree.
“Hold on there, Speedy! Where are you going?” Mom asked. She and Leo were stirring the ingredients for the pie filling.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I told her. “I just have to check on something.”
“Finish rolling out the crusts first,” she said.
“Grrrr.” I showed my teeth.
“Did you just growl at me?” Mom said. Her eyebrows were lifted up, and that means she is not in the mood for any monkey business, young lady.
I shook my head and went back to rolling out the piecrusts.
“I hope the Sea Star brings Dr. Dagan and not Dr. Scott,” said Leo as he poured the pecans into a measuring cup. “Dr. Scott always has cold hands, and his breath smells like bananas.”
Leo is an expert on doctors, since he has gone to a lot of them. That’s because of his right ear, which has no hearing in it. Mom and Dad didn’t even know he was deaf in that ear until he was three years old and would pick up the phone when it rang. He’d put the phone to his right ear and say, “Hello? Hellooooo?” and then hang up.
“Nobody’s there,” he’d tell my parents. Then the person would call back and wonder why Leo had hung up on them.
That’s when my parents brought him to a doctor, who said Leo was totally deaf in his right ear. He doesn’t wear a hearing aid because the doctors said it wouldn’t help him, so you probably wouldn’t even know he can’t hear in one ear, except for if you try to whisper a secret into it.
Mom came over to check on my crust.
“Hmm,” she said, tilting her head this way and that. “It looks a little lopsided.” She pulled off a piece from one side and put it on the other. “Now roll that in, and I think it will be nice and round.”
I growled again, but only in my head this time.
After I finished that crust, I had to roll out two more, which took FOREVER.
“Done!” I said, and I ran straight out the door to the Fairy Tree.
I climbed up the tree and sat down in the crook. Then I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
“Please let there be something in there, please let there be something in there,” I whispered. Then I reached my hand into the fairy hole.
“Oh no, oh noooo!” I cried.
There was nothing in there. Not a speck.
“The fairies really are gone! I ruined everything with that dumb pretzel.”
