[Above picture because it seems like something Quinn and Cody would do ;) ]

Eight

Just Call Me Sous Chef

Quinn's POV

It was a long drive in that cramped Audi with Vanessa's friends on the way home from school that afternoon. I had been planning on walking, not feeling like being treated like dirt for fifteen minutes while Vanessa and Co. judged me with impending disdain, but my evil stepsister had grabbed me by the shirtsleeve just as I was leaving the school, insistent.

"You have to ride with us," she pouted, her bottom lip sticking out. I saw her eyes flick over to Shane, who was watching us beadily from his perch on the brick wall near the back door. Everything clicked--Vanessa was clearly only being nice to me for one reason.

I smiled thinly. "I'm not interested in helping you be some guy magnet, so stop trying to be nice to me just to get Shane's attention." My voice raised with every syllable until I sounded like I was carrying on an argument to passersby. Shane's eyebrows perked up--I hadn't exactly been planning on him hearing what I'd said, but it had worked out nicely, anyways.

Vanessa's manicured hand clamped down onto my mouth. "Shut up!" she hissed, her eyes narrowing. She glanced in Shane's direction and cast him an apologetic smile that made her look like she'd swallowed something nasty--the girl had no capacity for being sorry. "Come on, Quinn. We're going home. Stop making up lies about me."

Rolling my eyes, I reluctantly climbed into the Audi, Shane's eyes still following us. Of course, Sara and Kenzie immediately began interrogating Vanessa about her progress with Shane, and I was subjected to boredom as I listened to them gossip on.

My phone buzzed a few minutes into the drive with an email and, since I had nothing better to do, I went on and opened it. The subject read Extra Credit?

I had no idea who would need extra credit on the third day of school, but at least my teacher was extending an effort. The woman spoke in plain English all throughout class even though she insisted on us speaking French, and then she was surprised that we failed all of our quizzes.

Mes étudiants préférés, it read. How sickening. She was actually writing in fluent French.

I struggled through the remainder of the email, translating it loosely into English as I read: In order to help you all with your French grades this semester, I am extending an extra credit opportunity to you all. This assignment is due tomorrow afternoon at three o'clock--

What kind of extra credit project was due the next day? I'd be lucky if I had time to do it; I was planning on starting a running conditioning program for my date with Andrew as soon as possible. I figured if I hit the treadmill for about an hour this evening that would be a good start, but then I had to work on strengthening...

--should you choose to complete it. Completed well, this assignment will allow you to replace the lowest quiz grade you receive this semester with this project grade. Note that this project can only help you.

I finished looking up "help" on Google Translate and tucked my hair behind my ear as I scanned the rest.

Your task: You and a partner will create a cooking show, during which you will speak only French as you prepare a native French dish in front of cameras. The rest is up to you, so be creative!

Awesome. Julia and I would have a blast making croissants with butter or something simple like that; plus, if I just let her talk the whole time while I wore the chef's hat, we'd get an easy A. I went to my messages to text her, but before I could type anything a text from Cody appeared.

I need this A. Want to work together on that french extra credit project?

Biting my lip, I weighed out my options. Cody was already angry with me and turning him down would only make him more mad...but I also needed a good grade, which I could achieve more easily while working with Julia. Then I thought of how well Cody and I had done on that French mapping activity, and I grinned.

Sure, I texted back, my fingers flying across the keys. Do you want to come over to my house?

We texted back and forth, agreeing to meet at my house in ten minutes. Kenzie, who drove like a maniac, had arrived in front of Vanessa's and my driveway in record time, and Cody claimed he lived just down the road.

"Don't invite anyone over to the house tonight," I told Vanessa sharply as we disembarked the torture chamber and I swung my backpack over my shoulder. I heard my dog Macy barking from inside the house and hurried to unlock the front door for her. "I'm having Cody over to work on my French project."

Vanessa smirked as I opened the front door and Macy ran out into the front yard, weaving between our ankles. "Who, your boyfriend?" she asked. "How cute."

The last thing I needed was her sarcasm. Tossing my backpack onto the kitchen floor, I hopped up onto one of the barstools and started researching easy French dishes that could be cooked in little time and with little skill--because I knew Cody and I combined had about the culinary talent of a three-year-old.

By the time Cody rang the doorbell a few minutes later, I had decided on making crêpes--mainly because I actually had all the ingredients that we needed in the house. I hurried to open the door and saw that Cody had not arrived empty-handed: he was carrying two chef's hats and aprons as well as a camera mounted on a tripod.

"You're taking this project way too seriously," I said as he shoved one set of the chef's attire at me and then heaved the tripod into the kitchen. "Set it down right there."

He plopped down his load where I told him to and then said, "So, what are we making?"

"Crêpes."

He nodded but wouldn't look at me straight in the face, and that was when I knew that he was still angry at me. He'd clearly only asked to work on this project with me because he truly needed the help, and that sort of hurt.

"You're not still mad at me, are you?" I asked as I went into the pantry to pull out flour, sugar, and salt.

He grunted noncommittally and I dumped the ingredients onto the counter, opening up each of them.

"Let me explain the situation to you," I said, pouring a pinch of salt into my palm. "This is you right now." I sprinkled the salt over his head so that the white grains caught in his perfectly gelled hair. "You're salty because I forgot about our study session."

Cody shook his head back and forth like a dog, sending the salt everywhere. "Stop, Quinn," he said, sounding thoroughly cranky.

I continued on, ignoring him. "This is how you need to be." I sprinkled some sugar out onto his head, adding to the salt that was already residing there. "Sweet."

He narrowed his eyes at me as I continued adding sugar to his hair, turning it white as if it were dusted with snow.

"Quinn," he said in a dangerous voice that immediately made me stop mid-sprinkle, "hand me that sugar."

Relenting, I passed the bag over to him. He finished shaking as much of the ingredients out of his hair as he could before digging his hand into the bag. "Don't act like you don't need to sweeten up, too, Quinn Ramirez," he said, sending a handful of sugar right onto the top of my head. "Take that."

I sneezed as some of the sugar drifted to rest onto the top of my nose. "The only way to fight sweet is with salty." More salt onto his head.

He tried to snatch the salt shaker away from me but I dodged out of the way, hopping up so that I was sitting on the counter. "Can't catch me," I chanted, swinging my legs back and forth.

Smiling mischievously, he shook his bag so that I got a faceful of sugar. It took me a while to recover from all of the dust in my face, and he succeeded in snatching the salt shaker from my hand as I coughed.

"Let's be done with the food fights, okay?" he asked, but he was grinning with one side of his mouth higher than the other and I knew that he'd forgiven me.

Cody stuffed his chef's hat onto his head to hide the sugar and salt he hadn't removed and then tied his apron, knotting it in the front instead of the back. Then, while I donned my attire, he went over to the camera and started fiddling with the controls.

"Go on and get the rest of the ingredients out," he said, adjusting the height of the tripod.

I grabbed some milk from the fridge and said, with a completely straight face, "You should be speaking in French, Cody. C'est dommage!"

He rolled his eyes as I pulled out eggs and butter. "You know I can't speak French. This project is going to suck."

"We should write a script first," I suggested. "Then we'll memorize it and this whole thing can be easy."

We spent about ten minutes seated at the barstools with the Mac I'd gotten for my fifteenth birthday in front of us, typing out a makeshift script. We'd barely gotten through our introductions (Bonjour, je m'appelle Quinn et mon ami est Cody) when Vanessa came down into the kitchen, wearing skin tight leggings and a very revealing tank top.

"Hey, Cody," she chirped, perching up on the barstool nearest to him. "What's up?"

Cody surveyed her with a look that could not have been mistaken for anything but disgust. "Hi, Vanessa. We're sort of working on a project here," he said, turning back to my laptop.

I shot Vanessa a satisfied glare from behind his back as she stuck out her lower lip again--it was quickly becoming her trademark expression. "Can I help at all?" she asked. Her eyes were locked on Cody's square jaw and his puppy-brown eyes, and I could practically see her melting a little. This was so sickening.

"No, you can't," I said sharply. I finished typing out another sentence and then added, "You can't even speak French."

"Oui, I--" Vanessa stopped abruptly as if trying to remember another phrase from her limited French vocabulary that she'd probably gained from watching TV shows. "I can," she finished lamely.

I shut my computer lid. "Look, Vanessa, this project is actually really important to our grades, so go out with your friends or something and stop bothering us. Please."

With another grossly sweet look at Cody, Vanessa gracefully hopped down from the barstool and strode out of the kitchen, tossing her long copper locks behind her.

"Don't you pity me for having to live with her?" I asked Cody as I opened my laptop once more--but my stupid computer had deleted the script, and now we were left with absolutely nothing and fifteen minutes wasted.

Cody exhaled loudly. "Let's just wing it."

That was how we ended up in front of the camera, me wielding a spatula with my chef's hat crooked and Cody struggling to crack eggs, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth set in a tight line. We'd practically pantomimed through the setting up of the ingredients, as neither of us had known the French words for anything we currently had spread out on the counter. Other than a few stumbled phrases of introduction, we'd been completely silent.

"Crack l'oeuf," Cody explained, speaking in a weird mix of French and English. He broke the egg and the entire shell went in our mixing bowl, mingling with the other two eggs he had already laboriously cracked. "Crap," he muttered.

"I don't think that's French," I mumbled back as I peered into the bowl to try and remedy this new development.

Cody hurried to shut off the camera and I used my spatula to try and pick out the egg whites, but I only managed to fling most of the mixture out onto the counter, and we had to start over, anyway.

"Take two," Cody said once we'd tidied the kitchen somewhat and were standing in front of our now sparkling clean mixing bowl, both of us sporting extremely fake smiles for the camera.

"Bonjour!" I said brightly, flashing the camera a cheeky wave. "Je m'appelle Quinn, est mon ami est Cody."

Cody gave an awkward wave-nod, smiling graciously. "Oui," he said.

This time, I cracked the eggs instead of Cody, waving my arms around extravagantly as I did so; I figured I could make up what I lacked in French vocabulary in the theatrical department. Then I took a whisker and began mixing together the eggs, chirping for the camera, "C'est très simple!"

"You forgot the salt," Cody mumbled in my ear, quietly enough so that the camera couldn't pick up on it.

My cheeks flushed pink. "Et maintenant, nous ajoutons le...salt." I sprinkled in a "pinch" of salt as the recipe had specified. Hopefully, adding the salt late wouldn't affect the end result; it wasn't like Mrs. Sonatra was going to taste our crêpes, anyway.

We stumbled through the rest of the mixing, adding, and stirring, constantly flashing apologetic smiles at the camera as we made blunder after blunder. When Cody pulled out a skillet and nearly set the kitchen on fire, I started to think we never should have begun this extra credit assignment.

"Le...mixture...est prêt," said Cody dramatically as he added some of our yellowish-looking batter to the skillet.

At that moment, the front door opened and my mother poked her head inside the kitchen. "Quinn!" she exclaimed, taking in the sight of us in our aprons and the mixture that was sprayed all over the counters. "Why are you trying to cook?"

I liked that she said "trying to cook", as if she knew that I would fail miserably. "Mom," I said proudly, waving around my spatula as Cody tried to cook the first crêpe with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration, "Nous cuisinons pour un projet français."

Mom wrinkled her nose in confusion, and I said pointedly, "We're working on a French project. Excusez-moi." I slid past her with a spoon dripping with batter and dropped it in the sink.

My poor mother looked very tired as she resignedly left Cody and me in the kitchen to burn the house down.

The rest of our project went no better than the beginning. We ended up burning half of the crêpes to a crisp, but figuring it would be unfair for Mrs. Sonatra to grade us on the quality of our cooking, we finished strong with some fluent French conversation (granted, we didn't even talk about cooking because we didn't know any culinary words in French, but still). By the time I added whipped cream and strawberries to our masterpiece with a flourish and Cody shut off the camera, I was thoroughly exhausted.

"I'll edit this tonight," he said as he took off his hat and set it on the counter.

"Make sure you edit it a lot." I plopped the least burnt crêpe onto a plate and then took a nervous bite of it--it actually didn't taste that bad. I finished the rest in four bites and then started in on another. "These are actually pretty good," I commented to Cody.

He put one on a paper plate. "I'll take it to go," he said as I handed in my hat and apron. "I'm out of here. Work on being sweet, okay, Quinn?"

I rolled my eyes as he tossed another handful of sugar on me. "I'm fine the way I am," I retorted, shoveling another bite into my mouth.

"Of course you are," he smiled. I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not as he slipped out the front door, the tripod under one arm and the crêpes in the other hand.

The second the door closed behind him, I realized that he had left the entire kitchen for me to clean up. Groaning, I set my plate on the barstool as a reward for when I finished and grabbed some paper towels and Windex. If I'd ever actually needed Vanessa's help, it was now.