Past the Victorian gate of Evergreen Kindergarten for Future Leaders down the longest avenue in town not far from Rivendell High School, children were scattered across the sidewalk, climbing trees and standing on benches, waiting to be picked up and brought home. Amongst them was a boy whose hands were gripped onto the straps of his bookbag that was bigger than him, staring down the road as though waiting for someone to appear in the distance.
He seemed to remain oblivious to the noise and movement around him, eyes the shade of lapis lazuli, hidden behind a pair of round, oversized glasses, looking straight ahead and with the clarity of a cloudless sky. He observed a group of friends—three boys and a girl—crossing the street in the midst of a conversation he could not hear. One of the boys, sensing his gaze, glanced over his shoulder and there, their eyes met briefly.
One would expect there to be some form of reciprocity in every bond between existences. Where there was love, it is—by the rule of some forgotten tale read by every bed—and would always be, returned when given. The receiver, enthralled by the gift, would thus willingly breed in themselves a nestling creature, ready to return to its owner, the giver, once ripe and ready.
He was four when he'd began to see the truth of it all; that though the creature had been given, it often did not return. That which it'd yearned to nest with would soon flee and nestle, instead, with another and that, was the true tragedy of them all. Simply because Leroy was his only friend didn't necessarily mean that he was Leroy's only friend and that there were not many others who adored him and yearned for his attention.
Not many a time did he see his only friend in school or outside of it. The closest they ever got after introducing themselves at the seesaw was the walk home after school—often which he would be accompanied by his uncle, watching the backs of Leroy and his friends. Sometimes, they stopped for ice cream.
*
It was a chilly November afternoon when Alfred Dempsey was sent to review the sudden catastrophic new menu of the Italian dessert store down town, leaving his schedule in a mess and his nephew, Vanilla, alone before the gates of his kindergarten after the bell.
By the time Miss Buttons had received a call from his uncle and relayed the message to him, the school's front porch was completely empty. No one jumping onto the benches; no one climbing the trees, scaling the gates; shouting and running about playing tag—no one at all. Just him. Vanilla.
He tightened the scarf around his neck, shivering a little and unconsciously sinking his head into the woolly material so as to prevent his lips from freezing. Miss Buttons had told him to wait inside since Miss Julie, his uncle's fiancé, would take a while to come over. Yet, the characteristic stubborn behaviour he'd somehow inherited from his uncle the critic made him root every grain of himself onto the concrete beneath his feet; and there, he stayed.
"Your uncle's always late," he heard all of a sudden. Startled, the boy raised his gaze—glasses fogged up from the heat of his breath.
"Leroy?" He couldn't resist the smile that threatened to surface. It broke through like a creature free of reins, taking to the skies and spreading its wings. Wide. "You're still here? I thought I saw you leave with your friends!"
"I left my homework under the table," said his friend, stuffing several papers folded in half into his bookbag. "My mother made me come back."
"S-so you did?" Vanilla's eyes were as wide as his oversized glasses. Amazed. "All the way back here? Did you walk? Is it far? Aren't you cold?"
He'd fired away as usual, energy levels at his highest since the previous time they'd talk. It was a long time. Bottling them up would naturally result in an outburst of joy and excitement, enthralled that he'd finally have his company at last—and all to himself.
"I live just down the road. It's five minutes from here," Leroy explained, eyes displaying no apparent spark of amusement. "Aren't you cold?"
His tone was fair and neutral, one of the many characteristics Vanilla liked about him and certainly missed. He peered over Leroy's shoulder, tipping his toes and craning his neck to catch a glimpse of anything down the road but the wind stung him in his eyes despite its handy shield and it wasn't much that he could see.
"N... not really. Just a little. I'm waiting for Miss Julie, actually. My uncle's got to review an Italian restaurant's new menu last minute." Still attempting to spot any semblance of a home, Vanilla squinted and braced the wind. "Where exactly do you live? I-I can't seem to see any houses down the road."
Leroy followed his gaze. "It's above a diner. I live in a shophouse." He observed the way in which the younger boy's eyes seemed to light up behind his glasses, brimming with a spark of enchantment that he, too, could not afford to miss for a moment. "You could come over for a bit."
Startled by the offer but immensely pleased that his only friend was willing to extend the privilege to himself, Vanilla nodded at once. "Really? Really? Are you sure? I'd love to! But is fifteen minutes alright? Or maybe—oh. Oh but... but I'd have to have Uncle Al's permission first. Or at least Miss Julie's, or they'd be worried about me, definitely."
Leroy shrugged. "I'll be waiting here."
There was no describing what he felt in that instant. A slow, generous wave; teeming with an emotion he could not yet comprehend or put a word to, lapping against the shores of his heart. The book-absorbed, spelling-bee-champion know-it-all could not. In that moment, there was no thinking in his steps that turned and bolted him back into the school's office where Miss Buttons sat before the counter, typing away on her computer while she, very subtly, slid the telephone towards the boy whose cheeks were flushed with excitement.
Dialing the number he'd memorized, he waited.
======================
[Vanilla]
It seemed to me and many others that the school was far too big for a simple ranking board to constitute most of the tour's time or be the highlight, if, at all. While it wasn't necessarily the grandeur or school-emphasized importance of rankings that resulted in my brooding over the list of names and numbers, it didn't stop the rest of those around me from dreaming; projecting an unlikely image of them topping the charts in their first year. Unlikely, only because Leroy was the only second-year student among the names of other upperclassmen.
Equally unlikely, however, was the possibility that this Leroy Cox was the same Leroy Cox that attended Evergreen Kindergarten for Future Leaders together with me—albeit a year older.
Yet, what were the chances of being enrolled in the exact same school as my very first friend; and a specialized school at that! The most prestigious culinary school, far away from our hometown, out in the middle of a forest in front of a lake, across an entire ocean's worth of distance between where we first met?
"Hey!" Xu caught me by the collar (an odd part of my clothing to choose), kindly stopping me from walking into a pillar. "And I thought I was absentminded."
Apologizing, I cleared my throat and recovered by pushing up my glasses that had slipped a little from the bridge of my nose. I was, however, fully aware that the act never seemed to completely erase the heat on my cheeks. Should I be tasked to rank levels of discomfort across every sensation to ever exist, blushing furiously whilst wearing glasses would no doubt be the runners-up. After wet socks.
"Here we have the strawberry fields—seasonal, duh—come and pick them any time and if you fill six buckets, you get to keep one," said the upperclassman who was starting to sound a little drained. "But honestly, with your packed schedules and all, you'd be dreading gardening duty 'cuz it takes forever and you'd rather be home preparing for class the next day or catching up with assignments. Moving on..."
We followed the flag he was waving around like a raft of ducklings, waddling around in shallow water for the first time. Xu would've been the one up front, asking questions every now and then. Not saying I wasn't the kind to do so but with other stuff like my childhood friend's stunningly inexplicable grades (and culinary skills) on my mind, well. I had my excuses.
Still, that didn't stop me from appreciating the architecture and general layout of the campus, doing my best to carve an imaginary map in my mind so that I would be lost tomorrow, when classes start. Already, I'd made out my likely base of operations: a tri-force alliance between the school's four-storey library, Roth Hall's apple pie bakery café, and the bookstore—each presenting its own unique addition to my weekly writing.
Admittedly, it wasn't the largest following. I-I mean, twenty-four reads per blog post (including that of my own, Uncle Al's, Miss Julie's, Chip's and Giselle's, from time to time) was within my meagre expectations. After all, everyone must have started somewhere... haha. Ha.
"This building behind me, yeah, just spread yourselves out, don't have to crowd. So this building behind me is the Colavita Center for Italian Food and Wine. None of your classes are here just yet, so uh. But you'll probably be coming 'round once you start taking your upper-level four-thousands like IT4001 or BW4001, for the culinary kids. I'm not sure about the critics but you'll probably have to take basic wine regardless—but that's in your final year, when you're legal. So."
Final year? Needless to say, I was disappointed. Uncle Al had expounded to me the roles of various types of alcohol in cuisines all across the world and though I wasn't a fan of drinking it from the bottle (or glass), I loved it in savoury and sweet dishes alike.
Along the way towards the student commons, where we were to end the tour and have our first meal in school, we passed a barn to the west of the main building. I wouldn't go as far as to say there was an entire farm filled with sheep, cows and roosting chicken but a decent plot of land had been allocated to it. In front of the barn stood a girl dressed in the school's casual uniform, scattering feed to a hoard of free-range chicken, running and flopping about.
"Does this mean we have farm duties too? Like, so there's lunch duty, gardening duty, stock duty and farm duty??" Xu fired away at once, consulting our guide who looked just about dead. Chip's husband once said something about high school students starting off as bright and shiny gems and then graduating as a stupid rock.
"Man, there's even dish duty if you get down to the specifics, but," the upperclassman laughed but his eyes appeared blank and void of emotion. "A whole lot of the school is student-run so it's going to be quite the leap from your sheltered middle schools, you moro—nothing."
Xu glanced sideways, giving me a look as though she was expecting some sort of brilliant comeback to come flying out of my mouth but I was not in the mood. The mood now was: goodness gracious. May Oscar Wilde and the god of rolling pins bless the rest of my semester.
*
The student commons turned out to be a large, sheltered space with an open concept featuring different sections—The Line, the marketplace, and a general seating area used both for meals and studying. What drastically set this place and every other middle school cafeteria or canteen (o-or um, more specifically my own) apart was that it boasted ample cushioned seats. Some rattan-backed like poolside chairs that were often designed to be, and even comfortable couches surrounding a central fireplace.
A fireplace. In the middle of a cafeteria—no, would anyone even call this a cafeteria? An area lined with kiosks of various cuisine at your pick (and additional cost), floor-to-ceiling glass panes with a magnificent view of the Hudson river, a touchscreen ordering system and a-a grand piano in on an elevated platform.
Good god.
"I've always thought the school was prestigious but," Xu was having trouble closing her jaw that had dropped about five minutes ago when we first entered, "I didn't think it was this prestigious."
"We must calm down," I spoke to no one other than myself, despite joining the end of the line with her. "The additional cuisines and the marketplace aren't free of charge. As long as we consider the fact that they aren't provided without consequence, this is... it's just an ordinary school cafeteria!"
I handed her a tray to seal the definition of school cafeteria into our heads, but Xu was not buying it.
"You might think I'm some crazy rich Asian, but you're wrong," she craned her neck to get a better view of the entire queue worth a dragon's body. "My mom's the rich one and I get by on morsels of bread, so. This may be some 'ordinary school cafeteria' to you but it isn't for me."
I begged to differ. "Um, actually—"
I was about to reveal my humble beginnings and the fact that I, unlike everyone else, was not associated to any world-famous chef and therefore stood out like a sore thumb when a sudden commotion erupted near the entrance of the building and turned every head. Unsurprisingly, there were people who tended to draw the undivided attention of the masses at every school and culinary schools were no exception.
"Who are they?" Xu could not see a thing from where she was standing and neither did I have the best viewpoint of the commotion. Half the crowd near the marketplace had for some reason shifted up front, blocking our line of sight to get a better view whilst leaving their purchase baskets behind.
"Third-years?" People at the front were beginning to say. "What are they doing at the student commons?" "I mean, they have access to all campus restaurants, so it doesn't make sense for them to be here but..." "Hold on a sec, there's a first-year with them."
Ah. Mere gossip, then. Nothing to do with—
"Oh, you mean Violet Birchwood? Uh, can't say I'm surprised." "Explains why they're dining here I guess."
Xu and I were moving up the line at a rapid pace, having gained the advantage of distracted humans who were, out of curiosity, moving away from their spots and towards the general commotion. Thankful for the opportunity, I scooted forward and laid my tray on the counter, picking out utensils for Xu and myself while the buzz in the air continued to rise.
Unfortunately however, the slight but audible gasps and gushes of several female students in front had my attention wrapped around their fingers. It directed my gaze to the group of people who'd only just entered the student commons and cooked up (worked up) a commotion.
"It's Cox!" O-oh. "Leroy?" "Where?" Oh. Ohhh no. "There. Beside Violet." "I think she's talking to him." "He doesn't look like he's listening though, haha."
Pretending not to have heard anything about someone I might have known (or, well, might know, for the matter), I deliberated between cream of pumpkin, French onion soup and Thai tom yum goong, watching the student in front of me tell the one behind the counter (also a student) her choice.
"I'll have the tom yum soup, please."
"Hey," Xu's attention was no longer on food and unfortunately for me, she, too, was drawn to a specific student. "That's the second-year guy on the rankings. Oh, and is it me or does everyone on the board automatically appear more attractive, because he's very good-looking."
I sighed, unsure if I wanted to follow her gaze and ruin the quiet, intelligent, but also eccentric image I had of Leroy as I child or continue to preserve it. Gently placing the bowl of tom yum soup handed to me by the student on duty, I moved to the main selection. Was that really it, though? Did I really wish to avoid looking at him merely to preserve the pure, adorable image of small Leroy in my mind? H e l p .
"Pay attention, Xu. They're asking for your order." I was able to resist all temptation and continue down the line to pick up some grilled vegetables, a small serving of butter chicken, and some jasmine rice. "It looks like they're serving fruit punch at the end of the line. Would you like me to—"
She wasn't listening. "Hey hey hey, that girl whose seat I sat on this morning. She's there too, talking to that guy but he's just like, looking around. Like he's trying to find somebody."
"Your tray's empty, Xu," I pointed out so that she would finally focus on the task at hand. "And we're nearing the end of the line."
"Oh. Oh shit," was all she managed to say, glancing over her shoulder as though to see where the line had gone while she was distracted. "I'm sorry. I... I'll just get whatever's left and what were you saying earlier? I didn't mean to interrupt you but everyone over there's so noisy and the buzz is killing me and I can't help but turn my attention."
I placed an additional tiny jar of panna cotta on her tray while Xu tried to fill the rest of it, telling her that I'd be fine with sharing some of whatever's on mine. "I'm guessing you didn't take your medication this morning?"
"Um," she shot me a sheepish look. "I did last night. After dinner."
"So... it's wearing off," I pointed out and she could not escape, fidgeting with her utensils. "Do you have them with you? Let's find a seat so you can take them quickly."
"Fine," Xu sighed, looking in the general direction of the entrance again. "I just hate the side-effects... making me lose my appetite, you know? Worst thing ever for a culinary student."
"I know a really talented artist who lost her eyes once," I smiled, handing her a glass of fruit punch before we set out in search of a table. "She's got them back now, but she didn't let it faze her when times were dark, so. Maybe you'll find your way around this."
For a moment, Xu appeared as though she had many things she wanted to say and a hundred thousand thoughts running through her mind but she made a strange face—a cross between a frown and a grin—before following me around the seating area which was, by now, nearly filled with freshmen.
While it certainly wasn't the most shocking factor among many others, I had to remind myself that culinary, baking, business, and nutrition students each had different timetables for our sub-courses, which would then put us at different meal timings and hopefully diffuse the crowd.
"Are these two seats free?" I heard Xu's voice from behind me ask all of a sudden and I turned to see who she'd spoken to, hoping it wasn't a table of upperclassmen. Thank god, it wasn't.
"Yeah, you can go ahead," one of them looked up from his phone and nodded. "First-years too?"
"Yes," I said before setting my tray on the table and taking a seat. "Are you three from the middle school division?"
They nodded, laughing a little. "That's how we know you're not."
Oh. That was a little harsher than I thought. Xu didn't seem to notice the undertone in their off-handed remark, laughing when they did and proceeding to ask about school-related activities and the like. Regardless, none of the three seemed to mind our presence at their table and while they were not necessarily clones of my godfather Chip Honeycutt, they weren't the devils of conversation like his husband was either.
"... in P.E, so. You still have to get your sweats no matter what."
"What about lunch?" Xu hopped on to the next topic at once. "Is it this crowded all the time? Don't you guys get ticked with so many people in the queue?"
"Uh, it depends. Meal timings are separated by course, so culinary—the biggest group—is always paired with the critics because they're the least. So on, so forth. Upperclassmen don't usually eat here, so that one's solved too."
I listened in on their conversation, absorbed instead in the flavour profiles of my tom yum soup, depth re-imagined. The sting of kaffir lime; fresh bird chillies, chopped, and the scent of lemongrass cutting through something like roasted chili in oil hit the back of my nose, and left on my tongue the most addictive aftertaste that begged for more. There was something about the fish sauce—extra virgin, Vietnamese, or at least from what I could identify just by taste—and the milk which didn't taste like coconut at all but a version of... oh. Evaporated milk.
"They're probably here because Violet has to be," the left-most girl in a yellow-striped tie said while I was distracted by food, my favourite thing to be distracted by, and craned her neck to catch a glimpse of where they were seated. "I mean. The upperclassmen you see around now."
"Who's Violet?" Xu had the ability to ask again despite the fact that she'd probably only just overheard bits and pieces of gossip about her already.
"You don't know Violet Birchwood?" The guy seated diagonally to my left had his jaw dropped. He fished out his phone and scrolled through several feeds to arrive at what appeared to be her Instagram account before passing it to Xu. "Here. Headmaster's daughter. Youngest Birchwood. There's like, five of them. Topped every baking class in middle school and invited to world-renowned patisserie conventions. Invented her signature premium tart when she was ten and it's only available at her eldest brother's restaurant in Paris. High-flyer. Over-achiever."
"Wow, you know a lot about this... Viola—Violet," she corrected herself upon seeing him mouth Violet's name and roll his eyes. "Are you her fan or something? Does she have a fan club? Can anyone join?" Xu passed the phone to me though I was perfectly fine being distracted by food. Regardless, I received it and scrolled through her posts out of curiosity.
"Yeah just search it up on Facebook or follow the official fan account on Instagram. I'll accept your requests," the girl in baking studies replied, already pulling out her phone.
Clueless me, having yet to notice the overbearing involvement of our table in Violet's fan activities and the extent to which they worshipped her back in the middle school division, had to spot a picture of a tart whilst scrolling and identify it as one that Uncle Al was invited to taste during our stay in Paris.
"Oh! This tart," I pointed out then, pausing to show them the picture I was referring to. Uncle Al had ordered one each for the three of us—Miss Julie, him, and myself. "I've had this before. It's beautiful, but it wasn't really... oh. Oh, it says here that it's her signature tart. Well I guess she does have a lot to learn here, so."
====================
A/N: Hi everyone! I'm having fun writing this book but updates are currently still irregular (until I finish the Baked series, so). I hope the culinary school experience is immersive enough for you guys to realistically feel its presence! ^0^/
Feel free to let me know about anything at all.
-Cuppie.