A Measure of Thanks #10

After the fundraiser and Matthew’s party, Molly thought that life would quiet down a little—but she felt busier than ever. She had just gotten home from a Post meeting and was about to start her homework when the phone rang. As usual, Amanda grabbed it first.

“Hello? Yes, this is Dish,” she said, grabbing a pen and a piece of paper.

Another Dish job? Molly thought, looking up from her notebook. She was trying to calculate the cost of ingredients for one batch of pesto sauce so she could figure out what to charge for it—and how much profit would go to America Second Harvest. Dish has been non-stop lately! I don’t have time for this!

“Three dinners next week?” Amanda was saying. “That shouldn’t be a problem. I just need to check with my business partners. I’ll get back to you tomorrow afternoon, okay?”

Molly sighed. Great—Amanda practically just agreed to this job.

“What’s the matter. Molls?” Amanda asked as she hung up the phone.

“We’ve just had so many Dish jobs lately,” Molly complained. “I’m so busy! It’s, like, hard to keep up. Maybe we should just skip this one.”

Amanda frowned. “I don’t know, Molly,” she began. “It’s an easy one. Besides, we really should check with everyone else to see if they want to do it.

“Good point,” Molly admitted. “But I might have to bail. I’m sorry, Manda.”

“No big,” Amanda reassured her. “We did the last job with only four people and it went okay.”

But it is a big deal, Molly thought as she looked at her list. How am I ever gonna be able to do two businesses at once?

“I’m going to e-mail everyone about the job,” continued Amanda. “See you in a bit.”

Downstairs in the den, Amanda turned on the computer and logged onto the Internet. Natasha, Shawn, and Peichi were all online, so she sent them an instant message.

Amanda logged off the Internet and went back upstairs. “Everyone else is up for the job,” she said as she walked into the twins’ bedroom. “We’re going to cook here on Friday afternoon, if Mom says it’s okay.”

Molly was sitting on the twins’ windowseat. staring into space with an intense look of concentration on her face. She didn’t answer.

“Hello? Earth to Molls?” Amanda joked. She was used to Molly’s daydreaming. “What are you thinking about?”

Startled out of her thoughts, Molly looked up at Amanda. “What? Oh, nothing. That’s, uh, great about the job. Sorry I can’t help out, but I’m babysitting for the Brewsters on Friday.” Molly hopped up from the windowseat. “I’m going to get a snack—you want anything?”

“Oh, yeah—would you bring me a cookie?” Amanda asked, her face brightening. “Thanks!”

“Be right back.” Molly slipped out of the room and headed downstairs to the kitchen. What am I gonna do about Dish? she wondered. I know one thing—I can’t keep ditching our jobs. That’s not fair to everybody else. Molly sighed deeply. She already knew that there would be no easy answer to this problem.

A few days after the rest of the Chef Girls had done the Jacobson cooking job, Molly sat at the computer, her arms folded across her chest. She stared out beyond the screen for a while, thinking. After a few moments, she took a deep breath and began to type.

Molly sighed, hit “SEND,” then stood up and got ready to go tell Amanda her news.

“Hi. What are you doing?” Molly asked Amanda up in their room. She could barely breathe, knowing that she was about to tell her sister the bad news. Between the summer-with-Justin news, and now this, she’d been doing that a lot lately.

“Oh, I’m just sketching a costume idea I had,” said Amanda as she retraced a few lines on her paper. She looked up. “Molls, what’s up? You look so worried.”

Her heart pounding, Molly replied, “I’m, uh, not going to be cooking. With Dish.”

“Huh?” Amanda frowned, trying to figure out what Molly meant. “We don’t have a Dish job this week, Molls. The one you couldn’t make was lasf week.”

“Well, I—I’m just too busy these days, Manda. And I want to do a new business. I want to bottle pesto sauce and sell it around Park Terrace. Then I can donate all the proceeds to charity.”

“Are you kidding?” Amanda exclaimed. “Molly, I know the whole charity thing is important to you, but Dish is our—our business! You don’t just quit a business on a whim, Molly! You can’t dump the whole thing on my head! It’s not fair!”

“You know what’s not fair?” Molly snapped. “The fact that so many kids in this country go hungry—every single day. And I want to—want to help them. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Of course it does!” Amanda replied, her face growing hot. “Who’s going to take over Dish? Everyone else is busy too. I can’t even believe you would just quit like that, like it’s no big deal! You know what? Forget it. This is too much. Everything has been going wrong lately. I can’t take one more thing!”

“Oh, please.” Molly rolled her eyes. “Your life is great. We are so incredibly—blessed and we don’t even know it!”

“Oh, all right already, little Miss—Miss—” sputtered Amanda, annoyed that she couldn’t come up with the right put-down. “...Save-the-World!”

“Little Miss Save-the-World” sounded so corny as it came out of her mouth that Amanda had to snicker at herself. She quickly fried to turn it into a sound of disgust at her sister, but Molly was too quick. She heard the laughter trying to come out, and suddenly, Molly was laughing, too.

Molly took a deep breath. “Listen, Manda,” she began seriously. “This was, like, the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. And you’re right—this does affect you. And I’m sorry if you’re upset with me. I hope—I hope you can understand that this is just something I have to do right now.

Amanda nodded. She understood, suddenly, what her sister was saying. “Well, you have to do what you have to do, I guess. Dish won’t be the same without you, though.”

Molly smiled thankfully at her sister. “Thanks, Manda. But I’m not going anywhere. Maybe I can still help out sometimes. We’ll just...see how it goes.” She reached out her arm to help Amanda up. “And we’ll still cook together. I don’t know about you, but I could totally go for some brownies. How ‘bout it?”

Amanda smiled at Molly. “Sure thing. Let’s go make some.” As Amanda followed her twin downstairs, she realized, It’s gonna take a while to get used to Molly not being in Dish. But I got used to Justin liking Molly instead of me. And I got used to not being in the play. These things just take...time.